Barnsley v Southampton Preview
Posted on | January 9, 2009 | No Comments
Both of these sides were tipped for relegation struggles at the start of the season although that statement is probably only half correct now. Barnsley have enjoyed a fairly successful season and currently sit in 16th, while Saints look set for another campaign of battling the drop and now sit in 23rd place.
Considering the fact Barnsley started the season in truly awful fashion, their fans are likely to be very happy with the current situation at Oakwell. Simon Davey has said that he’s aiming for year on year improvement and by the looks of things that seems to be the case. The Tykes have been in fairly decent form recently and managed to pick up seven points from their three games over Christmas, although blotted the start of 2009 with a 3-0 defeat to West Ham. The biggest problem that Davey is facing at the moment is injuries, with his squad absolutely plagued with them. It looks as though again he’ll be struggling to put out a team this weekend and after missing out on transfer target Jamie Ward this week, it remains to be seen how Barnsley will cope with so many absentees.
Southampton were another side to suffer a heavy loss in the cup, with Manchester United coming to town and comfortably beating them 3-0. While some teams thrive and really push looking to cause a cup scalp, Saints failed to impress and looked quite poor in front of the cameras. At times they lost their discipline and Matt Paterson paid the price with a red card. That defeat added to what’s been a miserable season for them and they now find themselves next to the bottom, with an awful goal difference of -18. There’s no doubt that financial restraints mean that Jan Poortvliet has his hands tied behind his back, but the Dutchman will have probably thought that his influence would have brought better results than what’s happening at the moment.
Barnsley’s injury list is frightening at the moment and Simon Davey claims that Diego Leon, Hugo Colace, Rob Kozluk, Iain Hume and Michael Coulson are all out. Anderson de Silva is another player that could also miss out, with the Brazilian struggling with an ankle injury that’s prevented him from training through the last ten days. However, Jon Macken, Jamie Cureton and Darren Moore are all back in the reckoning after missing the defeat to West Ham, so at least Davey does has some good news. As for Southampton, they could have a couple of fresh faces for this one with new signing Jan-Paul Saeijs hoping to receive international clearance while Marek Saganowski has returned to the club after a loan spell abroad. With Lee Holmes and Morgan Schneiderlin being fit and Adam Lallana being the only absentee, Jan Poortvliet has a strong squad to pick from for this one.
Had Barnsley a full squad to choose from, there would be only one winner in our eyes. However, the Tykes are missing some really big players and with Southampton being somewhat better away from St Mary’s, we’re going to go for an away win – 2-0 Saints.
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