Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl has backed his side to improve against Arsenal on Tuesday night – even after dumping the Gunners out of the FA Cup at the weekend.
A Gabriel Magalhaes own goal was enough to earn Saints a 1-0 victory over Mikel Arteta’s side on Saturday, sending the cup holders crashing out at the fourth-round stage.
The two sides meet again in the Premier League just three days later, with Southampton having been the better team for much of their previous meeting.
Arteta praised the way the hosts pressed his side during the game at St Mary’s, but Hasenhuttl has called for an improvement from his players when they are in possession.
“It is a new game,” Hasenhuttl said when asked how much Saturday’s game could impact the next meeting.
“I don’t know how much impact it has on the game tomorrow, they will definitely want to turn the table around.
“So with a few changes in the team we have to show another good performance. With the ball we can play better than last Saturday, it was definitely not our best game with the ball.
“Without the ball it was a good game and against these top-six teams that is usually the most important thing.”
Two changes that will be forced on Hasenhuttl come at full-back, with both Ryan Bertrand and Kyle Walker-Peters set to miss out.
Bertrand is suspended and Hasenhuttl revealed Walker-Peters, whose cross was turned into his own goal by Gabriel to seal the FA Cup win, suffered a small injury in training on Monday.
“Kyle Walker-Peters took an injury in the session today,” he added.
“It looks like he definitely can’t make it, he was out in the session today and it is another setback for us, hopefully not too bad.
“It’s the quad area, he’s got some problems. He only warmed up a little bit today and then felt some problems so had to stop.
“With Ryan Bertrand out with his fifth yellow card, we have to find the right solutions at full-back. It’s an important position for our game.”
With a packed fixture schedule which now also includes a fifth-round FA Cup tie away to Wolves, Saints are managing an injury list which Hasenhuttl believes will ease in the coming days.
“The only good news is that (Nathan) Redmond is back, he trained today for the first time and tomorrow he will be on the bench, he could come in for a short spell and it will be good for him,” he said.
“Oriol (Romeu) could be an option for the weekend, it (the number of injuries) is getting better so hopefully in the next one or two weeks it will get better because we have a lot of games coming up.
“When the team is in good shape and you don’t have many injuries I like playing games in a row.”
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