A Short Look Ahead To Southampton v Liverpool

 This weekend we have one of the rarest fixtures on our schedule, a 3pm kick off on a Saturday! Away at Southampton isn’t a fixture I associate with us winning, the only two visits that spring to mind instantly are back in 2000 when we were 3-0 up and drew, and more recently John Arne Riise heading over our ‘keeper into his own net. I’m sure we have won there more often than not but they’ve obviously not been memorable victories for me.

 We’re on a very good run of form, we’ve won our last four games in a row and played well in all of them. I try to be optimistic and upbeat on here and with the run we’re on it isn’t hard, but I’m always a little suspicious when things are going well. I think we’ve been very promising this season but I’m not sure we’ve shown enough to suggest we’re capable of going on a long unbeaten run. I hope I’m wrong but I have a gut feeling we’ll struggle at Southampton. It’s a big game for them and they will be right up for it, we will need to match their attitude and desire in order to win.

 We need to use our 4-0 win at Wigan recently as a motivator, go to a ground like that against a team that likes to play football, get your attitude spot on, attack from the kick off and the rewards will come. We can use the results at West Brom and Stoke as good examples of what can happen if we don’t get everything right.

 Fingers crossed Pepe Reina will be fit for the game, Brad Jones has done well (Oldham apart) deputising this season but Reina is our undisputed first choice. I wouldn’t expect any outfield changes from our game against Spurs last weekend, Brendan Rodgers has shown a reluctance to change something that works so far in his tenure and I see no reason for him to alter the side for this game.

 By the time we kick off Everton will have played against Man City so knowing the result of that game should give us great motivation to either keep pace with our neighbours or pull clear of them. Hopefully the recent run of results has given us a hunger for more and has helped the team focus on getting victories, not just controlling possession and making hundreds of passes during a game. To anyone else looking in a win at Southampton tomorrow might look like a routine result for Liverpool, for me it will be genuinely impressive and a real sign of progress made under the current management.