Saints Ahoy - Game 27 and the 2024 Season to Date

Game 27 was a dismal loss to Warrington. 

Dismal because Warrington, and even more dismal because the only points that Saints scored was from a penalty. It seemed to be that sort of game (https://www.saintsrlfc.com/2024/09/07/saints-beaten-by-warrington-at-the-halliwell-jones-stadium/), with lots of their points also coming from penalties and 3 yellow cards - 2 for them, 1 for us. 

Yup, the team with fewer cards lost.

The "who is present together when Saints concede in game 27" matrix indicates quite clearly who the "missing" player was, enveloping Matty Lees in one group even though his line is paler than the players around him. 

Yes, I wonder who got the yellow card! Looking at the season to date: 

When do Saints score?  

Bennison is now equal to Welsby in the "who scores for Saints?" bar chart. Game 27 was when Welsby made his return from injury. Who is present when Saints score, up to game 27?  

To my mind, the interesting thing here is you've got the three present the most (Blake, Welsby and Dodd), followed by one slowly declining cluster (Mbye, Hurrell, Sironen, Percival, Bell, Lomax, Clark, Makinson, Lees, Whitley, Mata'utia and Delaney) then a drop to the bottom cluster who also slowly reduce in number present as you go down the list (Batchelor, Bennison, Knowles, Davies, Ritson, Stephens, Robertson, Walmsley, Wingfield, Paasi, Burns, Royle, Vaughan and Whitby). 

In the matrix of who plays together most often when Saints score, now updated to game 27, the top left border of Whitley, Bennison and Batchelor, first seen in game 26 is still there.  

The network graph looks like this: When do Saints concede?  

The "who is present when Saints concede" chart has a very different shape to the "who is present when Saints score" bar chart. While that has three distinct sections, this chart has Blake and Lomax in the lead (because they have played a lot of minutes), then a slowly degrading curve covering most of the other players, then a small section of the infrequently present players at the bottom.  

The concede matrix looks very similar to last time, except fuzzier once more. It's interesting that as there's more data, the boundaries between the groups get weaker, then they suddenly pop back into strong colours, then weaken again (and so on). Another interesting this is that, although the shape is similar, some of the players have moved section e.g. Ritson has moved from the middle group to the darkest group, in just one game. The network graph is the same shape but has shifted about 15 degrees clockwise. Last time I suggested that players were either being sucked into the centre or moving out. It was being sucked in because they're all much closer now. Despite the piles of data, there are still changes, and the players brought in as other players were injured are now clearly part of the main group due to number of matches played. It's been interesting to watch that exchange of players coming in and out of the matchday squad. 

There may be a slight delay as I work on the Women's Euro 2025 network graphs. I am already seeing some interesting patterns.