Martin Samuel p*sses in our pool again.....

I thought the article OK, nothing to get our knickers in a twist over. My take on what he wrote was basically that it was good that RK came in and started afresh, an incumbent manager would have taken the sales badly. That he hopes the board don't think its easy and feel they can repeat it next year with the same outcome. We've had a relatively easy set of fixtures, but were unlucky to lose to Liverpool, however Swansea and west ham have had some good results so to win away was a good result. There were obviously a few claims that are open to debate, but overall a pretty reasonable article.

Personally, my main gripe would be the assumption that Read and co would consider adopting this as a business model as opposed to managing an awkward set of circumstances really well. But I've read and heard a lot more pony from saints fans than Samuel writes here.

Basically "if we sell all our best players and lose our manager again next summer, we might not bounce back so well."

To paraphrase:

We might do a Man Utd if we keep on hiring Dutch managers and replacing half the team.

To paraphrase:

 

We might do a Man Utd if we keep on hiring Dutch managers and replacing half the team.

The players that went are now on the whole getting **** from the fans at the clubs they have gone to. Reason for this IMHO is that our midfield flattered them. Samuels and his ilk couldn't spot a whore in a whorehouse. ?

A decent article from a very average journalist who is, as Alpine suggests, one of the big club sycophants. I'm just a little tickled that Alpine is berating someone for writing us off during the Summer shenanigans.

It is very very simple journalism and I honestly don't know how these guys get away with it. But he's stating the obvious and is right.

 

1. We sold at the right time for the best prices

2. We've got a good manager who can gel new players

3. The board shouldn't think it's always like this and we can't go on selling half our team every season

 

So yes, he's right. But it's hardly rocket science.

I had intended to post a link to this article under the heading "Martin Samuel tells Saints Board not to run with Scissors"

Is it though?

 

Shaw - brought through

Chambers - brought through

Lallana - brought through

Lambert - brought through

Lovren - bought

 

Samuel's argument that Lallana and Lambert were brought through by him, is that they got into the England squad. Maybe this isn't really applicable to Lambert, but Lallana last season was a lot better than the season before. Same really for Shaw. Chambers - MP is considered to have brought him through by giving him his debut. And Lovren he bought - apparently.

Shaw--starter when MP arrived, sometimes tried to replace with Chambers

Chambers--MP brought through, but was always considered top prospect by team

Lallana--Adkins made team captain had a somewhat better year under MP

Lambert--MP tried to replace with Osvaldo, then changed his mind

Lovren--bought when MP was manager, but we don't know if it was MP's idea or team scouting idea

No doubt MP did a good job for us, but crediting him for all five of these players is nonsense.

It's a load of bull as it's based on the premise that it was our choice to sell the players, when it wasn't. He says it would have been different if they'd been sold out from under Pochettino, ignoring the fact that MP leaving was the catalyst for a lot of the upheaval. He says we shouldn't put a price on Morgan's head, we should just say no to any offers. Um, isn't that what we did?

It was our choice at the end of the day

Its not really a slag fest against the club to be honest, and realistically I agree with everything he says. Theres no team in the world that wouldnt sell at certain prices and especially ourselves will be moments where we are forced into a corner. The club has done excellently to do what it did over the summer. But lets not kid ourselves that it wasnt a tightrope walk, we got away with it, would we do it again ? Who knows ? Hopefully that is it for major departures, a couple is acceptable but to the level that it happened over the summer ? No, it cant happen again.

This is a man who recently wrote an article criticising FFP and claiming it prevented clubs such as us (I think he directly named us as well) from keeping players and competing towards the top of the league, and yet now he slates the board for selling players

 

He's a moron

I think this is the article you were referring to.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2609004/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Why-Southampton-sign-stars-like-Christian-Benteke-Robin-van-Persie-John-Terry-instead-sell-sell-sell.html

Samuel is the kind of lummox that was picked last in P.E. at school and has spent the rest of his life trying to compensate. Sports writer of the year my arse.

Samuel is the kind of lummox that was picked last in P.E. at school and has spent the rest of his life trying to compensate. Sports writer of the year my arse.

He wheezes getting a sentence out and don't think he will live long as looks like heart attack material.

The article is accurate.. Samuel is just re-iterating what all sensible fans know; in that we have started the season well, but have had an easier start than most teams.

In terms of players leaving, we all know MP made some of our players look better than they are in another team set up.. so we were raided and its to the club's credit that we have a team that can compete at the top level again.

Really? So Liverpool away was an easy start, West Ham away was an easy start, Swansea away was an easy start? Why can't people accept that we have made a good start and that there are no easy games in the Premiership.

That said though, I agree that the premise of what he writes is utter crap, possibly the easiest article he has ever written.

'If a club keeps selling the majority of its 11 and its best players and manager there is a strong chance it will fail'

You dont say Samuals

What I will say though is any comparison between us, athletico, newcastle and leeds is tired and frankly incorrect, the other clubs were forced into it through financial requirements, there were differing reasons for us and we reinvested well.

An outsiders take on the matter...

http://thepremierleagueowl.com/southampton-should-be-embraced-rather-than-belittled/

An outsiders take on the matter...

 

http://thepremierleagueowl.com/southampton-should-be-embraced-rather-than-belittled/

Now THAT is a damn good article.

Samuel is the kind of lummox that was picked last in P.E. at school and has spent the rest of his life trying to compensate. Sports writer of the year my arse.

Sums him up quite nicely.

The snidey wee 5hite.

We are only 5 games into the season, a lot can go wrong between now and May.

OMFG that is such a bad article, desperately trying to make a story out of nothing - it's also deeply patronising. Do people honestly believe that the board are thinking we can sell off half the 1st team every year and survive?? Jesus, give them some credit - what a load of bullsh1t. What the **** is all that about Leeds and Wimbledon!!

It's the sort of thing you'd write if you were bitterly jealous, like a carefully crafted preemptive "told you so".

The whole assumption of that article is that the board have a plan based on flogging half the first team every summer. I never got the feeling this summer that the board wanted to go down that path but felt backed into a corner by certain players I really doubt they plan on going through another summer like the one we've just had. On that basis the whole article seems a bit pointless to me.

An outsiders take on the matter...

 

http://thepremierleagueowl.com/southampton-should-be-embraced-rather-than-belittled/

Now THAT is a damn good article.

Sums it up perfectly. Hope Samuel reads that.

It's just a weird article to write, since nobody has suggested we should sell half our team every year. Not really sure who he's addressing it to.

I think everyone (Saints fans or otherwise) is also pretty on board with the idea we won't end up finishing 2nd at the end of the season, so suggesting our "luck will inevitably run out" is a bit trivial.

An outsiders take on the matter...

 

http://thepremierleagueowl.com/southampton-should-be-embraced-rather-than-belittled/

Good read, thanks for posting.

Samuels is an arse (imho) - perhaps only surpassed as a heap of arse but the **** rag he writes for... but then again I am biased. But apart from his assumption that the current board ..could/might make a habit 'selling and replacing' its a fair assumption that should you avoid the constant change - he is right in that have we not all been schooled in the following? a) continuity is key, b) there are bigger risks associated with new recruits than sticking with the players you know c) even good players can't always jell to make a team... and if there was ever a club that has shown periodically that you can achieve mores as a team, than as a collection of stars its us. The problem we have is that irrespective of what the board would 'like' to do - should we have a great season, how many will 'want to leave for bigger and better things beyond the control of the board' the moment the 'big club' come calling?.... Whilst we (and the board) continue to accept that 'there is nothing clubs can do' when players want to leave - nothing will change, and if we end up getting replacements wrong, it can be doom. There needs to be a shift - something MUST change to provide more of a balance so that clubs are not held to ransom by agents and players the moment they get a sniff of something they perceive as better... or the club needs to deliver on its ambition...

I agree with him frankly, I've said consistently that the big worry for me is that the board have the idea to make such wholesale changes every year based on financial considerations.

Well, I hope they sell you - a very poor influence in our dressing room!

Well, I hope they sell you - a very poor influence in our dressing room!

I agree with him frankly, I've said consistently that the big worry for me is that the board have the idea to make such wholesale changes every year based on financial considerations.

And this is based on what exactly?

And this is based on what exactly?

Baseless worry, nothing more.

Samuels job is to help sell newspapers and with Saints currently sitting second of course we are newsworthy; as Keown said on Saturday MotD "the story goes on" meaning the last five years of seemingly endless progress from the depths of League 1 to now almost the top of the PL despite the many managerial and personnel changes that people decried at the time but none of which in fact have arrested that continuous progress.

So there is a story to tell and for football fans the country over our situation continues to be one of the hotter topics of football gossip, not to mention the fact that we have done it all against the odds by playing real good attacking football. Finding a new angle by introducing a dose of negativity rather than drooling over the current success has stirred the **** for sure as he knew it would and now we are all talking about it. His job done, everyone of social media will be talking about Samuels.

Baseless worry, nothing more.

FWIW I was highly critical of the early season situation, and a lot of the worry I accumulated at the time was because I was hearing worrying things from the training ground.

What I can say is that its all seemingly turned to the positive now, the board have a grip on things and I genuinely have no worries for the future, and again, this is backed up by what Im hearing from the training ground.

I can't say I fundamentally disagree with the notion that repeatedly ripping the guts out of the team each summer would be a bad idea. Some of the examples aren't comparable though.

I can't say I fundamentally disagree with the notion that repeatedly ripping the guts out of the team each summer would be a bad idea. Some of the examples aren't comparable though.

Bolton did it for a while with short term deals for top level pros who were on a downhill slope (eg Djorkaeff, Bobic, Campo) and Wigan seemed to be doing something similar for their entire spell in the top flight until it finally caught up with them.

Samuel is a clown, but even in his stupidity, he may have stumbled upon a harsh reality that we all have to face.

Can we, Should we hold onto our players that are wanted by bigger clubs?.

Ye,s this years could be a one off, we showed the world we had talented players and they came with their cheque books open. It proved smart business to sell under such circumstances (players wanting/insisting to leave).

I have been openly optimistic of our club and board after the ML era began. I still am, but with this optimism has to come some semblance of rational thought.

If we continue to show the PL that we can push for the top six, then we have the players they will want to buy, spydy, vic, clyne, tadic, jrod are already realistic targets for CL clubs with deep pockets and high wages. Even our new hero, RK maybe tempted like Poch to cash in on a one season hit and move to a CL club (If Barcelona want their alumni back, it would be hard to turn down).

It will mean another year of rebuilding and finding new players who are just as talented and cost far less. Still not gloom and doom for me, because of the wealth of football talent in the world, I think we have a greater pool of players to choose from than ever before, world wide coaching and training methods are improving. Not everyone can fit in the top CL teams, and we are shaping up to be the next best group!

The manager/coach makes a huge difference, he is responsible for making us tick, wrong manager will mean poor playing style and poor players being bought. Lets hope RK can stay for awhile and become a Saints legend, building teams that constantly challenge the status quo until we can one day stand shoulder to shoulder with them. To do that bit of magic, we need to grow our fan base, we have to be the new hot team that newcomers to the biggest game in the world want to be a Saint! We are on the right track, many are falling in love with SFC and the way we play, our march up the leagues, and the so called fire sale of our best players being turned around into another successful season without them. It has many football lovers rooting for us to crack that glass ceiling.

So if these sales do happen, I will still be positive because our board has brought us this far, I will not doubt them when the next big test of our clubs resolves happens next transfer period.

What goes up comes down! Not rocket science from the big hairy twa t.

For all the bleating and whinging about what a clown Samuels is, he's not that much of a clown as all you lot are reading and discussing his articles, which is the point of them.

For all the bleating and whinging about what a clown Samuels is, he's not that much of a clown as all you lot are reading and discussing his articles, which is the point of them.

Reading it on here yes, but wouldn't spend money on that rag.

Reading it on here yes, but wouldn't spend money on that rag.

I would imagine quite a few hundred people clicked on the link, which in today's money is almost like buying the paper.

The whole article does seem somewhat predicated on the notion that the Board will look to do the same next summer, when there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. It *could* happen of course, but I am pretty sure that what we saw was a one-off based on the fact that the players that left felt there was a change of ambition at the club because of what they were told by Cortese... any new players coming in to the club now will know exactly what the clubs intentions/ambitions are and so are much less likely to leave IMO.

 

So yes, the article is correct in much of what it says except perhaps for recognising the unique circumstances that led to those departures, that was almost certainly a one-off unlikely to be repeated.

I'm not sure the Board wanted to sell off this summer. It was surely the players thinking they were now Champions League club quality and were determined to go. The first 5 games of this season should be a warning to our existing players that they are actually better off here than being a bench-warmer or left out or struggling in their sides, and hopefully no-one will stick their head above the parapet in 2015 and ask to leave. The grass is NOT greener elsewhere.

If you subscribe to the idea of the multiverse, or quantum universes, (a good many physicists,including Stephen Hawking support at least one of the multiverse theories) there will be a universe somewhere where Saints will go on to win the title this season. Whether it will be in this universe that we inhabit, we shall have to wait and see. But where it happens, surely players would not want to leave the club, on the contrary, Southampton would be an attractive team to play for and of course, would need to recruit for next season's Champions League. Maybe Samuels already inhabits an alternative reality and gets a bit confused.

For all the bleating and whinging about what a clown Samuels is, he's not that much of a clown as all you lot are reading and discussing his articles, which is the point of them.

Many people (seemingly me included despite having you on ignore) read your posts in a similar way with a similar view. In order to form the opinion that Samuels is a clown it is usually necessary to read said posts. Personally don't think he is a clown, just a very poor, ill-informed, stating the bleeding obvious fat **** of a journo hack.

Many people (seemingly me included despite having you on ignore) read your posts in a similar way with a similar view. In order to form the opinion that Samuels is a clown it is usually necessary to read said posts. Personally don't think he is a clown, just a very poor, ill-informed, stating the bleeding obvious fat **** of a journo hack.

First off How can you quote my post when you 'claim' to have me on ignore?

Secondly, He's done his job very well then, got people reading his articles and talking about them and no doubt been very well paid as a result. I doubt he cares someone in ohio is calling him names on an Internet forum about it. Remind me who is the clown again?

Looks like a few fans have hit a nerve with Samuel after his previous article...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2769078/Southampton-emulated-Manchester-United-s-Class-92-instead-sell.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

A lot of drivel on there from both fans and Samuel.

I still have difficulty believing any Saints fan with a memory would have given the original the time of day.

The fact that he has to qualify this one says it all.

Looks like a few fans have hit a nerve with Samuel after his previous article...

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2769078/Southampton-emulated-Manchester-United-s-Class-92-instead-sell.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

 

A lot of drivel on there from both fans and Samuel.

I think there is a surprisingly small amount of drivel there by internet standards. I think the problem with Samuels initial article was that he made a point of stating the obvious--you can sell five of your best players every year and survive indefinitely in the BPL. Of course, no one seriously thinks that that is the Southampton Board's plan. As a result, Samuels article sounded like an attack on Southampton when it wasn't intended that way. But when you tell someone who just went through an unpleasant experience that turned out better than expected that the should not count on things always working out that well, it sounds condescending.

What goes up comes down! Not rocket science from the big hairy twa t.

I'd think that this is quite an important part of Rocket science...

In the wake of a extraordinary summer do we access the clubs subsequent success as proof positive that SFC is a exceptionally well run organisation, or perhaps have we been exceptionally fortunate in that Koeman and all those new players have adapted to the demands of the Premier League so very quickly?

A bit of both probably, but I can't help but think that what we have achieved so far this season is the exception to the rule and should we lose the manager and sell off most of our best players again next summer then we may not get away with it a second time.

Come next summer, if not before, you can bet your bottom dollar that the rest of the Premier League will be knocking on our door again trying to sign every good player we have because SFC has now gained a reputation of being the ultimate 'selling club' in this division. I can only suggest that if we don't find a way of resisting that pressure (within the bounds of reason) then it's only a matter of time before that lands us in deep trouble.

Looks like a few fans have hit a nerve with Samuel after his previous article...

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2769078/Southampton-emulated-Manchester-United-s-Class-92-instead-sell.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

 

A lot of drivel on there from both fans and Samuel.

"I’m not sure I understand the first sentence, but if you’re getting filthy skate I’d change your fishmongers."

:lol:

In the wake of a extraordinary summer do we access the clubs subsequent success as proof positive that SFC is a exceptionally well run organisation, or perhaps have we been exceptionally fortunate in that Koeman and all those new players have adapted to the demands of the Premier League so very quickly?

 

A bit of both probably, but I can't help but think that what we have achieved so far this season is the exception to the rule and should we lose the manager and sell off most of our best players again next summer then we may not get away with it a second time.

 

Come next summer, if not before, you can bet your bottom dollar that the rest of the Premier League will be knocking on our door again trying to sign every good player we have because SFC has now gained a reputation of being the ultimate 'selling club' in this division. I can only suggest that if we don't find a way of resisting that pressure (within the bounds of reason) then it's only a matter of time before that lands us in deep trouble.

I don't think anyone disagrees with the notion that such upheaval is unlikely to be a good thing a second time... but the fact that Samuel overlooked the fact that the departures were primarily down to our chairman and manager leaving, having both contributed to the progress and expectations of the players who left.

His whole original article was based around the board thinking that it might be a good idea to do similar next year purely from a financial point of view when, whilst we did well financially, and Cortese may have put us in a position where it was needed, it was almost certainly a one-off. He didn't even touch on this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2769078/Southampton-emulated-Manchester-United-s-Class-92-instead-sell.html

Basically selectively takes quotes from across the summer, takes time to take them all apart on his own terms and twisting the context - all in article where the fan's in question are openly attacked with no option for defence. All of it demonstrating he hates saints. All of it utter bull twaddle as well.

"attacks" is a bit of a strong word. He's responding to criticism he's been sent.

You could spin it the other way and say he was openly "attacked" with no option for defence until he wrote this.

I don't like the guy but to say he's attacking our fans is extreme.