Given that Tadic has been away and played a couple of times for Serbia in the last few days, and has generally been underwhelming at everything other than writhing around on the floor in fake agony; maybe give Boufal a shirt on Saturday? He has been back at home with Saints training so he will be fresh and well versed when it comes to the manager’s plans.
This makes it a straight fight between your bones and Bearsy’s balls. It’s a close call, but your bones have been pretty accurate in the past and I like their prediction better than that of the ursine glands, so I’ll go with that.
We are seeing again what a good manager Marco Silva is - at this rate he might even last more than a season in charge of Watford - or at least get to Christmas anyway.
But I fancy Southampton here. They got back among the goals at St Mary’s in their previous league game there, against West Ham, after a run of five games without scoring there at the end of last season.
The rule should be if you play well you kee your place in the team. And so far this season Stephens & Yoshi have not done anything to deserve being dropped.
Yet Hoedt has had a week to “bed in” and has had International game time. Big money so should walk into the team.
And then the “statement” as to when VVD gets onto the bench.
In the second half of his press conference, the gaffa said that VVD would still not be in the squad this week.
It is tough to drop players who haven’t ballsed up etc but at the end of the day they are all well paid professionals so the manager ought to improve the side if he has the tools to do so. And I presume that Hoedt was deemed better than what we already had, otherwise we wouldn’t have forked out £15m-£17m for him. So in that respect I would get him in the team sooner rather than later.
And of course it isn’t just about making mistakes vs not making mistakes. It is also what these players do with the ball, what they offer at the other end from set pieces etc and also how their presence and communication effects the rest of the team.
VVD on the other hand, that is a different situation entirely so that little bitch can wait a bit longer.