Shamelessly cut and pasted from fiverweb as I couldn’t be arsed to work it all out myself …
Last 17 games
L L L L L L D L L W L L W L L D L
13 L
2 D
2 W
conceding 40 along the way.
29 points in our first 17 matches
8 points in our last 17 matches
First 17 matches - 26 goals for
Last 17 matches - 15 goals for
First 17 matches - 19 goals against
Last 17 matches - 42 goals against (wow!)
I think teams have gone from dreading playing us in the first part of the season to looking forward to some easy points in the second …
Can’t wait for the season to be over, it truly has been miserable. However, if our form continues, we’ll be joining Sheff Utd in the Champo after next season …
I think that, more than anything else, this shows the difficulties faced by a team that plays a high-energy, high-tempo game yet has a relatively small squad. We’re clearly prone to the vicissitudes of fitness and form more than many other clubs would be. In many positions we currently lack backup, or the backup is nowhere near the standard of the first-choice player.
Just to add to our woes in the second half of the season, we’ve lost key players to injury and their replacements have lost form. As an example, early in the season many were touting Diallo as a first choice alongside Ward-Prowse rather than Romeu. His form was good and he looked impressive. Romeu forced his way back into the team, then suffered a season-ending injury. Diallo was also injured, and his form’s been poor since then. Hopefully this will improve; he hasn’t become a poor player all of a sudden.
That’s just one example; there are plenty more. All teams have players who they rely on more than others, and for whom they have no obvious stand-in (just look at Liverpool and Van Dijk), but we do seem more prone to this effect. What we need to be able to do is maintain a level of team form and consistency, even if we’re not at full strength. Our form may dip at times, but then this applies to all teams. This season our form dropped off a cliff.
So we need to ensure that we have players who can step in when injuries etc. hit, and this coming transfer window will be critical. But if we’re looking at the 34 league games we’ve played, we need to consider all 34, not just the second 17. We didn’t get stats like those for the first 17 games by luck, after all.
I’m with you Dave but I also think that there’s got to be a plan B … if you don’t have the complement of players to play the “Southampton Way”, you need to have a way of playing with the players you’ve got. You can’t just play shit and then blame it on the injuries. You have to have a way. I love Ralph and I want him to stay but you can’t be so rigid in your approach that you don’t adapt to changing situations (both during the game and in between …)
My favourite depiction of a thesaurus occurs in the book “Bored of the Rings” - no prizes for guessing the mighty work that it satirises. The book itself if puerile and hilarious in equal measure (in my view, naturlich). Here’s the scene, in which Frito, Spam, Legolam, Gimlet, Stomper et al are attacked by a Thesaurus outside the mines of Andrea Doria:
Ah “vicissitudes” I like its use too.
I do know what it means, I’d like to use it too sometime but I’m afraid to, as I usually have a gobful of saliva and that renders its use socially unacceptable.
A very revealing stat tbh.
Sums up modern football - look at Pep & false 9s.
And sums up our major problem of past decades - lack of goals from other positions.
