Marcus Barnes is aiming to net his first goal of pre-season when Saints Under-18s face Girona in their second of three friendlies in a two-week tour of Spain.
The striker rattled the crossbar, had a shot cleared and another saved in Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Villarreal but is remaining calm and feels the goals will follow good performances.
Barnes will once again be hoping to lead the line as he did against the Yellow Submarine when Southampton travel to second-tier side Girona’s training ground for Wednesday’s match – kick-off 7pm BST.
“I want another good performance like against Villarreal, hopefully a goal or two to get off the mark and maybe an assist,” Marcus told the club’s official YouTube channel.
“I obviously wanted to get a couple of goals but hopefully they’ll come in the next game because I need to get off the mark myself like Ryan [Seager] has for the Under-21s. I just need to keep performing and hopefully the goals will come.”
Due to the unfamiliarity shared between Saints and their midweek opponents, Barnes is hoping his side’s style – far from an English stereotype of relying on physicality and hitting long balls – may spring a surprise on Girona.
“Hopefully they’ll play like Spanish teams do – good football – so it should be a good game,” the frontman assessed.
“It should be a bit of a surprise as well because they don’t know how we’re going to play because all English teams play differently as well. It should be good for both teams to see how good we are.
“We’ve got some good players. We need to play well at all times and we need to score some goals because we didn’t have any against Villarreal and that’d give some confidence to the team going into when we come back and next season.”
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