Football News: Southampton v Huddersfield Match Preview 22 December 2018

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Tomorrow's match by any stretch is a pretty big one for both Southampton and Huddersfield. But who is more likely to come out on top?

Huddersfield come into the game in wretched form losing 4 on the spin including to Brighton and most recently Newcastle at home. One of their major problems this season is scoring goals. They've only netted 10 times in their 17 games. That said, after a very iffy looking start to the season, they sured up their defence so haven't been conceding heavily of late, regularly going down 1-0.

So on paper, they're an ideal opponent as Saints continue their rebuild under Ralph Hasenhuttl. But they shouldn't be written off. They often were last season, by yours truly among others, and each time David Wagner managed to pick up the troops and find a way to get them to bounce back. There should be no-one in the Saints camp looking at this as a comfortable 3 points.

Saints on the other hand have beaten Arsenal and scored 3 goals to boot. The performance wasn't perfect in its execution of the tactics but it was spirited and the players worked very hard. It will be interesting to see whether the team's formation and personnel changes for this fixture as Arsenal exposed the inexperience of our defenders last week and Oriel Romeu seemed to be trying to decide what to have dinner during the majority of the match, rather than actually playing football. Cedric and Mario Lemina are likely to be pushing for starting spots and Jack Stephens is back training again too.

But its early days, the coach is still trying to get his message across and build up the players' knowledge and ability to apply it consistently. Performances are likely to be up and down but I hope the confidence of last weekend's result will eb enough, coupled with another determined performance. Danny Ings isn't going to score twice every week, nor is Staurt Armstrong so it would be nice to see the likes of Redmond, Elynoussi, Gabbi, anyone else from the starting line-up picking up the slack. I have to say though, that for the first time in what seems like years, I'm excited about seeing the Saints game this weekend.

Written by figodasilva December 21 2018 20:56:00