Our Southampton fans here inside the Transfer Tavern are hoping for a little respite from the weekly rigours of the Premier League to try their hand at getting to Wembley for the second time in two seasons.

This season, the Saints have found themselves in the bottom three and, not being able to find the back of the net on a regular basis, life in red and white has proven really rather frustrating of late. With that in mind, today’s FA Cup matchup is against fellow Premier League strugglers Watford, in which both will be hoping it can kick-start their 2018.

Southampton have lost their rock at the back to Liverpool but the south coast team need to find the back of the net in order to really start moving forward at all this season. The match today can be a welcome distraction for Mauricio Pellegrino, and our regulars think that he should try to change things about in order to maybe inject some freshness into the team.

Our landlord agrees and thinks that these two players should get their chance to impress…

Sam McQueen

The next Luke Shaw, as he’s been dubbed by many of the regulars in the bar. The 22-year-old left back has been at Southampton since being a boy and is in a long line of youth academy products to start making the step up to the first team over the years.

McQueen will want to start getting more minutes under his belt and an FA Cup round match is always a good place to start, with the Saints struggling, maybe an injection of youth and fire raring to go may help the cause.

Josh Sims

Not all too much has been heard of Josh Sims since his famous run at Anfield almost a year ago now set Shane Long up for the EFL Cup semi-final win over Liverpool. However, the 20-year-old showed his ability to bring the ball from deep and pick out a good pass, something the Saints have been lacking of late.

In order to get the fans back on side, Pellegrino desperately need to trust the academy graduate.