Southampton – it has been a long time

Harry Redknapp has been in charge of them for just about a year but it has been a year when it would have been no surprise to see him pack his bags and leave, particularly with the situation regarding Clive Woodward and his recruit Simon Clifford. So this week’s news has been no shock at all with Portsmouth apparently earmarking him for a return to Fratton Park, I suppose he has to decide which is the lesser of two evils, working for Rupert Lowe or for Milan Mandaric.

Whatever he decides, or whatever Southampton decide, Harry will be in charge tomorrow when the Clarets pay their first visit to St. Mary’s. Despite losing a number of players during the close season, particularly Peter Crouch and Kevin Phillips, they were amongst the favourites for promotion.

Redknapp strengthened the squad with a number of signings with only one of them, our old Ricardo Fuller, costing money when he signed from Portsmouth for £90,000. During the pre-season he was joined by Dennis Wise, Darren Powell, Tomasz Hajto from Nuremberg, and Al-Ittihad’s Djamel Belmadi, all on free transfers.

There have also been three loan signings in Kamil Kosowski from Kaiserslautern, Penarol’s Marcelo Tejera and more recently Blackburn goalkeeper Zak Jones who is providing cover.

They have been beaten just three times in the league with only once at home against Leeds when they led 3-0 only to go down 4-3. Their problem has been that they don’t win enough games and they have drawn no fewer than twelve of their twenty league games. That included a run of eight successive draws that came within one of a league record.

They have been as high as fifth in the league, in the top half for much of the season so far, and they are right at the bottom of the top half at this time, four points behind the Clarets although with a game in hand.

Click HERE to see all Southampton’s results this season.

The Clarets will be hoping to get a good result on their first appearance at the new stadium, we are certainly due to get a good result in Southampton. Our last league win there was back in our 1946/47 promotion season and our only other win at the Dell was in the League Cup in its inaugural season of 1960/61.

There’s some bad news and some good news for Harry Redknapp. The bad news is that Nigel Quashie is ruled out suspended but to counter that David Prutton is available for the first time since breaking a bone in his foot in September.

There’s also some good news for Burnley fans, Dennis Wise hasn’t recovered from a thigh injury so we won’t have to put up with him. Also out for the Saints are Marian Pahars, Claus Lundekvam and Tejera with knee, rib and calf injuries respectively. To add to that Michael Svensson is still rated as doubtful.

Southampton are expected to line up: Antti Niemi, Darren Kenton, Rory Delap, Danny Higginbotham, Darren Powell, Kamil Kosowski, Matt Oakley, David Prutton, Djamel Belmadi, Brett Ormerod, Theo Walcott. Subs from: Paul Smith, Tomasz Hajto, Martin Cranie, Ricardo Fuller, Neil McCann, Kenwyne Jones.

Click HERE to see the full Southampton squad.

Despite the convincing win against Crewe last Saturday, Steve Cotterill will have to make at least two changes to the team. Michael Duff is out suspended after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season, whilst Nathan Dyer, scorer of the last goal, will not be available because Southampton put a clause in his contract to prevent him playing against them.

The change for Dyer should be the easiest one to work out, Southampton fan Wade Elliott will get the chance to play against them, but it might not be just as easy to second guess who Steve will play at right back. He could bring in Duane Courtney, he could switch Frank Sinclair over, or he could again opt for three central defenders as he did at Leeds.

With John McGreal passed fit, despite the stitches in his head wound, I suspect he could well move Frank over to right back for this game and continue with the winning 4-5-1 formation.

There’s a boost to the squad though with Graham Branch having come through a reserve game on Wednesday, his first game since he sustained the injury against Leeds some weeks ago.

I think we could line up: Brian Jensen, Frank Sinclair, Keith Lowe, John McGreal, Jon Harley, Wade Elliott, John Spicer, Micah Hyde, James O’Connor, Garreth O’Connor, Ade Akinbiyi. Subs from: Lee Grant, Duane Courtney, Chris McCann, Danny Karbassiyoon, Graham Branch, Gifton Noel-Williams.

Our last visit to the Dell was back in September 1977. We had picked up one point from our first four games of the season and things weren’t about to get much better as we were to draw one and lose four of the next five.

That fifth game was at Southampton and we went down to a 3-0 defeat against a Southampton side who had fared just a little better than us with one win in their first three games.

There was never much doubt as to who was going to win this one after Phil Boyer gave the home side an early lead and he scored again with David Peach also on the scoresheet from the penalty spot. The result needless to say left us bottom of the league.

Southampton’s team included former Burnley player Chris Nicholl and Malcolm Waldron who would join the Clarets six years later.

The teams were:

Southampton: Ian Turner, Malcolm Waldron, Manny Andruszewski, Steve Williams, Chris Nicholl, Mike Pickering, Alan Ball, Phil Boyer, Peter Osgood, David Peach, Ted MacDougall.

Burnley: Alan Stevenson, Derek Scott, Ian Brennan, Billy Ingham, Peter Robinson, Billy Rodaway, Terry Cochrane, Peter Noble, Malcolm Smith, Brian Flynn, Tony Morley.

Click HERE to see all our results against Southampton dating back to an FA Cup tie in 1908.