After reading Lawro's comments in his prediction -- that, while many Saints fans would no doubt be expecting a top-half finish, the Premier League is not as easy as that -- I decided to go back through the past ten years and see what, exactly, a team with this sort of first quarter tends to produce over the remainder of the year. Obviously, not all hot-starting sides are alike; for that reason, I've tabulated the results (for any teams posting 2+ points a game through their first nine) without the traditional 'big clubs': Arsenal/Chelsea/Man U/Liverpool, plus Man City after their takeover in '08, and Tottenham from the Redknapp era on. If anyone has quibbles about that distinction, it only affects two seasons -- City in '07/'08, Tottenham in '05/'06 -- but the intent was to separate out the teams that were year-in, year-out contenders with outsized financial resources, and neither of those clubs really qualified until those points, at least during the '02/'03-'12/'13 period that I was examining. The first thing to note: this doesn't happen terribly often. There are only nine occurrences (including City/Tottenham's seasons, per above) where a team other than the traditional dominant players produced a start equal or better. That also means that the outlier(s) (that'd be Hull, naturally) move the needle pretty significantly. Anyhoo, below are the average finish in position/points, and points per game over the remaining 29: Average points through nine games: 19. Average points finish: 54.8. Average points per game after first nine: 1.23. Median points finish: 58. Average finish in table: 8.56. Median finish in table: 7th. Teams finishing in the top five: 3 out of 9. Teams finishing in the top seven: 5 out of 9. Teams finishing in the top half: 7 out of 9. Not shockingly, teams tend to slow down from the two-points-a-game pace. But most of the time, neither do they fall off a cliff...one, Everton in '04/'05, qualified for the Champions League, while two others (Newcastle in '11/'12 and Tottenham in '05/'06) were in the race until the very end, the latter undone only by a dodgy buffet. Adversity will come, no doubt. But the pronouncements of melty-faced talking heads aside, most starts of this nature are not flukes: the majority of the teams that started as hot as we have ended up having decidedly successful seasons.
It's only tradition and the media's natural bias of the "bigger" teams that are the lingering doubts as to whether we are the real deal or just upstarts that should know our place. On the evidence of today's absolute demolition of a decent Fulham team, I would say with some conviction, that we are are just getting better and better, with a young team that will only improve. I'm used to making bold predictions and from the way that we have dealt with really good sides such as West Brom, Swansea, Liverpool and Manure, we are by no means in a false position, I would say that a top four position is by no means impossible and that only Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal have impressed me as much as Saints so far. The Chairman, Manager and players have stated that they are aiming for the Champion's League and I believe that they mean it and quite often a positive attitude and belief can be a self fulfilling prophesy....Shoot me down if you feel that I am overstating our promise, but I really feel that the club is on the threshold of doing something truly remarkable.
Nice bit of research and analysis there Schad. You might have a future in statistics. And that's always a growth area.
I still think we will spend big in January. definitely back in for Banega (or alternative) and maybe one leftfield option that Pochettino/Cortese/Reed see as a useful addition. After today makes me think even more that we will try and ship Gaston at the same time for as much as we can get (£7m - £10m) as I don't think he really has anything to add to our game the way we are playing. No room for Le Tissier / Berbatov / Gastons in our team at the moment. Everyone is having to chase, harry and work very very hard for 90 minutes.
I also think we'll spend in every transfer window until the team is considered strong enough to meet the aims of the club. As said before, this may mean one or two more of our old favourites disappearing out of the team, but they will remain in the squad until they become too weak for that also. Lambert staked a huge claim to be right in the centre of any plans, even if there was the remotest chance that he was beginning to be being edged out to the periphery. He was superb against Fulham, and Rodriguez wasn't that far behind, in terms of being an effective striker. But this is Guly's last season, or I'm no judge, and we'll not see Puncheon again [OK, that was easy]. I can see Jos not being with Saints next season, and one or two others if I really screw myself up into a ball and think hard. There may be some shocks in store in the coming couple of years. I wonder how many League Oners will survive. For the record, 6 players were in the Fulham facing 18 from League One. A further 3 played from the Championship [Cork either side of League One], and 2 were bought from the Championship to play in the PL. Brave, hard working lads all. As far as Le Tissiers are concerned, the new breed is Adam Lallana. He's the closest to Le Tissier we have had since the Le God, in terms of skill, and he's beginning to really show it now.
Agreed, I was meaning more (as Matt admits) the strolling about, not running but producing moments. We don't even have players that take their foot off the gas for a few minutes. If Matt was playing now he'd probably not change his mind about the Tottenham contract he'd just signed. lol. Great to see and trust in the committee to only buy players that are prepared to do the graft. TBH I'm not even sure that 'injury/suspension' concerns that many including myself have stated as being as obstacle to us finishing high in the league are as much a factor as we seem to think. Our lack of actual squad depth is covered in many ways by how adaptable our players have become plus how many injuries have we had in the Cortese era? Our backroom staff must be awesome because unlike other top teams (Man U, Arsenal etc) we don't seem to have many problems with behind the scenes injuries. We could have Rickie and Osvaldo out and Rodriguez move up front. We have so many attacking midfielders that can play anywhere along that 3 (and do so during the game anyway) that Ramirez doesn't even get a look in. We have cover at full back in Chambers for right, Clyne doing both sides, Fox and Targett too plus Cork and Lovren as last resorts. We have JWP,Morgan, Wanyam, Cork who cover the 2 DM positions. We really could end up doing this season like an old fashioned squad and ending the season having played less than 20 different players. TAKE NOTE: for many saying they have never felt this proud to be a Saints fan. I'm sure you're just lazily saying this but I have always felt as proud as I do to be a Saints fan. What you actually mean is you have never felt this excited to be a Saints fan. I was this proud when we finished 2nd behind Liverpool. I was this proud when we were relegated from the Prem, Championship. I was this proud when we were days away from being liquidated. I have never been this excited though and that DOES include when we were the second best team in England 30 years ago
I think Matt said a couple of weeks ago that for this team he would have got his head down and grafted. I'm prepared to believe him without question.
The nice thing about being a Saints fan right now is that we don't have to be particularly concerned about how the Saints do the next X games, or what they do in January or where they finish this year. I feel like all the pieces are in place for the team to be amongst the best in Europe-- not just for a year, but every year. So I'm not that worried about what happens immediately next. Not to insult those who post here or on other threads. We're all curious and of course it's fun to talk about and naturally we all want it to come as soon as possible. I'm just saying it's nice knowing that losses are just setbacks now, as opposed to dictating the future of the club. I'm very much enjoying this season. Every win is a bonus and it's fun being in the top four. But I feel pretty confident relegation is not an issue and there's no promotion on the line so it's much less life-or-death. If the season goes South to some degree and we wind up mid-table with not much to play for, that wouldn't be such a bad thing as I think we would start bedding in players like Chambers and Rowe and I'll be just as interested in tracking their progress as I would be following a Champion's League race.
With things going so well we need to kick start new contract negotiations with players, managers and back room staff immediately to keep this magic story moving forward. Add one major quality signing in January, move on one or two fringe players and things will continue to progress. The biggest threat to me is the loss of NC, MP as well as our top players
I think we have all the playing staff on long term deals now which is really important. Even if we were looking to sell (which we are not) then the long contracts mean they would only go for silly amounts of money. The really exciting thing for me is that all of our front 4 were English last night and linked up brilliantly together. Rickie aside they all have years before they reach their peak and coupled with Shaw and Clyne we really could have the backbone of the future England team and a Saints team that improves naturally season on season. The faith MP puts into the academy players is also really impressive, a lot of mangers talk a good game about promoting youth but this is one that carry's this through. We had an 18 year old academy player in JWP who started instead of what was our record signing only 14 months ago. This bodes well not only for now but the future as the best young players in the country will want to come here as they know they will play, if they are good enough, where as somewhere like Chelsea will just loan them out.
Very interesting stuff schad, my thanks and appreciation for for doing all that leg work. We are one of the three clubs that are the envy of everyone else at the moment (Hull and Arsenal in my opinion as well) but we should never forget that despite all our style and flair at the moment we are just 2 or 3 injuries away from scrambling to fill the line-up. Our season sofar has been a resounding success and i feel...probably very very biasedly..that we have the talent and management to keep up the intensity, But we need to prepare ourselves not only for serious injuries but also that horrible run of game around dec/jan. Are we capable of competing for Champions league at the moment...possibly but despite our flying start i would like to see some transfers to add depth and the realization for the fans that our toughest period of this season is still to come.
Worse case scenario for me is that we have a good season but not quite good enough and end up in the Europa League. That would damage our effectiveness next season when, if we can really keep pushing on as we are now, we might be realistically pushing for a top 4 spot. I can't think of any team who has played in the Europa League having a successful domestic season.
If we do qualify for the Europa League, can we decline to take part and give someone else a chance. With MPs view of this competition, why take up the place and don't challenge or simply use it for youth development
I have no idea if the competition rules permit this, but fielding the second strength team in the Europa League sounds a very good idea to me. It would provide great experience for some of the development squad.
The fans would enjoy it....a chance to see how we do against foreign opposition. Let's hope it wouldn't be as short as our last foray into Europe.
Not to be a downer, but in the season following our greatest escape season, we were top 4 until about December. And I believe West Brom were top four until about the same period last season (or maybe it was just until November, either way it was a while). If you're top four come February, then yes you should start dreaming of the overrated league (aka the Champion's League) but I genuinely not-taking-the-piss believe you'll finish top 8. Possibly Europa but possibly not (depends on how the FA Cup and League Cup goes). The top 8 imo in no particular order will be: Man City, Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton, then that leaves one place which I think'll be between you, West Brom, Swansea and possibly Newcastle (yes, I know the latter three are comfortably midtable at the moment, however I believe they have the quality for top 8), and I would imagine Hull will finish mid-table, unless they implode after Christmas like last time.
Out of the teams you have mentioned we have gained 10 points out of a possible 12....away wins at West Brom & Liverpool, home win against Swansea and an away draw at Manure...That suggests to me that we are not only competing with our rivals, we are beating them and if you had seen the complete and utter domination of Fulham (another mid table side) yesterday, 20 shots to 2...67% possession. then you might understand the optimism around our club at the moment.
