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Saints - title winning form since October

The Kraken

By The Kraken,
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The Kraken

The Kraken

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OK, this is maybe one for the stattos amongst us. Although it will hopefully serve as evidence to some that we're not under-achieving as much as some people may think.

 

It’s pretty much accepted that our performances started to turn around after the Bristol Rovers home game at the end of September. The whys and wherefores of the reasons for that have been done over and over again, so I’m not looking to get into that. However, it was widely agreed then that if we were to push for the play-offs we would need to produce title winning form from there-on in.

 

And, having had a look at the stats, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

 

In the last 5 years the League 1 championship has been won with 98, 82, 91, 92 and 96 points respectively. That’s an average of 92 points required to win the league, or 2 points per game (essentially win all your home games and draw all your away games).

 

After 10 games we had 9 points.

 

Since then, we have played 22 games and scored 45 points, an average of 2.05 points per game.

 

Even our recent “blip” doesn’t look too bad when you consider the amount of away games played. Even discounting our excellent last two home victories, the previous 10 games before those saw us play 3 home games and 7 away games. From that we scored 16 points, exactly the number expected from winning your home games and drawing your away games.

 

So, despite the fact that we clearly have some difficulties winning away on soggy, muddy pitches, the stats don’t lie.

 

We have been producing title winning form since October.

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richardc

richardc

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Unfortunately our play off place is not really down to us anymore - if we continue with current form over last 6 games at 2.33 points per game we will finish on 76 points - Both Millwall and Huddersfield would need to score less than 1.5 points per game ie lose as many as they win at the moment they are both averaging the same as us - if we won every game from now on it would give us 86 points and then they would need to average 2.33 points which they are doing at the moment. Therefore basically we need to win all but one of our games and hope Millwall and Huddersfiled lose at least 5 of their remaining 12 games

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The Kraken

The Kraken

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Such a pity that the season started in August...

 

Indeed. And ss I said in the initial post, the whys and wherefores of the reasons for that have been done to death. We took some time to turn things around, which was disappointing. But the point is that since we turned things around, we've been producing title winning form. Its certainly encouraging for what will hopefully prove to be a tight run-in. But if nothing else it certainly leaves a huge amount of optimism for next season if we don't make it this time around.

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St Landrew

St Landrew

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Such a pity that the season started in August...

 

Not only that, but this season's top 6 are definitely 10 or so points further on than for recent previous seasons. If this was an average season, we'd be right in there, or just under, with 2 games in hand, -10 points or not, bad start or not.

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madsent

madsent

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OK, this is maybe one for the stattos amongst us. Although it will hopefully serve as evidence to some that we're not under-achieving as much as some people may think.

 

It’s pretty much accepted that our performances started to turn around after the Bristol Rovers home game at the end of September. The whys and wherefores of the reasons for that have been done over and over again, so I’m not looking to get into that. However, it was widely agreed then that if we were to push for the play-offs we would need to produce title winning form from there-on in.

 

And, having had a look at the stats, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

 

In the last 5 years the League 1 championship has been won with 98, 82, 91, 92 and 96 points respectively. That’s an average of 92 points required to win the league, or 2 points per game (essentially win all your home games and draw all your away games).

 

After 10 games we had 9 points.

 

Since then, we have played 22 games and scored 45 points, an average of 2.05 points per game.

 

Even our recent “blip” doesn’t look too bad when you consider the amount of away games played. Even discounting our excellent last two home victories, the previous 10 games before those saw us play 3 home games and 7 away games. From that we scored 16 points, exactly the number expected from winning your home games and drawing your away games.

 

So, despite the fact that we clearly have some difficulties winning away on soggy, muddy pitches, the stats don’t lie.

 

We have been producing title winning form since October.

 

Averaging 1 point per away game is good but nowhere near title-winning form. We're averaging 1.35 points per away game for the season. Even if you discount the first 5 away games, we've gained 20 points from 12 games which is 1.66 per game. It's better than Charlton's 1.64 per away game but worse than Leeds with 1.81 and Norwich with 1.82.

 

If we've been producing title winning form since October, how come we're further behind Norwich than we were in October ?

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Professor

Professor

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The title winning form has generally co-incided with the team playing more attacking football. For some time Pardew seemed more concerned with trying to avoid defeats with Dave Merrington saying there was too much use of 4-5-1, but maybe that was due to being a quality striker short. Things changed, first with Connolly coming into the side until injured, and lately with Barnard up front alongside Lambert. Pardew has built a great squad but playing two quality strikers seems to have been the key that's unlocked the door.

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positivepete

positivepete

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Unfortunately our play off place is not really down to us anymore - if we continue with current form over last 6 games at 2.33 points per game we will finish on 76 points - Both Millwall and Huddersfield would need to score less than 1.5 points per game ie lose as many as they win at the moment they are both averaging the same as us - if we won every game from now on it would give us 86 points and then they would need to average 2.33 points which they are doing at the moment. Therefore basically we need to win all but one of our games and hope Millwall and Huddersfiled lose at least 5 of their remaining 12 games

 

If you complete the BBC predictor, you will find that a lot of the teams above us have to play each other. I reckon the top eight will be Norwich, Leeds, Charlton, Colchester, Swindon, Huddersfield, Millwall, and Saints. Not necessarily in that order, but we may well fall a frustrating three or four points short of the play-offs. It depends also on how the teams above us deal with the expectation of reaching the play-offs, you usually get at least one team who blows up completely in the run-in.

 

Note the Brighton Saints match is not in there, so if you do complete it you will be one match short for Saints

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/predictor/default.stm

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positivepete

positivepete

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Posted
Unfortunately our play off place is not really down to us anymore - if we continue with current form over last 6 games at 2.33 points per game we will finish on 76 points - Both Millwall and Huddersfield would need to score less than 1.5 points per game ie lose as many as they win at the moment they are both averaging the same as us - if we won every game from now on it would give us 86 points and then they would need to average 2.33 points which they are doing at the moment. Therefore basically we need to win all but one of our games and hope Millwall and Huddersfiled lose at least 5 of their remaining 12 games

 

If you complete the BBC predictor, you will find that a lot of the teams above us have to play each other. I reckon the top eight will be Norwich, Leeds, Charlton, Colchester, Swindon, Huddersfield, Millwall, and Saints. Not necessarily in that order, but we may well fall a frustrating three or four points short of the play-offs. It depends also on how the teams above us deal with the expectation of reaching the play-offs, you usually get at least one team who blows up completely in the run-in.

 

Note the Brighton Saints match is not in there, so if you do complete it you will be one match short for Saints

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/predictor/default.stm

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dune

dune

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Have we **** been producing title winning form since October. We improved up until around November, then wen't off the boil, and now we're playing well again. We were roughly 10 points off the pace in November which increased to 17 points until last weeks win over Huddersfield. That statistic correlates with our form over the period.

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dune

dune

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Have we **** been producing title winning form since October. We improved up until around November, then wen't off the boil, and now we're playing well again. We were roughly 10 points off the pace in November which increased to 17 points until last weeks win over Huddersfield. That statistic correlates with our form over the period.

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hutch

hutch

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We were roughly 10 points off the pace in November which increased to 17 points until last weeks win over Huddersfield. That statistic correlates with our form over the period.

No it doesn't. It correlates with missing several league games because of our cup run(s). Our "dip" in form would have prevented us from improving our position significantly since then, though.

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hutch

hutch

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We were roughly 10 points off the pace in November which increased to 17 points until last weeks win over Huddersfield. That statistic correlates with our form over the period.

No it doesn't. It correlates with missing several league games because of our cup run(s). Our "dip" in form would have prevented us from improving our position significantly since then, though.

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dune

dune

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No it doesn't. It correlates with missing several league games because of our cup run(s). Our "dip" in form would have prevented us from improving our position significantly since then, though.

 

Ultimately i'm basing my assessment of the games i've seen and up until our last 2 games I do not think we were champions material.

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dune

dune

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No it doesn't. It correlates with missing several league games because of our cup run(s). Our "dip" in form would have prevented us from improving our position significantly since then, though.

 

Ultimately i'm basing my assessment of the games i've seen and up until our last 2 games I do not think we were champions material.

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Ash

Ash

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My point is you can have a sh*te game every now and then and still be in contention for promotion.

There was no need to clarify, everybody understood what you meant. Delldays is being silly.

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