Southampton vs Manchester City Preview

Bottom-of-the-table Southampton will welcome title hopefuls Manchester City to St. Mary’s Stadium this Saturday with both sides looking for maximum points to help them achieve their season’s aim.

The Saints’ only goal this season is avoiding relegation and there is no more challenging opponent to attempt to get maximum points from than City. However, the hosts have one of the most porous defences in the Premier League, conceding 47 times this season. In contrast, City have the best attack in the league having scored 71 times in 29 games.

So it will be defence against attack on Saturday as the Saints attempt to end a run of four league games without a win (D2, L2). Their last outing, a 1-0 loss to West Ham, showed one of their glaring weaknesses as they conceded their 12th Premier League set-piece goal of the season.

That’s a long way from being the ideal preparation for taking on reigning PL champions Manchester City. However, Southampton won the last head-to-head meeting in January when they were 2-0 victors in the League Cup so perhaps some comfort can be extracted from their recent mixed home PL record (W1, D1, L1), which coincidentally matches their recent H2H record at St Mary’s in the PL.

Meanwhile, City will look to avoid another embarrassment against the Saints when they make the trip to the south coast. Pep Guardiola’s side have lost three of their last ten visits to this stadium, most recently getting knocked out of the league cup.

City come into this tie in hot form having won their last seven games in all competitions including a 4-1 win over Liverpool last time. They are also unbeaten in eleven competitive matches (W9, D2) and will be desperate to get maximum points to cut the gap between them and Arsenal to five points-albeit temporarily.

Having won their last three away games while keeping two clean sheets, they will fancy their chances of getting maximum points against the league’s joint-lowest scorers, Southampton.

Other fixtures taking place this week in the Premier League Fixtures:

Premier League Table