The Play-Offs - 2014-15

Norwich, Preston and Southend are who I think will go up.
I would love to see Brentford, Swindon and Southend make it.
Brentford, because it would be such a great story and their fans are fun, although I have a soft spot for Norwich.
Swindon, because of our two loanees and Southend because of the bond we formed with their fans in 2006/07.

 

Brentford- they are close
Swindon- have our loan defenders
Plymouth- because good memories of playing them away in L1.

Think it will be Norwich but not sure about L1, stats suggest Preston. No idea about L2.

 

I'd like Norwich or Brentford. Swindon and Plymouth to go up.

 

Championship: Ipswich as one of my best mates supports them or Brentford as it's closest.
League One: Swindon - watched them a few times this season thanks in part to our two young defenders on loan there and I really like their style of play and the way the club seem to be approaching things.
League Two: Wycombe Wanderers - had a ridiculous career with them on Football Manager 2007, took them to the UEFA Cup Final and then got snapped up for the Barca job.

 

Bit like what's going too happen to Ron then

 

I'd like;
Brentford, Swindon & Plymouth to gain promotion.

I'd like Sheff Utd to fail miserably.

 

Would like to see Swindon go up but on present form of last few games....no chance.
But as someone said a long time ago "footballs a funny old game".

 

Pragmatic as well as cheering on the underdog.

 

I saw a programme about Warburton's achievements at Brentford, and if I remember correctly, he's going because Brentford want to professionalise their management structure into something along the lines of continental clubs [and Saints btw] in that they want a director of football to run the show and the manager as just another department head. Warburton didn't want to hack that scenario so he's leaving. Shame that they couldn't find common ground, but I can understand both sides of the argument.

 

Having mostly good memories of the grounds we visited on our sojourn into the lower divisions, I'm basing this on places I've actually been to.

Championship
Been to all of these but would love to see a club the size of Brentford in the Prem. Wouldn't be disappointed to see Norwich back there either.

Div 1
Only been to Swindon, so have plumped for them. Did drive past Deepdale once though.

Div 2
Been to Wycombe and Plymouth. Have to count Plymouth out as some thug decided to throw some rocks at us on the way out last time there. Wycombe it is.

 

Regarding Brentford, take a look at this article

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/feb/22/brentford-mathematical-modelling-denmark

 

Very interesting article. It will be interesting to see how they progress.

I also wonder how much our analysts and black box work in a similar way

 

I would expect that statistical analysis plays a large part in identifying players that could be key performers for Southampton.

 

Oh I expect so too. It just intrigued me that Brentford have come out and said this is what they are doing; running the club in stats, whereas Saints may be doing a lot more of that in the background, without actually publicly declaring so. There will be a large number of the old school sneering at that.

We know they have been to see Saints and what we do and I just put two and two together. Les may have been really cute here, by putting these things into place at our club in a fairly discrete manner, knowing that publicly it could have been a PR disaster to come and say we are "doing it by numbers" (so to speak). I also wonder how much of this approach Les wanted to do a the FA (if indeed he is doing it), as he did fall out with the FA in terms of not being progressive enough.

 

You may well have hit upon something there. The FA have long had the reputation of being stuck in their ways. IIRC at the time, Les Reed was painted as someone one brick short of a load. From the evidence of the last few years I think we can be reasonably sure that he knows what he's doing. That's a deliberate understatement, by the way.

 

Said recently that when a player leaves that we didn't want to, we match his stats to those of possible targets. So at the moment we are no doubt looking for Schneiderlin Mark II.

Suppose it's a bit too late now to try and keep Les Reed under wraps Suspect there are more Schneiderlin-type players than there are Les Reed-type directors.

 

That's my one slight fear. But take heart. There are not many bigger clubs [perhaps none] which would give over so much football control to one man, as Southampton FC. For example, if you read the article about Brentford when it cited an example of a club doing things the way they want to, it wasn't in the plural. It mentioned Southampton and that was the end of the list. And that's down to the Les Reed way of setting things up and doing things, and to Cortese, Liebherr, Krueger etc... for letting him get on with it. I think Southampton fit him and he fits Southampton very well indeed and may well be our finest signing of all

 

GOAL: Chesterfield 0-1 Preston - Jermaine Beckford 6'

 

Swindon's defence is all over the place.

 

Unsurprisingly, Sheffield takes the lead.