Saints take on Arsenal in a game that will determine who will be sitting in fourth place in the Premier League by the end of New Years Day.

Saints take on Arsenal knowing that a draw will be enough to keep them in fourth place on goal difference, however Arsenal would have to sweat on West Ham failing to beat the Baggies by five goals if they were to keep fifth.

Once again Ronald Koeman has to shuffle his pack and decide what formation he will play, he will be without Morgan Schneiderlin in midfield, but this shold not be a problem with the option of putting James Ward Prowse back into the midfield or even moving Dusan Tadic into the centre.

His biggest question though is at the back where he will be without Nathaniel Clyne, he will though have Ryan Bertrand back in the side after his enforced lay off against his parent club on Sunday.

So what does Koeman do at the back? does he keep the flat back four employed against Chelsea and if so does he keep Yoshida at right or does he have the option of moving Bertrand or Targett into that position.

Or does he revert to a back three, with Bertrand back he could do this and use him and Matt Targett in a more forward position, if he does this then the question would be who does he use as the man in the forward central position of the trio, does he use Tadic or bring back JWP at his expense.

The good thing is that we have options and in Ronald Koeman we have a manager who knows how to use them and that is going to be the key to the battle.

On the other bench Arsene Wenger's problem has also been options, he has too many of them at times and in that sense too often he has not known what ones to choose for the best.

For the first time in a long time we take on the Gunners on a level footing and with the confidence that we can beat them, we have done it once in the League cup this season and we also know we can combat them under adversity coming so close to a draw at the Emirates as our players dropped like flies with injury.

This will hopefully give us the confidence that we can beat the Gunners whilst they are a team with low confidence knowing that at this moment in time the way their season will pan out is still in doubt, whether they will challenge for the Champions League or suffer the same fate as manchester United last year is open to debate and there is much unrest at the Emirates at present.

All of this adds up to a great opportunity for Saints and hopefully we will take it with both hands.

We have a tough month ahead culminating with the visit of Swansea, if we can start it off by beating Arsenal then we are a jump ahead of our rivals going into it and if we come through unscathed then with the return from injury etc of the likes of Cork and Rodriguez aligned with a new signing or two we could march on strongly through February and March.

But first Arsenal and we owe them a beating at St Mary's, our last victory over them was in November 2002 when we won 3-2 in a cracking game with Augustin Delgado scoring the winner.

Photo: Action Images

Jesus_02 added 14:42 - Dec 31 What has happened to Clyne? everyone seems to agree that he is injured. How badly no one knows!!
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Fordy added 15:41 - Dec 31 We have to play JWP for this. With Giroud out they only have a couple of tall players and we must try and make use of out height advantage over Arsenal and get JWP firing the ball in from set pieces. If they use Mertersacker and Koscielny to pick up Pelle and Fonte that leaves Toby or Maya or even Wanyama with a huge height advantage over whoever picks them up.
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perazi added 23:01 - Dec 31 With Morgan out I'm hoping Ron plays a midfield of Vic, Davo and Reed. I think playing JWP makes our midfield vulnerable defensively - I would rather trade off JWPs dead ball skills for the defensive and movement/intercepting qualities Reed would bring.
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