Our team-by-team guide to the new Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season continues with this preview of Southampton.
For a ten round spell after Gameweek 6 the Saints camped in and around the European places in the league table, even reaching the very top briefly, but consecutive defeats against Leeds United, Leicester City and Arsenal sent them back to lower mid-table where they remained throughout the second half of the campaign, dropping to 15th on the final day.
Co-incidentally, 15th is where Southampton are ranked on our Season Ticker from Gameweeks 1-6:
Can they outperform that fixture difficulty and make the same kind of start as last year?
The Main Man
Approaching a new season, especially after one where most of the wheels finished significantly loose if not actually detached, you’d hope that at least the chassis of the team would be in good shape. In the driving seat there is the reassuring figure of club captain James Ward-Prowse (£6.5m), the undisputed set-piece king of St Mary’s and a podium performer across the Premier League as a whole.
If he isn’t despatching a penalty or placing a dead-ball beyond any mortal goalkeeper’s reach he’s swinging in a threatening corner or laser-guiding a free-kick towards a gigantic centre-back.
Eight goals and seven assists combined with his record-breaking second consecutive ever-present season as a Premier-League midfielder reinforce why almost 10% of FPL managers currently have Ward-Prowse in their squads, but it’s at the sharp end of his pinpoint deliveries that Southampton’s problems begin to mount.
Picking Up The Set-Pieces
Both Jannik Vestergaard (£5.0m) and Danny Ings (£8.0m) are out of contract next summer and openly reviewing their options during this pre-season. Vestergaard will at the very least be late back to training after reaching the EURO 2020 semi-finals with Denmark and last season his head was on the end of 20 of the Saints’ set-pieces, almost as many as the rest of the squad combined. Ings was third on that list with seven and utility defender Jack Stephens (£4.5m), also with only a year to go on his contract, was fourth.
Saints Preserve Us?
If Vestergaard, who made 30 league appearances in the last campaign, were to move on that would leave Jan Bednarek (£4.5m) partnered with either Stephens or comparative newcomer Mohammed Salisu (£4.5m) in the middle of a defence that produced comfortably the worst deficit (-14.6) between expected and actual goals conceded of any Premier League side in 2020/21.
All statistics/screenshots in this article are taken from our Premium Members Area.
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