Southampton v Burnley betting preview, free tip & analysis

Free football tips, best bets and analysis for Southampton v Burnley in the Premier League.

Where to watch

BT Sport 1, 12.30pm Saturday

Best bet

Southampton & over 1.5 goals
1pt 5-4 Coral
Click to bet on this tip with Coral

Team news

Southampton
James Ward-Prowse has recovered from injury and Yan Valery is also back in training.

Burnley
Matt Lowton is rated 50-50 after a knock. Johan Berg Gudmundsson and Ashley Barnes could be involved.

Match preview

Southampton, the Premier League’s laughing stocks when shipping nine at home to Leicester in October, have been transformed into a team on the up and they can continue their improvement by seeing off Burnley at St Mary’s.

Sorry Saints were as short as 5-4 for relegation a couple of weeks after that humiliation at the hands of the Foxes but their recovery, for a team who were apparently on the ropes, has been little short of sensational.

Confidence appears to be coursing through the team, coach Ralph Hasenhuttl has finally found a shape and personnel he likes, and if all goes well they should be too good for the Clarets.

Burnley also found form just as they were nosediving towards the relegation zone, and the clubs find themselves level on 31 points.

Accordingly, odds of 5-6 Southampton aren’t exactly jaw-dropping especially as they are, statistically at least, far better on their travels.

But Burnley are poor travellers and with Saints playing well – and far better than their last couple of results might suggest – they are worth backing, perhaps in a game featuring at least a couple of goals. Their games tend to produce plenty of goals.

Southampton have lost three of their last 11 matches, the last two of those against Liverpool in the Premier League and Tottenham in the FA Cup.

For 45 minutes against the soon-to-be champions they were simply outstanding and as Jose Mourinho stated after the subsequent cup tie, the better team lost.

Saints have beaten Chelsea, Spurs and Leicester since Christmas and players who plenty were starting to give up on – Jack Stephens, Oriol Romeu, Nathan Redmond and, in particular, Danny Ings – have suddenly clicked.

Ings, who spent more than three years at Burnley, has scored 17 in all competitions, which is impressive when you consider that Che Adams was generally being preferred to lead the line at the start of the season.

Burnley will approach this as they tackle most games, acutely aware that they will have less of the ball than their opponents, but that’s their modus operandi and recent results suggest it works just fine.

Their last three matches have produced wins against Leicester and Manchester United and a draw with Arsenal with an average possession level in those games of 38 per cent. Against United they lost the shot count 5-24.

Indeed, they’ll be expected to lose the shot count at St Mary’s as well given that Southampton average three shots per game more than their guests.