The Premier League Thread

Considering we were only officially safe last Sunday, we ended up finishing closer to you in 8th than we did to hull in 17th. Extremely tight in the PL this year.

 

It's hard to say which is the weird one. Last year followed a season that looked pretty similar in lacking a big gap between the haves and have-nots, and 203-14 wasn't this stratified, either. So either this is normal service resuming, or it's the outlier, and we probably won't know until halfway through next season.

Regarding Koeman, I don't think it really affects perception there, because the primary reason you have that gap isn't that the big clubs were so spectacular (though they were better this season), but rather than none of the other thirteen teams distinguished themselves in competition against other teams at or below their level. Koeman's team took points off the traditional big clubs and (more often than not) held serve against the teams they ought to beat, particularly at home. Unless we assume that every team last year was kinda garbage, it doesn't do much to detract...otherwise, you wouldn't have that large gap between Liverpool and the chasing pack.

Merely being demonstrably better than the undifferentiated mediocrity this year would have been enough to propel ourselves, or West Brom or West Ham or whoever, into the high-50 point range. But as brendy noted, we dropped an awfully large number of points we should have taken against them...and, presumably, they feel like they dropped points against us that should have been banked. Because we, like them, were just kinda bleh, and the true top teams and the merely pretty good (see: Everton) capitalized.

 

We have certainly had a season of our very own. Looks lonely out there.

Lies, damned lies and stats isnt it? According to whoscored we were very close to Everton in terms of shots per game and slightly behind on shots on target per game (4.7 v 5.4) . We scored 41 all season, they scored 62. Goddamn useless manager aye I know where I think the fault lies.

 

I find that attitude a bit fatalist. Everton may well have a better squad, but did that stop us last season when we had an overall weaker squad. That didn't stop Leicester last season either. I understand fairly well why we didn't do better this season, as I have written in previous posts, but that doesn't stop a sense of disappointment. And seeing as I was born in Southampton, now live in Southampton again, have the attitude that you support the club of the city that you were born into or closest to, it's a bit unlikely that I'm going to change after 50 odd years. I don't get the choice of wrong club.

 

Good find, Q. That graph sums up the season very well overall. The evidence that the team was often in possession, yet could not score. Which supports the belief once more that allowing the main strikers of last season to leave and not replacing them sufficiently well was a major reason why the club stumbled when it required sufficient goals to get over the line. For comparison, Everton had 8+ per goal and Saints had 13.3. That's a lot more misses and saves.

And it wasn't for trying either. Look at this graph. It shows Southampton as having a reasonably busy attack [although energetically wasteful] and quiet defence. Look at the teams around us. The major difference between Arsenal, Everton and Saints is that they could often score when they really needed to and we could not. In fact, Saints faced slightly fewer shots per match, and had more shots per match than Everton over the season. How much clearer does it, and the graph above, have to be.? You sell your best strikers and don't replace them sufficiently well, you score less. I've mentioned this so many times I'm bored stiff pointing it out, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that. Of course, it doesn't help that the best finisher that we did have, prior to Gabbiadini's appearance, and best defender were both out injured for half the season. Austin remained our top scorer, I believe.

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Not really, as if this carried on we could end up relegated, and I don't believe Puel would 'av gottus out of it. Cos he eats garlic and snails. Not cos he is French...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39999708

 

Bet JT's Dad had a bet on it.

 

Moyes has resigned.

 

Shocked, but not shocked!

 

Anyone else think yesterday may have been the final nail?

 

For me, Chelsea and Sunderland should be charged with bringing the game into disrepute. It's ludicrous what went on. Did Bayern give Lahm a send off like that? No. Oh, and Terry is a twat with an ego the size of Jupiter. Go piss off the Americans John.

 

Agreed, absolute farce. Bet they won't though.

I'd be so angry/embarrased if a Saints manager/team agreed to do that.

Like a Sunderland fan said on their board, could you imagine the reaction if Chelsea had asked Keane to do that when he managed them?

 

Better squad or better main striker?
Lukaku's 25(?) league goals probably accounts for a good number of the points they finished ahead of us with.

Gabbiadini could be a great player for us, but I would still like to see us chasing a player, like Lukakau, who can not only put chances away, but create a few for himself by beating players, or outpacing them.

 

Saw an interesting stat the other day, that if you took all of Lukakus goals away then Everton would have almost exactly the same amount of points.

Now I don't buy that read too much into that personally, found it interesting though.

 

Or imagine if Saints had done it for Puel on Sunday.......

 

Glad you pointed that out StB. I'd like to change that to 'Everton might or might not have a stronger squad than Saints'. If you've read my posts about Saints' squad, you'll know that I believe that the squad is stronger overall, than last season's. However, last season's first eleven was stronger than this season's. The essential difference is that our ability to score goals has drastically reduced because we sold our two best strikers and didn't replace them well enough. Not to mention a quality holding midfielder, but Romeu fills that role superbly. There are also the mitigating circumstances of big injuries to key players, which didn't happen anything like so drastically last season.

One could argue that Nathan Redmond has developed into a Mane replacement. He's certainly come on leaps and bounds and is possibly as effective as Mane in his first season, maybe better, maybe not. But there is no Pelle. Saints still play a style that would be improved with a Lambert/Pelle style leader in attack. Saints cross the ball more than any other team, I believe, yet often there is nobody there. That's what those guys did. They were routinely on the end of those. They were also skilled enough to receive the ball, hold it for a few essential seconds and then lay it off, or make their own killer pass. Pelle would tend to lay the ball off, flick or pass it, whereas Lambert could come quite deep [being an ex-midfielder] and spray some real quality passes around. Neither Austin, JayRod or Long display any of that ability beyond the ordinary, whether they are in or out of form. And that's something that needs addressing. Gabbiadini, I'm leaving out of it because he was put in an already weakened team and has only been around for a few months. His spectacular start promises a lot. I'm betting it's not a Saga promise.!

 

Gabbiadini isn't really a big threat in the air. He's a threat running on to low crosses at the near post/mid goal area, and very good at that. Problem is that those types of crosses are the easiest ones to block, but I think those are the ones we've been trying most recently/been told to do.

Where we've been a bit crap (well one of the areas) since Gabbi has come back from his injury, is putting those dangerous balls in the channel past the CB or over the CB for him to run onto. That's where he excels, off the shoulder of the defender. There was one against Stoke where he should have scored/was well saved, but that's about it for those.

 

Funny you should add comments about Gabbiadini because I did write something about him and then scrubbed it. I remember I wrote: 'Gabbiadini, by his own admission, isn't the best in the air, so the high cross is a waste of time, however, as we know, they've been trying the low driven one to the near post, which was extremely effective in the EFL Final. Then he became injured...' Anyway, that was too much straying off the summary, so I wiped it and replaced it with his spectacular start. I suppose you got the 'Saga promise' quip.?

 

From the Telegraph - #23. Only the teams that finished in the top six had more shots than Southampton's 549 but only the bottom five scored fewer than their 41 goals.