Southampton analysis with football writer, Alfie House

As we travel to Southampton for Sunday's FA Women’s Continental League Cup fixture at St. Mary's Stadium (12pm KO), football writer for the Southern Daily Echo, Alfie House, gives us his insight into our opponents.

Hi Alfie. It looks like Southampton are having a good season at the moment?

Yeah definitely. They got promoted last season from the National League and it was something they'd wanted to achieve for quite a while. They'd had promotion denied before because of Covid. They brought Marieanne Spacey-Cale in and have gone up. They didn't probably expect to be fourth in the division. They lost their opening game of the season, but in the league they haven't lost since then. If you'd have offered them fourth at the start of the season they'd have bitten your hand off. Speaking to the coaches, that's certainly the impression that I get.

They've had a rapid rise. Is the WSL the ambition?

The good thing about women's football at the moment is there's a lot of ability because if you've got a Premier League club like Southampton or Tottenham that's willing to commit to a budget which is still significant, you can achieve big things. That's something Southampton identified four or five years ago. You can get into what is a massively growing market. There will be more than 7,000 fans on Sunday which is a club record for Southampton. I know Spurs played in front of over 40,000 for the north London derby, but it's going to be a huge crowd for them. This season is about staying in the division. When you look at the bottom of the Championship, the teams aren't winning, so maybe they can change their expectation to go up next season, but it's very difficult because only one team goes up, so they'll have to improve massively.

How good is it to play all the home games at St. Mary's Stadium?

They only did it a couple of times before this season. They played there for an FA Cup game two or three years ago and then last season against Bristol City in the FA Cup. Bristol were in the Championship and they ended up beating them and knocking them out. Then they played Portsmouth at home at St. Mary's to win the league. Obviously they're the bitter rivals. It worked really well. They used to play their games at AFC Totton, so it's a massive increase in facilities. It's testament to the club. When I speak to Spacey-Cale the first thing she always does is say she couldn't be more thankful to the club. The facilities and money they're putting into it, everyone is really grateful and it's a massive opportunity.

Can you remember their previous two Conti Cup games?

They lost 3-0 in both. They put rotated sides out in both of those games so I think they wanted to focus on the FA Cup and the league. That being said, there was a lot of illness last weekend and they ended up losing in the FA Cup to Bristol City, so a lot of the first team players didn't play, which makes me think that this weekend they're going to try to make a statement versus Tottenham, who are one of the best and biggest sides in the country. We'll see a lot of those first team players who missed out last week come back in I think.