Sunderland will be aiming for three points at St Mary’s on Saturday but manager David Moyes has warned that it won’t be easy against Southampton.
After qualifying for the UEFA Europa League last season Saints were awarded safe passage into the third round of the EFL Cup, with Claude Puel’s side last in action one week ago against Manchester United.
Moyes was impressed by what he saw from Saints despite Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s double sealing a 2-0 win for his former club, and speaking to safc.com ahead of Saturday’s game the boss praised the club following an impressive rise from League One to Europe.
“I think Southampton are a club which have built progressively and they’ve built progressively through their academy,” said Moyes.
“They’ve had to sell some of their players to finance the next stage of their development but they’re a club which is certainly on the climb because of the way they’ve done their business.
“I thought they played really well at Manchester United and I thought they were really unlucky; they played some terrific football and the club have a real solidity about them.”
Moyes also ran the rule over new signing Javier Manquillo, revealing the Spaniard could start at St Mary’s.
“I’m pleased to add more competition and I’m looking forward to working with Javier; his English is limited at the moment but when I worked in Spain my Spanish was limited, so we will do everything we can to help him and try to get him settled quickly.
“He has qualities and he was an under-21 player with Spain so we will try to get him in right away and get him ready for the game.”
He added: “There’s a good chance he will be ready to start.”
