Saints kick off their pre season fixtures with a game on Wednesday evening with the Premier League opening day being exactly a month away.

Saints take on Spanish side UE Llagostera a team currently playing in tier 3 of the Spanish League, they have risen rapidly through the Spanish leagues in that 10 years ago they were playing regional football and only joined tier 8 of the Spanish league at the start of 2003/04 season.

Since then they have risen rapidly through the divisions although how much further they will rise is questionable given that their stadium only holds 1,500.

Segunda Division B were they currently play is as mentioned the third tier of Spanish football, however it has 80 teams divided up into 4 seperate divisions and includes the reserve teams of several La Liga clubs.

They seem to represent a good starting point for Saints in that they are a professional team, but given they finished 10th in their division last season I would imagine their standard to be somewhere around Conference South level.

For Saints this game wont be about winning, as has been normal in previous seasons it will be about giving the squad a chance to blow off the cobwebs and get some game time, of course we will also get to see just how Mauricio Pochettino likes to prepare in pre season and how that differs from his predecessors, initially it seems that he prefers to play less games but make those games of rising standard, this summers pre season only has six fixtures spread out over just under 4 weeks and as previosly said, the standard of opposition steadily rises.

Photo: Action Images

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