Southampton: Stat shows how good Saints have been away from home

It is fair to say that the 2019/20 Premier League season has been an inconsistent one for Southampton.

An average start to the campaign was followed by a dreadful drop in form – including a 9-0 loss – and then a brilliant surge up the table over Christmas.

Saints currently sit in 14th place in the table and could be back in action from 1st June after the latest measures from the UK government.

What has been notable from their showings so far has been the difference in their results at home and away from home.

Just from memory, Saints fans could tell you that Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side have picked up more points on the road than at St Mary’s, but now the true extent of that has been revealed.

Via skysports.com, Saints have taken the lowest proportion of their total points at home when compared to their top-flight counterparts – just 0.93 points per game (four wins, two draws and nine losses).

The situation when visiting teams away is a lot better, with their 1.43 points per game (six wins, two draws and six losses) picked up on their travels the sixth best in the league in 2019/20.

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Interestingly, Chelsea and Wolves are the only two teams who join Saints in having a better away record when compared to their points tallies at home. However, this is only because they have played one less game on their travels.

Because Saints are, therefore, the only team with a record so heavily weighted to playing away games, they need to get to the bottom of why they don’t perform in front of their own fans.

Their pressing style perhaps gives us a clue about why they have only won four games out of their 15 at St Mary’s this year.

Ralph Hasenhuttl makes his team divide a game of football into spells where they press the opposition heavily and then spells when they don’t in order to conserve energy for key parts of the contest.

Saints fans want to see their team on top for the whole game though. The home atmosphere at St Mary’s doesn’t play into the team’s hands when the fans see their team dropping off and delaying more pressing until a later stage of the game.

To stop this, Saints really need to improve their attacking play when experiencing strong spells in a game.

Watching the football under Hasenhuttl has shown that Saints start both halves of a game quickly. Early goals from better attacking play would ensure consistent support from home fans as they see their team on top from the off.

Being the underdogs and frustrating another team’s home crowd really does suit Hasenhuttl and his players at the moment, but they will know a solution to their home woes needs to come quickly.