Toussaint

The soul stripping of the club continues, I hope the current unicorns and rainbows culture isn't reflected in the new choice of manager / coach, but I think it maybe a grey corporate "yes" person.

Away fans and minority groups

Presumably with a job like his you would still be keeping abreast of things and chiming in with the odd tweet or something? You wouldn't want one of your colleagues beating you to the story? My cynical mind tells me he has to keep his powder dry until there are further developments. His hands are tied, he could quosh the speculation, then be made to look an idiot if RH goes, or he confirms it before its official, and Saints won't let him through the door again?

The article reads like an "unofficial" press release from the club to me.

Getting way off track, but I remember that game well (I think)!, the game should never have been played, the pitch was frozen solid, and I had a long standing hatred of the ref, Roger Milford?

It would be a nice change to the usual F**K us formation!

I agree he doesn’t deserve it, there is no doubt he has given it his all, but I’d stop short of saying he’s done an excellent job.

I think it's more they would rather not subject the new coach to a potential humiliation in his first game, but I'd be happy to go into this one with a caretaker if it meant we could end this torture sooner rather than later. If we put on a good show against City it won't change anything for me, we always have a good go against the best teams, but that suggests to me the players are doing it for themselves, not for Ralph, given how unmotivated we are against the dross.

Why are we restricted to Gulf states?

I don't know if the consensus is that we have a "right to be successful", but as a very well established premier league football club, in he richest league in the world, it's not unreasonable to expect to be in a much better position than we are. I'd call it frustration rather than expectation.

Maybe we should get Willie out for this one.

In this case it is expedient to combine both in one thread.

Agreed, we went quantity over quality.

I think he was / is better than his barren spell would indicate, that whole team went off the boil. He scored a goal that kept us up, scored two in a Wembley final and had one disallowed when he was not actually offside. Looking at his stats at Sampdoria he has scored 25 goals in 91 appearances, he also plays for Italy. I think someone like him would be a big upgrade on AA

You have to wonder where all the Pelle's, Tadic's, Mane's ., Gabbiadini's are lurking, they must be there somewhere out there, just under the radar. I think one problem we have with Ralph as that he in himself cannot attract players to play for him in the way someone like the "footballing deity" , that was Koeman, for example, could. I, like someone else said yesterday, thought we would be picking up gems from the German and Austrian leagues with Ralph's connections, but that just didn't happen. (let's not talk about Danso)

I think the midfield is right down there too.

I’m sure we can find someone equally as shambolic as Ralph if maintaining that “style” is the key requirement? 😉

A new manager could make us harder to beat though, that wide open 4 2 2 2 nonsense has to go for a start. I can live with grinding out a few bore draws until we can address the situation. You might also find those strikers could be more effective in a better set up team.

You are not alone, I think I was an 8.

Prohibitive cost to get rid They believed his bullshit Semmens & Co are spineless They wanted to see how he went with the new coaches, but Ralph has now shut them out May have thought we would be good enough to stay up this season and build on that, now realising we are in serious danger of relegation A few things that sprung to mind without too much effort

It may work the opposite way, I have seen this happen in other team sports I have followed, where unmotivated players get right up for the big games, this may explain why we have done better against the better sides generally.

We didn’t want him, didn’t fit our system and Ralph said he was untrainable, we dodged a bullet there.

Too late ….. 🦎 👽

Not quite true, there are superstar managers who wouldn’t even consider the role plus Sam Allardyce, that’s what I’ve learned on this forum

We will need to add one or two old “war dogs” as well