SaintBobby

I hope we can all now agree it's been a pretty fantastic season (as were the last two). But, hell's teeth, it's been a grim and depressing time on SWF. A (fairly small) number of regular posters have been consistent in their pessimism about the status and future of the club. There seems to be a split between "wind up merchants" and "happy clappies" (I think most fans probably fall between the two, but lean more to the latter). The psychology of both sets of posters is, IMHO, fascinating - both in terms of trying to understand Saints fans and in terms of understanding the way an internet forum works. My first thought would be that the "WUMs" are keen to be "fleetingly" definite. Amongst the most hilarious (but probably not genuinely believed) "WUM" assertions this year have been: 1. "We are going down". A thread started by an individual about two minutes before we fully confirmed our Premiership status. As it turns out, even if we had gone on to lose 15-0 and deliberately scored a shedload of own goals we wouldn't have been going down anyway. We have, actually, been safe for weeks. This is an interesting and typical narrative from the WUMs/pessmists. The thread was not titled "OMG, might we blow it and get relegated?" or "Yikes, this is looking dicey". Oh no. It was "We are going down". No room for doubt. Certainty is asserted. And then shown to be mad. The individual then claims to have been "angry" and expects everyone to forgive and forget. Mr Wrong walking down False Street whilst trying to prove how utterly incorrect he was could not possibly top this. 2. "Saints will not add to our 39 points and will therefore be relegated". This was an especially bizarre meme. Firstly, the chances of Saints not getting any points in our last few games was pretty low (although our recent results have, indeed, been disappointing). But, secondly, this was exacerbated by a number of truly strange claims. Including "I am certain that Wigan will beat Arsenal, although I may end up being wrong" and "I still think we will finish on 39 points and be relegated but I accept this is unlikely now". 3. "West Ham are as likely to be relegated as Manchester United." Both these teams are staying up. No real surprise. But the assertion is clearly false. 4. "We won't finish in the top ten and anyone who says we will is mental". The first part of this assertion is likely to end up being true. The second part rather less so. You almost fear that those who have pegged their colours to this mast are now personally desperate for Saints to finish 11th or below to retain some shred of personal credibility. A last minute Reading winner at Upton Park on Sunday might be a real choker for them. However, on the happy clappy side, whilst there isn't the same level of expressed total certainty, there is still a smidgen of mania. 1. A push for Europe. Yeah, I guess this could happen if every single thing falls our way, you could just about imagine Saints finishing 7th next year and stealing a Europa League place by a whisker. But this has to be at the insanely high end of expectations, it can't really be called a "target". 2. The upwards trajectory is the norm and will continue as a force of nature. There's no obvious sense that we might have peaked and that our natural position is somewhere between 14th and 30th in the English league system. The assumption is that if we were 46th two years back, 22nd last year and 14th this season, then surely we're heading upwards next year too. Sadly, this just ain't so. 3. Bad news is "no news". Worrying stuff reported in, say, the Times is tittle tattle. If it's negative, let's try and explain it away. But if Paul Allen is sailing in to pour several billion into the club, according to the Guardian, let's uncork the champers and believe it's true. The reason things get so fraught on here is that whilst the majority are in neither camp, there's a centripetal force embedding each side into their trenches and a determination to adopt more and more extreme positions and swipe at the other side. How do we stop this lunacy? Or do we even want to?

I am bemused as to why anyone ever thought 40 or more points would be needed. I think the bottom three have been consistently averaging less than a point a game all season, so over 38 games you would expect the relegated teams to be on 38 points or less. Why on Earth some argued that we'd need up to 43 points is hard to say. Still, it does give a good steer on whose tips to trust over the Summer months and beyond. One particular tip I'm glad I didn't put money on was that Wigan were "certain" to beat Arsenal.

It's not the most important pre-season for a long time. I'd say it's probably less important than the last three pre-seasons. I don't know when you think European football was "promised". Must have missed that announcement on the OS.

Yes, it is too much. And I don't think there have been "promises", just plans and aspirations. We aren't going to continually improve "year on year". Going from 24th in League One to finishing c.14th in the Premiership in 4 years is amazing - 58 places in 4 years. On that trajectory, we win the Premiership next season, which ain't going to happen. With the right investment, we could probably stabilise as a club typically finishing somewhere between 6th and 12th. But that was as good as it was ever going to get.

Well, this is way beyond tittle tattle speculation in the Times. If the club still hasn't issued a denial, something big is probably going down.

I'd say this now looks pretty serious. Even if he stays, something clearly isn't quite right...

I'm sure that's right. He logs onto SWF everyday and cries his eyes out. He's famously known to be incredibly thin-skinned.

Not totally sure how you derive that. We have nearly twice as many shots on goal as our opponents, but aren't scoring many more goals. That might indicate we're shooting TOO MUCH (e.g. wild, useless shots from 30 yards out)

I think he could "experiment" from the bench (e.g. include a couple of youngsters amongst the subs but only seek to use them if we're 3-0+ up or 3-0+ down)

One stat that doesn't seem to be collected is "shots from inside the penalty area". Shots on target from inside the area have a very high % conversion, I'd guess. Shots off target from outside the area have a 0% conversion (barring some weird deflection) - but they all get grouped together as "shots".

IMHO, people do tend to base their view of the performance too much on the actual result. It's hard not to, of course - especially towards the end of the season when everyone gets nervous (e.g. losing 3-2 to Man City on the opening day was generally seen as encouraging, but losing 1 nil to Spurs 9 days ago as pretty disastrous). The same applies to the press too. If we win a game having played averagely, you tend to find our players getting 7s or 8s out of ten. If we lose, having played well, players suddenly start to get 5s and 6s for no apparent reason. Yes, yes, I know that ultimately the game is all about scoring more goals than your opponents and all the stats stuff (possession, shots on goal, shots on target, pass completion rate, successful tackles etc) doesn't formally "count", but it is well worth looking at to work out a team's likely future performances. (A good case this year is when Reading went on that mental run of scoring goals in the last few minutes of several games but their overall stats still looked ropey, sure enough they couldn't continue such a flukey run forever and they went on to sink without trace).

If we do lose 13-0, I'm not sure I'd be very confident on relying on Fulham losing by at least eleven goals to ensure we stay up! :-)

As others have said, if we were certain to finish in a narrow band of final places (say 13th-15th) might be worth experimenting, but given there's over £5m at stake, we really do need to field our strongest team and go for the win. That's probably the same team we put out on Sunday - except I might start with Puncheon and drop either Steve Davies or Lallana to the bench (I'd probably keep Jos at the back given Stoke's aerial threat).

Just to say, if Wigan do beat Arsenal and Villa, most likely it will be Sunderland who get relegated. Assuming Spurs beat Sunderland at White Hart Lane, Villa are safe whatever Wigan do.

Errr, no. We are safe whatever Wigan do as long as we avoid losing to Stoke by 12 goals or more. HTH.

I think we are playing better than we were under Adkins, but the results haven't obviously been much better, frustratingly. A lot hangs on the transfer window, as many have said. We're an 10th-18th sort of side without any new signings, but can definitely aim to the high end of that or even a bit higher if we sign 3 or 4 quality players.

I voted for 42. Which I have to concede now looks a tad unlikely...:-)

The Penguin?

Who did Harry sign for QPR in January and for what transfer fees (and alleged wages?) Wasn't that enough money to buy "quality"?

He was taken off today when we needed to chase the game and it worked. If we fall behind, sacrificing a DM with 20 minutes to go seems tactically wise to me and not a swipe at Cork.

Well, not quite! But we do already know the following: Guaranteed to win the league: 112 points (37 wins and 1 draw means no one can be ahead of you) Guaranteed to qualify for Champs L: 94 points (31 wins, 1 draw and 6 defeats means no more than 3 teams can be ahead of you) Guaranteed to qualify for Europa: 88 points (29 wins, 1 draw and 8 defeats means no more than 4 teams can be ahead of you) Guaranteed to finish in top ten: 58 points (19 wins, 1 draw and 18 defeats means no more than 9 teams can be ahead of you) Guaranteed to avoid the drop: 58 points (technically, all teams could win 19 and lose 19 and all 20 teams would be on 57 points and separated only by GD) Guaranteed to be relegated: 5 points (technically, the bottom four teams could all draw 6 and lose 32, so 4th from bottom could be on 6 points and stay up on GD) I seriously need to get out more....

I wonder if Shaw ends up as a left midfielder/winger?

I recklessly suggested we could afford to experiment against Sunderland. Truth is that with so much prize money at stake, we should play our best starting XI. Not against some experimentation on the bench, but we should only use untried players if we have definitely won or definitely lost (and if we've definitely lost then to be confident we aren't risking heading for a 12-0 defeat!)

Nice bit of research. Well, it is possible we end up tied with Fulham then. Wonder when such a thing last happened?

Agreed. Completely agreed. That was pure gold.