CanadaSaint

If MP plans on running the full press it's probably a good decision, but that line-up does leave us short of creativity at times. Gosh, I'd love to see us sign a player who can contribute to the press and yet offer the creativity we sometimes lack with (three of) Schneiderlin, Cork, Wanyama and Davis in the team. The only one we've been linked with who could do that is probably Banega.

Given Katharina's seemingly strong awareness of some of the things that irritated fans under Cortese, and given her apparent desire to rectify them, I wouldn't be surprised if a well-organized campaign was successful. I'd prefer the old-style stripes but I'd vote for this because it could quickly become distinctively "us" again. I still haven't got over paying seventy quid for an indistinctive red top in November. P.S. to LostBoys: That must have been 30 years ago, yes?

We will ALWAYS dominate possession but fail to score if we keep playing Schneiderlin AND Cork/Wanyama AND Davis. We need more creativity in there - all the more so because the delivery from the two full backs has been poor for much of the season. The decline of Rickie hasn't helped at all, and contributes to the fact that it's all build-up, no finish. Frustrating.

What I find frustrating about this forum is the tendency for some people to mis-characterize the majority opinion. The vast majority do not want Pochettino gone, are extremely happy with what he's done for us, and hope he sticks around for a long time. However, the significant majority also feel that he made errors of judgment on Saturday. Take your pick: fielding a starting line-up that couldn't play as we're best playing, under-estimating the opposition, failing to make changes early enough, failing to understand how important an FA Cup win would be to most fans (and a fair few of his own players). Sure, there was certainly no guarantee that we would win the cup, but going down fighting would have been much easier to handle than the abject surrender we saw at the weekend. And if I'm annoyed about it, having watched it online in the comfort of my own home, I can't imagine how it must have felt for the 900 who - in all good faith - made the long trip. But that's it. The milk is spilt and we move on. Or, perhaps I should say that we move on as soon as people stop starting threads like this - threads which bring out all the over-statement, misrepresentation, nastiness and polarization that continually screw this forum up.

I'm not sure it is "utter b*****ks". A desire to avoid qualifying for the Europa Cup (MP has already - surprisingly and needlessly - publicly expressed his disdain for it) was put forward as a possible explanation for him fielding a starting eleven that most people thought would struggle - and it did. But even when it was clear (well before half time) that we needed to make changes if we were to get back into something approaching our normal high-pressure style - which you'd think he'd be anxious to do if he was keen to win, Pocchettino decided to wait until 62 minutes to do it. That - for Schneiderlin and Rodriguez - was like trying to board a moving train. I love what MP has brought to the club, I'm ecstatic at our normal playing style, and I hope he's here a long time. He's a smart guy, but smart guys don't make mistakes like he made today (Guly in, engine room out), which - along with the delay in making changes - suggests that fielding a team that might struggle for a result wasn't entirely accidental. He didn't leave the dugout much, so he seemed okay with what was unfolding before him. I would suggest to you that the FA Cup doesn't have much "intrinsic value" to people who didn't grow up with it, and who arrived on the scene in an era when more and more clubs don't seem to take the early stages seriously. That covers most PL managers, including MP. If there's one flaw in Pochettino's make-up that troubles me, it's a disconnect with the average fan. He seldom acknowledges them, he still chooses not to speak directly to them in English, and, judging by today's events, he has either misread what's important to them or he's disinterested in it. I'm not trying to excuse what happened today, just understand it. And the Europa Cup explanation is not b*****ks but quite plausible.

The performance was woeful because the team selection was woeful. Our established pattern of playing out from the back went down the toilet with the selection of two central defenders who struggle with passing and a goalkeeper whose distribution is pitiful. But we might have got away with that if we hadn't also replaced the shield in front of them - and the conduit for moving the ball forward - by leaving out both Schneiderlin and Cork (IMO our best pairing at the moment), and if we hadn't replaced the highly-mobile Rodrigues with the languid, lazy, low-intensity Guly (along with his needless offsides and failure to present moving pass opportunities). And we might even have got away with that if MP had seen the writing on the wall and made the two changes at half time, when they could almost have started afresh, instead of at the 62 minute mark, when they were trying to jump onto a moving train. As others have said, those changes destroyed an established pattern of play which should have been easily good enough to see off the side that Poyet fielded.

Even the match commentators had the perspective to say that MP might have a lot of explaining to do. But I get your point, so let's see what the "Just back from the game" folks think then - in about six hours. I suspect that their views won't be much different . I don't think there's much escaping the fact that MP blew it today, big time.

You're talking about one instance - and yes, it was a lousy pass by Yoshida. I was talking about a trend. After the way he's played this season and much of last, and the impact that his slowness and poor reading and positioning have on others, you're not seriously suggesting that Jos is a scapegoat, are you?

I agree with you on the misplaced frustration but I don't think the problem was in the players' heads. I think it was in the fact that some crucial cogs in a quick-thinking, fast-reacting, high-intensity machine were missing - and they were replaced by players who are slow readers and lack intensity. Guly's the biggest example but not the only one. And, on top of that, Kelvin's distribution was almost obscene and the Maya/Jos duo struggles to play out from the back, which meant that we were constantly surrendering possession when we're used to winning it in those areas.

I can't help but wonder whether the demise of the FA Cup resulted from the widespread tendency to hire non-British managers. They don't have the emotional/historical respect for it that we have, after growing up with it since we were kids. Pochettino may have underestimated how important a win today was to the fans.

Jeez, if the forum is as unanimously p*ssed off as it is, imagine the folks with six hours of road ahead of them, God love 'em.

Lambert didn't do "absolutely nothing" - all his touches and layoffs were there but there was nobody to read and react to them. Granted, he missed a sitter but much of his normal game was there. Lallana is a match winner - even when he's knackered. The rest of it I don't disagree with.

I'm not trying to justify it, just understand it.

Of course it does - well, much of it. You can't take at least three key components out of a pressing side and expect it to perform - especially if Guly is one of the replacements. All of the intensity disappears just when you need it. I was sure he'd make the same two changes (Rodriguez and Schneiderlin on) at half time so they could set the pattern - not past 60 minutes. But taking Lallana off - who can change a game in a second - was madness.

Anyone who fancies a crack at the Europa Cup must be out of their minds if that's an insight into our squad depth. But perhaps that's why Pochettino didn't even want to risk qualifying for it via the FA Cup.

It's funny how other central defenders look poor whenever Hooiveld plays. Remember how bad Fonte looked last year? And he's a different player paired with Lovren. I rate Yoshida but not if he's playing alongside someone who needs perpetual covering.

I can't remember being quite this p*ssed off about a Saints result because the quarter-finals were there for the taking. Picking the languid, lazy Guly to play in a high-intensity side is insane, especially when you're leaving out the engine room in the middle of the park and you've got a problem pairing at the back. Even the commentators said there would be some explaining to do.

For someone who's supposedly not into football, she seemed very into football.

He looks and sounds like a manager very committed to this club: http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/9139088/pochettino-hails-sensational-performance

So much for the idea of selling him after he's boosted his value with sparkling World Cup performances: http://forzaitalianfootball.com/2014/01/osvaldo-to-be-left-out-of-italys-world-cup-squad/

New GM who wanted his own head coach and - in the opinion of many - dropped a very big clanger. A lot of fans have raised the possibility of getting Ralph back. But he's now involved with Canada's Olympic hockey team, and you don't get anywhere near that unless you're extremely highly regarded. Look, don't knock Ralph - he's a very talented guy with many attributes, and an extremely pleasant person. My only reservation is with his lack of football experience, but then we don't know what his role will be, do we?

It will be interesting to see how long that tweet lasts. If it's untrue, there is potential for legal action, and - had Cortese still been here - it would probably already be underway. On the other hand, it it stays up ...

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that a former school mate is (apparently) about to become CEO and a former head coach of my local NHL hockey team here in Canada is (apparently) about to become a board member. Bizarre. As soon as the very private Katharina Liebherr decided to become personally involved in Saints I was fairly sure that she had no intention of selling-up and was going to do all she could to honour her father's legacy, and I'm impressed with her performance and openness thus far. I really like the "team of various talents" approach she seems focused on, and she's shown more warmth in one open letter than the highly-talented but flawed Cortese has shown in all the years he's been here. My "however" is this. If people are expecting her to open the vaults to fund expensive new acquisitions I think they're going to be disappointed. My hunch is that one of the (probably several) breaking points in her relationship with Cortese was an unwillingness to do that for two reasons - because it can easily become inconsistent with Markus's original plan to use the academy as the springboard for a successful but viable club, and because two of our most expensive acquisitions have hardly set our world alight. Arguably, the inexpensive players we've signed have thus far been much more pivotal in our success. I'm not saying she won't spend, but that she won't throw money around. The team she's (apparently) assembling seems to support that view. John Williams has never managed a club with a mega-budget but one that has always had to be fiscally responsible. Ralph Kreuger is a very talented motivator who is at his best IMO with younger players. There are signals to be read IMO. I like what I'm seeing so far, but then I never wanted to become a Man City or a Chelsea, where the soul of the club has disappeared into a vortex of money, greed, high expectation and intolerance of any kind of failure.

Badger, the thread title took me by surprise because my instant reaction on seeing it was "Surely it's not the same guy", what with Ralph being such a hockey man. But then I started to see at least some logic because he's really much more than that. He's a thinker and a motivator and one of his attributes was finding new and enjoyable ways of getting players fit and keeping them there - minimizing the drudge aspect of fitness training. Krueger is an "out of the box" kind of guy, and a very pleasant man. Perhaps his strongest skill set is player communication, and I can see some value in having a top-notch communicator there because almost all of Pochettino's current team are native Spanish speakers. Krueger is (at least) bilingual - English and German, and is especially well regarded in Switzerland. I'm not saying it will work because, as you said, a lot depends on how willing Pochettino is to embrace it, but it does seem that Katharina is aiming for a team approach, with the team consisting of a variety of people with different talents. Krueger unquestionably has a lot to offer, and he's the sort of guy to quickly win people over with his personal warmth and thoughtful input; he's not the kind of guy to push himself in where he's not welcome. I'm still concerned that, for all his undoubted skills, he has no significant knowledge of football as far as I know.

That was my first thought, but my second was that there's an ocean of difference between Harry and Pochettino. Some of these signals coming out of the club suggest that the plan is to build the club around a team of different specialists, rather than a hierarchy with one guy very much at the top. I would be inclined to see Krueger's role, if there is to be one, as being a counsel and advisor for Pochettino - not inflicted on him but available to him. Both Tambellini (the GM, on the left) and Krueger were fired a year later. As far as Krueger is concerned, the new coach - even though he has a better squad to work with - is getting much less out of the players than Krueger did.