Saints pre season programme steps up a notch as they meet German Giants Schalke in Austria tonight.
So far Saints pre season opponents have been of a low standard and quite rightly so, any club wants to build up gradually and start at a gentle pace, however this pace starts to quicken in Austia as they meet the Bundesliga side Schalke 04 in the town of Villach with a kick off of 6pm local time which presuambly equates to 5pm good old British Summer Time.
For their part Schalke finished 4th in the Bundesliga last season qualifying to the Champions leaguie in the process and although they havent won the title since the late 50's they have been consistent in the past deacde or so, finishing runners up on no less than four occasions the last being in 2010.
Schalke have been in pres season training for around a month now with the league season in Germany starting on August 10th a week ahead of the Premier League and are therefore at a slightly more advanced stage than Saints in their schedule, so this then should represent a big jump in quality of opposition for Saints, the Germans drew with Besiktas on Saturday who Saints themselves face this weekend.
What sort of side Mauricio Pochettino will put out is open to speculation, in the opening two games he has used virtually a different side in each half, but given the standard he could afford to do that, whilst I would expect there to still be a lot of substituions etc, given the jump in standards, it could be folly to put out two different sides against a team of Schalkes capabilities and the changes could be dependent on how the game is going rather than decided in advance, whilst the result is secondary, a big defeat is not what the morale needs at this stage of preparation.