Ralph Hasenhuttl makes his Premier League home debut at St Marys as Southampton meet Arsenal in this weekend’s opening Super Sunday match.
Having made his debut away at Cardiff last weekend, Hasenhuttl will be hoping that his relegation battling Saints can halt an fierce Arsenal side who last tasted defeat in August.
Team news
Embed from Getty ImagesSouthampton will be without Jack Stephens after he picked up a knee injury in training.
Left-back, Ryan Bertrand is also ruled out with a back injury whilst Michael Obafemi continues to recover from a thigh injury.
Danny Ings (thigh), Shane Long (ankle) and Cedric Soares (calf) are all in contention after returning to full fitness.
Arsenal have a defensive crisis with Shkodran Mustafi and Sokratis Papastathopoulos both suspended whilst Rob Holding (knee) and Konstantinos Mavropanos (groin) are also absent.
Midfielder, Emile Smith-Rowe is another absentee with a hip injury as Danny Welbeck remains out after ankle surgery.
Form
Southampton are winless in last 12 with just five points in that period all coming from draws.
They however have scored seven goals in five of last six with five of those goals coming before half time.
Arsenal are now unbeaten in last 22 matches across all competitions but have kept four clean sheets in nine games since start of November.
League wise, the Gunners ended an eight match run without a clean sheet with a 1-0 win over Huddersfield last weekend, which also saw a three match streak of scoring twice come to an end.
Stat Attack
- Southampton have lost three of last five meetings with Arsenal in all competitions (W1, D1, L3).
- Arsenal have avoided defeat on their last three trips to Southampton, having lost previous two by an aggregate score of 6-0.
- Since Southampton returned to the Premier League in 2012-13, they have taken nine points at home compared to just one away against Arsenal.
- Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is currently joint top of goals chart with ten goals alongside Mohamed Salah of Liverpool.
- Southampton have made the fifth highest number of long balls (1,074). Only Burnley, Huddersfield, Brighton and Newcastle have created more long balls.
Prediction
This could be a very interesting game because we are going to properly see how Southampton handles Hasenhuttl’s style, given that he only had two days with them before their defeat at Cardiff last weekend.
I however can see Arsenal continuing their recent strong form against the Saints with victory here.
Prediction: Southampton 1-2 Arsenal
Jake predicts: Southampton 1-3 Arsenal
Result: Southampton 3-2 Arsenal
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