Southampton’s progress over the last few years has been absolutely remarkable. They were promoted to the Premier League winning the Championship in the 2011-12 season and since then they never had to look back. This is their fifth successive season in the Premier League and now they are an established Premier League force having finished eighth, seventh and sixth respectively in the past three seasons. The Saints also are in the Europa League for the first time in their history.
The South Coast club’s rise from just a newly promoted Premier League side to one of the forces in English football was never an easy ride. Their best players and even their managers were constantly lured away by the bigger clubs and this summer was no exception. Ronald Koeman left for Everton and Claude Puel came to the helm while key players like Sadio Mane, Graziano Pelle and Victor Wanyama moved away.
Southampton have had an underwhelming start in the Premier League this campaign but they are doing pretty well in the Europa League. Let us take a look at the Saints’ strengths and weaknesses from what we have seen so far.
Strengths
Southampton needed a big and deep squad in order to contend in both Premier League and Europa League and from what we have seen so far, they are blessed with an amazing squad depth. Puel has so far used the squad depth to perfection and has shown that he is not afraid of rotating his squad even against a mighty side like Inter Milan.
The area of the Southampton squad that boasts the greatest depth is midfield, the engine room of the team. The South Coast have plenty of options out there in the likes of Oriol Romeu, Jordy Clasie, Steven Davis, James Ward-Prowse, Pierre-Emile Höjbjerg, Harrison Reed and Jake Hesketh.
On top of that, there are quality attacking midfielders like Sofiane Boufal, Dusan Tadic and Nathan Redmond. The squad depth Southampton is scary. All Puel needs to do is to find consistency in their game.
Weaknesses
Southampton have played 17 games in all competitions this season and have scored a total of 20 goals in the process which is not the greatest. Out of those 20 goals, Charlie Austin himself has scored eight while the likes of Shane Long and Jay Rodriguez have struggled for both form and fitness.
The Saints must improve attacking wise and have to score more goals in order to improve their league position.
