coalman

At some point Tonda has to be practical about demands on his players. He's not going to be about to play the high octane style he wants every game due to the frequency of fixtures and sometimes, like last night, he's going to have to rotate some of the lesser squad members to make sure his core team are ready for the big games and hope he gets lucky. It's what all the truly great managers do and you could argue that his consistency in both playing style and personnel has been a key part of our results over the last couple of months.

What are his passing stats, though?

50 points would've been enough to survive last season. We need 12 more with 18 games left to hit that mark. So four more nights like last night out of 18.

Playing with 2 centre backs means we move the ball quicker as there's one fewer centre back to put their foot on the ball and move it on at glacial pace. We cunted about far less than recently because they needed to move it quickly because there were fewer easy options five yards away. It also means there's more likely to be an option in front of them. And, that they are more likely to take responsibility for defending rather than watching each other. Playing with Fellows in his natural position means their left back is going have a worse night and spend more time pushed back towards their own penalty area. It also means Fellows can last closer to 90 minutes rather than blowing hard after 60. Playing with Wellington means there isn't a massive gap in No Manning's Land for the other team to exploit every time they attack. Wellington linked up really well with Scienza in a way that Manning doesn't as well as being present when he needed to be. Playing with Stewart up front means we have more options to move it forwards and carry a threat in the box. Though, it was also good to see him being protected rather than run into the ground. For all his goals, we're a worse side with Adam Armstrong in the side as a lone centre forward (why does every Saints manager have to learn this the hard way?). Last night we defended further up the pitch and were less ponderous when we had the ball. It's nowhere near where we need to be but it was actually watchable football for the first time in a couple of months. Without the usual suspects playing their particular brand of walking keep ball we looked so much better. With Charles back we can get back towards a midfield of him and Jander which is always going to be more progressive than Downes with his inability to turn and move the ball forwards.

Eckert knows what it's like to go for a long spell without winning. Thank god for the pure desire in the team. Though he may find that the second win after a long spell without winning is also pretty hard. Back to the old Saints complacency mantra of "we've won a game of football so everything is fine" "After a long spell (of not winning) the first win is always the hardest. "We had to dig very deep and in the end it was just pure desire to win that game of football. "It comes from so deep inside to grind out games and credit to the boys because they put so much into every minute of the game. "Today we were much more direct and we got the ball forward a bit quicker, Ross Stewart was very good up front for the 60 minutes he gave us today."

I'm just not used to seeing a player in our left back position when the other team gave the ball. It's unnatural

We're at the stage of Tonda's Saints manager career where it's time to drop Martin's favourites. Dragan is getting some phone calls tomorrow.

Crikey. A line up I don't hate at first sight. Sheff Utd won't have prepared for this.

Probably best not to watch the actual games and just look at the stats page afterwards then.

"looking forward to" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Even if I think that the players will rouse themselves to win this so they don't have to feel bad about not showing up on Sunday.

If we look at Hull we created more good chances. That's true. But the "we had higher xG so we should've won" argument only works if there are non systemic issues leading to the defeat. For example a suicidal back pass and two players failing to make a challenge on a corner xG comes from averages and there's a special place in hell for people who blindly use averages in decision making with doing things like understanding the modality or variance of the data. There's also the classics correlation Vs causation bias where you need to understand why two data points align. Eg. did Downs score goal in Bundesliga 2 because he was a good striker or because they kept bouncing off his arse.

Fucking hell. The first rule of fucking data science is don't blindly trust data because the real world is more complex and will fuck your shit up the first chance it gets. I have lost count of the number of people I've seen burned by this.

Yeah but nobody listens to Einstein. It's not like he ever gave a TED talk.

There's also a quote by Jeff Bezos that when your data and qualitative feedback disagree that you should trust your qualitative feedback. Then you should figure out how to get better data.

Any question starting with "surely even SR wouldn't be bonkers enough to..." is typically answered in the affirmative.

I guess we're going to all need to come to terms with the ugly reality that Bazunu is too good for Saints and was always going to move on to a more successful club. This is on you, Sport Republic.

The players were quick to point out how much clarity he bought into the team after Will Still when he became interim manager. Which was obviously sound judgement and nothing to do with the fact that he was most likely to give them an easy ride. Or, that they're all too fucking stupid to know what "clarity" means.

If Baz's career blossoms after leaving Southampton you have to think that there's something rotten in Denmark (or in our case something rotten from Denmark)

I'm more expecting them to get injured with all the work they're going to be doing talking to the press and social media about how they know what this fixture means and how they are going to be so up for it. Expect they'll be shattered by the time Sunday comes around.

That's a pretty damning indictment of where Saints are at. We may be in a fight but it ain't for the big prize. And Baz starts with a clean sheet. As we all know Saints can't keep clean sheets because they are unlucky.

Scienza.

If he doesn't want to be here and isn't going to put in the shift then yes. Even if he does play he should be wearing the captain's armband unless he's going to do some actual captaining.

Our best hope might be Leicester getting a points deduction this week. Though I imagine they'll wiggle out of it again due to it being unclear whether the EFL or Premier League should be applying it.

Rasmus "Hold my beer"