Town boss Kieran McKenna says winning at Southampton on Tuesday night to secure promotion back to the Premier League would be the “dream scenario” but knows his team is going to be in for a tough evening against “a very good side”.

The Blues make the trip to the south coast knowing a win from either of the final two matches, the game at St Mary’s or Saturday’s final match of the season at home to QPR, would be enough to secure second place in the Championship and a return to the Premier League after a one-year absence.

McKenna admits that the ideal situation would be a win at St Mary’s, but says he’s concentrating on preparations for the game rather than on the potential outcome.

“That would be the dream scenario going into the week,” he said. “But I don’t put too much energy into thinking what a relief it would be, what it would feel like or anything like that because the energy and thoughts need to go towards the performance and what it’s going to take.

“It’s a hard game, it’s a game with a lot of different challenges, different complexities to it, so we need to prepare as well as we can for a strong opponent and how we can deal with their threats and how we can cause them problems.

“That’s just where the focus is, what the emotions will be if and when we get the result that we want this week, whether it’s on Tuesday or Saturday, we’ll deal with those when they come.”

Southampton, who were beaten 2-1 by Manchester City in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley on Saturday having taken the lead in the 79th minute, are fifth in the Championship, four points behind the Blues with Tuesday’s game also their penultimate fixture. They need to win on Tuesday to maintain their automatic promotion hopes.

The Saints have staged a remarkable comeback following the interim and then permanent appointment of Tonda Eckert following Will Still’s disastrous short spell at the start of the campaign.

Since the beginning of January, no Championship side has picked up more points than the Saints.

They are currently unbeaten in 17 league games going back to a 2-1 defeat to Hull City on January 17th, drawing three and winning the rest, including a run of seven victories on the bounce, which was ended by last Tuesday’s 2-2 home draw with Bristol City.

Only three teams have picked up more home points than the Saints, who are the division’s seventh-highest scorers on their own turf. They and Town have conceded the joint-fewest home goals in the division, 17.

“I’m expecting a really good game,” McKenna said. “No doubt about it, they’re a good side in good form in the league and have showed up really well in the cup.

“It’s going to be a big challenge. I think we’ve had quite a few over the last few weeks. We’ve faced some of the most in-form teams in the division and Southampton are very much that as well. We’re expecting a good test but we believe we’ll give them a tough game as well.”

Asked what’s been behind the Saints’ Lazarus-like change of fortune this season, McKenna said: “I think it’s a lot of things. You don’t pick up a run of form like that without a lot of different things.

“They’ve clearly got a really good squad, really, really good players, a really deep squad. Although they have some variation, they’ve found more of a base system and template now that seems to be suiting them well as a team, even from when the manager came in that’s changed.

“They had a good start with him but then some bumps in the road but they seem to have found a template now that’s working well for them.

“Of course, confidence and momentum is a massive part of that, especially in this division when the games are so even and they come so thick and fast.

“Whereas earlier in the season they were probably losing a lot of tight games, they’ve won a lot of tight games now, had comeback victories, won on small margins a lot.

“And they’re a very good side, no doubt about it. Excellent players, excellently coached and with big confidence and big momentum. That makes them a big challenge for us tomorrow night.”

The Saints need a win to maintain their hopes of usurping the Blues and returning to the top-flight automatically and McKenna was asked whether he anticipates them taking a more aggressive approach than usual.

“I think they’re an aggressive team anyway, so I don’t see that changing too much,” he continued. “And probably from Birmingham to Middlesbrough to Norwich, we’ve had a lot of teams [in a similar situation], this last-chance saloon must be a pretty busy saloon because we seem to have played someone who has been in it every week.

“They’re an aggressive, positive team anyway and they’re going to go and try and win the game.

“I think we all know that if the game’s tied in the last 10 minutes, I don’t think anyone’s going to be sitting on a draw.

“Let’s see where we get to. It’s going to take a big, big effort to go there and compete as well as we want, and it’s clear that both teams want to win and neither team is going to be holding out for a draw.

“If it’s a tight game in the end, certainly both teams are going to be pushing for the win, but both teams go out there every week trying to win the game anyway.”

As with the Saints, a draw is little different to a defeat on the day for the Blues, so does that alter McKenna’s attitude to the match?

“I think you go to try and win the game,” he reflected. “If going to try and win the game means playing seven up front, then we’d do that, but we’d do that every week.

“It’s about picking a team and a strategy and a game plan, which gives you the best chance to win the game, whatever that takes.

“And always that’s respecting the opponent and their threats and respecting and looking at our strengths and how we can impose them.

“I don’t think it changes too much, to be honest, in terms of how we approach the game because there’s not an away game we’ve gone to this year and not tried to win or given the messages of going out to win.

“What’s probably different in reality is that if it gets to the last throes of the game, whereas there are times over the course of the season in a tough away game, you accept and say a point’s not bad.

“Saturday [the 0-0 draw at West Brom] was probably one of those where we knew in the later stages of the game that a point was a pretty good result.

“If it gets to that point late on Tuesday, both teams are going to be going for the win, whereas at a different stage of the season, either team or both might accept that a point is a good result, but no one’s going to settle for that.

“It’s more about maybe how the game finishes if we’re in a tight game. I think the start of the game and the game plan is as we have all season, trying to prepare it as well as we can and picking whatever team or whatever strategy or the key bits of the performance to try and win.”

While Southampton’s FA Cup semi-final defeat at Wembley will have gained more headlines, McKenna says the Blues go into Tuesday’s match following a game at the Hawthorns which was similarly big in the context of their season.

“If you know how much the game on Saturday meant to us, as a staff, as a group of players, away from home Wednesday, away from home Saturday,” he said.

“Probably Southampton are the only team who have had a schedule anything resembling ours over the last few weeks, so maybe it’s one game where we can’t talk so much about freshness as both teams have played a lot.

“Different emotions going away from home, fighting for a point in the Championship as against being at Wembley playing maybe the best team in the world in a different competition, both are just different mentally.

“We know where we’re at in the season, we know we’re facing a good team, they’ve played a lot of games, we’ve played a lot of games and it’s about being ready for the game now tomorrow night.”

Two years ago, the Blues went to Coventry City, who coincidentally had also had a cup run to the semi-finals, in the final midweek needing four points from their last two matches, winning 2-1, and McKenna says the visit to St Mary’s has a similar feel.

“In some ways maybe because it’s Tuesday night and all the other teams are sitting at home and you’re getting ready for a big game,” he added.

“With the Coventry game, [promotion] was never going to be decided on the night but we were going there really trying to get a result and similar for this one.

“This stage of the season does feel similar, even to the League One season because of the schedules we’ve had games coming thick and fast.

“You’re rolling from the emotion of one game into the emotion of the next and trying really hard just to focus on the next performance and trying to pick up the next points, so I think the similarities are probably there.”

McKenna is yet to taste defeat at St Mary’s as Town boss with the 1-0 victory early in last Championship promotion season, courtesy of Omari Hutchinson’s first goal for the club, an important evening in that campaign.

“In September, I think,” he recalled. “It was a really big win, so good memories there. Both squads have had big turnovers, so I’m not sure it has much bearing on this one, but you’d always rather go to a ground where you have good memories than bad memories.”

The Town boss says he’ll assess his squad, among them Leif Davis, who has missed the last two matches with a hamstring injury, with a number of them looking tired at the end of the goalless draw with the Baggies.

“We’ll make those assessments today through training and speaking to the players this evening,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that there was fatigue out there on Saturday. I’ve spoken about the schedule enough, but three away games in six days at this stage of the season is really, really tough.

“We’ll make the assessments. Coming into the spell we wanted to be relatively consistent with our selection and give players a chance to build up some good momentum, and I think we’ve done that over the last few weeks.

“But we also have other players ready to go and a squad of people ready to contribute, so in reality there’s going to be a need to freshen up some positions going into Tuesday night and we’ll make a decision on what those positions are.”

The Team

Christian Walton will be in goal, while Davis will return at left-back if fit with Jacob Greaves then moving back into the centre of the defence and Cedric Kipre dropping out.

Skipper Dara O’Shea, who has played every minute of Town’s Championship campaign, will continue in his right-sided central defensive role.

Darnell Furlong looked shattered at the end of Saturday’s match but may well be OK to start once again, but if not Ben Johnson will probably come back into the XI.

Azor Matusiwa will be in central midfield with Dan Neil perhaps coming in for Jack Taylor alongside the Dutchman.

Most changes are likely to be in the three ahead of the double pivot. Marcelino Nunez will probably come in as the number 10, Jaden Philogene on the left and Wes Burns on the right, if the Wales international is considered fit enough. If not, then Kasey McAteer may start again. George Hirst could be given the nod ahead of Ivan Azon as the number nine.

The Opposition

Saints boss Eckert insists his team needing to beat Town — and then Preston at Deepdale on Saturday while hoping sides above them drop points — to stand a chance of finishing second doesn’t alter his approach to the game.

“How the table looks doesn’t make a big difference for us in terms of the way we approach the game,” the German said.

“I think we’ve done this for every single game that we’ve gone into, that we’ll do everything and put the best starting XI in the game.

“If you would ask me if I would have preferred to win the game on Tuesday [the 2-2 home draw with Bristol City], then I would have preferred to take three points over a draw.

“But I think it just shows that we’ve been able to raise the bar over the last few weeks. And it’s not just that you go into a Championship game.

“You leave everything on the pitch on a Saturday and then you play again on a Tuesday with two days in between, you have to travel back from Wales.

“To think that a game just falls for you, that’s not how it works. I still think that towards the end, we had two big moments that could have won it.

“It shows how much we’re able to dig deep in these games. Sometimes the last ball falls into the back of the net, but sometimes it doesn’t.

“But I think for most games we’ve tried to leave the emotions behind and close them very quickly on the same afternoon or on the same night.

“Then you open up a new page, and there’s a new job coming up to focus on for another 90 minutes. I don’t see this being any different.”

Eckert has a lot of time for his Town counterpart McKenna: “It’s not just this season, but they are very consistent over many years, which I find quite remarkable.

“It is not easy to reset after a difficult summer. It’s not easy for a football club or manager to leave the disappointment behind and go again.

“I don’t need to say anything about him as a coach and the way he sets up his team tactically because I think he’s one of the best.

“But I think it’s even more remarkable how you just leave disappointments [like relegation] behind quickly and manage to go again.

“The summer is three months long for the media, but it isn’t three months for you as a manager. You have five to six weeks to prepare, maybe.

“You have so many conversations going on about the squad building. You need to be there on the very first day of pre-season, full of energy.

“Meanwhile, you still need to recharge completely. I think if you do get promoted, you carry some enthusiasm, and it’s very different.

“If you get relegated, I think it’s a different way to process emotions. I think that’s been a very remarkable job that he’s done at Ipswich."

Eckert made made six changes for the FA Cup semi-final, some enforced, while captain Jack Stephens missed the City tie and the Robins game with a calf problem.

Welington, Cameron Bragg, Caspar Jander, Tom Fellows, Leo Scienza and Ross Stewart all came back into the side with Ryan Manning and Flynn Downes suspended and Shea Charles, Kuryu Matsuki, Cameron Archer and Cyle Larin among the subs.

Manning is back from his ban, but ex-Blues midfielder Downes remains unavailable having accepted an FA charge of violent conduct for an incident against Swansea City earlier this month.

One-time Town loan keeper Alex McCarthy (wrist) and Mads Roerslev (achilles) remain sidelined.

History

Historically, the Blues have the edge having won 27 games against Southampton (26 in the league), losing 24 (18) and with 22 (21) ending in draws.

Town are unbeaten at St Mary’s in the league since February 2007 when Jim Magilton’s Blues were defeated 1-0 by a Saints side managed by George Burley. Five of the six games there since have been draws.

The Hampshire side did win an FA Cup tie in that time, 2-1 in January 2010 during Roy Keane’s stint as boss.

At Portman Road in August, the Blues ended their record nine-game run of home defeats as they drew 1-1 with the Saints.

Town took an early lead via a Taylor Harwood-Bellis own goal on four, but Jay Robinson levelled for Southampton with a header in the 29th minute with Sammie Szmodics going closest to winning it in the second half when he struck the post.

In September 2024 at St Mary’s, skipper Sam Morsy netted a 95th-minute equaliser as Town and Southampton also drew 1-1.

Tyler Dibling’s fifth-minute goal gave the Saints a 1-0 half-time lead against the overall run of play and both sides had chances before Morsy slammed home his first Premier League goal to secure a point.

The previous season in the Championship as both teams won promotion - the Saints via the play-offs - Town did the double over the Hampshire side.

In April 2024 at Portman Road, sub Jeremy Sarmiento scored a 97th-minute winner as Town came from behind to beat 10-man Southampton 3-2 in a Portman Road classic to return to the top of the table.

Davis gave the Blues the lead on 13 but Southampton hit back through Che Adams only a minute later and Adam Armstrong gave the visitors the lead in the 23rd minute.

Town had been second best but took charge after a triple substitution with one of those changes, Nathan Broadhead levelling on 68, before ex-Town loanee James Bree was dismissed for hauling down Davis on 85 and Sarmiento sent Portman Road into raptures seconds from the end.

At St Mary’s in the previous September, Hutchinson’s first goal for the Blues on his full league debut saw Town to the three points and back up to second in the Championship.

The then-Chelsea loanee struck on the half hour as the Blues maintained their brilliant start to that Championship season.

Familiar Faces

Southampton’s squad includes a number of ex-Town players, most notably Downes, who came through the academy and made 75 starts and 24 sub appearances, scoring three times before moving on to Swansea in the summer of 2021 for an initial £1.4 million with the Blues receiving another £1.5 million following the midfielder’s £8 million move to West Ham the following summer.

The midfielder, who will miss Tuesday’s game due to suspension, was on loan with the Saints in 2023/24 before making his move permanent the following summer for £18 million when he turned down the chance to return to Portman Road. The Brentwood-born player was keen on a return to Suffolk in January 2025 but with the Saints not willing to sell to a relegation rival.

Keeper McCarthy spent time on loan at Town in the second half of 2011/12, making 10 appearances and impressing after a difficult start having been red-carded in his third game, a 3-1 defeat at former loan club Leeds.

Full-back Bree was on loan at Town in the second half of the 2018/19 season making 13 starts and one sub appearance.

Saints full-back Manning came close to joining the Blues as an academy scholar but ultimately opted to sign for QPR.

Officials

Tuesday’s referee is Thomas Kirk, his assistants Hristo Karaivanov and Jacob Graham, and the fourth official Josh Smith.

Cheshire-based Kirk has shown a not insignificant 144 yellow cards and four red in 33 games so far this season.

He is in his fifth season as an EFL referee having risen swiftly up the divisions and took control of his first Premier League match, Burnley-Crystal Palace, which ended 1-0 to the away side, in December and has since taken charge of four more top-flight games.

His most recent Town match was the 3-3 draw at Stoke City in March in which he awarded the Potters a controversial final-minute penalty, Kipre having been adjudged to have fouled Lamine Cisse, from which they claimed a point. After the match, referees’ body, the PGMOL, apologised for the error.

In addition, Kirk booked Jack Clarke, Mehmeti, Taylor and Kipre for the penalty incident, a decision which triggered a two-match ban for the Ivorian international.

Prior to that, he was in charge of the 3-1 defeat at Leicester in December in which he booked Taylor, Clarke and one home player.

Earlier this season, Kirk refereed the Blues’ 3-1 East Anglian derby victory over Norwich City at Portman Road, yellow-carding Philogene and three Canaries.

In his only Town game prior to that, the 2-1 win at Morecambe in League One in October 2022, he awarded the Blues two penalties,

On 58, Kyle Edwards was tripped by Farrend Rawson, Town’s first spot-kick in nine months, but Conor Chaplin’s effort was saved.

Six minutes later, the Blues were given another when Kayden Jackson was felled by Jacob Bedeau. This time Lee Evans was successful to claim the points. Evans was the only Town player booked during the game along with six of the home team.

Squad From

Walton, Palmer, Button, Furlong, Davis, Johnson, Young, O’Shea (c), Kipre, Greaves, Baggott, Matusiwa, Cajuste, Neil, Taylor, Clarke, Philogene, Nunez, Burns, Walle Egeli, McAteer, Mehmeti, Akpom, Hirst, Azon.

Photo: TWTD