For 38 rounds of the past season, Southampton has not managed to establish a stable game. The team had 12 victories and seven peaceful outcomes, which eventually brought the 15th place. In addition, the saints showed the worst result in the Premier League in terms of the quality of defense. At the end of the season, Ralf Hasenhuettl’s charges beat Crystal Palace (3:1) and Fulham (3:1), followed by two losses in a row. Over the summer, Adam Amstrong from Blackburn (17.7 million), Romian Pierro from Brest (12 million) and Valentino Livramento (5.9 million) came to reinforce the team. The start of the new championship was unsuccessful. The away match in Liverpool brought the first defeat. The Red-Whites opened the score in this duel, but Everton responded with three goals, which brought the first fiasco. Smallbon, who has a knee injury, will not play today.
Barcelona entered the new La Liga season without gold medals and Lionel Messi. The 26-time champion of Spain got 24 wins in the last championship and drew seven times, which brought 79 points and third place, after a couple of metropolitan clubs. At the finish of the tournament, the “blue-garnet” lost to “Celta” (1:2), after which they outplayed “Eibar” (1:0), which did not affect the result in any way. Newcomers include Sergio Aguero and Eric Garcia of Manchester City and the €9m purchase of Emerson from Betis. In the first match of the new tournament, Ronald Koeman’s wards proved that life without Messi goes on and confidently outplayed the uncompromising Real Sociedad (4:2), for which we made a prediction. In this game, one cannot fail to note Braithwaite, who has a double and an assist. Today Aguero, Dembele, Mingesa, Ter Stegen and Fati, who has a knee injury, will not be able to enter the field.