Southampton are approaching a crucial run of fixtures and Russell Martin knows his side can waste no time in getting points on the board starting with Manchester United on Saturday.
Southampton are 19th in the Premier League after three games, with only Everton below the newly-promoted side.
1-0 defeats to Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest were followed by a 3-1 loss at Brentford where Russell Martin did at least witness his team score their first league goal of the campaign.
Against Newcastle, Southampton fell victim to a huge Alex McCarthy error to lose 1-0 against ten men, whilst they were disappointing as they mustered just one shot on target against Forest in their only home game of the season so far.
Brentford was again a tale of mistakes playing out from the back, with Yoane Wissa and Bryan Mbeumo emphatically punishing Southampton.
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Martin will hope to begin to turn around the Saint’s poor early season form, but perhaps his team have been a little unlucky to find themselves with zero points at this stage.
Opta data shows Southampton should actually have three Premier League points
One element of Southampton’s football that has remained from last season is the high possession, with only Tottenham Hotspur having a higher average possession than Southampton’s 68.1%.
However, they have struggled to convert that into goals as Yukinari Sugawara’s late consolation strike against Brentford last time out finally got the Saints on a Premier League scoreboard this season.
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Opta have been reviewing the data they have collected from the English top flight so far, with their findings showing that Martin can consider his side a little unfortunate to be in the position they’re in.
When comparing the expected goals (xG) to expected goals against (xGA), Opta believe that Southampton should have 3.3 points, of course rounded down to three, after three games.
When. compared with the 19 other Premier League teams this would put the St Mary’s club as high as 14th in the table, sandwiched in between Wolves and West Ham and two places above Newcastle United.
Southampton struggling to replicate strength from last season
The step up in quality of the Premier League compared to the Championship will have been eye opening for Martin and a number of his players.
With that in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that Southampton are struggling to get points on the board, but the Opta report suggests there may be one key area that the Saints are performing far worse than last season.
That is their press, as the Opta report explains: “One aspect of their game from last season that they’ve struggled to establish with any real success in the Premier League, however, is a high-intensity press.
“In the Championship regular season last term, Southampton’s 222 high turnovers (recovering possession within 40 metres of the opposition’s goal line) was bettered by only two teams, but they’re well adrift of the metric leaders this time around.”
Spurs lead the Premier League for this metric with 40, whilst Southampton are 17th on just 15 from their three games so far.
Therefore, Martin would have had plenty of work to do off the ball with his players during the international break as well as on it.