Paul Merson highlights one thing which Southampton must do against Manchester City

In the previous three weeks, Southampton have twice faced a comeback defeat against Arsenal and Leicester City on both sides of the October international break. Now, the upcoming match is an away fixture against Pep Guardiola's Manchester City which looks highly likely to be the eighth Premier League defeat for Russell Martin's side.

This is due to the fact that Southampton gave away their good momentum twice in the second half in the previous two matches and are yet to keep a clean-sheet this season. On top of that, Manchester City returned to their prolific goalscoring form with their recent 5-0 win over Sparta Praha in the Champions League, thus, could score a lot of goals given Southampton's defensive struggles.

Paul Merson highlights one thing which Southampton must do against Manchester City

Premier League analyst Paul Merson also believes it to be the case, as he predicted a massive 4-0 away defeat for the Saints, saying,

"Southampton will try to play all their fancy stuff and in the end they will get defeated by Manchester City.

Honestly, we could be looking at goal difference to determine final standings at both ends of the table."

- Paul Merson

Although Southampton's aren't expected to take any points from this match, Merson highlighted goal-difference as an important area after this match. Currently, the Saints are ahead of bottom-placed Wolves by a one goal-difference, thus, Russell Martin's side will need to make sure that the margin of defeat isn't very high.

A two-goal defeat can be decent for the league table but a massive four-goal defeat as Merson predicted, can lead to Southampton being bottom of the Premier League for the first time this season. This would be a massive blow to Russell Martin's side, who would want to take some good momentum from this Manchester City match before playing two important games against Wolves and Everton.

Now, it remains to be seen whether Southampton can give an encouraging performance against Manchester City as well, after two much improved displays against Arsenal and Leicester City.