The9

I doubt we'll suddenly develop thousands of new away fans outside of matches against "glamour clubs" in Liverpool, Manchester and London. Home fans, yes, for the first season anyway we'll get a jump in attendances unless the prices are also hiked ridiculously. It's actually the cost of transport not the cost of tickets that I'm finding more influential on my away attendance.

Up to the point when we got relegated from the Prem, Saints had lost more matches than ANY of the other 91 Prem/FL clubs. Winning games is a good thing and makes me happy. I can go to visit the places big clubs play in when I'm watching small clubs too. What I really want is Saints to win matches in the Prem, and then win matches in Europe, and then win the World Club championship, preferably whilst turning themselves into a global phenomenon that everyone loves and without selling out its soul, sacrificing itself to the Gods of money, or attracting glory hunters or people who only claim they're fans when we've won stuff. Some of those things just ain't gonna happen without others being compromised. I quite like being good at a not-tippy top level, Premier League football is mostly plastic and annoying, and so full of hype and vacuous behaviour that it is really difficult to like being part of it. As an example, people are glad-handing football fans for having basic decency in the wake (not literally, thankfully) of a player nearly dying on the pitch. Big whoop - did we really sink so far that we didn't expect it ?

Tranmere, Rochdale, Oldham, Brentford and Leyton Orient would like a word.

They haven't. They've both replaced 5 or 6 starters since Jan 2011. I our case that means adding another 4 at least.

I have no intention of ever using my 1999 Royal Statistical Society qualification, I assure you !

Worth noting also that due to Hooiveld's late start, they weren't our partnership in the W6 L1 opening 7 matches either.

Actually... 62% win rate with them both starting, Only 12% defeats (3 games - Doncaster A, Bristol City A and Cardiff A) Matches with J Fonte and J Hooiveld W16 D7 L3 As a %: 62 27 12 Matches without J Fonte and J Hooiveld 9 3 6 As a %: 50 17 33

Not yet, ask Soccerbase .

He really did, you know : http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16312545 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16571369 though he did go off against Leicester after 65 minutes.

Because no-one's bought me a nice statistical presentation package. Any offers, I could do with an new blog idea now I've canned ridiculous football..?

You can draw a correlation between wins and the players playing in those wins, for whatever reason. It was me that pointed out it's only for games they've started, I only had a lunchtime . I'd also add that Martin being part of a depleted side because he's in it is about as strong a correlation as you can get... we lose more games with him playing because he's not as good, rather than it being the other way around.

The one thing the figures DON'T show is how many matches players have played - logically the players with the most appearances are more likely to be near the arithmetic mean, i.e. 57% - Lallana's 60% over 35 matches is as impressive as Chaplow's 73% in his 15 starts. Don't expect me to start producing pie charts, ranges or standard deviations though.

Cardiff (A), Bristol City twice, Doncaster (A), Brighton (A) and Leicester (H) all had Hooiveld in losing starts.

Thanks to a new feature filtering players against the season's results on Soccerbase, I've managed to produce this little table of stats for our most winning players this season. http://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=2471&comp_id=2&teamTabs=results NB : Players are only counted for a win if they STARTED the match, only players with 10 or more starts are included, this is for all competitive matches this season. Saints' average this season is 57% Wins, 23% draws and 20% losses. WIN PERCENTAGES : Chaplow 73 Lallana 60 Hooiveld 59 Fonte 59 Harding 59 Schneiderlin 59 Lambert 58 Davis 58 Hammond 57 Guly 57 Cork 54 Fox 53 Richardson 50 Connolly 47 Martin 43 For those of you interested in quirks of tiny statistical samples : Butterfield 80 (5 starts) Holmes 75 (4 starts) Lee 60 (5 starts) Bialkowski 50 (8 starts) De Ridder 44 (9 starts, though it goes up to 57% if sub appearances are included) Puncheon 25 (4 starts) A few highlights : - Despite being one of the leading assisters in the division, Frazer Richardson has a win % of only 50%, whilst Saints have won 80% of their matches without him ! - The stats (from a smallish sample) seem to support the theory that De Ridder shouldn't start. - Chaplow and Lallana are the "winningest" regulars - Dan Harding has a much higher win percentage than Danny Fox, with both having started more than 10 times this season. - Connolly and Martin have the lowest win percentage of starters playing more than 10 matches. There's a fairly obvious skew of results in cup games where we played weakened sides which is acting against some players, but these are the raw figures.

I've just been on Soccerbase and they have a new feature which filters player appearances (might have been what prompted the OP). Chaplow is far and away our most successful starting player of those who've had more than 10 starts in all competitions. His personal win percentage is 73% as opposed to the squad average of 57%. I'm about to start a thread on it.

Makes sense, I'd assumed it was the same half from the previous comment. Sometimes at half time the linos change ends, sometimes sides of the pitch, depends on the ref's preference, as long as they do opposite halves and the ref has his diagonal it's not an issue. Bit dubious to have the same lino for the same team's attackers in both halves, but I *think* there's nothing preventing it, given that the laws assume all officials are impartial anyway.

That's probably true due to the cost of player wages, it doesn't mean the Prem is as much fun as the lower leagues though. Pretty sure everyone enjoys winning more than losing, and it's not very likely we'll be matching the last two years' success next year.

One of the bottom three not having a chance to win it doesn't mean the rest of the league will pitch up to Upton Park or St Mary's expecting a 5 goal thrashing half of the time. And Saints weren't exactly "big spending".

That isn't true at all. Saints had no Championship pedigree at all in July, and we're top. There are maybe 5 teams in this League who had no chance of winning it pre-season, Peterborough, Barnsley and Doncaster obviously springing to mind, along with Coventry when they weren't taken over. Pretty much anyone else could have been up there challenging, and almost everyone in the top 15 has already played in the Prem. Where are Leicester, heavily tipped pre-season ? All of the teams that are ACTUALLY above them must be considered as feasibly having being title contenders too, even if people didn't realise it at the time. Equally, there's no massive financial difference or self-perpetuating Champions League money driving a gap between the top teams and the rest, and you don't have to spend £30m on 10 players to have the remotest chance of breaking into the elite in the Championship either.

Given that Spurs are likely to be playing a load of European matches alongside their Prem games and fielded a bunch of kids a few times this season he might get more games with them than us - though that assumes Redknapp is still there and still using the same methods.

I'm pretty sure we signed him as an emergency measure for flair in case Lallana stayed injured, which he was when Falque signed. His performance in the one match we had suggested he'd at best need a run in the side to get used to playing for us, which we couldn't offer him, and then we got Puncheon and Chaplow back too, and he's nowhere near the team. He does seem to be ahead of Lee Holmes and Johnno Forte though...

I can't begin to fathom what the rules of this "won"/"lost" game are.

Last time we weren't part of an ownership legacy worth £2.5bn. Although we also didn't have to deal with the new financial regulations.

Let's face it, getting to the Prem is going to be a damn sight more fun than being in it again once the first season has worn off, unless we suddenly find ourselves pushing for a European place. Then again we might "do a Derby" and then we'd be constantly in fear of promotion, which would also be a bit crap.

It's up to the ref whether he wants the linos to change ends/sides at half time etc. They don't do it during the same half though !