Southampton will make the short trip to London to take on Arsenal at the Emirates tomorrow evening, with his side in blistering form.
The Saint arrive on the back of seven wins from their last 10 Premier League outings, including two respectable draws away to Chelsea and Wolves, and currently occupy fourth place in the division.
Arsenal on the other hand come into the match with just one sole win from their last eight fixtures, a win over the only team to have beaten the Hampshire club’s side since the start of October in Manchester United.
With the two sides in such contrasting form, some are claiming that Southampton should be considered as favourites to get a result on Wednesday evening, but their boss is refuting such claims.
Hasenhuttl said in his pre-match press conference (via Southampton’s official website): “No. I don’t anybody expects that we’ll go there and dominate them, nobody expects this. It would be stupid to think it.
“I don’t feel we are favourites going to Arsenal. Nobody wants to be the favourite, but favourite or not favourite, it’s not really interesting for the game.
“The mentality must be that we are convinced about what we are doing and find a good balance of not forgetting about the basics which have brought us to this situation that we are in now.”
He moves on to talks about his side’s strengths this season, and why he believes his side have performed so well of late.
He said: “We know about our quality now, we know that we can have self-confidence, but the difference between self-confidence and a little bit too much self-confidence ends up in a disaster when you are too risky.
“But we have definitely learned to manage the game well and this will be important tomorrow also. You cannot only run against the ball and only hunt and only work against the ball, you need to have also some possession to keep them away from your box.
“We have learned to do this and we want to show this also against the teams like Manchester United. We did it well against Manchester United, but not long enough and not clinically enough.
“Hopefully we are better prepared and can do it over 90 minutes to stretch them.”
I know many Arsenal fans are down currently, and rightly so, but our team should still be favourites to be winning this match, especially at home, although I don’t think I’ll be rushing to the bookmakers to get my money down until I see some rapid improvements from our side.
Should the Saints be considered favourites?
Patrick