Southampton: Are the Saints really in a relegation battle?

Southampton have made a very average start to the Premier League season, with fans at St. Mary’s looking down the table rather than up.

Attacking problems have carried over from the previous campaign, and that mixed with questionable managerial decisions from new boss Mauricio Pellegrino has seen tensions on the rise around the club.

With 11 games of the Premier League played, Saints currently sit 13th in the table and just four points outside the relegation zone. But, even with early indications not looking so good, should supporters be so worried?

Here is a statistical look at Premier League relegation and what the St. Mary’s faithful can expect from the remainder of 2017/18:

Saints’ start has been almost identical to last season’s first 11 games, with 13 points gained and three wins, four draws and four losses in both. However, both are clearly poor in comparison to the previous two campaigns of 2014/15 and 2015/16.

There are a number of reasons for this, with one being key player departures after 2015/16 leaving creative holes in the team and those players not being replaced fully ahead of the next two seasons.

This drop in creativity is shown by the consequent drop in goals scored, and is probably responsible for Saints winning back-to-back games only three times since the start of 2016/17.

	2014/15 Southampton first 11 games	2015/16 Southampton first 11 games	2016/17 Southampton first 11 games	2017/18 Southampton first 11 games
Points	25	17	13	13
Goals Scored	23	18	12	9
Goals Conceded	5	13	12	11
Position after 11 games	2^nd	7^th	10^th	13^th
Wins	8	4	3	3
Draws	1	5	4	4
Losses	2	2	4	4
Final position that season	7^th	6^th	8^th	?

Saints’ defence has been strong overall throughout all four seasons, and this could be key in keeping them away from bottom three this year. Relegated sides often have a porous defence, and although Saints have lost four games so far, they have only lost by one or two goals in those matches.

So how does this Saints side’s early record compare to recently relegated sides? The table below shows just that:

	2014/15 relegated teams – Hull, Burnley, QPR respectively	2015/16 relegated teams – Newcastle, Norwich, Aston Villa respectively	2016/17 relegated teams – Hull, Middlesbrough, Sunderland respectively	2017/18 Southampton
Points	11,7,8	7,9,4	10,11,5	13
Goals scored	13,6,11	12,15,10	10,10,9	9
Goals conceded	15,19,22	22,23,20	24,12,21	11
Position after 11 games	15^th, 20^th, 19^th	18^th, 16^th, 20^th	18^th, 15^th, 20^th	13^th
Wins	2,1,2	1,2,1	3,2,1	3
Draws	5,4,2	4,3,1	1,5,2	4
Losses	4,6,7	6,6,9	7,4,8	4

Saints have better records than the majority of these teams despite their poor form. However, their record is similar to Hull from 2014/15 and Middlesbrough from last season, who both slipped to relegation after being in 15th place.

Although Pellegrino’s side have at least two more points than any of the mentioned teams after 11 games, the number of goals they have is equal with Sunderland’s tally last season which is quite a concern.

At their current rate, Saints would finish the season on around 44 to 45 points. This has been enough to stay well clear of relegation and finish 13th in the last three seasons. As Saints fans will know, Claude Puel’s team finished their season in 8th with only 46 points six months ago.

Newcastle’s finishing total in 2015/16 was 37 points, which is the highest relegated team total in the past three seasons; still a lot lower than Saints’ projection. Even the Premier League’s all time highest total in a 38 game season is lower, and this was achieved by West Ham’s 42 in 2002/03.

SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 21: Mauricio Pellegrino, manager of Southampton looks on before the Premier League match between Southampton and West Bromwich Albion at St Mary’s Stadium on October 21, 2017 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images) /

At the other end of the scale, West Brom somehow survived with a record surviving low of 34 points in 2004/05, with Saints finishing bottom of the Premier League that season on 32.

With the help of these stats, we can see that Saints are ahead of the average positions and points of recently relegated teams. However, their goal-scoring is even lower than the rates of most of these teams. Therefore, they haven’t left themselves a lot of room for slip-ups in the remainder of the season.

More from Saints Marching

After a favourable opening 11 games, Southampton next face Liverpool, Everton and Manchester City. More seemingly challenging fixtures follow before christmas, so the team will have to improve their performance levels to keep ahead of the required points total. Following their 19th game of the season at home to Huddersfield Town, Saints would need to be on 22 points or more, meaning that they need nine points from their next eight games.

This is clearly achievable, and the situation would need to become a lot worse for Saints to be considered real relegation candidates. Most of the recently relegated teams spend almost all of their season around the bottom of the table, which Saints haven’t so far. Many things will have to improve too however, and the team may have to find a new way of playing to find better results; a 3-5-2 system has been mentioned.

Following past successes, Saints fans are right to be disgruntled at recent team performances as they aren’t used to being in the lower reaches of the table. However, relegation is not a strong possibility yet, and won’t be if saints continue to pick up some points along the way.

There are worse teams in the league than Saints, but anxiousness will grow amongst fans until the team shows signs of improvement to get them away from the dreaded bottom three.