hypochondriac

Hopefully Gao can step in and take the decision out of clueless Ralph's hands.

If he isn't getting sacked voluntarily then fans need to force him out. We are capable of playing well but this can't go on much longer.

But if the chances of winning next week abd the week after are improved by a change of direction inspired by a loss this week then I can see why there would be a temptation to view a loss as a potentially positive thing.

I'm guessing his point was that he would rather we lost one game which would hopefully spark some response in the club eventually that would mean we are ultimately more successful. I want us to win but I understand why it is tempting at times to hope for short term failure which inspires a change of direction and ultimately success. Or is that too nuanced?

Thabks for this Guan. Incredibly worrying post but I appreciate the info and I learnt more from it than anything that Ralph just spouted. Not sure what we can do? Any suggestions?

I think it's clear he will be here unless we really do go on an epic loss of runs to leave us stuck in the relegation zone with a gap to get out. Will be interesting to see how the club reacts if we do lose the next few though because I think it's close to mass protests.

In the interview he said refurbish the stadium and do some more stuff at the training ground along with some international stuff- probably in China.

Depends what you mean by bothered. I think that interviews like this show the club to be quite out of touch with the fan base. It was suggested that one possible reason for recent underperfprmance may be that we have become arrogant and slightly aloof- those cringe inducing slogans we see everywhere now and that recent express article about our lack of publicity could back this up. If this is the case then I would be inclined to see interviews like this to be a perfect demonstration of the sort of thing we should avoid doing. With regards to the actual content of the interview, I'm not overly bothered by it, I just think it deserves highlighting for the hypocrisy, the obfuscation and the vaguely humorous nature of it all. If nothing else it certainly shows what the clubs opinion is of its fans- maybe it's a somewhat accurate opinion!

Agreed straight talking, well articulated precise and I could see exactly what he meant to say. Saintlondon can you apply to be the Southampton PR representative please?

Wow we agree! I absolutely think that would have been the best course of action. What we need right now is a bit of straight talking and honesty, not this obfuscation and marketing flannel which fills up a page but says nothing. Those saying he would have been bashed either way are wrong, the reaction would be much more positive if he had said something similar to what was suggested above.

Nah. It's the standard pre transfer window PR mandated interview like we have every year (I posted the other day that we hasn't had it yet.) We will have a similar one in the summer assuming we survive. Hopefully Les will be chosen this time though.

"Mauricio, you've taken some criticism this season because of your turgid style of play" "it was the vvd situation" "you've also had some flack for continually changing the team so there's little consistency" "it was the vvd situation" "but what about the lack of goals and games where players have appeared to give up?" "vvd" "OK but how can you explain players like Forster, Romeu and JWP who have regressed even from the average performances of last season? Shane Long hasn't scored in almost an entire calendar year. Gabbiadini has got much worse, Bertrand has put in half hearted performances, Tadic has been largely anonymous for long periods." "I'll just record myself saying the Virgil Van Dijk situation and leave it playing on a loop for you to save my voice"

There's always a contrarian who just likes to pick an argument. Regardless of anyone's feelings towards Ralph, objectively that is not an "alright" interview. It contained virtually nothing of substance and you can feel the frustration of the journalist who must realise that not a single question was actually being answered with anything that was worth the time to read. What did you actually like about the interview?

I don't think it's self deception- he's clearly a very intelligent guy. He knows exactly what is going on and has deliberately chosen the tactic of waffling without answering any question. Yes we may be a small club and the premier league may be hard but the fact is we have performed vastly better in the past few season in similar conditions.

Also hugely hypocritical saying they don't get hung up on single events like the cup final or league position when discussing puels sacking and then focusing on those two events as evidence that we had a good season last year! He's also incredibly patronising, I'd genuinely rather hear from les or not hear from anyone if we are going to get something like that.

I've just read this and haven't looked at any reactions from anyone else yes. Some thoughts: Christ he is difficult to listen to and read. If he ever writes a book I certainly will not be buying it. One of the biggest load of corporate speak ******** I've ever had the misfortune to read. Why anyone thinks it's a good idea for a Canadian to talk to us in his highly irritating dialect that says precisely nothing I have absolutely no idea. If we lose tonight I think he will see what people think of him and his plan. Fans will force the manager out if our poor form continues. Fair play to the echo for actually trying to nail him down to an actual answer or two. They didn't succeed but they certainly tried.

CB FRY doesn't suffer fools. The problem is that there are a number on here.

Nope he was never 'dreadful'. A few posters said he was around that time and was roundly ridiculed. Saying "saints fans" wrote him off as terrible is just a lie. How many posts other than from the original poster have written mane off as rubbish in that thread? Maybe check the first 100 posts if you can't be bothered to go through the whole thing because I couldn't find a single one.

Absolutely. All this begging for pm's from posters with a grandiose sense of their own self worth is hilarious. As someone else said, genuine itk like Guan, k Billy etc don't get any abuse because they have proven to know stuff, have shared little snippets and not made a sweeping vague statement to try to make themselves feel superior.

If you're using that thread as proof that there were more than two or three then I wouldn't if I were you. It consists of 90% of people ridiculing the poster in question and saying how wrong he is. It doesn't demonstrate what you think it does at all. As I and almost everyone else said at the time:

As I said, a couple of posters thought he was rubbish and the rest just laughed at them. I stand by my post from back then: https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?p=2087722

This lie is really annoying. Mane was derided by about three people on here for the first few games. Most coukd see he was quality.

I'm not sure we do have a very good squad here any more. We have a host of average players who could definitely do better than they currently are but imo are no better than midtable or below.

Lose to Palace and he won't be staying surely.

Ffs we don't need a fresh start- we need to rid ourselves of this awful manager.