I'd be interested to see if anyone can find a league table of penalties awarded to teams. Seems we have had a very low number awarded to us this season.... From memory the last one was away at Burnley in mid December (which Tadic missed). Possibly more interesting is if there are stats for not awarded penalties? I do wonder if we need to be more direct in the final third. We have some nice football up to the final third, but then seem to run out of steam. Having said that we were too slow in our build up play yesterday and gave Liverpool the opportunity to get men back.
No point in a team like Saints focusing on things like penalties which are seemingly an exclusive right for the bigger clubs with larger attendances.
It's not a conspiracy against Saints you know. There are just far too many mediocre referees in the Premier League.
Knew that was coming! There are only so many poor performances I can tolerate. Everyone has a bad day at the office once in a while but we've had 3 lousy referee performances in the last 3 home games - each one making the one before look good!
The only referees I feel are good enough are Mark Clattenburg, Michael Oliver, Mike Dean and to a lesser extent Lee Mason, Phil Dowd, Anthony Taylor. Though the first 3 are by far and away our best referees.
Agree that those 3 are our best. The worst thing about Friend yesterday is his performance wasn't even the worst of the weekend!
To be fair city, Chelsea and Newcastle should have had penalties against us. The best refs get the biggest games, so unless we are in one of the biggest games of the weekend....
Well certainly in the league we have had one penalty awarded to us - which means that the opposition both home and away have committed only one sure-fire, penalty-worthy, offence in their own penalty area - all season [so far]. Is that really possible? Meanwhile of course Manchester City have been awarded three in one game! It will be interesting to see how many we get in the remaining games, I hazard a guess at none. It was only a few seasons ago that we didn't get awarded a penalty all season I think. Wasn't it mentioned in the press at the time? If you want to be tin-foil hat paranoid and bit nutty consider this. There has just been a inordinate amount of money spent of televising rights for the Premier League and what clubs sell it around the world [thereby making the companies who have the rights huge amounts of money], Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool. You can't have the likes of Southampton, West Ham United or even Spurs displacing these clubs at the top -think of the potential lost income...
Have to get in the box with the ball to earn a penalty, never going to get them playing sideways, backwards short of the area!
I'll answer my own question seeing as I found this..... http://www.myfootballfacts.com/Premier_League_Penalty_Statistics.html I think it's a bit far fetched to say we get in the box less than any of the teams above us..... Yet we've only had 1 pen all season.....
