TWar

Paul McCartney init?

I didn't see this report. Can you remember where it was from? That's an interesting quote

Depends on the player really. Generally speaking if a young player was of a sufficient quality to really improve us straight off the bat then they'd have better offers than us whereas an older player of the same quality might not. If we are loaning someone and the current season is all that matters as we won't retain them then I'd rather sign a player in their prime as that might actually make us better.

We have enough depth in that position without developing other clubs players for them.

People are too simplistic about this sort of thing. It will depend on what the issues are. We will look at specifically what's going wrong and then consider who is to blame based off that.

He's not absent, he was in the last training session with his knee taped up.

Because then he'd be obliged to do it every time there was a link or people would assume he was off Bad precedent to set that he responds to every press rumour with a declaration of loyalty. There is a reason players very rarely do such things.

He said it in a couple of different ways, the one I remember off the top of my head is Blackmore asked "I tweeted out a couple of days ago that there was 100% no chance JWP leaves, will I be made to look silly?" to which Semmens responded very bluntly with "No." He then went on to say how promising JWP was staying with the club was a key part of negotiations with new signings, especially Tino who asked specifically about it. He also spoke for a while of how he will be here next season, how important he is on and off the pitch ect. The gist was he isn't leaving.

Semmens said it himself yesterday, JWP will not be leaving under any circumstances.

On the other hand, the quicker we sell the more time we have in the market to replace.

Salisu will prove himself to be class this season imo

He's not bad, just slow. He is still great in the air and a very good passer but not a £20m player, therefore if we pick up £15m for him in his last year we'd mostly be happy. Probably be ace in a low block long ball side but not suited at all to a high line like we'd like to play. This is all based on this season, incidentally, before then he was shit.

Yeah xG is supposed to be pretty indicative of the quality of a save, whether it's a worldy or whether it's a tap in. Positioning is taken into account with whats called post-shot expected goals, but the results were very similar to normal xG and I didn't feel like explaining the difference so I used normal xG but you can look up post shot expected goals if you like. There are stats for coming for crosses, how many times you do it per game ect. I believe I put them in that post. Outcomes is difficult as whether a cross should have been claimed or not specifically is often down to the relationship between the GK and the CBs. Different keepers will favour leaving different crosses to their CB's and taking different ones for themselves.

Here that is, but given we are stuck with these guys it doesn't make for happy reading! Goalkeepers I considered the idea of putting strikers first and goalkeepers last in an attempt to open with positives but lets not beat around the bush. Both our starting goalkeepers have been, statistically, woeful. The most important job of a goalkeeper is to make saves. McCarthy has the joint lowest goals prevented per 90 in the league (-0.32), joint with Guiata of Crystal palace, of any keeper in the league that has played over 500 minutes. Ryan is lower in total as well and has technically played over 500 minutes but across two clubs which makes the number hard to judge. From this, we see that his shot stopping is dreadful. Forster is better with a goals prevented per 90 of (-0.14) which still puts him in the bottom 25% but is at least not an outlier in how poor he has been. So the obvious answer is to play Forster? Lets look into that. Forster is betrayed by the type of save he makes. Forster has made 20 saves this season with a pretty dreadful save % of 64.5% (McCarthy is 63.4%). Of those saves however, not a single one was a catch, with 14 parries and 6 punches. For most goalkeepers catches make up about 25% of their saves, Forster has 0%. He constantly puts us in danger with his poor handling skills, pushing the ball out for set-pieces or dangerously back into play. Forsters recoveries per 90 is 7.05, is only better than Ederson, Mendy, Schmeichel, Patricio, and both manchester united goalkeepers. That may seem like prestigious company, however these goalkeepers have low recoveries due to their teams high possession and low amount of time with the ball in their half (with the exception of Patricio who also is very poor in this area). Other goal keepers who face a similar number of balls into the box as Forster are significantly ahead. McCarthy, for example, makes 7.48 recoveries per 90 which is still poor compared to most goalkeepers adjusting for possession, but better than Forster. From this we can see Forsters ability to claim the ball really lets him down, and justifies McCarthy having to play against cross-heavy teams. Finally we look to distribution. Our side relies quite heavily on Vestergaard to make long balls from the back. In fact in the closing games of the season McCarthy was taking goal kicks to Vestergaard who was stood a couple of feet away from him, who then took the goal kick for him. This is not normal, often a short goal kick is taken but normally the goalkeeper is sufficiently trusted to pick a pass incase the CBs are marked, we do not trust McCarthy to do this, and hence he no longer takes his own goal kicks. For this we turn to FBRef for info as FFS didn't have details. This resource only looks at primary goalkeepers for a team so we only have stats on McCarthy, however his launched ball (over 40 yards) completion % is a shameful 29.5%, rock bottom of the league and a full 16% lower than the median result. Whilst this website doesn't provide details on Forster, it does display Southampton's over all launch completion % which is 29.2%, this is EVEN WORSE, showing Forster is even worse at longer passing than McCarthy. We are still rock bottom of the league by this metric. Our need for a passer, like Vestergaard, is artificially larger than it should be as both our goalkeepers are embarrassingly bad at passing compared to the rest of the league.

I really was hoping we'd get a new keeper as they are both relegation quality keepers. If I had to choose I'd go with Forster as he's a mildly better shot stopper and seems to be better at knowing when to come off his line and sweep if we play a high line.

Yeah I think it's very reasonable. 14th is a good prediction too. If we get a bit of luck we might be a top half challenger, if we get bad luck we could be in a relegation battle but I think we will be the definition of midtable mediocrity this year. I'm fine with this, we need to slowly build ourselves up.

Sell sell sell! Very obvious to get rid imo at this stage. £20m would be nice but I'd take £15m personally. Then spend big on the replacement, take the money, add a bit from the left over Ings money if needed.

The straps could just be a precaution tbh. Will trust the physios to know whats best regarding getting him back and playing.

Worth also noting that after the goalkeeper question they immediately responded with a "three window plan" comment, which to me implies we will look to do something about our keepers next summer.

They'll go quiet now.

Damn I'm glad you said that, I was thinking "what's wrong with his skin?!" but it's just skin coloured straps!

Fair, that's a little misleading of Tom Leach, since he has tweeted out two different pictures of JWP under the "JWP returns to training" tweets.

Yes, but people thought it was a pretend injury because he was being sold.

No one is "never injured". JWP had a good run but that doesn't mean he cannot be injured. I agree that Villa thought they could get him, I believe that to be about as illjudged as them thinking they could get Smith-Rowe. I just think all the fans who thought we were resting JWP incase of sale were wayyy off base, why didn't we rest Ings in that case? He left like 3 days after a friendly and we know they were in negotiations during that friendly?

JWP back in training pics, Semmens saying definitively he stays. Maybe it was just a knee injury and the conspiracy theories about him actually not being in friendlies because he was off to villa were, in fact, a little bit silly. You don't stay as fit as JWP if you insist on playing through injuries for friendlies for no reason...