Saints look to break their scoring duck and in doing to send the Hammers back to East London with their tails between their legs.

Its hard to believe but the last man to score for Saints at St Mary's was James Ward Prowse against Crystal Palace on 5th April, he scored the 3rd in a 3-1 win over the Eagles with Nathan Redmond and Yoshida the other scorers.

Indeed if these are the only three goals we have scored at home since Manolo Gabbiadini netted against this weekends opponents West Ham on 5th February, so in almost seven months we have rarely had the chance to jump out of seats and celebrate a goal in our own ground.

Although we really do need to break this duck, personally I think we have to put last season behind us and concentrate on this one, it was Claude Puel's team that struggled to score, Mauricio Pellegrino has to be judged on his team not the fact we couldnt score six months ago.

The last game saw us create plenty of chances but not really work the keeper and that has to change, we have to not only create opportunities but finish them, the real downside of the Swansea game was despite so much possession and pressure the keeper only had to make one real save that has to change.

Mauricio Pellegrino has to make his first real tactical decisions on Saturday, he has to decide whether to go for the saf option or to look to take the game to the Hammers and put them to the sword.

I dont expect any changes in the back four, but I do expect Mario Lemina to come in the side and anchor the centre of the midfield alongside Oriol Romeu to create a base for us to attack.

The first decision is who goes out for Lemina, I think it might be Steven Davis in that the creative talents of James Ward Prowse could come to the fore with less defensive work to do.

Out wide I would sticke with Nathan Redmond and Dusan Tadic who offered width, creativity and had their chances against Swansea.

That leaves who to play up top, does Pellegrino stick with Gabbiadini or go for Charlie Austin, or does he perhaps take out JWP or Tadic to play both Austin and Gabbiadini together.

Either way he is not short of attacking options with the likes of Sofiane Boufal and Shane Long on the bench.

But we have to also look at our soft underbelly, we were not troubled by Swansea but we should consider that we were up against perhaps te weakest attack in the premier League at the moment in that they were missing the two players who scored over half their goals last season, yet we still managed to gift them a free header.

West Ham will be a tougher ask and we cannot afford those lapses in concentration again this week they will undoubtably be punished.

West Ham themselves have their injury problems and although they have a couple of players back in contention, whether they are fit to start is another matter.

One player who doesn't look like he willstart though is Jose Fonte, he was on the bench last week and although he will be able to sit their and run his bank balance through his head on his return to St Mary's he must surely be thinking "what if" knowing had he stayed he would have almost certainly Captained a team at Wembley and perhaps lifted a trophy whereas now he seems likely to stagnate at West Ham, strugglig to get in the side and unable to move elsewhere without taking a hefty drop in wages.

I think that Saints are due a win at St Mary's, the events of the last few weeks have strengthened team spirit, we are a different side from last year in that respect, we are a stronger side than in the second half of last season and we will get stronger, we just need to give someone a good hiding to kick start the season, lets hope it is against West Ham.

Photo: Action Images

SaintBrock added 21:39 - Aug 18 On paper at least WHU have strengthened massively in the close season but they are very much a work in progress and this I think will hamper their style for this weekend especially having been thrashed last week by United. It seems to me likely they will go ultra defensive to get at least a draw to stabilise their situation so we should not expect an overtly attacking style of play from them. They have to get their team together and working as a unit before they can have the confidence to try to boss the park and dominate their opponent. Expect another dominant but ultimately fruitless afternoon for Saints. Likely to be 0-0.

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1970 added 08:32 - Aug 19 Last season I wasn't looking forward to watching wet spam rain crosses in to our box for carroll to just head in without even getting off the ground, but they didn't need to they played straight through our flakey defence and I'm hoping it was because of Puels lack of pressing we lost the game so today we press high and make a game of it coyr
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GeordieSaint added 11:28 - Aug 19 Feel really positive today that the season starts now! 3-1 saints, come on!!!!!
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