At the start of every season there seems to always be at least one team on which the majority of pundits and the analytics disagree. This year that team was Southampton, and it is no fluke they are currently sitting second in the Premier League table.
Conventional wisdom suggests that a team selling five of their best players who made up the core of their squad in the previous campaign will struggle to succeed—especially if they also lose their highly respected manager in the same summer.
That of course is exactly what happened to Southampton with Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers all being sold, and manager Mauricio Pochettino joining Tottenham.
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However, looking at the transfers on an aggregate level it is hard to say that those players have a combined value of £92 million. In which case selling them for that combined fee was good business from Southampton’s perspective.
The Saints then poached manager Ronald Koeman from Dutch side Feyenoord and he came in to the job making a series of very smart transfer decisions. In fact so smart it’s hard to see how other teams from around Europe passed on the players Southampton picked up.
Koeman brought 29-year-old striker Graziano Pelle with him from Feyenoord. Pelle was the second highest scorer in the Eredivisie last year with 23 goals and had a blistering scoring rate of 0.8 goals per 90 minutes.
Southampton also bought Dusan Tadic, the man who led the Eredivisie in assists last season and averaged four key passes (passes that lead directly to a shot) per 90 minutes, again the highest in the league.
To make up for the losses at the back Southampton made very good use of the loan system by bringing in Ryan Bertrand from Chelsea and Toby Alderweireld from Atletico Madrid.
Since then everything has been smooth sailing for Southampton. While Pochettino has had a rocky start at Tottenham and many of the summer departures have struggled at their new clubs, Southampton have shot up to second in the Premier League, conceding only five goals all season. They’ve achieved all of this while playing an attractive, fun style of football. With the possible exception of rival Portsmouth fans, it’s hard not to fall in love with this Southampton team.
The question is will the trend continue?
One of the things that advanced statistics are most useful for is sorting out luck from high-quality underlying performances. There are several statistics that show a team is playing well—as the season progresses some of these tend to differ among teams and others tend to even out among teams. The ones that diverge are more indicative of a team’s underlying ability than ones that lead to short term runs of good form but even out over the course of season.
The first thing to look at is shots. Consistently taking more shots than opposing teams is one of the best indicators of whether a team is really playing well, or just getting lucky. We can use a statistic called Total Shots Ratio (TSR) to look a team’s shot dominance. TSR (or Corsi as it is called in hockey) is just the ratio of shots a team takes relative to the number of shots their opponents take.
For example, a team that takes exactly the same number of shots as their opponents will have a TSR of 0.5. A team that takes more shots than their opponents will have a TSR higher than 0.5, and a team that takes fewer shots than their opponents will have a TSR less than 0.5
Southampton’s TSR so far this season is 0.63, which is the highest of any team in the Premier League. Even Chelsea, the team everyone has been raving about so far, only has a TSR of 0.57. To put this in perspective, when Aston Villa started the season with 10 points from four games they only had a TSR of 0.39, an immediate warning sign that their form wasn’t likely to continue.
One of the problems with just using shots is we know that all shots are not created equally. The only way to score is by actually putting shots on target. We can narrow down the quality of shots by looking at a team’s Shots on Target Ratio (SoTR). SoTR is the exact same as TSR, but only includes shots on target.
Southampton’s SoTR is actually an even more impressive 0.72, again the highest so far in the Premier League. Chelsea trails in second in this category with a SoTR of 0.64. Any team that, like Southampton, takes seven shots on target for every three they concede is going to win a lot of matches.
There is a caveat on Southampton and Chelsea’s relative TSR and SoTRs. Teams that are tied or trailing tend to shoot more than teams that are winning. This idea is called Game State Effects. When a team needs a goal they are going to be shooting more, and usually from worse positions than when they are content to sit on a lead. With this idea in mind it makes sense that Southampton have a slightly better TSR and SoTR than Chelsea since Chelsea have spent 541 minutes leading games this season, while Southampton have only spent 397 minutes leading.
Finally, we come to one of the best indicators of luck in football, save percentage. Teams face all sorts of different shots from teams of all different skill levels. We’ve all seen the type of game when the ball just won’t seem to go in the net no matter how many shots a team takes. If a team has a few of these games in a row they might get lucky and win more points than their actual performances deserve. Once again Aston Villa’s start to the season is a perfect example of having won a few of these games back to back.
Southampton have a 79 percent save percentage, the highest in the league and well above the league average of 66 percent. So maybe even with their high shots ratios, Southampton are still getting a little lucky.
Looking at the overall picture it is clear that 11 games in, Southampton are one of the best teams in the league and deserve to be where they are. Their high save percentage suggests they are getting a few lucky bounces here and there, but don’t expect any major slide down the table from the Saints. Ronald Koeman has put together a very good team on the South Shore of England and they are here to stay.
Sam Gregory is soccer analytics writer based in Montreal. Follow him on Twitter