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Once Again The Media Has Ignored The Achievments Of Saints !

Most of the talk in the media this season has been about the triumphs of Leicester City and quite rightly so, but whilst the press have also salivated over Spurs & West Ham, Saints have been completely ignored.

Leicester City have received full credit for their Premier League win and that is only right and fair, but as the Foxes stormed to the title, the media also salivated over Tottenham Hotspur and to a lesser extent West Ham United.

To the London based media for most of the season they were waiting for what they saw as the the inevitable blow up of Leicester and Spurs glorious charge to their first League title in over half a century, as back up they had West Ham United, for some reason the sports media has a disproportionate amount of journalists who support West Ham to the size of the Hammers actual fanbase and that showed in the way West Ham were betrayed as the plucky East End club who have always played the game in the right way and were now going to their destiny in the Olympic Stadium.

These were the two stories that the media wanted to right although eventually they had to grit their teeth, stop patting Leicester on the head in a patronising manner and acknowledge what really happened.

Of course the reality now is that both Spurs and West Ham choked, the North London Soccer Chickens became the first team to finish third in a two horse race and the Hammers were overtaken by Saints on the final day of the season.

But in what has been an exciting season overall, little or no credit has been given to Saints and just what they have actually achieved, of course at the start of the season the press were quite happy to write us off after we lost a couple of key players again and the Daily Mail as usual liked to whip up a story every now and then about meltdown's both on and off the pitch.

But as the media praised Spurs and West Ham to the hilt for their flowing football and prayed for a Spurs title triumph and a West Ham top four finish, Ronald Koeman and his team quietly got on with the job and come the final reckoning I would say that Saints are the story of the season after Leicester City, not that anyone in the media has noticed.

All the headlines have been about Mauricio Pochettino and how he has finally turned Spurs into a club that challenges for the League, all the praise for Harry Kane and Dele Alli, no one wanted to point out that Spurs were lucky that virtually all of the potential top four challengers were having problems, that being the case with Spurs having the luck they did with injuries and suspensions, the fact that they still could not win the title is more an indictment on their season than a feather in their cap for trying so hard.

The media have failed to give Saints credit for the fact that whilst Spurs initially looked like they might catch Leicester and finally spluttered to an embarrassing ending, Saints came up on the rails and that in the second half of the season only Leicester gained more points than Saints.

In the first 19 games Leicester had 39 points meaning that in the second half of the season they gained 42 points, next up is Saints with 39 points whilst Spurs managed only 35 and West Ham a mere 33.

This perhaps emphasises just how well Saints did in the second half of the season, Leicester stormed to the title, yet Saints only gained three less points.

And those three points in some respects cost Saints dearly, for if they had gained them in a win at Manchester City then it would have been Saints and not City in the final Champions league spot, if that had happened then perhaps the press would have had no choice but to look towards St Mary's and given us credit.

So perhaps now as the season quietens down, the media will look at Saints and acclaim just what we have achieved in the past three seasons, each of which has had its issues of one sort of another, we have had more adversity than perhaps any other club in that time, yet we have still managed to overcome it and move forward.

So how good is Saints season ?

Well firstly in the Premier League era it is of course our best ever finish, whether we end it 5th or 6th after tonight and it means we have finished in the top 8 of the top flight for three consecutive seasons, a feat only achieved once in our history before, that in the Keegan era of 1980-82.

Our best ever top flight finish is 2nd in 83/84 but after that it is the 5th place of the following year, so if we do hold on to 5th this will equal our second best ever league finish and of course 6th will equal our 3rd best finish of 80/81.

The 63 points gained is again the best in the Premier League era in the top flight, back in the 80's there were 42 games played in a season so to compare we have to average it on a points per game basis.

83/84 understandably still comes out top with an average of 1.83 per game, but after that this is virtually identical to season 80/81 where the ratio then was 1.66 per game with this season just being a fraction under that.

So the message here is that this is as good a run as we have ever had in our history in terms of not only where we have finished but in consistency in doing so, if we finish in the top ten next season that would set a new club record.

Then there is what Ronald Koeman has done for this football club, no other manager in the Premier League has probably come in to a club with the squad being so decimated and with morale so low because of that.

The Dutchman has rebuilt the squad almost completely since the one that ended the season two years ago, firstly in that major rebuild in the summer of 2014 and secondly last summer where he had to lose more key players again and replace them.

So just what he has done is minor miracle and should not be underestimated, although there are few in the press that would give him too much credit.

But take a look at the League table, apart from the fact that we were the second best team in the second half of the season, there is the actual finishing points total, we finished 3 points above Liverpool who have spent far more than us and taken four of our squad in the past two years, we may finish equal with Manchester united who have again with far more resources than us spent much much more including two of our squad over the past two years.

We are only three points behind Manchester City a club with unlimited resources and who will take the final Champions League spot, that is how near we came to truly hitting the big time.

We are only seven points behind Spurs who have tried to unsettle our players and indeed did so at the start of the season with Victor Wanyama a period that cost us dearly both in terms of the Europa League and Premier League points.

We are only eight points behind Arsenal in second place, again a club with massive resources and the ability to make big signings including some of our squad in recent years.

This is the magnitude of what Southampton Football Club has achieved this season, every Saints supporter should be proud and virtually every member of the national media should be ashamed for their inability to see past the big clubs and of course Tottenham and West Ham.


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