Southampton v Manchester City: Premier League – live!

25 mins: The players take a drink, and TV viewers soak up a few more replays of the goal. It really was delicious.

23 mins: Cancelo slams in a cross/shot from the right, which reaches Jesus just beyond the far post, who has an open goal and a decent angle but almost no reaction time, and scoops over the bar.

21 mins: Bernardo Silva gets into the box, squares up Bednarek and then goes down as Romeu comes across to help. He looks upset not to get a penalty, Southampton seem annoyed he even appealed, and VAR takes about three seconds to dismiss it.

20 mins: City’s pride has been punctured, and they create good crossing opportunities from right and left, but on both occasions the lovely play to create the chance is not followed by good delivery.

17 mins: Zinchenko tries to jink pass Armstrong and fails, the ball bouncing away to Adams. From about 50 yards he hits a first-time, curling shot over Ederson and into the net. What a finish! That is an absolute beauty.

Che Adams breaks his Southampton duck – and how!

14 mins: Ings has a chance to play Armstrong in, but it’s a difficult opportunity, and he mishits his pass pretty emphatically. Ederson collects.

11 mins: Walker-Peters shadows Sterling’s run towards the ball and then just keeps going when Sterling stops, steamrollering him.

9 mins: The game is being played at quite a low tempo, at least when City have it. Southampton, it’s fair to say, are a little more rushed when they get the ball.

6 mins: The first chance of the game, such as it is, falls to Southampton! Laporte helps, attempting a left-footed volleyed clearance and missing the ball entirely, allowing it to run through to Adams. He mishits his shot but it goes straight to Redmond at the far post, who is surprised to see it come to him, and can’t quite react in time to shoot, takes a poor touch, is forced to turn his back to goal, and City recover.

5 mins: Southampton have now touched the ball, and even played a few passes, but eventually Ward-Prowse gave it away.

David Silva wins the coin toss, and decides his team should have the ball. Which is typical.

Ralph Hasenhuttl talks about Southampton’s remaining ambitions:

Taking as much points as possible until the end of the season. We have some interesting fixtures, today’s the first one. It’s always a great pleasure to play against maybe the best team in the world, they have incredible players, and it’s always a pleasure to have one week to prepare for the game.

What he’s asked, does his team have to do to win this game:

More running, more sprinting, more fighting, more speaking on the pitch, brave on the ball, good decision-making, and when you have a chance, then be clinical, and then in some moments have the luck to don’t concede a goal. So you need to have a very good day, so let’s go for it.

Pep Guardiola has a quick chat for the TV folks, initially about his six changes:

We play every three days, a lot of games, and all the players deserve to play for the way they behave and their training and they play. I’m really impressed [with Southampton], after the moment the suffered losing 9-0 against Leicester they made an incredible run of results and they’re out of the dangerous positions and thinking of the top, top positions.

Southampton have had a full week to recover from their 3-1 win at Watford so their need to rest players is less pressing. Still they bring in Jack Stephens, Stuart Armstrong and Che Adams and leave out Shane Long, Jannik Vestergaard and Will Smallbone

Manchester City make fully six changes to the team that tonked Liverpool in midweek, bringing in David and Bernardo Silva, Fernandinho, Joao Cancelo, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Riyad Mahrez. Edertson, Laporte, Garcia, Gabriel Jesus and Sterling keep their places.

These are the all-important names whose more-important bearers will be playing in tonight’s vaguely-important match:

Southampton: McCarthy, Walker-Peters, Stephens, Bednarek, Bertrand, Armstrong, Ward-Prowse, Romeu, Redmond, Ings, Adams. Subs: Long, Djenepo, Obafemi, Smallbone, Gunn, Vokins, Danso, Jankewitz, Ferry.
Man City: Ederson, Joao Cancelo, Eric Garcia, Laporte, Zinchenko, Bernardo Silva, Fernandinho, Silva, Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus, Sterling. Subs: Bravo, Stones, Gundogan, Rodri, De Bruyne, Otamendi, Foden, Doyle, Harwood-Bellis.
Referee: Andre Marriner.

Hello world!

Southampton have drawn just one league game since November and four all season, more only than two teams, one of which they face this evening (Liverpool and Manchester City have drawn three each, though there’s a chance that the newly-crowned champions will have drawn a fourth before this game kicks off).

Southampton’s home record is the worst in the entire division (they have nearly twice as many away points as home, with the same number of games played, and are only two points behind City in the away table) with just 14 points to their name at St Mary’s this season and 10 of 16 games lost. Never in their entire history have they lost 11 home league games in a season, and with only Brighton and Sheffield United to come should they avoid defeat in this game they will be confident of avoiding that unwanted piece of history. But City have won their last six league meetings with the Saints, by an average score of 2.83-0.67. One thing’s

for sure
slightly more likely than usual: it won’t be a draw.