coalman

It was pretty heartbreaking watching Downes get overrun every game this season. None of the three managers seemed to want to set up with a midfield that might be able to control the middle of the park. We got away with playing attacking midfielders in CDM roles in the Championship (just). One of the downsides of the 5 at the back we kept insisting on which left us light everywhere else. Then our ball watching central defenders and walking football midfielders would watch the attackers breaking from midfield sprint past them and score. Over and over again. I think we'd have seen a different player with the right people beside him.

Including Martin who continues talking about his time with Saints.

Thank you for reading that so I didn't have to. Also, sorry you spent time on such utter tosh.

I have not though I suspect that I shouldn't? 😉

I suspect he'll find somewhere else to bravely play dominant front foot football in the top 3rd of the pitch with unmatched intensity and form yet more unbreakable bonds with the supporters of another club.

So, hang on. Nobody could've done any better with the players he had but he's left a legacy of squad building that Saints must maintain? What. The. Actual. Fuck? This is what happens when you let ChatGPT write your clickbait articles. https://saintsmarching.com/russell-martin-makes-controversial-claim-which-is-partially-correct In hindsight, Southampton's Martin appointment was a masterstroke move considering the youth focused approach the club implements. Though the end could've been much better instead of a ton of Premier League humiliations, Martin has left a legacy in terms of squad building and talent scouting which the Saints must strive to keep intact.

https://theanalyst.com/football/player/sc-155511/adam-armstrong/stats He scored 3 goals against expected goals of 3.77. 25 shots. 10 shots on target.

The trouble is our strikers and defenders practice against each other in training. The weakness in both areas reinforces itself.

Other than Celtic and Europe he is going to have a big player advantage in every game he plays. Teams will sit back to try and nick a goal. There are going to be games where Rangers score hat fulls. There are also going to be games where they concede stupid goals. And oh so much aimless passing around the centre circle.

Let's not forget that's goals not scoring opportunities. And we reached the previous Premier League record before Martin was sacked.

The media in full swing telling us "what to expect". Though obviously this cuts both ways as perhaps we should be treating what we're hearing about Will Still with a similar pinch of salt. Again I would challenge whether this guy actually watched any of Russell Martin's games if he thinks it's all about playing in the top 30 yards of the pitch and that Russell Martin teams don't pass it around the back.

He only every wanted the Rangers job. He's never been first choice for any role he's ever had. His whole career has been based on proving people wrong. Good to see he's walked through the door with the victim mentality he left with. One of the Rangers board said "there's a lot to be proud of in Southampton's Premiership season" Martin "my teams run more than any other - we do more sprints than anyone we play against" Martin "wherever I've been the supporters have been behind me because of the relationships I've forged" Martin "it's about courage and intensity and being able to express themselves in the final third" Martin "Nobody ever talked about my style of play until I got to the Premier League. I don't want to talk about style of play"

One of the biggest mistakes made with statistics is in blindly looking at numbers without seeking to understand why. One of the (many) flaws of xG is it doesn't say what led to the goal scoring opportunity. Blindly following correlations is the road the Rasmus appears to have led us down. For example - looking at Nathan Jones stats you could have said he was an up and coming manager who was likely to overperform. Talking to him for more than a few minutes (or watching any interview after a match) would tell you he's an utter loon. Brighton clearly have a well functioning data science team which is why they're currently punching so far above their weight but that is in support of an effective scouting network and decision making process not a replacement for it. Whether that's a short term anomaly or something they can maintain in the face of the talent drain from the big clubs in the Premier League remains to be seen. Our data science team appears to consist of Rasmus looking at outliers in a spreadsheet and assuming that one thing implies another. A clown with a spreadsheet is still a clown. xG is something that may be useful to sanity check an approach (a team that totally underperforms xG may not be as bad as people think and a team that totally overperforms xG may well be worse than people think). But, if you go back through last season the xG completely backs up the results we saw on the pitch (in fact we may have been lucky to get 12 points). The use would be to sanity check what you think you're seeing rather than as the source of truth for decisions as it doesn't tell us what we need to change. It's also a measure of average performance where the variance or confidence interval is not published. I've found that someone coming to me and telling me they're managing against an average is usually a sign that I'm going to be handing that person a P45. To give a better example to explain our last season - if you looked at the number of clear cut chances we gave up due to fucking about at the back. That would have been a much better metric to manage against - it told us why we struggled to keep clean sheets. Or the number of clearcut chances we created. Not only did we invite our opponents to score but weren't creating anywhere near the chances to make up for it. Without the why you can't really know what to do. More alarmingly Martin appears to be all about possession which doesn't even have positive correlation with results on the pitch. Analysing data is clearly an area where Southampton FC are weak relative to our peers in an era where it can make a positive impact.

The Rangers forum has already eclipsed saintsweb by hitting 1035 pages of discussion compared to our measly 340. Someone needs to get up there and tell them they're all obsessed.

from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/teams/rangers "His teams play dominant football, they control the ball, dictate the tempo and impose themselves physically. They press aggressively and work relentlessly off the ball. These are all characteristics that we believe are required to be successful at home, away, and abroad." Have they watched any of our games before making this appointment or just the Gary Lineker interview?

But he'll be facing it with much better players relative to his opposition. More so than his Championship season with us. That being said he's going to have weeks where he drops points against those teams. He's also going to have the fans on his case pretty quickly if he doesn't start well.

That's what I'm afraid of.

It's a great move for Martin. He gets Champions League football and the reins of the 2nd horse in a 2 horse race. It's a great move for us as it gets his wages off the books and may result in some of his core players moving with him. All the best to him.

It's on Sky News now as breaking news "Rangers close to appointing Russell Martin as new head coach"

Reports say the new owners are injecting 20 million for transfers.

Well played

As long as we don't go signing any strikers by mistake...

Who'd have thought I'd find Russell Martin exciting in a footballing context again. Leicester hearts may be about to be broken. Or not. Scenes.

I think the phrase about a stopped clock being right twice a day covers our transfer policy. When you buy enough players eventually you luck into a good one. Trying to derive a strategy from that doesn't get you anywhere.

With a manager dogmatically sticking to his system... And a billionaire meddling in the running of the club