David Wagner speaks ahead of Town’s match against Southampton
- David Wagner previews Southampton
- Head Coach reveals Huddersfield Town’s latest team news
- Subscribe to #HTTV+ to watch the full press conference
Making sure the performance is right was the main message from Huddersfield Town Head Coach David Wagner ahead of this weekend’s Premier League match against Southampton.
Coming into the game the Terriers are currently two points and two places below the Saints, but David Wagner has remained clear that the players’ focus must be on putting in a good performance.
“You have to make sure that if you like to win football matches and you like to score, then you have to perform at your best.
“I am a strong believer that you have to perform on your best as a team, offensively and defensively to have a chance to score and to win games.
“Performance-wise everyone has seen that we’ve more or less always been competitive and performance-wise we’ve sometimes deserved more than we got.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t scored and collected points, but we have to make sure our performance is on the highest level.
“If we perform on our highest level, this opens the door to have a chance to score and win football matches, without the performance you have no chance.”
The appointment of Ralph Hasenhüttl has changed Southampton’s style of play, something that David Wagner is well aware of.
“Southampton are much more aggressive than before, play a higher line, and are on the front foot.
“I’ve seen the game against Arsenal and they had a little bit of the game that you need to win matches in the Premier League.
“They changed their style a little bit after they changed the manager, but there aren’t any big secrets that we expect on Saturday.
“We are aware what they are doing and hopefully we can find some areas where we can hurt them, whilst limiting the quality they have.”
Ahead of the game, Town’s Head Coach revealed the latest team news, detailing there was nothing new to add on top of the existing longer-term injuries that were revealed ahead of the Newcastle United match.
“There’s no real differences to last week, Steve Mounie is back as he’s allowed to play again and he’s in contention for the weekend.
“Rajiv van La Parra was in training yesterday and the day before. Today he wasn’t in training with his back problem, so we will see how he looks tomorrow.
“All the other guys who have been training in the last week are ok, no further issues after the last game.”
During the period when he was suspended, the Benin international joined the supporters in the stands for the away match against Arsenal.
David Wagner believes that act optimised the relationship between everyone at the Club.
“I liked it even though I didn’t know it (at the time). I was very pleased for the supporters, I think it shows first of all what Steve character is all about, but also what our club is all about; unity and togetherness.
“This is what brought us to where we are, and this is what we need. We need this to continue because it gives us the chance to reach our targets.”
You can watch clips from David Wagner’s press conference below on #HTTV!
Subscribe to #HTTV+ to watch the full pre-Southampton press conference.
