Can Saints repeat their 2-0 heroics against Pep Guardiola's unbeaten Manchester City

Coming on the back of another comeback defeat in the Premier League, Southampton will now turn their attention towards facing defending Premier League Champions Manchester City. While the two teams have enjoyed a contrasting start to the season so far, this fixture could be an important match in Southampton’s season.

Pep Guardiola's Manchester City have won the league title consecutively in the previous four seasons and thus, their start to the 2024/25 Premier League season has also been similar. Despite being one point behind league-leaders Liverpool, Manchester City are the only unbeaten Premier League team after eight matchdays.

Can Saints repeat their 2-0 heroics against Pep Guardiola's unbeaten Manchester City

The defending Champions have one of the best squads in Europe's top five leagues and are again the heavy favourites for the UEFA Champions League. However, City's previous two league matches have been a last-minute 2-1 win against Wolves and a thrilling 3-2 win over Fulham. In both of these matches, Pep Guardiola's side conceded an early lead and later completed a comeback in the second half.

This is the exact opposite of Russell Martin’s side, who twice gave away their lead to conceded three goals in the second half. Therefore, Southampton can give a good performance against Manchester City, but still need to be more resilient while defending to take an important result from this match. Hence, the Saints should take inspiration from their surprise Carabao Cup 2-0 win over Pep Guardiola's side last year, under manager Nathan Jones.

Southampton were struggling to find some form in the Premier League and had brought a new manager as well, still managed to display a heroic performance to advance through to the semi-final of the Cup competition. Sekou Mara and Moussa Djenepo scored to give Southampton a 2-0 lead in the first-half, and centre-back Lyanco led the defence to build the foundation for that memorable win.

While manager Nathan Jones and those players have left the club, Russell Martin’s side can take consistency as one of the biggest learnings from that game. Moreover, the Saints need to again take an early 1-0 lead as Manchester City have conceded a 1-0 lead four times already this season, which can increase Southampton’s momentum for the remainder of the match.

Fullback Yukinari Sugawara and defensive midfielder Will Smallbone are highly likely to miss the Manchester City match, and it remains to be seen whether Russell Martin implements a new defensive formation in their absence.