5 Premier League teams who are involved in a battle for relegation

#3 Southampton

Southampton's decision to keep faith with Mauricio Pellegrino may come back to haunt them

Where the majority of the other struggling sides in the Premier League have already dispensed of their manager this season, Southampton has kept faith in Mauricio Pellegrino, evidently feeling that the saying “better the devil you know” makes sense.

But the likelihood is that the Saints probably regret getting rid of Claude Puel in the close season given the Frenchman has taken Leicester to 8th position.

Southampton meanwhile is in deep trouble. They’ve only won five Premier League games all season, the least of any side outside of bottom-placed West Brom, and they’ve also only won one game since the turn of the year.

So what exactly has gone wrong? Like with fellow strugglers West Brom, the majority of their issues have come up front.

Southampton’s strike force has been massively misfiring, with Shane Long and Manolo Gabbiadini scoring just 5 league goals between them. Charlie Austin has scored 6 goals, but he injured his hamstring in December and hasn’t been back since.

Pellegrino’s insistence on playing a formation with just one striker probably hasn’t helped matters – nor has new signing Guido Carillo, as he’s only featured in 5 games thus far and has yet to find the back of the net.

Interestingly, they haven’t conceded many more goals since the loss of Virgil van Dijk in January, but they simply must start scoring more goals soon if they want to survive.

With games against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City still to come, they face a real dogfight if they want to keep their Premier League status going into 2018/19.