Looking at the title of this article, most would say it’s easy – Gabbiadini, of course!
But despite the Italian’s superb start to life in England, is he the only player who’s been a key part of Southampton’s new attacking prowess even though it is now the former Napoli man who has been stealing the headlines?
Statistics prove that Gabbiadini has been a key player in our recent goal-scoring run with the £14 million man scoring 55% of our goals since his arrival on deadline day. Since he signed, the team have scored 11 goals (nine in the league and two in the EFL Cup) with the striker getting six.
However, the other five have been scored by Shane Long, Dusan Tadic, and Nathan Redmond with two, plus a Jason Denayer own goal at Sunderland. These players are also part of our pleasing displays of late when the back of the net has bulged many more times than at the beginning of the season.
Here’s a nice contrast, it has taken us just three Premier League games to net our last nine Premier League goals. Before that, it took us more than double the amount of league games to reach the same number of league goals. It also took seven league games for us to score our first nine league goals. We’ve gone from just over one goal on average per league game to three, and that is incredibly satisfying.
But who or what is to thank? Is it Manolo Gabbiadini and his fellow attackers finally making names for themselves? Is it Claude Puel and his coaching staff working some magic on the training field? Or is it the re-introduction of the 4-2-3-1? For me, it’s all of the above but the formation has played a huge part.
After playing with a 4-4-2 diamond at Nice before coming to Southampton in the Summer, Claude Puel put lots of effort over pre-season and in early games of the season trying to get his new squad of players to learn his preferred method of playing football. It was frustrating to see at the beginning but the defeat at the Emirates to Arsenal was where us fans really saw it’s quality and my word it was enjoyable to watch.
But once the results across multiple competitions were grinding themselves out, suddenly Puel started to play a 4-3-3. Performances weren’t of the same quality and results weren’t positive. We had to scrap this formation otherwise we were going to continue heading down the table.
Last season’s usage of the 4-2-3-1 saw Saints score over 50 goals and we have seen why in games against Sunderland, Manchester United, and Watford.
With a normal back four plus goalkeeper Fraser Forster, Oriol Romeu, and Steven Davis in holding midfield positions, James Ward-Prowse in the middle with Dusan Tadic and Nathan Redmond either side and Manolo Gabbiadini up front, we look like a much improved side with the same players.
Claude Puel deserves a lot of credit for discovering what it is that makes our side tick and how to get the best out of his players as now us fans are beginning to gain more confidence from each performance that we see.
With another two week break, Puel and the team must prepare for a trip to White Hart Lane which us fans seem to be more confident about gaining a result from.
It reminds me of last season’s trip, we had scored four goals in each of our last two league games and went to White Hart Lane and won. Yes, they had the disappointment on missing out on the title but the team has shown that they are capable of replicating those sorts of performances.
