Top seven away form: Team P W D L F A GD Points 1 Saints 10 3 3 4 16 15 1 12 2 West Ham 10 7 2 1 18 5 13 23 3 Cardiff 10 3 5 2 15 12 3 14 4 Leeds 10 5 2 3 20 14 6 17 5 Middlesbr. 9 5 2 2 11 8 3 17 6 Brighton 10 4 2 4 8 10 -2 14 7 Blackpool 10 2 4 4 14 17 -3 10 Top seven home form: Team P W D L F A GD Points 1 Saints 10 10 0 0 26 6 20 30 2 West Ham 10 5 2 3 18 12 6 17 3 Cardiff 9 6 2 1 18 10 6 20 4 Leeds 10 5 2 3 15 14 1 17 5 Middlesbr. 10 3 6 1 12 9 3 15 6 Brighton 10 5 3 2 15 11 4 18 7 Blackpool 10 6 2 2 17 8 9 20 Saints have the worse record away from home out of all of the top six, however only two teams in the division have won more than half of their away games (this will go down to one unless Middlesbrough beat Bristol City today). The team that has been the most successful away from home are West Ham who are extremely solid and physical and are therefore difficult to break down. At home Saints boast the best record by a significant margin with Cardiff having the second best percentage home win ratio (67 %). Aside from Cardiff no other team in the top six has won more than half of their home games. These figures show how much Southampton have relied upon their impressive home form to keep them top of the league. However, whilst Saints have struggled on the road it could be argued that the main difference between our sides away form and all other competitors, except West Ham, is that we have not been drawing enough of our away games. Only Leeds, Middlesbrough and West Ham have won the majority or half of their away games. Interestingly Saints have conceded more away goals than any other top six side suggesting that we have a good reason to play compact football away from home, especially considering only two other sides have managed more away goals than ourselves. So after two disappointing away results perhaps we should consider not playing more attacking football but making our side more compact and using counter attacks to score our goals. The problem with this tactic is that Saints would then have to rely on pace and crosses, which has aided West Ham so well away from home. This is not Saints specialty, who prefer to play the ball up front through the middle. Maybe we will have to accept that Saints style is suited to attacking football allowing us to win more home games at a cost to our away form. Whereas West Ham's compactness has benefited them away from home, but at a cost to their results at Upton Park. Perhaps we have the lesser of two evils? Personally I think that we have played two of the bottom three at the wrong time when new managers have started to revitalise their sides. Having said this I believe that we will have to use more width especially away from home if we are to try and win more away games. The selection of Hammond, Cork and Schneiderlin does not give us enough width and pacey players such as De Ridder do not give us the defensive cover required. Therefore it makes sense that Saints started with a 4-4-1-1 formation today and I think that perhaps Adkins will rue chopping and changing from this during the Doncaster game. Having said all this it is worth noting that our much superior home form is something to be proud of and a couple of tight away wins would put our away form in line with nearly all the other top Championship contenders.
top article it puts all the worrying straight (which to be fair at 5pm today i started to worry about our away form, especially with the fishy few coming up in our next away game) like u said a couple of wins away from home and we will be back in the form charts for away games. but if we had won our last 2 away we could have been out of sight, 8 points clear of west ham :-(
The problem for me is that this all works on the basis that home form and away form are completely disconnected from each other, which I don't really buy. You can solve this by either saying we are playing above ourselves at home or playing below ourselves away, but then West Ham fans will probably be having the opposite conversation, their only away defeat was to us. In any case, no one can change what has already happened so the only thing we can do is look towards the next game.
I accept that but I was trying to look at the season so far analytically rather than the pathetic complaints of many on here tonight (Guly, Lallana all rubbish apparently!). I agree that this is an over simplification, I think that the issue must be to do with our formation changes in games. However, it is interesting that we have scored so many away goals highlights that this is not the main issue.
