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Can Saints Win Three On The Bounce
Wednesday, 26th Dec 2018 09:48

The last time Saints won three Premier League games in a row was in Ronald Koeman's final games in charge of the club in May 2016, can they at last do it again.

Saints problems over the past couple of years have been down to a lack of consistency, Claude Puel could not manage a hat trick of Premier League victories and managed a double only twice, the last in April 2017.

Mauricio Pellegrino could not manage back to back wins and nor could Mark Hughes, although he came very close twice, firstly Everton ruining any chance of that with an equaliser in the 6th minute of injury time and then Brighton coming back from two down earlier this season to level with a last minute penalty.

Indeed the last time this happened was when Ronald Koeman won his last four games in charge at the club to storm to sixth place in the final table.

Ralph Hasenhuttl has restored the faith of the Saints fans since his arrival and the win at Huddersfield meant the first back to back wins since Puel 20 months earlier, now the question is can he go one better and match Koeman, although if he does beat West Ham if he makes it four in a row by beating Manchester City then he is truly the new messiah.

Certainly there is a feeling that we can win three in a row, indeed West Ham are the benchmark we are aiming at in the short term, a few weeks ago the Hammers were in the relegation dog fight, then they won four in a row, all against teams in the melee around them to pull themselves well clear and up to 24 points.

The bubble burst for them at the weekend when Watford beat them on their own East London turf, but they now sit comfortably in 12th place on 24 points and this is what Saints should be looking to do.

What Saints will have is confidence, a capacity St Mary's full of Saints fans who believe and are behind them all the way, a team full of confidence and also believing as well as a manager who has charisma and an aura about him.

Sound familiar ? It takes us all back to those heady days of April 2016.

Ralph Hasenhuttl won't be able to click his fingers and make two years of mismanagement right straight away, but he has already made great strides forward, it will be a rocky ride along the way, but what he needs to do as West Ham have just done, is win the games that he can, pick up the odd point from the top six and get some consistency.

He has made a great start to his Saints career, this season has a long way to go, but things have really started to look up at last.

Photo: Action Images



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underweststand added 15:10 - Dec 26
Yes Nick, it's easy to get carried away on the strength of a couple of excellent performances but the very least we can say is that it has been very encouraging to see an attacking Saints team again. Maybe a more enthusiastic article can be written after the Chelsea game has past, but at least we can draw breath a little easier at the moment.

It will be important to see who comes and goes in the January window when, (as you pointed out) Yoshida is away in the Asian Games, and I'm unsure if there is a similar competition for African countries?... in which case we'd be without Lemina - that's if he's still a Saints player by then.

One thing for certain..the next month will give a a pretty good guide to the second part of the season, added to which a few familiar faces may have played their last games here.
IF ..as your headline asks ..can we do make it 3 on the bounce ?...a headline like 4 or 5 on the bounce....would be a real statement of intent from Ralph Hasenhuttl. COYR !
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KriSaint added 01:25 - Dec 27
Yes Nick - I think we can get that third win in a row, because - out of nowhere - a new ´time` has arisen, and this time it is not some ´Fergie time` phenomenon.
It´s `Ralphie time`.
A new era has begun.

Allow me to add, that maybe Ralph was in fact on our radar last summer but not available because, as we have now heard from his own mouth, being mentally somewhat tired at the time he wanted (a 3-6 months?) break after having left Leipzig in may. We know by now, that he said no thanks to even Bayern M. last summer because of this fatigue and because he felt BM was too big for him at the time, AND also because he wanted to try himself in an other league in another country (probably first and foremost England and the PL)).
In any case we are lucky that he was available and ready when we came for him a couple of weeks ago.
He probably considers HIMSELF a bit lucky that Saints came for him, because he is a humble person in the best meaning of the word, and because our club sounded like a good match being a PL club with a decent size, history, philosophy, academy and amount of ressources (remember, at a point we were actually 18´th in the list of ´richest European clubs in 2018` (probably because of - among other things - all the infamous millions of pounds we got from Liverpool)).

Speaking of Liverpool (and then I´ll shut up about Liverpool):
like Jürgen Klopp rightly said when he heard of RH´s new job: a win-win situation. (Thanks Jürgen. You finally said something intelligent about our club).

Well done Saints, recruiting such an obviously talented manager. At long last :-)

What a difference a few weeks can make.
I certainly think we can get our third win in a row by beating West Ham.
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SaintPaulVW added 09:14 - Dec 27
I think we are playing the next 3 teams at the right time to get some points out of the games.

It's still early days and there will be bumps on the road. It will be interesting to see how other PL managers set up against us when our new style has been studied.

Fingers crossed we can make it 3 but no disaster if it all comes to a halt and we still play well. COYR!
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