High hopes Ings’ injury won’t wreck it for Ralph ONE
SOUTHAMPTON are confident that Danny Ings’ knee injury will not hinder their remarkable rise under Ralph Hasenhuttl.
Saints’ top scorer has had a scan on the knee injury he picked up in Sunday’s 4- 3 win at Aston Villa and is being monitored this week but there is optimisism that the injury is not serious.
It is the only potential dark cloud on the horizon for a club whose form at the end of last season and the start of this has been so good that they lie fourth in the post- lockdown league table.
Top of the Project
Restart table – in other words, games played at the end of last season and the beginning of this – are Manchester City with
11 wins from 16 matches and 35 points.
Liverpool lie second with 33, Tottenham are third with 32 and Southampton fourth on
31 with nine wins from
16 games.
Hasenhuttl’s team have four wins in their last five games and, remarkably, could go top of the table if they beat Newcastle at St Mary’s on Friday. This comes just over a year after they were thrashed 9- 0 at home by Leicester in their most embarrassing result in recent times.
That defeat threatened Hasenhuttl’s position as manager but the Austrian stuck to his methods and Saints have lost just 12 times in 35 games since that hammering by the Foxes. Skipper James WardProwse, who scored twice on Sunday, with Ings also on the scoresheet, said: “We are unbeaten in five games but we are not going to get carried away.
“It’s a long season – we just want to improve year on year.
“For us it’s about making sure we apply ourselves right in every game, give ourselves the best chance to win and take it from there.
“We’ve got a great group of players and a great manager to guide us on the right path.
“You are going to have difficult results but it’s about making sure you stay focused and believing in what we are doing as a team.”