Southampton have struggled to score goals at home ground St Mary’s of late, but Tonda Eckert isn’t too worried about this drop-off...
Southampton have scored 20 goals at home this season, in 15 games at St Mary’s.
But 13 of these 20 goals came in head coach Tonda Eckert’s first five home matches in charge, and since then, just three goals in the last four have shown a remarkable drop-off.
Eckert has given his verdict on this drying up of goals in his pre-match press conference ahead of Charlton Athletic’s visit to the south coast - and it’s encouraging for Saints fans.
Eckert feels unlucky
When asked about scoring fewer goals at home recently, Tonda Eckert said, "We have had chances to score the second goal in games. We will go strong again tomorrow, and if it's a 1-0 again, then I'll be happy to take that."
"I think we have managed over the last couple of weeks to win games in very different manners. I think that's a quality that comes from a lot of work that the boys and staff have put in."
Saints will be encouraged by their 5-1 win over Charlton in the reverse fixture; this is yet another chance for them to get a convincing win and surge towards the play-off places.
And Tonda is right - Saints have had many chances to score more goals than they have.
Do the numbers back Tonda up?
In these last four home games, where the Saints have scored just three times, the side has collected 5.8xG - so are heavily underperforming in this metric [-2.8].
And this includes the last time out - where Cyle Larin netted a debut winner worth just 0.14xG, without which they would have missed out on two important points.
Saints are missing big chances, and need to sort this out soon if they want to remain in the play-off hunt, where they sit just two points off the top six.
In Tonda Eckert’s first five league home games in charge at St Mary’s, his side averaged 2.6 goals per game, but has averaged just 0.75 since.
It’s clear that putting the ball in the net on their own patch has been hard to come by of late - the visit of Charlton Athletic, who often leak goals, could be that opportunity to get some much-needed confidence back into the frontline after the sale of top scorer Adam Armstrong.