trousers

I watched the second half, and highlights of the first, and was suitably impressed. I did however get a bit of a 'spiritual home' vibe from him in the post-match interview, which made me think of those managers that do really well when in a relative comfort zone but then struggle when they move on to other clubs... And as others have pointed out, coming to a basket case of a club (as we are at the moment) could ruin him!

Reminds me of that chap from Glasgow (or was it Bournemouth?) that used to post on here a while back... Before your time Willo, so you won't remember him, but he used to like an insurance bet too....

Yep.... Pretty sure we started off playing Aribo as a forward when we first signed him too.

Indeed. Shame we're too good for him...

Ha, fair point... 😁

Seems to know his stuff... But obviously of no interest to Saints as his team is currently a massive 5 league places below us...

Aye...

Oh, go on then.... Source? Ta 👍🏻

Any chance of applying your expertise in football management to predicting where certain managers will end up...?

MLG and Dman both have valid points: a) appointing a DoF that nobody else wants = not great b) appointing DoFs that keep getting enticed elsewhere within months of joining Saints = not great Is there an answer to this conundrum? Who knows. I'd probably look at other similar sized clubs to see how they manage to keep hold of decent DoFs and perhaps use them as a template for what we could/should do...

No...

Made the question more pertinent to our situation for you... P.s. there are pros and cons of both scenarios, for what it's worth...

Decent effort. 6/10

There's probably a "fallacy" in your reply. Not sure which one though, will leave that to MLG to clarify.

I think I may have solved our striker problem for the rest of the season...

Aye. As always, when considering alternate realities, we'll never know how well Martin would've performed with this squad (and visa versa), so it's a tad moot comparing the two managers when it's not possible to compare like with like given they had different squads, different contexts, etc, etc.

ITK...? Examples...? Ta

P.s. it's also 'interesting' to me that Blackmore finished off his statement with "...based on the past"... i.e. that the likes of Ankersen have a track record of interfering at squad management level...

Yeah, difficult to tell, but part of me thinks it's a tad out of character for Blackmore to put his head that far above the parapet with such a detailed 'supposition' when he could've simply said: "I've no idea what's going on with Spors"... My hunch is that he knows something and is using the 'supposition' language as a bit of a cover...

The way this season is unfolding, it certainly seems that Martin is a much better manager than Still at this level. Probably not the most startling revelation you've ever heard though, I would venture.

∆ That's a more pertinent question...

Transcription: Blackmore: "But I do want to say, if Spors is trying to leave for Juventus you have to ask yourself why. And it may be because Saints are in the Championship and he doesn't see them getting out this season, so he wants to be back at the top table. It may be he's not enjoying working at the club, he might feel he's got too many people around him like Ankersen or anyone else, who he might think are stopping him doing his job or interfering with him and making decisions that he's not in charge of and you won't want to be a technical director responsible if you're not making all the decisions. So, we don't know those things but I can definitely supposition say that's a possibility based on the past..."

It was Adam's hunch that it could be the latter, but Adam was clear that he was reading between the line ls rather than knowing this for sure. It's 12 mins 30 seconds into this recording: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0mbv33t I'll transcribe it in a sec...

The truth is, we'll never know what the impact of keeping Ramsdale could've been. Having a 'marquee' player in such a pivotal position could've inspired and galvanised the team as a whole and given the rest of our players more confidence than they have now, so who knows what might have transpired in such an alternate reality. As for his wages, yes, of course they would've been excessive for this division, but how does that compare with the cost of the possibility of having to replace the manager, lost revenue from receding attendance figures, etc? Of course, I'm not saying that it's inevitable that everything would've been rosey if we'd kept Ramsdale, but we can't rule out that he could've made a significant difference to overall team morale and performance. And that *might* have been a price worth paying. Who knows...

It's almost as if certain managers are OK at Championship level but out of their depth in the Premier League...