On Saturday, Southampton welcome former manager Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham Hotspur back to St Mary’s Stadium once again.
With Pochettino admitting this week that he cried when he took the decision to depart all those years ago for Spurs, he will be in the stands for the game as he serves a touchline ban and plenty of Saints fans will be hoping he tears up again at the fulltime whistle as we take all three points to ease our own relegation concerns and improve our form once again.
One man who won’t play a part in helping us battle to victory is striker Danny Ings, as although he continue to make good progress in his return from injury, manager Ralph Hasenhuttl has confirmed that the game will come too quickly for him.
The 26-year-old hasn’t featured for the club since February 2 where he picked up a hamstring problem in the game against Burnley and with ongoing striker issues – well, a lack of them – plenty were hoping he’d be back ahead of the international break.
As it is, we now look to Brighton and Hove Albion for a return at the end of March, but at least it means we can ease him back into training so that might be a small positive, rather than bringing him back too quickly and seeing him suffer a breakdown.
“No, he is not in the group at the moment. We have not taken any risks. We want to give him the time to come back in this three-week break we have after the Tottenham game. We have one friendly game against a Championship team and then maybe he can get 45 minutes to build him up for the games that are coming up then because they are very important.”
