Graffito

More from the Eggheads - home support does not make a difference (unless directed at the referee. Perhaps we should concentrate on the B*stard in the Black). Far to much to paste but if anyone's interested, here's the link. Seems counterintuitive to me. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/feb/03/features.sportmonthly16

Home support makes a difference. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3123723.ece "Scientists make themselves heard with crowd noise studyJames Ducker It seemed like a needless rant to some, but it was with good reason that Sir Alex Ferguson criticised the atmosphere at Old Trafford on New Year’s Day. Manchester United might have beaten Birmingham City regardless of their manager’s claims that the club’s supporters were the quietest he had heard them, but scientific research has proven that crowd noise can play a huge part in the fortunes of a team with home advantage. In their 2002 quantitative study, “The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football”, for the Psychology of Sport and Exercise, an official journal of the European Federation of Sports Psychology, Alan M. Nevill, Nigel J. Balmer and A. Mark Williams established that the noise of the crowd influenced referees to favour the home team. In their study, 40 referees from the North Staffordshire Referees’ Club, from the newly qualified to those with 43 years of experience, were asked to assess the legality of 47 challenges or incidents recorded during a top-flight match between Liverpool and Leicester City at Anfield in the 1998-99 season. Twenty-two referees watched a video of the game with crowd noise, but no commentary, while the other 18 viewed the video in silence, with binary logistic regression, a technique for making predictions, used to assess separately the effect of the independent variables — crowd noise and years of experience — on each outcome. Those viewing the incidents with background noise awarded 15.5 per cent fewer fouls against the home team, compared with those watching in silence. The study indicated that the dominant effect of crowd noise was to reduce significantly the number of fouls awarded against the home team, rather than to increase the number of fouls against the away team. Other investigations have unearthed similarly revealing results. In his 1999 study with Roger L. Holder, entitled “Home advantage in sport: An overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home”, Nevill, a professor at the University of Wolverhampton, concluded that “crowd factors appeared to be the most dominant cause of home advantage” after an analysis of 40,493 football matches showed a home winning percentage of 68.3, excluding draws. In their 1977 paper, “The home advantage”, B. Schwartz and S. F. Barsky established that home advantage was rooted in the social support that partisan fans give the home team. Stephen R. Clarke and John M. Norman found in their 1995 review, “Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer”, that there was a depleted advantage in matches involving the 13 London clubs because derbies tend to attract an increased number of away supporters and, as such, there was more vocal support than usual for the visiting team"

Hits the right note. Nice post.

Stan, I answered your question but you didn't answer mine. Sorry if I contributed to spoiling your thread, it's just that I'm fed up with Saints losing and all, and Wales beat England in the rugby so I just wanted us all to lighten up a bit. Anyway, I'm off down the pub. All the best.

He's talking balls again.

We should be playing in the Premier League but as every isiot and his dog knows we're barely good enough for the Championship and probably won't be in it come May. Now, explain what you've done to the pr*t, I'd really like to know.

blinding fcking insight...and here's me all this time thinking it's all because we keep letting them in. thanks Mark, my penny's finally dropped.

why have you stuck half of Rupert's head to half of Brian Clough's? I haven't It's got one enormous ear as well.

Be honest, are you ever happier than when your miserable? And why have you stuck half of Rupert's head to half of Brian Clough's?

It was a wet one.

This one beats me. We give him a contract at the beginning of the season (so high wages aren't the issue?), we struggle all season to get crosses in from the flanks, we have no real pace, yet we have a winger who goes like a whippet and we loan him out to rival clubs.

Mickey, I agree that no one person is responsible for the club's predicament, the others running the club over several years share blame with Lowe. But you can't blame the fans. We have no control over the running of the club and little influence (except if we stop going en masse - a high risk strategy). As you say, the fans are the lifeblood of the club. It's about time the club realised that.

Appears he may have been taking more of his company's money than he should have, money which ultimately may cost creditors should the company go under.

Not so bad when it's not your money.

We're always better under floodlights, the dimmer the better.

Seems he's not even capable of getting onto the treatment table let alone the bench.

I seem to remember Channon being called Daisy but I defer to your greater knowledge of all things Saints. Anyway I think you're missing the point. I remember a young Alan Shearer being given stick by some Saints fans away at Highfield Rd one time and he giving it right. But we're talking here about two exceptional characters. Not all players react to criticism in the way that Channon and Shearer did. For a team low on confidence, abuse from the fans (and I'm not saying it happens much at SMS) is not the kind of support it needs. Nor has it anything to do with which cars the players drive. One final observation, it seems to me there are several posters on here that are pretty thin skinned when it comes to criticism but apparently it's ok to give stick to the team they support.

So we can all be better supporters then by giving the players huge amounts of abuse.

I know what you mean but only the manager is in a position to know, if he's any good, whether a bollo*king or an arm round the shoulder is what's required for each individual. I'm bound to say that I've heard little mass criticism of players at SMS this season but if it does happen I can't see how it will achieve what we all want which is wins.

The criticism has to be constructive and it won't be constructive coming from the stands. Apply your approach to your own place of work and consider whether it would produce better or worse results.

We always lose there but nine of us going anyway, just for the hell of it.

That's the kind of thing an 8 year old would say.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce".

James deserves a chance in his proper position, he has put in some fantastic balls this season and we could really benefit from these if he was to play in a more advanced position. It's worth a try. He is a good crosser. A great ball in for Saganowski's goal against Norwich. I'd like to see him get further forward before crossing. If we're going to play narrower in midfield, that's a possibility from fullback.

Unbelievable. If he turns out to be inadequate blame those that brought him not the lad himself.