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MAURICIO Pellegrino believes he’s reached a point of perfect equilibrium with his Saints squad at a very important time.
With Saints facing nine games in the space of a month, Pellegrino has been attempting the “difficult” task of getting his group of players ready for a jam-packed period, which continues at Premier League leaders Manchester City tonight.
After seeing the superb performances against Everton last Sunday of previously bit-part players – Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Charlie Austin and James Ward-Prowse – the 46-year-old boss reckons that Saints are now well-equipped for the busy period.
“As a manager I am delighted because when you have a squad with 25 players it’s really difficult to have everybody motivated and ready to play,” he explained.
“I feel that we’ve got a lot of players who are ready to play and it’s something at the beginning I couldn’t say. Now I feel most of them are ready to play.
“We have now in the next two months a difficult fixture list and for me it’s important news for us, because it’s not easy coming from the bench, from the outside.
“Even Pierre and Charlie – Prowsey, okay, played more – but when you’re usually on the outside it’s really difficult to be on the same level. Most of them played really well.”
Hojbjerg was superb against the Toffees, while Austin netted a brace in the 4-1 win and Ward-Prowse produced a solid performances.
It certainly gives Pellegrino options, with Oriol Romeu and Mario Lemina back in starting contention tonight and Maya Yoshida eager to win back his place at centre-back from Wesley Hoedt.
He said: “I prefer to have problems to make a decision instead of having problems because you don’t want or you don’t know who will play.
“This is something that happens when you’ve got enough of a squad.”
Pellegrino admits it hasn’t been easy to keep everyone happy, especially with so few games this campaign compared to last term, when Saints competed in the Europa League and went all the way to the League Cup final.
“When you’ve got more competitions to play in like last season, but now we play in just one competition it’s not easy to keep the same mentality,” he said.
“They are professional but first of all they are human beings and sometimes they don’t have the same confidence or the same preparation because the best training session for me is to play games.
“When you don’t play - we try to move them in the reserve games, try to do friendly game - but never is it the same.”
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