Ralph Hasenhuttl explains drastic Southampton changes ahead of Aston Villa

Ralph Hasenhuttl took advantage of the fact that managers can make five substitutions in the FA Cup to ring the changes in Southampton’s win over West Ham on Wednesday night.

Saints head to Aston Villa on Saturday when the Premier League resumes, and the Lions will welcome a particularly in-form team who have booked their place in the FA Cup quarter finals and who are seven matches unbeaten in all competitions.

It was a very different side that beat West Ham 3-1, however; only Kyle Walker-Peters and James Ward-Prowse kept their places from the side who had beaten Norwich City the previous Friday night.

Hasenhuttl decided to rest a number of his first-choice players in order to fully prepare them for the trip to Villa, and he maximised the utilisation of his squad by making five changes across the course of the evening at St Mary’s.

The Austrian might have, though, named the same XI for the two previous victories and changed things at Villa - that was his predicament.

“It was this week a little more difficult because we had now the longer break from Friday to Wednesday,” he told the Daily Echo. “It would also have been possible to go now with the same squad what we played against the Norwich, and then change for the Saturday game.

“The problem is, in the Saturday game you don’t have this many changes you can do, subs you can make and today we had five, so I decided to go today with a completely changed team and then have five subs to react to whatever I need.”

Villa have endured a sticky patch on home soil recently. Their last win in front of their own fans at B6 came against Leicester City at the beginning of December, though they’ve won three games on the road since then - the most recent of those coming on