Next Monday, 24th of November 2014, a super motivated Southampton will travel to Birmingham to face an Aston Villa side looking for inspiration at the emblematic Villa Park for round 12’s last match of the English Premier League. The clash is of crucial importance for the home side who are currently on an unimpressive run of seven matches without a single win.

When Mauricio Pochettino left Southampton this Summer, no one could certainly have imagined that their new manager, Ronaldo Koeman, would be able to, at least, replicate the excellent work the Argentinean performed last season. The Dutch manager was the “perfect choice” to carry on what Pochettino started last season and what he has been doing so far with the Saints’ is absolutely remarkable.

Southampton are currently enjoying from a fantastic moment at the English Premier League with four consecutive wins including the 8-0 goal galore against Sunderland one month ago. On the last round of the competition the Saints grabbed another precious 2-0 home win over Leicester and secured their position at the top of the table right behind the league leaders, Chelsea. Ronaldo Koeman’s side has the best defence line of the EPL at the moment, with just five goals conceded on 11 matches, and they also have the second most prolific attacking line with 23 goals.

The Saints’ overall campaign is, by all means, remarkable and it will certainly be interesting to see if they can extend this fantastic stint until the end of the season.

For their upcoming clash at Villa Park, the Dutch manager will almost certainly still not be able to rely on the contributions of Schneiderlin, Davis, Ward-Prowse and Jay Rodriguez, all sidelined due to injury.

As Aston Villa, they are currently experiencing a traumatizing nightmare at EPL. With six defeats over the last seven matches, the Villans have dropped several places in the league table and are now closely dangerous to the relegation zone. The partnership between Paul Lambert and Roy Keane is clearly not working now and, although they started the season in a good pace, they need to figure out something very quickly to solve Villa’s current problems. After losing to Tottenham at Villa Park, Aston Villa grabbed an unexpected but motivating draw from their visit to West Ham, but they need to extend that inspiration for the match against Southampton, which will certainly be fairly complicated for them.

Southampton are clear favourites for next Monday’s clash and if they manage to replicate some of their recent good performances, they will certainly not experience any major troubles in overcoming Aston Villa.

Aston Villa

Stats: W-0 L-4 D-1

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Southampton

Stats: W-5 L-0 D-0

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Possible Line-ups

Aston Villa (4-3-3) – Guzan - Senderos - Cissokho - Vlaar - Lowton - Westwood - Cleverley - Sanchez - Weimann - Agbonlahor - N’Zogbia

Southampton (4-3-3) - Forster - Clyne - Fonte - Aldewereld - Bertrand - Wanyama - Reed - Cork - Tadic - Mane - Pelle

Prediction

Aston Villa 0 Southampton 1