Match Preview: Southampton v Aston Villa

by Dek Hogan

Who are we playing?
Southampton on Wednesday 28th October at 3pm

Where are we playing?
St Mary's Stadium
Britannia Road, Southampton,
Hampshire
SO14 5FP

Can I go?
Villa's allocation of tickets has now sold out.

Easy to get to?
Off the M3 take A33 into Southampton. Continue on the A33 until the junction with A3024 Northam Road and turn left onto this road towards Northam. Then turn right onto the B3038, Britannia Road for the stadium. Parking is a bitch though.

Can I watch it on telly
Not picked by Sky Sports so you'll need a stream, which is not always guaranteed for cup games.

Big game?
Huge.

We are absolutely useless in the league, so we might as well have some fun in the cup while we can. With no league match until the following Monday, we could probably afford to field our best side here, if we only had a manager that knew what that was. If only we had a manager...

On the other side of the coin, maybe we could field a few players that have been discarded to give them a chance to show what they can do. Veretout was starting to look the part before he was inexplicably dropped altogether, most of us would welcome Amavi back into the team with open arms and whatever ypu think of Scottie Sinclair, he knows where the goal is.

Jores Okore must be chomping at the bit for some first team action by now and this might be the ideal opportunity to give Gary Gardner some game time.

If we are going to cause an upset here though (how sad that we've fallen so far that beating Southampton would be an upset) our best opportunity would be to unleash the force of nature that is Adama.

Lucy

God knows who'll start though and at this stage who'll be picking the team. Kevin Mac looks to be the last man standing.

Do Southampton boast any famous fans?
Well there's the drummer out of Coldplay and Lucy Pinder who is famous for...

We've got Ian Bell.

So we win.

Who's playing for us?

Gawd knows but surely Bunn gets a start.

Who's playing for them
We assume Koeman will rotate.


Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• We faced Southampton in the League Cup just the once in 1999, winning 4-0 thanks to goals from Steve Watson and Julian Joachim and two from Dion Dublin.

• Sadio Mane battered us with a rapis hatitrick last season setting up the Saints for a crushing 6-1 win.

Prediction
3-1 to Southampton