What went well?

Wing backs

One of the successes of the season came in the very first minute, when Tino Livramento was given his debut. Two games later Kyle Walker-Peters appeared at left back v Newcastle. Neither were expected from pre-season and both were tactical victories for Ralph Hasenhüttl which deserve credit.

FBRef

Heroic effort all season by Kyle Walker-Peters to get the team up the pitch.

Set pieces

An easy way to turn the 14th best team into the 18th is to have poor set pieces. Southampton have been streaky but effective.

The Analyst

James Ward-Prowse scored his 14th Premier League free kick from 99 shots, a goal every seven attempts.

Shots since 2014 from Understat

Youth

The team has mostly stuck with the strategy of developing playing young players. Even if it all goes wrong next season, there will be something left to build from.

Transfermarkt

What went ok?

Goalkeepers

For the first season in a while they all performed to a roughly league average level, until the last few weeks anyway.

FBRef

Apart from early 2020 none of the goalkeepers have performed very well for a long time.

More about post-shot expected goals from Statsbomb.

Strikers

FBRef

Adam Armstrong was a semi-emergency signing to replace Ings, whose 22-goal season is the orange dot. Armstrong’s high-volume low-chance shooting really stands out. Taking a lot of low quality shots isn’t a very good way to score overall, but at least he carried his high volume from the Championship. He will need to gain some patience and composure, which is a coachable skill.

Armando Broja pushed into the top right corner for a little while, which would have been an outstanding season for a 20 year old. Not surprising that he cooled down from there but still performed well overall.

Performances up to February

Positive expected goal different for a couple of periods is a good achievement and earned the team most of their wins.

FBRef

What went badly?

The no10s

None of the wingers stood out. Elyounoussi, Redmond and Stuart Armstrong got the most playing time, but they’re all similar age, ability and contract status. Even if some of them have a future, this is the transfer window to make that position younger and more dynamic.

Tella completed his first ever 90 minutes, but only played half a match more than the previous season.

Performances after March

FBRef

This level of performance is nowhere near enough to stay up. It has to be taken seriously as an indicator for how 2022-23 could go.

Why did it happen? Some possible answers: Players in unfamiliar roles. Livramento injury. Fitness and tiredness. Lack of good tactical ideas.

Or maybe everything that came before was overperformance and this is the baseline.

What else happened?

Appearances

James Ward-Prowse’s unbroken appearance record was ended by a red card on 83 full matches, 4th in the top division since 3 subs were allowed.

Subs

FBRef

Five substitutes are back in 2022-23, which means more depth is needed to avoid being overrun by teams with better subs.

Surprises

Pre-match data from FiveThirtyEight

The 3-2 win at Tottenham was the fifth most unlikely result [win / draw / lose] of the 380 match season. And we were so unfavoured v Man City away that drawing 0-0 was the seventh most unlikely result.

End of season thanks to

1. Statsbomb, FBRef, worldfootballR, Understat, Transfermarkt, FiveThirtyEight, and others for the data.
2. Southampton supporters and everyone else online for the discussion.
3. The analysis community for support, help and ideas.

Links

1. Data from Statsbomb / FBRef unless stated otherwise
2. Link to R code for the data collection and visualisation tools in this post.