Southampton managed to turn around their season just before Christmas and although Ralph Hasenhuttl has changed a lot of things to produce success, there is little doubt that his decision to drop Angus Gunn from the starting line-up has produced remarkable results.

The 24-year-old started Southampton's opening 10 league matches, but kept just two clean sheets and conceded a remarkable 25 goals, including nine in that fabled defeat to Leicester.

He was dropped immediately after, and rightly so. Alex McCarthy took his place and although the Saints were still winless for the next three, they followed that up with a run of just two defeats in ten league games.

Removing the sometimes error-prone and shaky Gunn clearly gave confidence to the defence, and it is little surprise that Southampton are now seven points clear of danger.

To evidence just how bad Gunn has been, he has averaged a rating of just 6.19 on WhoScored, and compared to his last few seasons his performances have dropped off significantly.

According to FBRef, his save percentage rate has fallen from 62% in 2018/19 to just 56% this term, which means that almost half of the shots taken against him have found their target.

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Such a statistic left the Saints very vulnerable and put a tremendous amount of pressure on their defenders to prevent shots on goal, which can be a very difficult task.

Since McCarthy has come in he has stabilised the back four with a 68% save rate, and his experience in commanding his area has been key to picking up points in difficult games against Chelsea and Leicester.

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To put things into perspective, the Saints took just eight points from Gunn's 10 games and were left in the relegation zone as a result. Since his omission they have transformed things with 26 points in 19 games, so it is clear that Gunn has been a major flop in this campaign.

Meanwhile, a 2009 signing my Alan Pardew has proved to be one of Saints' best buys in recent years...