Tomorrow Southampton take on Vitesse in Arnhem, Holland for the second leg of the Third Round European Qualifiers after winning the first leg at St. Mary’s 3-0 last Thursday evening amassing goals from Graziano Pelle, Dusan Tadic, and Shane Long.
Saints will not hold back in the second leg according to Manager Ronald Koeman speaking earlier today in his press conference: “I hope a good game and for sure a game that we will start with the same intensity with we did last week. Even with this result it’s comfortable but certainly after 90 minutes, football is sometimes strange and if you don’t start with enough concentration, if you don’t play with the same intensity it’s possible that we have a difficult evening.
“But if we play on our level with the same concentration and with the same intensity the qualities make a difference.”
Southampton will be without Shane Long who is ill, Ryan Bertrand will be out for another 2-3 weeks, and Jordy Clasie is still not 100% after leaving St. Mary’s last week with a leg injury in 62’ minute.
Even with these setbacks Koeman says that he wants to start his best team saying: “No I don’t like that, I like to win every game even when the result was higher, of course 3-0 is a good result in Europe but we still have 90 minutes to play and we need to develop and the boys need to be 100% in the physical way and we need to play and we need to play seriously and tomorrow we will start a very strong team.”
In the first quote, Koeman mentioned pressing and this tactic could be a focus tomorrow as it was last week. Making life difficult for Vitesse defenders helped Southampton control the game and lead to some great opportunities.
Koeman went on to defend new signing Steven Caulker retorting the question of him not being ready to play. He claimed that Steven was in good physical shape. With such a comfortable result in the first leg do not be surprised to see Caulker make his official debut tomorrow.
Koeman still admits that the club needs another centre half after the departure of Toby Alderweireld and injury to Florin Gardos, but remains silent about the heavily rumoured Dutch Celtic defender Virgil Van Dijk saying: “It’s a lot in the media today about the player, I think it’s the best in my position to say nothing about that because everyone knows he is a good player, there is a lot of interest in the player, lets see what happens.”
The match starts at 8:00pm and will be aired on BT Sport 2.
Predicted Lineup: Stekelenburg, Targett, Caulker, Fonte, Cedric, Wanyama, Davis, Reed, Tadic, Mane, Pelle
