I don't want to watch this terrible defending anymore

There were a bunch of good games yesterday, so you might wonder why I’m not focusing on one of them instead of being such a Negative Nancy. I’m sorry, I am just really sick of watching Southampton do whatever this is.

I think this is the worst goal conceded in the Premier League this season, competing with several other ones where Southampton tries to play out of the back aggressively, but gives the ball away, leaving their keeper alone in a 3-on-1 situation. You can watch all 5 goals the Saints conceded to Chelsea here if you wish.

A few weeks ago, Ted wondered if Russell Martin is trying to get fired on purpose. He’s called out individual player mistakes and deflected blame for poor results constantly. It would be one thing if he spoke positively about the club’s playing philosophy and developing players for the long-term (see: Kieran McKenna), but he’s constantly taking an adversarial tone towards… well, everybody.

Southampton are currently the only team in the Premier League conceding over 2 xG per 90 minutes. The team one spot above them in the table, Wolverhampton Wanderers, have conceded more than 8 fewer xG through 14 games this season. The Saints’ defense is bordering on unprofessional.

I think the radar isn’t actually a great visual representation of how bad Southampton is at defending because of how far they are below the threshold for registering a visual on the xG conceded spoke. All of Wolves, Ipswich, Leicester and West Ham are that bad too, and they’re all defending much better than Martin’s side.

In many Premier League seasons, I could buy the argument that it wasn’t even worth changing managers for Southampton at this point if you thought Martin was still the best man for the job in the Championship. Generally, a team with 5 points from 14 games and a -19 goal differential does not have a good chance of staying up. But this does not appear to be a particularly strong relegation race.

17th place Crystal Palace are better than their current standing, but they’re still on just 12 points from 14 games. Leicester, the team above them, are running a bit lucky at the moment. Understat has them on 11 expected points, relative to their current 13.

A point per game is usually good enough to stay up, and last year 17th place Nottingham Forest were a touch below that with 36 (before their PSR deduction). Right now, we’re on pace for the team in that spot finishing on around 33 points. Southampton would need about 1.1 points per game for the rest of the season to feel like they’ve got a shot at staying up, and 1.2 probably gets the job done.

I don’t expect them to do that even with a good managerial hire and a quality January signing. Any reasonable person would predict Southampton to be relegated at this point. But safety isn’t so unattainable that they shouldn’t try, and step one towards trying to reach that goal is a managerial change. Probably towards a manager who’s a bit more pragmatic than Martin.

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