WHICH of the eight distinctly different Manchester Uniteds will head to the south coast this weekend to take on in-form Southampton?
Will it be the woeful hotchpotch of individuals that looked decidedly off the pace in their opening fixture at home to Crystal Palace? Or will it be the accomplished and confident incarnation that bested Everton at Goodison prior to the international break?
Maybe it might be the flat and underwhelming United that squeaked past the Baggies last Saturday evening, or the laboured Reds that struggled throughout against Arsenal. For their sakes let’s hope it’s not the almost comically inept team that capitulated to Spurs. For their sakes let’s hope it’s the fluid and strong-willed side that ground down Newcastle in mid-October.
Determining who will show up at St Mary’s is an impossible task. Indeed, trying to establish any discernible patterns to Manchester United in 2020/21 will have you constructing a large board full of newspaper clippings and scraps of paper, with pinned string randomly linking each.
STOP THE COUNT pic.twitter.com/rS94knWEhO
— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) November 6, 2020
All we can say for sure is there is precisely no way of knowing who they will be from one week to the next this season and point out the clanging irony that a common charge directed at Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is that his side lacks identity. In actual fact, they have too many.
Southampton are 14/5 to win and given their recent successes this appeals enormously. Manchester United are 21/20 to grab the points. Making sense of Southampton meanwhile is a far more straightforward affair.
For quite some time now the Saints have been a cohesive unit who work hard for one another; a terrific example of what rewards can be reaped when a collective buys wholly into their manager’s philosophy, so long of course that the philosophy is sound.
“It’s just about the consistency of the squad and the team staying together for a longer period of time, working with the manager and getting his ideas across”. That was how defender Jannik Vestergaard explained Southampton’s brief flirtation with the top of the table recently.
Indeed their high pressing and intensity off the ball coupled with quick transitions in possession have paid off handsomely for so long now that it’s starting to annoy when people mention their 9-0 mauling at the hands of Leicester by way of comparison. That was relevant for a while certainly. Now the only thing that matters is that Southampton are almost a complete package with legitimate aspirations to qualify for Europe.
Monday night’s draw at Wolves stretches an unbeaten run to seven and like any good side who has both eyes firmly fixed on longevity it’s encouraging that the Saints are managing to overcome absences to key personnel. In the two games since Danny Ings was felled by a knee injury Che Adams has scored once and assisted in a newly imagined strikeforce with Theo Walcott that is harmonising well. Adams is 15/2 to score first this weekend. At the back Vestergaard is a player transformed while knitting everything together centrally James Ward-Prowse continues to greatly impress.
A sidebar: Ward-Prowse seems destined to become one of those players who falls between two stools in being a highly productive and consistent Premier League star who never really gets the international recognition he deserves. For whatever reason, Southampton have boasted a good deal of these players since the Eighties.
All of this bodes badly for United. With a manager under severe pressure and with two of their leading creative lights in Martial and Pogba horribly flailing and failing the very last thing they need presently is to travel to a tigerish outfit who are horrible to play against: a team that have lost only three times since Project Restart back in June.
It only gets worse too when it’s factored in that Southampton have scored first six times from their eight league games this term while United have conceded 28% of their goals inside the opening ten minutes.
The Saints are 11/8 to score in the first half and 3/1 to lead at the break. The latter in particular jumps out as a very good shout. Yet from the away side’s perspective there remains sufficient reasons to be hopeful.
Firstly, that United are away from Old Trafford is a plus because their record on home soil this campaign has been abject, even with no fans to escalate expectation. On their travels however the Reds have won three from three though this is balanced out by the Saints’ decent home return that’s seen them triumph 2-0 three games running.
Those trio of clean sheets may be a cause for concern for the visitors but not when we widen the lens. Since Project Restart, Southampton have kept attacks at bay seven times in 17 matches which is deserving of praise but equally they have a defence of extremes. On the occasions it is breached more tends to follow as evidenced by the five shipped in against Spurs and three apiece vs Chelsea and Aston Villa.
Then there’s the tactical consideration. United typically struggle to find their way through a low block – “We need a team which can break teams down”, Solskjaer lamented last week – but against a high press their counter attacking often pays dividends.
And it could well pay dividends again so long as the ‘right’ Manchester United turns up. Right now though banking on that feels like a foolish endeavour indeed.
Latest odds: Southampton (14/5) Draw (49/20) Man Utd (21/20). For all Southampton vs Man Utd markets, click here.
