Southampton
The Saints have been the epitome of inconsistency over the past few weeks. They've beaten Arsenal away in the Capital One Cup, drawn away at Stoke, beaten Bournemouth soundly at Dean Court and then got thrashed 4-1 at home against Spurs last time out.
In fairness to the Saints, the result wasn't really a fair reflection of what happened. They were very much in the game until Nathan Redmond's red card on 57 minutes and conceded twice in the last five minutes to make the margin of victory look much bigger than it should have been. Claude Puel's men are currently eighth.
They're badly missing the injured Charlie Austin, no doubt about that. And they will of course miss the suspended Redmond for this one, too.
West Brom
The Baggies are one place and one point behind their hosts.
Their last five games have seen them win twice at home by a 3-1 scoreline, lose 1-0 away at Arsenal and Chelsea (no disgrace there) but they were rather luck lustre in losing 2-0 at home to Manchester United a couple of weeks ago.
Six matches without a clean sheet won't have impressed manager Tony Pulis and up front he'll be wanting more from playmaker Nacer Chadli who was excellent when he first arrived at the club but has been looking a little rusty since returning from injury.
On the plus side, with the exception of the strange case involving Saido Berahino, Tony Pulis has a full squad of players to choose from.
The Saints look too short at 1.80. There's not much between the two in the league table, they'll be a little low on confidence after that 4-1 loss and are without their two most potent weapons in attack in Austin and Redmond. And we can also mention the Opta stat that the Saints haven't won the last match of the year since 2010.
In addition to that, the Baggies have put up some brave fights against good teams away from home as mentioned already. 1-0 losses to Chelsea and Arsenal suggest they set themselves up to make life hard for their opponents. If they can do that again here, they may well leave with something, given those two are better sides than Southampton are.
A Baggies win is somewhat unlikely at 5.60 but you never know so covering that and the draw is the way to go.
If you want to take the 1.65 on there being under 2.5 goals, no-one would blame you. 78% of West Brom's away games this season have had less than three goals, as have...78% of Southampton's home games.
And Opta tell us that only once in the last 12 between these sides have both teams scored so that's a further reason to expect this to be low scoring. A very tempting bet indeed therefore to go 'unders' but one we'll decide to swerve.
We've established that the stats suggest this will be low-scoring but there might be a couple of players worth considering at fancy prices. Southampton's Virgil van Dijk(10.0 or better) got the Saints' goal against Spurs and is a constant threat from set pieces with his aerial ability. And the same can be said of fellow centre back Gareth McAuley of West Brom, who could be available at odds as big as 13.00. He's scored three goals already this season.
Ref Watch
Mike Jones averages 3.5 yellows from his 13 matches to date this season and curiously, showed a red card in each of the first two matches he was in charge of...but none since.
If you're tempted to go for a bet on the bookings odds market, you might want to consider going for 6-8 points (three or four bookings) which would be in line with the average both of the referee and the two teams in question.
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