Southampton travel to face Liverpool on Saturday in what will be their first game after the November international break.
In the past year, six rounds of international fixtures have seen brief pauses for the Premier League, and the most recent breaks have been followed by poor Saints results.
Since September 2016, their returning matches have produced one win, three draws and two losses; just six points taken from a possible 18:
- September 10th 2016 – 2-1 loss away to Arsenal
- October 16th 2016 – 3-1 home win against Burnley
- November 19th 2016 – 0-0 home draw against Liverpool
- April 1st 2017 – 0-0 home draw against Spurs
- September 9th 2017 – 2-0 home loss against Watford
- October 15th 2017 – 2-2 home draw against Newcastle
There is clearly room for improvement here, and these matches could have meant both more points last season and an improved start to this season too.
Since returning to the Premier League in 2012, Saints have consistently had a squad full of international quality players. This means that the their team has been improved to be able to compete better with higher quality opponents, but it also has its negative points.
Preparation time ahead of upcoming club fixtures can be disrupted, especially if players are travelling a lot or playing in international matches just a few days before returning to their clubs.
Maya Yoshida will have been one of the Saints players to have clocked up the most air miles in recent years when travelling to play for Japan, whilst Dusan Tadic’s Serbia also played friendlies over in Asia.
Ahead of this weekend’s game at Liverpool, the Saints players and coaching staff are likely to have only two days to work on a game plan.
However, Liverpool have an even higher amount of international players than Saints, meaning that they also could encounter this problem. They have also had an injury setback to Sadio Mane and Jurgen Klopp falling unwell to contend with, and these things could favour Saints come Saturday.
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The match will be a big test for Saints, but they will be wanting to get a positive result and improve on their post-international record.
After a less than convincing start to the season and some challenging games coming their way, it will be vital that they show better performances and begin picking up some points.
The international break could be used as a new start for Mauricio Pellegrino and his men too. Fans at St. Mary’s have been concerned about their team’s beginning to 2017/18, so this run of games is a good chance to show that both the players and Pellegrino himself are capable of turning it around. The Argentine’s Alaves side did gain an impressive 2-1 win at Barcelona and a point away to Atletico Madrid last season, which perhaps shows his ability to create clever game plans against the top sides.
Overall though, Saints’ record after the international breaks needs to improve to avoid them dropping yet more points, and their record of 13 points from 33 available this season has not been good enough.
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There is still time for them to turn their fortunes around however. Both them and Liverpool have their problems, with Saints struggling to score goals and Liverpool struggling to keep them out at the other end; hence their pursuit of Virgil Van-Dijk in the summer.
Therefore, there are a number of things that could work in Saints favour heading into this weekend’s game. It will be vital that they at least show signs of progression in the coming games to keep the fans on side, and this will give them hope of another decent finishing position in the league come May.