Sergio Agüero breathed new life into our season with that late winner against Bayern Munich on Tuesday night, but now we have another challenge to face – Southampton away. With Chelsea playing before The Blues this coming weekend, City could potentially be 11 points off the pace by the time the game at St Mary’s kicks off on Sunday.
Southampton have been on fire so far this season, currently lying in 2nd above City. Their only two league defeats have come at Anfield and White Hart Lane, leaving them unbeaten on home turf – a stat that would put jitters into the most hardened of professionals. With some tough fixtures coming up (including Arsenal and Manchester United), Ronald Koeman would be keen to go into those games on the back of a win against the champions.
The last time these sides faced was in Manchester a little over seven months ago. Despite the 4-1 scoreline, the game told a very different tale. The Blues went ahead early on thanks to a penalty from Yaya, but were pegged back when Rickie Lambert also scored from the spot ten minutes before half-time. Edin Džeko and Samir Nasri both scored late in the half, before Jovetić wrapped up the points with ten minutes to go.
However, it was a different story in the corresponding game at St Mary’s last season. Sergio Agüero scored within ten minutes of the start, before Dani Osvaldo ensured a share of the points before half-time with one of his only goals in England. Whilst Manuel Pellegrini might have been disappointed with the result, it was a vast improvement on the 3-1 loss the previous season which played a big part in the title race.
In fact, The Blues haven’t won a game at St Mary’s in over a decade, not since Robbie Fowler and Paulo Wanchope both scored in a 2-0 Premier League win in the 2003-04 season.
City will be without some big players once again as they travel down south. David Silva and Edin Džeko both still miss out with knee and calf injuries respectively, but could be back fit to face Everton next week. Aleksandar Kolarov is still likely to need a bit longer to recover from his calf injury.
These injury worries have caused Pellegrini to start looking further within the club to find backups for the missing men. On Friday, José Angel Pozo, Angleino, Kelechi Iheanacho and Pablo Maffeo (amongst other youngsters) trained with the first team ahead of Sunday’s game.
In the Southampton camp, there’s also injury worries for Ronald Koeman. Whilst Steven Davis (hamstring) is to have a late fitness test ahead of Sunday’s match, James Ward-Prowse (ankle) and Jay Rodriguez (knee) – two players who’ve been linked to City in recent months – and Simon Gallagher (knee) are all absent ahead of the visit of the champions.
It might be a little early to start trying to gauge what sort of effect the late win on Tuesday night had for the squad, but a win on Sunday could start to give us an idea. With the victory against Bayern being City’s second win in a row, we might be able to look upon this as a beginning to good form.
Some might also call this game a six-pointer. Maybe not for the title (which Chelsea probably already have wrapped up) but certainly for European football. With Southampton’s extremely good run in the past couple of months they’ll definitely fancy their chances of getting some European football, whilst that’s probably the minimum expectation for Manuel Pellegrini and Manchester City, if the Chilean is to keep his job.
