Southampton V Brentford Postponed
As was expected the fixture between Saints and Brentford at St Mary's on Saturday has been postponed due to a Covid 19 outbreak in the West London sides squad.
A statement issued by the Premier League this evening reads as follows:
"It is with regret that the Premier League Board has postponed a further four matches due to be played this weekend.
The affected fixtures are:
Southampton FC v Brentford FC Saturday, 18 December, at 3pm
Watford FC v Crystal Palace FC Saturday, 18 December, at 3pm
West Ham United v Norwich City Saturday, 18 December, at 3pm
Everton FC v Leicester City FC Sunday, 19 December, at 12 noon
The Board has agreed to postpone the matches after assessing individual club requests this evening. Brentford FC have an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. This has resulted in their training ground being closed which means they are unable to prepare for Saturday’s game."
From a Saints perspective I feel they will not be too disappointed that the game has been postponed, although so far the squad does not seem to have been too badly affected by the new variant and subsequent increased infection rate, Ralph Hasenhuttl's squad have been affected by injuries and aside from the missing Goalkeeping pair of Fraser Forster & Alex McCarthy also had Adam Armstrong, Che Adams and Stuart Armstrong missing from the squad at Crystal Palace.
Tino Livramento and Armando Broja played through injuries and both having played a number of Premier League games in a short space of time after previously having little experience are in need of a break.
Now Ralph Hasenhuttl has 10 days before the next scheduled match at West Ham United on Boxing Day and will surely be able to get most if not all of the players mentioned back in full training and back to full fitness.
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