SAINTS must beat West Brom today in order to avoid extending their winless away run in the Premier League to ten games.

Ronald Koeman's side have not won a top-flight match outside of St Mary's since Sadio Mane's added-time strike gave them a 1-0 victory at QPR in February.

Coincidentally, it was against today's opponents, West Brom, where their dismal run on the road began.

The 1-0 defeat at The Hawthorns on February 28, courtesy of an early Saido Berhaino strike, sparked a series of poor results that saw the club take just one point from their final seven away matches last season.

While they have not won on their travels in the league this term, Saints are at least undefeated, having drawn 2-2 at Newcastle on the opening weekend, before earning a 0-0 at newly-promoted Watford.

Still, the long wait for a Premier League away victory is something Koeman is acutely aware of.

"Yes, of course, I know that," he said.

"Even with the summer behind us, I know the last away games didn’t play our level and I think in most of them a clean sheet was impossible because we did some mistakes when we lost the ball and we gave already the space back to them and, ok, we know that."

One other thing that Koeman believes Saints also know better now is how to play against West Brom.

For as good a season as the team had in the last campaign, they struggled against the Baggies.

They drew 0-0 with them in their opening home game, with only a late one-on-one save made by Fraser Forster from Brown Ideye preventing Saints from suffering a defeat.

That was then followed by the loss at The Hawthorns later in the campaign, in which they also failed to score.

Koeman said: "Ok, we know that’s the way of playing.

"We try to do it in a different way, but it’s difficult because they have a very good defensive organisation.

"There’s not a lot of space between the lines, it’s very compact and it’s always very difficult to break open.

 

"You have to be patient, you need really high quality in the last part of attacking and we have that experience from last year when they scored I think after one minute and it was very difficult to break open and to create good chances.

"That was difficult, but I think we learned from last year and we know how to play."