Southampton V Manchester City The FA Cup Semi Final Preview
Friday, 24th Apr 2026 09:31
Saints travel up to Wembley for a game that means a lot more to Southampton players & supporters than it does for those who follow Manchester City and have grown blasé to their team winning trophies.
All roads lead to Wembley for Southampton fans, the ramshackle train line to London (Via Guildford) and the M3 will be chocca as over 35,000 make their way up to the capital, after the club received an extra allocation of tickets.
At the other end of the stadium though, City fans are not so enthusiastic and if rumour is to be believed there will be 10,000 empty seats in their section.
Up to 2008 before they were bought out by the Abu Dhabi Group, City supporters were a humble lot who loved to tell you that they were the Peoples club of Manchester and wanted to stay that way and would never be like the other lot across town.
The moment the Arabs rolled into town, they soon forgot all of that and their new found wealth and trophies, not all of them became arrogant and obnoxious, but a fair proportion did, although in some respects who could blame them give their 40 years or so of winning very little in the shadow of Old Trafford.
But Manchester City are part of the reason that football in England is in the state it is today and not part of the solution.
Thus in the two semi finals we have two clubs in City & Chelsea who see the FA Cup as a consolation prize and two clubs in Southampton & Leeds who truly care about winning it.
So we take on a club whose supporters will be apathetic to this game, but will their manager and players be.
The first issue for Saints is that they have the best squad in the Premier League and are in fine form having come through on the rails to jump above Arsenal, a task that looked impossible a month ago.
But there is good news, as a team we are perhaps better suited to playing Manchester City than we are Bristol City as was shown on Tuesday evening. Against Bristol City Leo Scienza had no space to run at players, they always had men behind the ball, whereas against Fulham & Arsenal, he had the room to run and expose their back four for pace.
That may raise eyebrows, but our game is based on getting the ball and moving it forward quickly and using the pace of the likes of Leo Scienza, Matsuki & Tom Fellows to catch teams on the back foot.
This is how we beat Premier League Fulham in the 5th Round and of course then runaway Premier League leaders Arsenal in the quarter finals.
A the back, Daniel Peretz will have a back four of James Bree, Taylor Harwood-Bellis & Welington.
I suspect that we might well opt for a central midfield trio of Charles, Jander & Bragg flanked by two wingers, Scienza with either Fellows or Matsuki out wide.
Up front if Tonda's keeps to his game by game rotation, then it would be Ross Stewart, but I would go for Cyle Larin, he is more mobile and faster on his feet than Stewart and I think we need work rate early on to combat a City side who will come out of the traps quickly.
That is the theory anyway and of course putting that theory to the test is far different.
In Championship terms we have a strong squad, but we have seen it stretched to the limits recently with Saturday games followed by midweek games for the last month or so.
It is stretched even more by the fact that we will be without Flynn Downes who will miss this game and the last two league games of the season after being handed a retrospective ban.
That is a big blow as Downes was in fine form, however we can cover his absence, Shea Charles & Caspar Jander being an obvious central pairing.
The other likely absentee is Jack Stephens, now I have been a critic of Captain Jack over the years, but above all I am a Saints supporter rather than being a Saints player hater and I give full credit to Jack for the part that he has played in our unbeaten run this season, I would hope that he would play, but although Tonda Eckert is saying positive things about assessing him, I would be very surprised if he is able to.
That would probably mean Nathan Wood deputising, I cannot see Joshua Quarshie being thrown into the role.
Last season though our two games against Manchester City saw us only concede one goal, that in the 5th minute of our trip to the Etihad, although with Ryan Manning suspended for this one & Jack Stephens potentially out, it is likely that not one member of the back four that day will play in this one with Jan Bednarek & Kyle Walker-Peters having left the club last summer.
But just under a year ago, Taylor Harwood-Bellis & Welington were in the starting line up as we held City to a 0-0 draw at St Mary's to ensure that we would not be the joint holders of the worst ever Premier League points total.
That day ensconced the Spirit of Southampton, on the pitch a team that gave it's all, with all four sides of the ground roaring them on and we need that again on Saturday at Wembley.
That spirit was in full view on our last visit to the stadium two years ago, the Southampton supporters were superb and we need to step up to the plate.
The club has treated the FA Cup run as a celebration of the run in 1976 in which we lifted the trophy against all odds and fifty years on we need to make the Saints sections of the stadium a sea of yellow & blue as we did in 1976 & at Cardiff in 2003.
Get out the yellow & blue balloons as we did in both of those above games.
Personally I will see only an appearance in the FA Cup final itself as a true Celebratory day, but given the fact that we have Manchester City in the semi, we might have to make do with this one or possibly a play off final.
But we need to truly make a show that will make the country sit up and take notice, we need a sea of yellow & blue, we need everyone to offer some form of vocal support, in games like this I find it strange some people can get through a game like this without uttering a single word of encouragement.
We all cant be waving flags and singing our hearts out, but we can all offer words of encouragement, the worst thing in football is a game being played in silence, perhaps the Man City end will be quiet, lets show them that this game matters.
The odds of us winning this game are of course against us, but that doesn't mean that we can't make this a game to remember both on and off the pitch.
Let's go out and as with the Arsenal game show the nation what the Spirit of Southampton is all about and make them talk about us long after the game is finished.
All Photos Via Reuters
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