Simon3737

It’s a little known fact that Marcus was “the least foreign man ever” (as quoted by stable genius President Trump). Marcus started his engineering business by buying some electronic components from Tandy in East Street Shopping Centre and named his business MALI after the MAyflower park sLIdes that he took Kat to as a toddler!

Good to see our owner meeting some fans. An asset stripper who doesn’t care about performances wouldn’t do that! It doesn’t matter that they don’t attend matches in person or speak English as a first language. Fans are fans! Hopefully they explained to Mr Gao why we need a new manager urgently and asked him why our midfielders refuse to ever pass to Gabbi!

He probably could as he’s a big football fan! Sheffield Wednesday btw. My concern is why our manager started the season getting the team to keep going wide and vaguely aiming high crosses at Gabbi when that wasn’t suited to his talents. It should have been obvious after the first match that he should either change tactics to suit Gabbi (by passing to feet) or keep the tactics and play Austin upfront instead of Gabbi. What he did was keep the high cross tactics and wait until 26th November against Everton to give Austin his first league start. Madness!

I generally agree with that logic, although I doubt our value would drop that drastically, especially as we’re a business with a guaranteed £65-75 million on our books (and no, it doesn’t matter that the payments are staged! Accountants adjust for such things). Mr Gao is a successful and ruthless businessman. I cannot believe he’s an idiot who doesn’t realise the state we’re in, or that he can be easily duped by Ralph and Les’s positive spin. He clearly didn’t borrow £200 million just so he could asset strip and repay his lenders really quickly. It isn’t a payday loan to get us through a few bad months, it is a long-term loan to give him the capital to invest long-term so he can grow the value of his asset. That’s how multi-million Pound businesses make money. Borrowing £200 million, asset stripping and selling off the shell of a club remaining to cobble together £210 million to repay the loan plus interest would mean he hadn’t made any money for himself at all! The best way Mr Gao can make money is to ensure Saints remain an established Premier League team (with accelerating TV money) that makes good returns on investing in players by buying cheap, improving them and selling for big profits. And then repeat. Then in 10 years time he may have a £400 million asset. He can then pay off his loans (plus interest) and walk away with a massive profit - and happy supporters too! Step 1 imho won’t be to hire a new First Team Manager (as he is hopefully self-aware enough to leave that to football experts), but to hire a Chief Executive with a remit to turn things around quickly and avoid relegation.

Suggestions from an armchair fan who can’t afford to be there (I just love armchairs! ) I would have thought the most effective way to influence the Board is financially. I have 3 suggestions: 1) Peaceful protests in front of Sky cameras as Guan suggests (while still cheering on the players). This may make advertisers and corporate partners nervous. 2) If you haven’t already got a ticket, boycott this match. 3) If you are a season ticket holder or have already bought a ticket for this match, then go along, but refuse to spend any money inside the stadium on food and drink, programmes etc until Pellegrino is sacked.

I’m predicting the following quote from Les on the 31st of January: “Having left Saints 12 years ago this month, we are delighted to welcome back 41 year old Brett Ormerod. Brett was always our first priority in this transfer window and Mauricio is a great admirer of his one non-scoring appearance for Padiham FC.” Brett will then give a exclusive interview to Jordan Sibley about how impressed he is with the facilities at Staplewood.

Les Reed for the following reasons: 1. Changing our successful strategy of being a stepping stone club for young ambitious players who want to perform well in the Premier League as a shop window for their dream move to a Champions League club (ever since Fonte was denied his move to Man United, the players have lost their motivation/work ethic imho). 2. Being over-ambitious in believing he could take on player-power and stop them wanting to leave by giving them pay rises and long contracts (rather than treating the players as the entitled prima-donnas with fragile egos that they are). 3. Giving Koeman an ultimatum that he had to either sign a contract extension or leave immediately and earn Saints a ‘transfer fee’. It seems obvious he wasn’t that keen on Everton and wanted to see out the one remaining year of his three year contract then move on to “the next level” of a Champions League club (the same ambition as our best players). 4. Pretending Van Dijk was not for sale at any price. He should have just said he can leave, but only on two conditions - that we get a high enough price (which no one offered last summer btw) and that we sell him early enough to have time left to buy new players. No one believed he would be forced to honour his 6 year contract, so why pretend. 5. Recruiting two ill-suited managers since Koeman, rather than picking positive managers who suited our existing players and playing style. 6. Although our player recruitment has generally been good (except Redmond and Forster!), I think we focus too much on finding good players (irrespective of position) who fit our model etc, but not enough on finding players in the positions we actually need (e.g. Lemina is a good player with potential to improve and increase in value, but did we really need another defensive midfielder last summer?). 7. Preventing managers having their own first team coaches in place (Dave Watson and Alek Gross seem unsackable despite Forster’s decline and our players generally seeming less fit than before). 8. Possibly interfering in first team affairs and putting off potential managers (although we don’t seem to have any solid evidence for that). 9. Appearing not to care that the under-23 team has been under-performing and was relegated last summer. 10. Launching barely concealed media character assassinations on players who leave us. Although this is in line with the mood of fans at the time, I worry that it may anger our existing players who want to leave one day, damaging team morale.

If Pellegrino is still here, I’d be fairly relieved if we can keep the defeat down to 5-2 again!

As they say, ‘it’s the hope that kills you’. We were excellent first half and played like we did in the Koeman years I thought. Long and JWP were excellent especially. I even noticed Tadic fall over a couple of times and get straight back up without complaining! The second half was back to Pellegrino’s usual nonsense with the usual outcome. I thought McCarthy was generally very good. Nice to see a keeper move! Why on earth did he bring on two injury time wasting subs to kill the game when we had a chance to fight for a last minute winner? He almost prevented JWP taking the injury time corner (which could theoretically have led to a last gasp winner)? Pellegrino gives the impression that he thinks we can win points from just playing defensively, even when we’re drawing or losing.

I’m hoping Theo will agree to come on condition that we hire a positive manager. I’m clutching at straws of course, but I think Theo could have more influence on Les right now than anyone else!

Looks like Pellegrino is setting up to avoid a big defeat. Keep the defeat down to 1-0 or 2-0 goals, maybe scrape a 2-1 defeat if we get lucky. It’s certainly an original approach to management!

Completely disagree I’m afraid. It’s precisely because leaving Puel/Pellegrino in place would lead to them to re-build the squad with their type of players that I wanted/want both of them sacked! If we let Pellegrino re-build our squad with players who suit his style, we may move up the league a bit, but we’ll become the new West Brom or Stoke. He’ll probably want to sell Gabbi and replace him with Andy Carroll! I would much rather change the manager to suit the players we already have and play attractive football like we did up until Koeman left.

Totally agree with that, and with lots of other posts on this thread too. The thing I disagree with is people suggesting we need a cash injection to keep going. We’ve just made £62 million profit on one player. Mr Gao can buy himself a luxury yacht, put no new money into the club, make two or three first team ready signings and still have change left over to sack Pellegrino. Where we’ve gone wrong IMHO in the last couple of years is appointing two I’ll suited managers and trying to change our successful strategy by believing pay rises and longer contracts would stop players wanting to “move to the next level”.

If Theo tells Reed that Pellegrino is putting him off signing, this could be the trigger to Reed sacking him. Theo could save us from relegation even if he doesn’t ultimately sign for us! The Sun’s £35 million suggestion is surely nonsense. I imagine if they were the same age and had the same contract lengths outstanding, Theo and the Ox would be worth about the same, but the Ox is 24 and had a year remaining on his contract, while Theo is 28 with 18 months left.

Yes, I agree. Football is (still) a growth industry in a world economy where lots of industries are struggling. Successful multi-millionaires aren’t the sort of people who see failure happening and just sit back and let it carry on. I’m sure Mr Gao is desperate to see his asset increase in value. That is massively dependent on staying in the Premier League and increasing the value of the Saints brand (especially in Asia). This will simply not happen in the Championship (unless he buys a load of big name Asian players and spends lots of money to ensure we get promoted again and even that would be riskier and more expensive than avoiding getting relegated in the first place). I think the chance of Gao not caring about our performance on the pitch is pretty much zero. He won’t just sit back as he sees Les, Ralph and/or Pellegrino (in his judgement) failing to grow his asset. I think the least he will do is bring in his own Chief Executive. Someone who’s worked for him previously who he trusts. Regarding building in Southampton, there’s been loads of large building projects over the last few years and those companies seemed to persuade the Council to grant them planning permission without having to buy a football club first.

IMHO: -----------------------------McCarthy----------------------------- ------------Stephens--------Yoshida--------Bertrand------------ Ward-Prowse-------Romeu---------Hojbjerg-----------McQueen --------Gabbiadini/Long-----------------------Boufal------------- --------------------------Long/Gabbiadini------------------------- If we didn’t have a week off after this match, I’d suggest resting players, but I think it’s an opportunity to try to improve/change how we play and play without fear (I have no confidence of this actually happening!).

Well, no. Kat would get 20% of the player sales income too, so selling £150m of players then selling the club for £50 would earn him £160m overall, losing him £40m on his £200m investment (but earning Kat £40m). Spending the VVD money on transfer fees and wages for 2 or 3 players and a new manager this month so we stay up would see his £200m asset increase in value as the TV money, sponsorship etc keep increasing from avoiding relegation.

It took us 7 years (and administration) to get back to the Premier League last time. Very few clubs manage to come back immediately. 19 out of the current 24 clubs in the Championship have been relegated from the Premier League since 1992 and lots of them have bigger stadiums, fan bases, trophy cabinets etc than Saints but keep failing to come back up.

It seems that when he bought his 80%, Kat persuaded him to let Ralph and Les carry on as they are. My prediction (hope) is that he’ll now panic and decide radical change is needed to avoid losing money if we get relegated. I imagine his first step would be to bring in a Chief Executive (as we no longer have one since Gareth Rogers was sacked) who’s worked closely with him before to manage everything/everyone at the club and bring in a Deputy who has a background in football (or maybe just sports in general as Kat did by bringing in Ralph). He could try and bring in Cortese to get a two for one, but I’d imagine he’d prefer to trust someone who’s run one of his businesses before. I can’t see Cortese being anyone’s Deputy. I imagine this would sideline Kat and make Ralph’s role redundant. I doubt he’d keep Les in any capacity if his aim is to change the direction of the senior leadership (as Les is the status quo). This could all be a disaster of course (Jim Hone etc), but I can’t see a millionaire being patient with the status quo when he’s at risk of devaluing his asset by losing Premier League status. I imagine he’d avoid hiring/firing a First Team Manager himself as he doesn’t pretend to know about football, but if he did I’d guess he’d go for Koeman as he is available and has succeeded here before (Pochettino isn’t an option and Adkins isn’t fashionable enough). I hope he doesn’t bring in his own manager and just give them free reign to sort everything himself as that’s pretty much what Everton tried with hiring Koeman. Anyway, that’s my prediction. By the way, I don’t see any logic in the fears that he’s just an asset stripper. Yes, he could sell all our good players and get his £200 million back, but what businessman just wants to get his original investment back with no profit?

Unchanged team please! Maybe swap Gabbi for Long. Gabbi did nothing at United, but he never seems to play well as a sub. Long did nearly score though, so on balance I’d stick with him. Difficult decision.

Very surprised, and delighted, by that performance. The big question is whether Pellegrino can build on this against Palace, or will mess it up with too many changes. I hope he doesn’t rotate any players to save them for Fulham. The FA Cup is far less important at this moment.

McCarthy did nothing spectacular, but he “looked and acted like a goalkeeper” and the defence seemed confident in front of him. I agree Forster will be hard to sell, but I wouldn’t write him off entirely. I think he should forgot this season (unless McCarthy gets injured) and work really hard on preparing for next season. He’s still young for a goalkeeper and didn’t used to be this bad. Purely based on articles I’ve read about other athletes, I think he needs to radically change his fitness regime and lose some muscle mass and focus on his flexibility and quick reactions. He reminds me a bit of Boris Becker physically (tall and broad, but even more so). Boris used to train by practicing gymnastic skills like falling over and quickly getting up again etc and he used to dive around in front of the net and quickly recover. He did this at his peak as well as players like McEnroe and Edburg who were much lighter. I’m only going on articles I’ve read, no personal knowledge whatsoever, but (if I’m right), Dave Watson and Alek Gross must take a lot of blame for letting him become so slow and heavy.

People are talking as if Walcott is 34. He’s only 28, the same age as Bertrand. No one suggests Bertrand is a has-been with no re-sale value (or Tadic who’s an ancient 29). As for ‘never going back’, we released Kevin Phillips aged 18 and bought him back aged 30 and he did pretty well for two years *****il the Carphone Warehouse manager intervened anyway). I’ve never been too impressed with Sturridge, but I think he’d improve our options. Prefer him on loan though to see how it goes. I imagine he thinks he’s too big for Saints anyway.

Totally agree. The attacking midfielders failure to react to Gabbi’s runs seems almost wilful sometimes (probably just a lack of football intelligence to notice him though). I’m sure Walcott would work well with him if Pellegrino doesn’t insist Walcott just keeps running towards the corner flag and making high crosses in Gabbi’s vague direction.

Obviously, I have no idea about Kelvin’s coaching skills or how influential his player-liaison role has been, but it seems pretty clear that there has been a serious trust/respect problem between the players and the management/board over the last 18 months. Coincidentally, the period since Kelvin was appointed. Maybe he’s just been a loyal servant of Puel/Pellegrino, maybe he’s been too junior to have any impact on player morale or maybe he’s given the players a route to moan to the board over the head of Puel/Pellegrino (and may have helped persuade Les to sack Puel). Whichever of these three is true, it’s hard to see how he can have had any positive impact on the trust between the players and management/board to have earned himself this promotion. The only way I can imagine he’s had a positive impact is if he’s managed to prevent the players’ attitudes over the last 18 months from being even worse. Hard to imagine!