Holmes_and_Watson

An early board vote of confidence in for Selles. 🙂

No bad thing to face a lifetime of sporting misery at such a young age. It's character building, and will help him overcome obstacles in other areas of life. Just be sure that he doesn't develop such an underdog chip on his shoulder that he considers PE teaching in Wales.🙂

With her in charge, we'd not get relegated. We'll have declared independence from the oppressive English Premier League. 🙂

Booze

We're more of a "May the farce be with you," sort of club. 🙂

Well, that teaches me not to even read along the line. The ref rightly blowing for a lazy post there. 🙂

Williams said that the dressing room had several players, with lots of Premier League experience in it. He and Ryan Shawcross were very different types of centre half. They expected Jones to at least tell them which of the approaches he preferred, and to get them working towards that. Williams said that instead, Jones said he wasn't going to coach players at that level. The Stoke players just looked at each other and wondered what he was there for. Now Jones may we'll have just meant that players at Premier League level should already know the basics. But Williams went on to say that Jones backed off of making any of those decisions all through his spell, struggled to deal with the players, and that the tactics were confused. Sadly a template for what we got.

Based on my in depth knowledge of only hearing it yesterday, Parker's results since taking over at Brugge look to be really poor. Lost yesterday too, although in Europe, I think. Quick peek shows 1 win in 8.

From JM's perspective, he's being asked to take a short term deal, with a very likely relegation to add to his CV at the end of it, and have possibly no chance to recover from that with a promotion season. That's a substantial personal, reputational risk. Not to mention money he may lose from his Leeds pay off. He can look at his RB, premier League and career record with some pride. And he can point out that if we were giving NJ a 3.5 year deal, based on that experience level, then he's at least worth that. Oh, and he'll have to work with Selles (who, even if good, may be a distracting voice from the messages needed to drive home JM's tactics to keep us up) and put up with repeated requests for 5 at the back and various "genius" Rasmus plans. From Saints' side, as noted, there's the cost. Lots of managers get payoffs, but it's a big burden to be paying off 3 managers while also paying your current one. In the end, they weren't convinced enough with JM's record to commit. How much the sting of the NJ recruitment has unsettled them, and their faith in their own ability, we don't know. They may well have other options in the works. Although with the JM ones being fairly advanced, you wonder just how far any of those are. Selles is clearly not their first option, which he and all the squad will know. While we can hope Selles does really well, he's not got anywhere near the track record of JM. A caretaker type role while the club work away at a replacement, is just as likely to see us limp towards the drop.

Random pros and cons. Brought in by the club who highly rate him. There were hints that had Ralph's time ended more naturally, he might be in the frame. Possibly part of a project based succession plan, that would see the next assistant coming in take over here, or at another SR club. SR 's recruitment choices have taken a bit of a knock though. It's difficult to know what we'll get. He may be liked and respected. But that's a lot easier, if you're not calling the shots. Being too nice might even be to the detriment of the squad, if they needed consistent critical feedback from the whole coaching team. But respect is a must for him to take over. As noted, he's been very much a part of two very poor managerial spells. However, we did briefly look to be a little more defensively solid. That was one of the things he was brought in for. SR not bringing in a striker, and selling Romeu, renders a lot of that moot. Without an attacking outlet, or midfield cover the team is not likely to do well. He did offer Ralph and NJ feedback. We'll find out how much of this was useful, but ignored, and how much made a difference, in due course. Not being the man of either manager could have been either divisive or a much needed independent voice. We don't know. At least there was some separation between him and managers that were not/ no longer working out. He's got no managerial experience of note, and stepping up offers loads of new challenges. The squad are going to have to respect and support the changes too. However, he has been coaching premier League players for a while. NJ and co seemed to have some difficulty in dealing with players at this level. He's still left with the same, although recently reinforced squad, as any other incoming manager would have. Not something to expect miracles from. He'll have a lot of familiarity with them, and will have already made a lot of choices. The players may we'll know what those are too. We may get a gem just waiting to step out into managerial life. Or we may get someone who can't take the step up and a continuation of our terrible season. SR were clearly looking at other people, so we'll see how long this caretaker role goes. We need every win we can get, so I can only hope the manager we needed was with us all the time. As unlikely as that might seem.

I think my Saintsweb parental control setting is going to block that. 🙂

No

Trade

This week, I have been mostly implementing a dynamic gegenpress. 🙂

Cracker

False alarm.

With City sanctions looming, could we also have P for Pep as a likely target? 🙂

I like the use of ass there, as opposed to arse. Marsch buy in already there. 🙂 At this stage, a kick in any extremity might ruin what shreds of morale they have left. Marsch's firm positivity might be the better option. I'd like to think we've got a group that are hurt badly, and do look at themselves. At the same time I think we've got a group who badly need direction and confidence. RalphBall is not for the independently minded. Add in lots of youth and players new to this league and level, and they need to be shown the way. If the above is wrong, then happy to help clear furniture out of the way of Jesse's butt kicking run up. 🙂

A twig of hope? 🙂

Ralph got a tune out of most of it for a while. And Marsch plays a system with some similar foundations. So that's a branch to cling to in the stormy relegation seas ahead. 🙂

Sorry to everyone waiting for CB Fry's next post. I've not finished programming it in yet. 🙂

It's clear from all the other forums and former players that, despite reflection, he couldn't implement any of the hard lessons learnt after his time at Stoke. He talked about being himself in glowing terms. That turned out to be the case with all the traits he would have wanted to move away from too. As it stands, he can certainly do a job driving a L1 side. Any success they have should be together, rather than him jumping ship. That way, if he gets promoted with them, he won't struggle to impose his ideas on "better" players. Due to the premier League platform, he will find it harder, as future players/ chairpersons will have easy access to his interviews, and less than complimentary articles. Although even a quick look at wiki and win % would not help either. I'd be surprised if anyone wanted it to end the way it did. One of the key questions is more how it was allowed to start, rather than pointing at NJ for taking the offer. While never wishing ill of anyone, I can't say he'll be taking up too many of my thoughts in future, outside of cautionary posts on here. A little thought is that he takes Havant and Waterlooville to glory. But that's not a level he knows about, and he may be looking to come back somewhere higher up. 🙂 Yeah. They were early in my thoughts. After the sheer relief. While NJ gets a big pay off, those guys will get far less. Part of the risk going with a manager. I wonder where they were while their boss was clearly compromising his principles though. I have more sympathy for his Saints supporting relatives. It's harder for them to move on than NJ and his staff.

This is Jesse's first big test. If he were to start tomorrow, would he count the Chelsea game? Would he prefer to start after it? Or would he say how brave he was to take it, but subsequently disown it, when it was added to his stats? The Nathan test. 🙂

Leave Strachan alone! We might find that Marsch deploys a similar tactic to his RB and Leeds days. The squad, not quite up to that level are a little disjointed,continue to miss chances, and get undone with all the 1 against 1 defensive duties. Against opponents who are clued up to play against his system. Since we need wins, we go for it, and we may concede more as a result. Might happen. But we would be going for it, with a clear plan. We'd not be going out with poorly devised, compromised tactics, and going out the division with a whimper. We'll take hits being more attacking, but that''s where support comes in, rather than moaning about set backs. We could then back Jesse with a full preseason and next season to get us back. Staying up is going to be difficult enough. Marsch has done it before, but offers us something longer term to build around too, whatever the outcome. There's no guarantees. Marsch may turn out to be a manager we wanted to see, rather than what we needed short term. But no guarantee those short term appointments would work out any better. We'll find out in due course. Marsch has lots going for him, and you've no idea if your disaster scenario will happen. Better a rational decision, than irrationally throwing toys around while offering no alternatives. Having watched his half time team talk, Marsch definitely knows one of the two words needed to respond to Selles or SR insisting that 5 at the back is statistically better. Another point in his favour. 🙂

I take it we'll have a message board for the phoenix club that replaces Southampton, who just call it quits moments after appointing Marsch?