Southampton: Cedric wins November Player of the Month

The 26-year-old has been rewarded for another consistent month as Southampton’s first-choice right-back.

Having started each and every game across both the month and the season to that point, Cedric went into November as one of the Saints’ most important squad members.

Despite having failed to grab his first assist of the campaign, the former-Sporting full-back continued to be one of the Saints’ most reliable attacking assets, with his regular runs up the right flank helping the Saints to one of their highest-scoring months so far this season.

Four goals against Everton and one against Manchester City took the Saints from nine goals to 14 for the campaign, with Cedric enjoying good days at the office in both of the aforementioned games.

Against City, the Portuguese international was taken off with three minutes to play and he has since missed his first league game of the season in last weekend’s loss to Bournemouth. Ryan Fraser was able to score easily thanks to a lack of marking from Jeremy Pied, highlighting Cedric’s importance even more.

Since arriving on the south coast, the 26-year-old has become a regular with his national side whilst taking leaps and bounds with his own game – he was linked with a move to Chelsea more than once over the summer.

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This season, Cedric is averaging a passing success rate of around 75 percent, meaning he successfully completes around 45 a game. However, only 0.8 of these per game are considered key passes.

Nonetheless, the decision regarding November’s Player of the Month was always going to be a tricky one. The losses to Burnley and Liverpool left manager Mauricio Pellegrino fighting for his job, before the games against Everton and City showed dramatic improvement.

Therefore, there was never any obvious winner as the month came to a close.