Southampton provide the perfect opponent for Manchester United right now as the south coast club haven’t achieved a Premier League win since beating Everton on November 26. They are winless in their last seven, and a big reason why is their inability to score.
They have scored just six goals in six competitions this month, and even that statistic is heavily inflated, because two of those scoring strikes came late against Tottenham Hotspur, when they were already down 5-0. So essentially one third of their goals in December have come via garbage time, when their opponent was already able to take their foot off the gas pedal.
This is exactly the kind of opponent United manager Jose Mourinho needs right now as his side is winless in their last three and looking to end 2017 on a better note and maybe carry some positive momentum forward into 2018. Mourinho made some well publicized comments on Boxing Day claiming that his side can’t compete with Manchester City because they don’t have the resources to match the league leaders in regards to spending on players.
This inspired Mourinho’s arch-rival, Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, to throw shade at Mourinho yesterday.
Moving on to the United starting XI prediction, here’s what we came up with.
Romelu Lukaku
Anthony Martial Jesse Lingard Juan Mata
Nemanja Matic Paul Pogba
Ashley Young Phil Jones Chris Smalling Matteo Darmian
David de Gea
We’ll have video of Mourinho’s press conference tomorrow. Here is the link to the full match injury/fitness report
Anthony Martial is back in training, and provides United with a major fitness boost, here’s a link to more on that.
Odds: Man United- 2/5 Draw- 15/4 Southampton- 15/2
Prediction: United 1, Southampton 0
As always, feel free to post your own MUFC starting XI and/or final score prediction in the comments section below.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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