Holmes_and_Watson

A way back link to the Spanish Saints: home of the MLT CD-Rom https://web.archive.org/web/20030923170638/http://www.spanishsaints.com/ and a link showing that De Pedro was the hot topic for a while in 2003 https://web.archive.org/web/20030727094025/http://www.saintsforum.asp-host.co.uk/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=1

Forty

Intelligent

Sometimes 6 minutes is more than enough for you to know your world cup star just won't give you the outcomes in your Luton tactic. 🙂

Sheets and coats come in so many different patterns and colours. I embrace the additional chapters, where the main characters, of many different shapes and sizes, go shopping for clothing and bed linen. It's what the authors would have wanted. 🙂

I thought that Lowe didn't want to pay marginally more for De Pedro. So, we got a Neil McCann who hadn't hit his his early promise by a few years. I remember being really disappointed we didn't get him, thinking we'd penny pinched and got a much worse player. I'd have seen him playing for sociedad, if only in passing, so must have thought he'd be okay. Looking back, I've no idea if it was Sociedad who raised the price, or how well he'd have done. Did he not get a bad injury? Career nosedived after joining Blackburn. Hope it wasn't the Le Tiss DVD that ended up on a hard drive somewhere. 🙂

Sleep

It did look like they were thinking of Selles longer term. He says he's been ready for quite some time, so the extra 18 months won't have made a difference as far as he's concerned. I'm a little wary of someone keen on a job being part of two regimes that haven't worked. Unlike yourself, I do think there's a bit of tarring if you've been part of it. In Sellers' favour, he wasn't brought in by either one, and can only do so much.

It is, but GIFs of people eating cake looked a bit random. If you thought that was mental and messy, what's "grips my shit" . No GIFs please. 🙂

Beale said just that about 7 or 8 in a conference the other day.

He knows he'd not be in the seat, had it not been for this season's mess. Actually, he pointed out that it's been a bit dodgy for 4-5 years. He did point out he'd learned from Ralph's approach too, so not all bad. Despite needing wins, he was brought in to improve us as a defensive unit, to balance out the vulnerable parts of Ralph's system. From his comments, it doesn't look as though we'll be overcommitting players forward, to grab a goal. Units and sensible pressing. Like all our managers, I hope he's a great success with us.

Yay! I'm fashionable! Oh... it wasn't a compliment... Ah well, I didn't know what a football circle was anyway. Some kind of dance... 🙂

Panel

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. 🙂

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