Southampton v Brighton: The Saints view with St Mary’s Musings

Ahead of Southampton v Brighton, we caught up with St Mary’s Musings for a chat that was about much more than just 90 minutes of football.

Southampton’s season was on the agenda. How could it not be when the Saints have both topped the table and lost 9-0 in the space of a couple of months? That is an achievement of extraordinary ridiculousness that we can only hope Brighton emulate one day.

What we really wanted to discuss though was Southampton’s transfer policy. Brighton have seemingly decided to copy the Saints in signing top young talent from around Europe, trying to develop them into quality players and then selling them on at a profit.

Southampton’s list of successes in this field is vast. They basically supplied Liverpool with the spine of their title winning team. If the Albion end up being half as good as Southampton are at it, then we look well set for the future.

And so before Southampton v Brighton, Allen Gunn from St Mary’s Musings took us through the pros and cons of becoming a farm for footballing talent.

We also discussed the somewhat controversial manner of Southampton’s win at the Amex and why the Saints have enjoyed a hoodoo over the Albion since our promotion to the Premier League in 2017. And there is no mention of a South Coast Derby anywhere.

Southampton have topped the Premier League this season and lost a game 9-0. How would you sum up what appears to the outside world to have been a very strange 2020-21 for the Saints?
I think from the perspective of a Saints fan, it has been a perfectly normal 2020-21. We have overachieved in certain aspects, played like absolute pants for large stretches and made a decent cup run – for an outside that seems pretty strange, but that is standard Southampton.

We have just had a lot more injuries during that stretch than we normally would have, which is a product of a thin squad and the type of press and high reward football that we play.

The 9-0 loss sticks out because of the scoreline, but we have definitely had worse losses this season from a playing perspective – the defeat following at Newcastle and at Leeds being two that really stand out the most.

That said… it was nice to look at the table and see us top based purely on merit of how we were playing and not because we bought this player or that player. Our squad had largely stayed the same from the previous year, so to see that was really cool.

I didn’t expect to sustain that level, but it was still nice to see. But it is November at that point and I’m not looking at the table until about December – unless we are in Sheffield United’s position, then I would have been a bit more concerned!

What are your hopes for the remaining 10 or so games? Where do you see Southampton finishing?
This next run of games is fairly nice to Saints. We have got winnable games – beginning with Brighton and then Burnley and Crystal Palace. Realistically, we should be picking up nine points, but football is played on the pitch as the saying goes.

Winning at Sheffield United has at least given us confidence back and even though we got slapped at Manchester City, we showed a good account of ourselves.

If we can play like that, we should be beating Brighton, Burnley and Palace. I think we will finish close to mid table, which is where I had hoped we’d be at the start of the year. Add in a possible trip to Wembley in the FA Cup and you have a pretty successful season.

Brighton appear to want to follow the Southampton model of signing young players from abroad, developing them and then selling them on for profit. What are the benefits and the flaws to that approach?
The benefits are the ability to sustain your place in the Premier League, long after the supposed sell by date. When you are not a big money club, you rely on big money clubs to keep you in the division.

Being able to play well and get the most out of your players helps you in the long term because they can then move on for bigger fees, which keeps the model turning.

The drawback is not hitting on a player and then you are stuck with a possible flop because no one wants them. Think Wesley Hoedt, Sofaine Boufal (to an extent), Guido Carillo, Mario Lemina… they all came in with some decent promise but it just didn’t pan out.

The other benefit is you may find an absolutely worldie in the mix if you have patience. None of us expected Jannik Vestergaard to be this good this season.

We expected him to be sold to Leicester and run away with a ridiculous profit, but here he is being a first-name-on-the-team-sheet kind of player.

What did you make of our last meeting when Southampton won 2-1 at the Amex in December?
Brighton 1-2 Southampton was good for us! I think it was a scoreline we were happy with, but if I remember correctly there was some VAR controversy?

The aforementioned Vestergaard played his part in the win, as did Danny Ings, who is unfortunately out injured at the moment. Fans or no fans, the Amex is a tough place to go.

That was the latest good result for the Saints in the fixture with Brighton yet to beat Southampton in seven Premier League attempts. You must love playing Brighton?!
We do. But it’s always a tough fixture on the calendar with not much separating the sides. Neal Maupay is always worth a tense effort on goal late to possibly thwart our result!

It will be a much different team this time to when we last played – we are without Theo Walcott, Ings and Oriol Romeu. I would also expect Fraser Forster in goal ahead of Alex McCarthy.

If you had to give Graham Potter some advice for beating the Saints, what would it be?
It will sound strange, but let us control the first half – hopefully you can get to the break level or only 1-0 behind and then hit us in the second half. That plan worked for Wolverhampton when we played them.

We played probably our best half of the season and then we just ran out of steam in the second half. We have trouble killing off games before half-time – not that that is easily doable by any stretch, but if we get a 2-0 lead at half-time I feel much better about that then a 1-0, where we have the possibility of cracking. We don’t have a lot of depth, so we need to do our work early.

Also because we press so dang high up the pitch, diagonal balls towards our left and right backs tend to open us up defensively. I know there’s not many teams in the world with the talent like City, but if you can pick a pass behind our defence, we lose our shape and forget who we are covering.

Stuart Armstrong has been pretty flawless in attack, but his defence this year at times has been a liability. But I love the guy, I think we are a better team with him on the pitch by a country mile.

Finally, what is the St Mary’s Musings prediction for Southampton v Brighton please?
I will say 2-1 to Saints and another close game between us.

Thanks to Allen for his revealing insight ahead of Southampton v Brighton – you can read more about the Saints approach which Brighton are looking to replicate at St Mary’s Musings and by following on Twitter.