To counter Wigan's width we need to play attacking wide men, so Rodriguez cannot start on the left. The problem is if we don't get a win today pressure will mount on the new manager to deliver one soon.
I think that one thing MP will have been working on is getting Puncheon to go outside his marker, rather than always cutting in on his left foot. One way of achieving this might be to get him and Lallana to swap wings every so often, or team up on the same wing. After all, it was these two combining down the left that led to our second goal at Newcastle, and I'm surprised they don't try it more often.
Beautiful day in Southampton. Which means of course that the council have called off all local league fixtures. Looks like a live stream for me this afternoon.
It's a shame Puncheon is so bad on his right foot because he can both cross and shoot very well. He'd be a monster if he was two-footed.
Good stat tweeted by the premier league just now: "Wigan have picked up nine points at home this season (W2 D3 L7). Southampton have picked up nine points away this season (W2 D3 L7)." Draw it is then!
Here's another... Wigan have conceded the first goal in 16/24 games this season. What's our stats for scoring first like....?
Scored first in 12/23 (left out the Everton game, where no one scored). Edit: also, we've scored first in 9 of the last 13 games where a goal was scored.
We always seem to score first, but we've dropped 22 points from winning positions, most of any team in the league. If we could hold onto a lead we'd be 4th in the table!
Part of our problem in that regard is that we have a nasty habit of taking leads against teams we have no business leading. Sixteen of those points came from Man U (twice), Man City away, Arsenal at home, Everton away and Stoke away.
I don't care about that stat. Like Schad said, in most of those games we took the lead against the better teams in the league. It's a bit of a stupid stat to be honest.
We're not the only side who have dropped points though. Personally, I only really consider us to have dropped five points this season. Two vs Swansea, two vs Stoke, and one vs Man Utd at home (and I know we went from winning to losing in those final five minutes, but I always accepted that Utd were going to equalise and would not have considered it two points dropped had it happened...which it did). I really don't see how anyone can seriously say we threw away or dopped points aganst, say, Everton, Arsenal and Man Utd (away). Especially not when in two of those three games, we scored our only goal inside the first 5 minutes on both occassions! And then of course there's the points we have gained this season, against Vila, Chelsea and Fulham twice. (Again though, I wouldn't say Villa 'dropped' points in that one, or that we 'stole' them etc)
The team today is... Boruc; Clyne, Yoshida, Hooiveld, Shaw; Cork, Schneiderlin; Puncheon, Gastón, Rodriguez; Lambert.
There was a huge amount of time left in that game when Gazza made his error, and Norwich were all over us at the start of the second half. I was hugely frustrated and annoyed that we'd conceded our only goal in that manner, but I've never once felt like we dropped two points. At best, we missed an opportunity to take two more points - but even that I'm not totally convinced on.
