Me. Fiver at 60/1 in the end. Very scared we might get a fourth in the last half hour. Looked very likely to me. I could have lived with the score, but the money started to matter when they announced 5 mins stoppage time. That's half a season ticket for next year. Vin Erm, edit - that was in reply to someone who asked "didn't someone have a bet on that scoreline"
I also had 3-1 only put £2 on that but had £10 on 9/2 for the win. I also had Rickie to score first 3-1 double at 225/1, if that had come in then it would have been next years st
Be careful not to let your analysis run away with you. I suffer a little from this myself, and so I know how some people might feel on this. I know if you look at the Man City result and see the instances of how the goals came about, you can begin to think that it was a collection of fortunate mistakes and events that brought the goals. But that is how football teams often win games. Even when ManU play ManC or Chelsea play Spurs or Arsenal play Liverpool/Everton, it's the little mistakes, more often than not, that win the games, rather than the outrageous skill. I often feel that to truly be a good/great team, one should waltz through an opposition, making them look inadequate in the process, before scoring an excellent and winning goal. But reality isn't like that. That's why they make compilations of these special moments when they actually do occur. Let's make no mistake here, ManC were below par because they were forced to be below par [and no other reason], by a Saints side who pursued them, out-fought them, out-thought them, out-played them, and ultimately wore them down. Gareth Barry was a typical example of six or seven of ManC's players. He couldn't live with the play around him and was lost in the whirlwind that was the Southampton midfield. It is said that Pochettino's previous Espanyol side had a reputation for looking for the opposition. Well his present Saints side went looking, and well and truly found Man City. And found them out, too.
Not disagreeing with any of this. However, I'm talking about shots to goals ratio over the season not just this game. Take the Man U away game as a great example. All the shots, all the pressure, but only one goal.
We also had a poor goals to shots ratio in the Championship....luckily we had lots of shots. This season is just like that...look at the shots we had against Everton.
I, too, think you can over analyse this. If in an average game, you get ten shots in on target, then you can be pretty sure that over a season the number of goals you actually score will follow a normal distribution, so there will be games where you score none out of those ten and games where you score five. All you can do is work to create the opportunities for the shots. Then there's an element of luck about how many go in and you have to live with it. Remember the Leeds game last year. Leeds had 12 shots on target, we had four (apparently, I only remember one) and we won 1-0. Create the chances and take the shots then luck does take over. We seem to have had a run of being at the low end of chances converted but yesterday saw a day when it swung the other way, at last. Vin
According to Saints Player, they've available for 15 hours. I think it's why Fran went to bed at 3am this morning.
Got to like Colin Murray on MOTD2. When the repeat of Saints v ManC came along he insisted afterwards of talking about Saints. They had the team out in the foreground, and started to mention some names. Schneiderlin [Murray], Puncheon [Roberts], Lambert [Dion Dublin loves him, and with good reason] and lastly Colin Murray named Steven Davis, and well mentioned too. I hope the Beeb go back on their decision to replace Murray on MOTD2 because he's fun; the younger, newer pundits obviously get on better with him, and lastly and most importantly... and he can't help but show it... He's a bit of a Saints fan. EDIT: He even thought Puncheon's goal against Chelsea was the best in January, against very stiff opposition.
This is how lower league teams can get results against top sides in cup competitions...they don't let them settle to play their normal game. However, that is in a one off game. Have to be very fit and motivated to do it every game. As someone said when MP took over, Saints fans are going to have fun.
Just to bump this subject - I've made the mistake of scanning through the Sunday's BBC606 phone-in [well, this website has an historic connection, after all], and it was interspersed with talk of the failure of Man City, from various callers across the country. Not a syllable uttered about Saints performance, you understand. Eventually, someone came on the phone from Southampton. Hooray, I thought. Here we go..! Initially, the caller was very gracious towards Ryan Giggs for scoring in every bloody season, which made Alan Green go off into paroxysms of pleasure, while I was thinking, yeah, yeah, get to your main point, and then he did so, and talked about how ManU were going to win the Premier League as Man City didn't have a hope of catching them. Even Alan Green prompted the man to say ManC played poorly [wrongly IMO] at St Mary's, but that didn't make this caller hesitate for a moment, 'cause he didn't bloody well care, and obviously hadn't a clue. And the bloke sounded like he was a Sotonian as well. I despair, I really do..!
As a 17 year old, I was told that statistically you need 4 attempts on target to score a goal. I remember being told and who by. It has stuck with me for years and although Ive never checked this out it always seemed to feel about right. Missing lots of chances isn't an issue; not creating them is.
Yes and no. Bearing in mind that the whole point of football is to score goals, creating chances and not scoring is kind of important. I understand what you're saying though.
I don't. I'm happy that no one is recognising just how good we are. We'll get a few more good results before they wake up to the fact.
Years ago When we used to train under George Horsfall Down the Dell he used to tell us that the person that made the goal was as important as the scorer himself. He also used to tell us that it didn't matter how many shots we had on goal as long as we got more goals than the opposition. Obviously he would say the more you got on target the more chances of getting the goals. Someone suggested about 1-4 ratio...yes that would be about right for shots on target. 1-6 would be more realistic taking into account all shots.
