Deano6

I'll admit that I've probably undermined JWP's confidence too, by repeatedly saying he's not very good and doesn't contribute much to a game. Sorry James, no offence, I'm sure you're playing to the best of your limited ability.

Wow, racist much? I presume you don't watch Saints games, as they also employ foreigners. By the way Brits are allowed to drive on Uber also, plus there are maximum age restrictions on all registered cars.

Other than the fact that your two predictions were: We will score 60 goals in the season (1.58 goals per game) and we currently have 41 in 31 (1.32 goals per game) We will finish 5th or 6th when we are currently 7th ...then yes - both your predictions were absolutely correct!

Well...14 goals down and 22 to go, with 7 games remaining. Good luck Super_Saint!

Our scorers include 2 England internationals that went to the World Cup as well as a player who is now ripping it up in the Premier League for West Ham in 5th place. Watching back the clip, I can't believe Lallana scored with his head. Has he ever repeated that trick?

I don't remember any of this. In fact I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

Why did you bother doing that, when you could have just had Saints lose by one more goal on the last day? I appreciate most people would have focussed on just my first 4 words!

The footballer Paul Gascoigne could be played by the actor Vinnie Jones. Am I doing this right?

Have there been lots of people changing their facebook pics to black, yellow and red filter? I haven't seen any on my page.

Oh I believe we can. We have a great record against them, and beat them last season. I just don't want us to.

Sure, I agree with what you say here, but there is a mountain of evidence in the other direction: - the two teams who are 3 points above us both have a game in hand on us (as do the 2 teams above them), meaning they're not as close as they look - Liverpool are only 3 points behind us with 2 games in hand - a bang in-form Chelsea (not lost in last 10 Prem games) are 6 points behind us with a game in hand, so only 3 behind us if they win it I believe realistically we will finish 8th or 9th myself.

I just looked. I got hard.

Consider me ridiculous then. I would much rather see Leicester win the league than see Saints finish 8th rather than 9th. Likelihood is that 7th wouldn't be enough for Europe this year either.

I rooting for Leicester.

It was Southampton.

Hi, this is great - thanks for the kind offer! I need to deliver my bike to my brother who lives in Stoke. Would be great if you could take it up for me. I'm not going to the game so won't need the ticket, thanks though.

Yeah, but so what? We're not getting relegated, we're not winning the league or getting into Europe. Just enjoy the football on display each game and you don't have to worry about if we win or lose. In terms of 'kingmakers', we play Leicester 7th last and Spurs 2nd last. It's hardly a pivotal role (although I can see the appeal of trying to find something to spice up the rest of the season and make us relevant in some respect). I would say Chelsea playing Spurs 4th last and Leicester on the last game of the season are much more relevant than us.

I'm buying it. MLG got us good. Well played sir!

I agree with this post.

I agree. Saints-related talk has no place on the Southampton twitter feed.

But it isn't trying to predict individual games. It is trying to predict the total points from a whole group of games. So trying to break it down and allocate it to individual matches is to use it for a purpose it was never intended to cater for. To suggest that a better model would be that you beat the teams you lose to first time round would lead to the nonsensical conclusion that everyone ends up around the same number of points at the end of the season. It makes far more sense to suggest that teams further ahead are also more likely to win more games in the future. If you stopped a 100m race half way through you wouldn't predict the guy at the back to run a faster pace than everyone else in the second half. This isn't MarioKart.

So you're saying the first time through playing those teams we got 11 points against those six teams and the second time through we got 10? Looks like the model's working pretty well then. Not sure why you're so dismissive of it that you say it is "coincidence" and yet accept weaker evidence (based on fewer games) as fact. Looks like confirmation bias to me - interpreting the data to suit whatever it was you originally intended to find.

I suppose the model is not assuming that we will precisely match the previous result, but that the previous result is a somewhat general indicator of the quality of opposition and we can be expected to perform worse against tougher opposition. So it's not saying we will match our Swansea result directly, but more that in a pool of Swansea, Stoke, West Brom and Crystal Palace we might be expected to get the same or similar number of points he first time we run through them as the second. *caveat - I've no idea if those are a correct peer group, but they are teams I generally consider to be in the same "meh, upper bottom half table teams". They may be doing better or worse than that this year.

Well deserved as in Feb he broke the Saints premier league record for 'clean sheet' minutes. Just a shame he let in such a soft goal a few minutes later.

And move cricket to the winter?