Southampton are possession and attack-heavy. In a way, Preston will feel very comfortable from a tactical perspective because they prefer to have less of the ball and play in a more direct fashion when they win it.

Southampton have been a dominant home team. They have won 7 of their last 10 at St. Mary’s and lost only one of the xG battles. That was a narrow one against Hull, in which they also lost the match. Generally, the Saints have been able to territorially dominate their opposition and been positionally smart enough to keep the bar closed, though it isn’t always the case.

Preston haven’t been bad away from home though. This is probably because they don’t mind sitting back a little deeper, relying on their box defending, then using the power and speed of their attacking players to cause damage on the break.

They haven’t created more than 1.5xG in any of their last ten away games, but they have only conceded over 1xG twice as well. Both teams haven’t scored in any of Preston’s last five away matches.

Southampton feel a little short in the market, which is probably being driven by their need to win. However, we have seen at the top of the Championship recently how little impact that can have. If Saints are to win, it could be a narrow one.

There is a gulf between these two sides in the way that we have to assess their shots on target data.

Southampton have 8 players whose shot on target per 90 ratio is higher than Preston’s first entry, Milutin Osmajic.

This doesn’t just mean that Southampton have taken overall more shots than Preston, but that they constantly have more shots on target than their opponents. The other stat against Preston is that Southampton conceded very few shots on target as well, indeed their goalkeeper, Gavin Bazunu, has saved only 2.2 shots per match this season.

Adam Armstrong has to be the main selection for this market. He has hit 50 shots on target so far this season and is likely to be the Saints player on the pitch with the best ratio of shots on target per 90, as well as being a good candidate to play the full match as well. He had 2 SoTs against Watford and Coventry, drew a blank against Blackburn away, but hit 4 against Ipswich.

There isn’t much else of value in this market. Preston’s best value is probably with Liam Millar, the Canadian leads the PNE shot charts, but his ratio of getting his shots on target isn’t the best.

One extra bet in the shots on target market though is to look at the team shots on target market, Southampton average 6 per match across the season, in a home match that has everything on the line for them, against a team that allows a decent number of shots on the road, this seems like a good bet.

Southampton are the shortest price we have seen when writing our bet builder previews this season on the corner match bet market in the Championship.

Whilst it is highly likely to be the case that Southampton do have more corners than the visitors, Saints are dominant in home corners count averages (7.67 v 3.71) and have won several corner counts in their recent matches, none of them, apart from Millwall at home, were particularly convincing.

Preston are no strangers to tight corner matches themselves. They had no corners at St. Andrews, but neither did Birmingham, in a rare case of a no-corner match. But other than this anomaly, PNE hit 5 corners at Watford, 5 at Plymouth, and 6 at Coventry in their last 4 matches.

Saints conceded three corners to Watford on Saturday and lost the corner count 6-8 to Coventry before that.

Whilst I don’t expect Preston to win the match market, they could certainly cover some of the other lines in the market.

Forwards are often good selections for this market because of the way that they play. Both Will Keane and Che Adams are physical players, getting involved in duels both on the ground and in the air with their defenders, and that close proximity will always lead to physical contact and fouls, one way or the other.

Keane is on 40 fouls for season from fewer than 26 90’s which tells us that he is a fairly likely player to get involved in something that upsets the referee. He has four fouls in his last four games, and he had four in a single game against Plymouth in March.

Adams didn’t actually commit any fouls last time out, but had 8 in his last 3 before that. He is another one averaging well over a foul per match, with 32 fouls in 21.7 90’s.