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After 35 games, no one has beaten us twice


SaintBobby
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Ok, not quite true...Crystal Palace have beaten us twice this season, given the FA Cup defeat at SMS.

 

But with 3 games to go, no team has done the double on us in the league, right?

 

That's quite a weird stat - have we ever got this deep into a season before without a league opponent taking maximum points from us?

 

Have we ever gone a whole season in any league without being "doubled" by an opponent?

 

Of course, all of our next 3 games are against teams who have beaten us once in the league, so we'd need to avoid defeat in all of our next three games to get through the whole league season without being "doubled".

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I think that's a pretty good objective for a club of our size to have - to not be doubled by anyone else in the league. Also, to date the only club we haven't beaten at least once this season is Leicester and the only double we have done is over Swansea.

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Shows how inconsistent we/the whole league has been this season in that anyone could beat anyone on their day.

 

Leicester, Spurs and Villa have been pretty consistent this season. I think a better description would be it shows how competitive the league is this season, and IMO all the better for it.

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with two of the more difficult games to come to keep that record going I think your timing of raising that is poor :lol:

 

I just hope man City are still very much in with a shout for their second leg Champions League Semi and that a leicester win over Everton 7 May will totally deflate Spuds for our visit !

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We haven't done a double over anyone either have we? I was thinking yesterday that I don't think we've taken six points from anyone and with Palace, Spurs and City to come, that's not going to change because they've all beaten us.

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Have we really dropped 9 points to the bottom 4 this season? Those extra points would give us 63 and put us 5th just 1 point behind Arsenal and City in 4th and 3rd. Not to mention the 2 points dropped vs Everton or all the other matches we either dropped points from hitting the bars or just not turning up for the game... Seems like we're on the verge of having a pretty awesome team. Just need more confidence in front of goal and to not be so weak psychologically. Feels like we lose a match and then everyone's on antidepressants for the next one...

 

I'm sure Sky Sports said if the league started in January we would be 3rd??? :?

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Weird that of all our aways wins we have only managed to beat Swansea at home.

And not drawn twice with any teams either. As said in thread a while back makes a mockery of Sky's 'this is what the table will look like if the fixture outcome is repeated' table

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Have we really dropped 9 points to the bottom 4 this season? Those extra points would give us 63 and put us 5th just 1 point behind Arsenal and City in 4th and 3rd. Not to mention the 2 points dropped vs Everton or all the other matches we either dropped points from hitting the bars or just not turning up for the game... Seems like we're on the verge of having a pretty awesome team. Just need more confidence in front of goal and to not be so weak psychologically. Feels like we lose a match and then everyone's on antidepressants for the next one...

 

I'm sure Sky Sports said if the league started in January we would be 3rd??? :?

 

I think only Leicester and Spurs have done better in 2016 than us. That period in November and December has really cost us. And yet, we're guaranteed a top 10 finish and it's looking likely that we'll only finish as low as 8th. Hopefully, like Leicester did, we'll start the next season as we ended the last.

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I think the encouraging thing is that even with that nightmare run at the end of 2015, we're on track for a solid 8th place.

 

The issue is whether we can ever really "push on". It's easier to go from an average of 50 points to an average of 60 than it is to go from 60 to 70, I guess.

 

Nevertheless, in our four seasons back in the Premier League we are averaging around 9th place. That's way better than I expected when we went up in 2012.

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I think only Leicester and Spurs have done better in 2016 than us. That period in November and December has really cost us. And yet, we're guaranteed a top 10 finish and it's looking likely that we'll only finish as low as 8th. Hopefully, like Leicester did, we'll start the next season as we ended the last.

 

I hope you're right and I really don't know much about Leicesters transfer window at the start of the season, but is our problem that every year we do reasonably well and therefore lose our best players? Where as Leicester had a good run but as they didn't finish last season high up like Saints they didn't have to worry about losing their best players? I could be way off...

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Last year at the halfway point we had 33 points. This year we had 24. Supposing we'd achieved those 9 extra points this year, we'd be on 63 right now and breathing down the necks of City and Arsenal. If 6 of those extra points had come from beating Utd and Spurs at St Mary's, we'd be 7 points ahead of Utd, 3 behind Spurs and Leicester would have been crowned Champions this evening. Would have made for an interesting end to the season.

 

All if's, buts and tenuous hypotheticals of course.

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It's all about starting well. Whenever we have there's always this assumption we'll fall away, squad not big enough and so on. Same with other teams. I always felt a lot of teams believe it and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If you can be up there in December then you can stay there. Hopefully Leicester and to a lesser extent West Ham have shown there's no reason for the rest of us to limit our expectations and be negative.

 

I don't see why Saints couldn't get 70 points next season.

 

I look forward to the season when we have as few injuries and suspensions as Leicester have and get to pick basically our first XI for 38 games. We'd have just as much chance of winning the league as Leicester.

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I hope you're right and I really don't know much about Leicesters transfer window at the start of the season, but is our problem that every year we do reasonably well and therefore lose our best players? Where as Leicester had a good run but as they didn't finish last season high up like Saints they didn't have to worry about losing their best players? I could be way off...

 

2015/16

Players in

PLAYER FROM FEE DATE

Shinji Okazaki Mainz £7,000,000 01 Jul, 2015

N'Golo Kante Caen £5,600,000 03 Aug, 2015

Yohan Benalouane Atalanta Signed 03 Aug, 2015

Goekhan Inler Napoli £5,000,000 19 Aug, 2015

Demarai Gray Birmingham £3,500,000 04 Jan, 2016

Daniel Amartey FC Copenhagen £5,000,000 22 Jan, 2016

Total: £26,100,000

 

They certainly haven't got to worry about them leaving in the first 12 months of their contracts whilst leading the Premier League, but only 2 of those players are actually regular starters.

 

The season before they spent slightly less money on a lot more players. 3 regular starters and regular sub Ulloa came in then.

Players in

PLAYER FROM FEE DATE

Jack Barmby Man Utd Free 01 Jul, 2014

Matthew Upson Brighton Free 01 Jul, 2014

Louis Rowley Man Utd Free 19 Jul, 2014

Leonardo Ulloa Brighton £8,000,000 22 Jul, 2014

Esteban Cambiasso Inter Free 28 Aug, 2014

Danny Simpson QPR Signed 30 Aug, 2014

Tom Lawrence Man Utd Signed 01 Sep, 2014

Mark Schwarzer Chelsea Free 03 Jan, 2015

Andrej Kramaric Rijeka £9,000,000 16 Jan, 2015

Christian Fuchs Schalke Free 03 Jun, 2015

Robert Huth Stoke £3,000,000 24 Jun, 2015

 

Total: £20,000,000

 

The year before that, 2 other starters:

2013/14

Players in

PLAYER FROM FEE DATE

Zoumana Bakayogo Tranmere Free 22 Jul, 2013

Dean Hammond Southampton Free 13 Sep, 2013

Riyad Mahrez Le Havre £560,000 11 Jan, 2014

Kevin Phillips C Palace Free 15 Jan, 2014

Ben Hamer Charlton Free 22 May, 2014

Marc Albrighton Aston Villa Free 23 May, 2014

Total: £560,000

 

Amazingly they signed all of Schmeichel, Morgan, Drinkwater and Vardy in 2011/12, they've been there for over 4 years already.

 

Schlupp is a youth product with 6 years first team under his belt.

 

I think it's fair to say that only Schmeichel would have attracted much interest before this season.

Edited by The9
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