Southampton v Newcastle United, St Mary’s Stadium, Premier League, 6/Nov/22, KO: 2pm.

On Sunday, 3200 die hard Mags make the long trip to St Mary’s with a huge spring in our step. Kick off’s at 2pm and it’s live on Sky Sports for the avid viewers.

October has been a bumper month for Eddie’s European chasing Mags. Can we say this yet? Can we really challenge for Europe? More about Howe’s Heroes later…

Southampton have made an inauspicious start to the season under the tutelage of the amiable Austrian, Ralf Hasenhüttl. The Saints have bagged 12 points to date, with 3 wins, against Bournemouth, Chelsea and Leicester, and draws gained against Leeds, West Ham and Arsenal. 11 goals scored and a leaky 20 conceded in 13 games.

It’s worth noting that they’re pretty impotent in front of goal having flogged their star man, Danny Ings, to Villa last season. They’ll always struggle for goals with former Mag, Adam Armstrong and Che Adams as their front duo. I’m baffled to see Armstrong getting starts ahead of Adams by the way!

As is pretty standard, we’ve got a bang average history on the South coast, although last season was the scene of a Bruno worldie back heel volley in a 2-1 win that also saw a bullet header from our now third choice #9, Chris “occupies defenders” Wood. We’ve only lost down there once in the last 5, but until the solitary winner from ASM back in the 2019/2020 campaign, you’d have to look back to the 2004/2005 season for our last win.

Ralphy’s Saints spent very little in the summer but brought in 10 recruits for the princely sum of £60m, losing a load of their old stalwarts, such as Shane Long, Oriol Romeu (proper shithouse midfielder) and our old custodian Fraser Forster.  I must profess to not having seen a great deal of them this campaign, but the league table doesn’t lie, and they’re struggling a bit, languishing in 17th, a solitary point above the trap door.

As I intimated earlier, we head down South full of confidence, and having accumulated 16 huge and delectable points in the month of All Hallows Eve. It’ll be a friggin travesty if we don’t sweep up on the October accolades. Eddie will surely win MOTM, Wor Miggy has to win player of the month, and you can take your pick out of one of his thunderbastards for goal of the month – Did I mention it’s been a mint month for The Mags?

Sunday sees Joelinton sit this one out, having picked up his 5th booking of the season on Saturday. I’d imagine that His Eddiness will bring ASM back into the starting line up for Jow. Asides from the one enforced change, I fully expect to see an unchanged starting 11 lining up for our last away day before the unprecedented winter World Cup kicks off this month.

Dare we start to dream of European football next season? Christ on a bike, we are a hard team to break down these days. In the last 2 home games, we’ve conceded zero shots on target and zero shots against full stop in the second half of those Everton and Villa games. In Sven Botman, we’ve got our Vincent Kompany, and Fab Schär must love playing alongside him.  Kieran Trippier is comfortably the best right back I’ve ever seen in black and white and in BDB we’ve got a shithouse of a defender slotting into left back and keeping Matty Targett warming the bench. When was the last time we had the best defensive record in the Premier League? One for the Stattos to check.

Equally as important though. We are scoring bags of goals. 4 at Fulham, 5 at home to Brentford and 4 on Saturday against a turgid Villa side who came for a 0-0 and went away with their hides well and truly tanned.

It’s an absolute joy watching Newcastle United these days and I can’t wait to make my St Mary’s debut this weekend. And, by the way, it makes these preview much easier to rattle off.

I’ll have to whisper this quietly as the football Gods don’t like too much positivity, but I can’t see how we get beaten these days. The high press intensity is just too much for some teams to handle and the pace and attacking prowess is fucking glorious to watch. To quote Alex Hurst, we are “class!” Have you copyrighted that yet Alex?

As for the dickhead twitter trolls – You can stick your match winning photos in your pipe and smoke them. We’re rattling some cages out there people! I absolutely love the togetherness that Eddie and his team have created in just 12 months!

A massive mention to Callum Wilson, who’s simply got to get into that World Cup squad. There’s no-one other than that gormless knacka, Harry Kane, to touch him at the minute. Saturday was the complete performance, and I was gutted that he missed his hat-trick by the width of a midge’s arse. The boy is simply on fire and is playing some of the best football of this career.

On the one hand, I’d fear him getting on that plane to Qatar and picking up an injury. On the other, it sends a huge message to English players who are on our radar. (I’m looking at you James Maddison) Maybe Southgate does select players from our club. Anyway, that’s a discussion for the pubs and clubs in The Toon as we close in on the January window.

You might have guessed, but I can only see one outcome this Sunday. I was a gnat’s chuff away from my Wilson first goal / 3-0 prediction on Saturday (45/1) so let’s see if I can get this one cock on. I’m going a 2-0 win with Willock finally bagging his first goal of the season. Get your quid on that one (don’t shoot me if it doesn’t land!) The odds aren’t up yet, but I reckon you’ll get a tasty 75/1 on that beauty.

For those of you making the journey, hopefully catch you there. Safe trip and let’s end the first half of our away campaign with another maximum points haul. Howay the Lads!

Paul Karter – @peekeekay 

NB – for those punters out there, I had a glorious 150/1 winner on Saturday, with a cheeky fiver on a double of Wilson to score a header and Miggy to score from outside the box. I’d forgotten that I’d placed it until I checked my tatty accumulator in The Town Wall beer garden post match.