gecko

Final day performance. Wasn't the 4-4 Liverpool game the last of the season too? Looked decent in that one as well iirc

Happy if that's the case, as long as we end up with a manager who prefers even the most half-hearted of presses... 6 points incoming.

SKY blog still doubling down on Still being the main target (for now at least) - https://www.skysports.com/football/live-blog/31771/12476234/transfer-centre-live-football-transfers-news-updates-and-rumours Seems a bit cruel of you to post this, with no context, and then just bugger off. I was just starting to like the idea of Still instead of Rohl, so hoping this is just WUM behaviour.

I definitely see what you mean; he's not exactly the born leader you'd come to expect at that position. I'm sure plenty of players, as with the fans, make their mind up immediately. However, I think it's possible for him to get them on side if he turns up at training and actually does that properly, i.e. not like Jones, who you could tell the players thought/knew he was a total simpleton from minute one of the training. Perhaps a Lallana type, recent retiree, as a coach is enough to help on-board him and keep the player mutterings to minimum to at least give this guy a good shot. From a team perspective, he seems to me to be relatively adaptable, as shown through losing multiple important players and still just about getting results. Although he admits that you can only lose so many of those calibre players before your results start to show it. If he wants to be here, and Spors wants him, then I'd be happy to see what he can do in the Champ.

I don't think they should/would either. But he was rumoured to be of interest to them only a month ago since Marco Rose's departure, all hearsay of course.

I think we're an excellent prospect for someone like Rohl - we're clearly not good enough for the prem at the moment, sure, but we are likely to be one of the auto-promotion candidates for sure. A promotion on the CV always looks good, regardless of whether it was "expected" - and we're a better chance than most to get one. It also (arguably) looks better than taking some mid-table German lot to.... mid table again? You might be right though. The call of a Leipzig (or similar) may well carry other importance to him.

Totally agree. Interesting that people have generally come to the realisation that players like Mane/Van Dijk (and soon to be Dibling/Fernandes) are basically too good for us to keep long term. And we seem to appreciate that the longer term situation with players is that we simply need to be successful in replacing those that we lose to the higher-ups. It's whats Brighton, Brentford, B'Mouth etc have done well at in recent seasons. Now counter that with how quite a few people seem to be talking about hiring an excellent manager, that we'll probably lose in the near future; kinda weird isn't it. Same thing applies here imo, managers need replacing and replacing well, just like players. And that means pre-emptive scouting so we're not completely sunk/scrambling when the inevitable happens.

I admire your optimism, but I would have very real doubts about him getting you or anybody promoted again. I'd go so far as to say there'd be a very good chance with your squad, but I would fully expect that if he did manage it, that it would be far less comfortable than last time. Lots of needless goals conceded; lots of unnecessary points dropped against crap opposition. We can certainly agree on the following relegation though :-D

Jordan https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/25117398.former-premier-league-chairman-claims-southampton-sale/

Guessing you mean Reims vs PSG? who are much superior to PSV, and makes the achievement that much more impressive. I've definitely enjoyed watching that, and the one from Sky the other night. He seems to be a pretty clever chap, very willing to adapt his team's shape to the opposition. He is obviously keen to press as well, so appears to tick a lot of Spors' boxes for now. My concern is that I've also seen Dyche do one (or two) of these masterclass vids. Don't get me wrong, I actually think he's a competent Champ/Prem level manager, but Dyche isn't the guy that anyone really hails as a genius manager, but he comes across incredibly well in these videos. So I can't help thinking, therefore, that most top level managers go into this level of detail in training anyway (our last few notwithstanding) - we as fans just don't tend to see them talking like this all that regularly. So whilst I think Will Still might do a job for us, I'm not necessarily going to give these videos a huge amount of weight. I think I could get a little excited if he were appointed, but I believe there are other names in the hat still of equal/better calibre. Link:

I was going to say the same thing - the only thing that swings me slightly to Cooper is his history of promotion. If we choose to stick with him upon promotion, then history says he has kept at least one other club up. Or... if we then chose to cut him loose in the prem and replace with someone more ambitious (kinda Adkins/Poch) then so be it. Anyway, I'm not sure Cooper's what the board are after, but I'd be pretty happy with him or Rohl.

Fair to say that Rohl is probably seen by many as the more "glamorous" choice - young, up-and-coming, worked in far more high profile/calibre clubs than Cooper, possibly expected to have a "higher ceiling" as a result. He's also well known by Spors, so fits the mould pretty well. It's definitely still a gamble though; as are all managerial appointments. He's worked under some excellent managers in his time already, but his own personal management is obviously pretty short and therefore not necessarily guaranteed. With Cooper, he is at least a fairly known entity - his record definitely suggests he could improve the squad and should get promotion with a team like ours with time to spare. Does he fit the "high press" desired by the DoF; perhaps not. But I think we would see some consistent performances from a team of his. I loved watching the early high-press from Ralph's team, but honestly couldn't give a crap about winning with a high tempo, vs winning with a more pragmatic style, as long as it's winning more often than not. I'd be pretty happy with either tbh; but my head still says Cooper is the better option to get us promoted first go, even if he feels a little boring to many.

As with all managers, I was hoping he'd do well. His history suggested he might be able to do so. Martin needed to go, and we all needed confirmation that the players were crap regardless of the manager, so the Juric experiment puts both of those to rest i guess; although it might have been nice to see a manager who wasn't so religiously tied to one system.... In my eyes, he'll just be another guy who couldn't get a tune out of a squad not good enough for the Premier League. Hard to know where we need to go from here; stick with most of these losers as they're probably good enough to get out of the Champ? knowing that we'll need to recruit much more effectively if we do win promotion again. Or bin loads of them off this summer, and start relatively anew. Don't know which offers a better long-term chance of staying in the Prem. All eyes on Rusk to get us over the record points low, and Spors to kick off the championship revolution then...

Not that I disagree, but the stats would suggest that Serie A clubs fair pretty well against EPL clubs historically. Granted we're comparing the best of both leagues because it's the only time they actually face-off; not the complete garbage that we are. https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/news/0232-0e9534dc4737-2f7b42d91e2e-1000--italy-v-england-whose-clubs-are-best/ (2016) Seem safe to conclude that a terrible EPL team (us) trying to play like we're in Serie A is going to work about as well as if we try to play like we're in the EPL.

I'm torn on him at the moment. There's been some pretty decent performances under him, and some truly abject ones as well. Trying to take variables out of our equation, his playbook is supposed to be broadly similar to the chap from Atalanta, having worked with him in the past - man-to-man marking, high press etc etc. A strategy that was/is clearly effective elsewhere, and against some very high level opposition - e.g. the undefeated Leverkusen, and they are currently sitting in 3rd in Serie A. As a result, I'm not sure the whole strategy needs to be binned off, but there obviously needs to be some analysis and tweaking to make us more effective. I think we're in a very similar situation to Amorim at Utd. His play was obviously very successful at Sporting, so he needs to work out why it's not so effective in the EPL. There's numerous reasons to explain it; pick and choose as many or more: The players aren't good enough - definitely true for us, we've already seen how crap they are before Juric arrived. The players arent' fit enough to play high press - probably, they're all blowing out their arse like the end of Hassenhuttl games, when we instigated the 70min fake injury/water break. The formation is a problem - I'm broadly fine with him having a preferred formation, but I am struggling to understand sticking religiously to it when it's leaving such gaping holes. And the pragmatic person in me would suggest that having a 4 at the back, to push another player into midfield is good, not just because it matches up against the opposition's likely formation (4-2-3-1 being the most popular in recent seasons), but because it's also what most defenders are used to playing in. Juric simply isn't as good a coach as Gasperini - again, almost certainly true. Some of the substitutions have been baffling, sure, but it's fair to say the depth of our squad is really poor I really want him to succeed as I'd much rather watch the attacking football he promised over the dross we had in the early part of the season. But without any uptick in competitiveness it's going to be difficult to maintain any level of optimism if it's him going into next season. On a more morbid note, if I have to see us lose every week I'd rather that it was because we were outplayed (like it is now) than from the never ending cock-ups we made at the back leading to goals (which it was before). I'm far less worried now about a terrible back pass, but it seems to have been replaced with an inevitable loss of possession on the halfway line, leading to break and likely goal when our one CB who has pushed right up is in no position to make the tackle. I'll support him for a good while more for now.