Les Reed Video Interview (From 2 Years Ago)

I watched this video with Jim Lucas interviewing Les Reed again recently. It's from nearly 2 years ago to the day (10 Jun 2014)

This was from in-between Poch leaving & Koeman arriving. It's quite topical as it puts into focus much of exactly what's going on now: Losing a coach, finding preferred candidates, player recruitment, how they find their preferred candidate etc.

Worth a re-watch if you have the time.

Interesting to watch that again. As you allude to, it could almost have been recorded 'today' and still be relevant.

I then watched Koeman's first interview. Interesting the number of times he mentions that how impressed he is with the club's policy to fast track players from the academy and how this philosophy was one of the main things that attracted him to the club.... I wonder how that panned out....

Interesting to watch that again. As you allude to, it could almost have been recorded 'today' and still be relevant.

 

I then watched Koeman's first interview. Interesting the number of times he mentions that how impressed he is with the club's policy to fast track players from the academy and how this philosophy was one of the main things that attracted him to the club.... I wonder how that panned out....

 

I suppose it's difficult to balance. I can't remember what we spent in that 1st season, but it was was somewhere in the region of 70m / 80m replacing all those players wasn't it?

I guess we'll never know whether he was right/wrong to not give the younger players like Gallagher/Hesketh/Reed more of a chance, but in his defence, not playing them didn't work out too badly for him.

Pretty obvious Gallagher isn't good enough and Hesketh not physically capable of sustained PL football.

The use of Reed is the only thing you could level at Koeman re use of young players. He isn't going to pick someone who is inferior to a senior player.

Interesting to watch that again. As you allude to, it could almost have been recorded 'today' and still be relevant.

 

I then watched Koeman's first interview. Interesting the number of times he mentions that how impressed he is with the club's policy to fast track players from the academy and how this philosophy was one of the main things that attracted him to the club.... I wonder how that panned out....

 

I think we've reached a point where we take everything Ronnie says/said with a mountain sized pinch of salt.....

From what Les says there we had 40 odd serious applicants, they got that down to 4 and all 4 were on their original shortlist anyway. He puts this down to how attractive the job and the club were. Well, 2 years later we are even more attractive with the added bonus of European football and an established top half team.

No pressure.

From what Les says there we had 40 odd serious applicants, they got that down to 4 and all 4 were on their original shortlist anyway. He puts this down to how attractive the job and the club were. Well, 2 years later we are even more attractive with the added bonus of European football and an established top half team.

 

No pressure.

There might be a train of thought (Devil's Advocated, granted) which says that our subsequent success in the last 2 years could make us less attractive to prospective managers as the chances of them being able to 'take the team to the next level' are less than it was for Koeman (and Pochettino before him)...."Glass Ceiling, blah, blah, etc".

In other words, there's perhaps a greater risk to a manager's reputation if he takes over us now than if he had done so two years ago. Anything less than top 6 would be seen by some (rightly or wrongly) as a failure.

Very interesting to hear Les's words again from two years ago. He talks a good upbeat talk and one can't fault him for that. Due diligence is such a lengthy process for us fans to bear, though it has to be done. I wasn't so calm then, I admit.

Thanks for that, SuperSaint

There might be a train of thought (Devil's Advocated, granted) which says that our subsequent success in the last 2 years could make us less attractive to prospective managers as the chances of them being able to 'take the team to the next level' are less than it was for Koeman (and Pochettino before him)...."Glass Ceiling, blah, blah, etc".

 

In other words, there's perhaps a greater risk to a manager's reputation if he takes over us now than if he had done so two years ago. Anything less than top 6 would be seen by some (rightly or wrongly) as a failure.

You might be over thinking it slightly! There will be a very long line of candidates eager for the opportunity this sort of job only come up every two years!