Southampton: 3 Takeaways from Swansea Success

Southampton took home their first Premier League win Sunday with a 1-0 victory over Swansea City at home. With the week wrapped up, here’s our take.

It was a good win for the Saints, at a much-needed time. Perhaps not the most graceful of victories, nor the most convincing, but one that will do much for team confidence going forward. With a grueling run of games coming up, manager Claude Puel again has much to ponder but also something to celebrate. With the dust all settled, let’s take a look at what the last time out taught us.

3. Shane Long shouldn’t start

Mark 18 September in your calendars as the day this blog ran out of patience with Southampton striker Shane Long.

Readers had told me that my prior ratings were overly generous. For awhile I wanted to ignore that, because I have a bias for tall, pace-y strikers who look like they could be the next Jamie Vardy. Unfortunately in this league, if all you have is pace, you have nothing. Long got four golden scoring chances this last time out and all he got out of it was a yellow card for a dive.

SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 15: Shane Long of Southampton FC in action during the UEFA Europa League match between Southampton FC v AC Sparta Praha at St Mary’s Stadium on September 15, 2016 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images) /

For those keeping score at home, this is the fifth match he’s played in. 288 minutes total. Zero goals, zero assists. That simply won’t do, and it shouldn’t be worthy of keeping a starting spot in the rotation.

Put Long in shooting drills or extra training. Send him on assignment to the U23s. Get him a shrink and a motivational speaker. Anything, at this point. Just don’t let him start until he can start finding the net.

2. Give Cuco Martina a chance

I have to say, a month ago the phrase “give Cuco Martina a chance” was about as far from my lips as can be. Funny how things change. An unfortunate injury to Jérémy Pied took Martina off the express train to Everton and put him back into Southampton’s picture. Since then he’s done a decent job for himself.

Playing the full 90 in Southampton’s match vs. Sparta Prague, Martina recorded an assist, his first since the final match of last season vs. Crystal Palace. In relief this time out, he did well to help lock the defence down in the final minutes, showing no fear of Jefferson Montero and Borja Baston in doing so.

Martina gets stick from Southampton fans over his quality vis-a-vis Cédric, and on their respective days the Portuguese starter is the better player. But Cédric hasn’t been quite in Euro form so far, and the idea of running with Martina in the right-back position shouldn’t be kiboshed entirely.

1. The system works

It’s taken awhile, and there’s still some kinks to even out, but the win vs. Swansea and last week’s victory over Sparta Prague have shown that Claude Puel system works, when the players adapt it. The key difference here is the fluidity of the diamond in recent outings. According to football stats website Transfermarkt, Southampton have transitioned to a 4-3-1-2 setup in recent matches.

At first glance it seems rather defensive, and it does well at that with the likes of Oriol Romeu, Jordy Clasie and Steven Davis in midfield. But with a technically gifted and balanced midfield, Southampton have managed to expand the diamond to play wider through the mid than normal, giving the wing-mids more of a playmaking role and, in some respects, taking the heat off Dusan Tadic to be the set-up man for action up front.

In a sense, the 4-3-1-2 is everything Puel wanted out of the diamond: possessive, technical, balanced, and most importantly, fluid enough to adapt to change.