StrangelyBrown

If RM stays the course, what might happen? 1) Some sort of miracle happens and we pull together some results and stay up - we'll beat a number of the better teams to get the points we need having already thrown away points against Ipswich, Wolves, etc. This is the stuff of pure fantasy. 2) we go down fighting and give ourselves a good chance of coming straight back. He gets the fans back onside by playing more attractive football and ditching the ponderousness of Russball. 3) we go down with a whimper continuing to play Russball. RM starts waffling on about scar tissue and it takes him until November 2026 to get the team firing again. He loses the fan base completely and things are really toxic I can only see scenario 3 happening. Which begs the question WTF are SR hoping is going to happen?

The latest of football innovations from Ankersen is that he's now reinvented "football manager sacking" - coming to a TED talk anytime soon...

Russball at its finest. Lose the ball in your own half, back off the man with the ball and concede. Now we need to do something different, but we won't.

... but will his name come out of the substitute tombola???

Give it a rest Gio. Perhaps a lot of the dissenters just don't enjoy the football - I certainly don't. I completely understand what we are trying to do, but sadly we don't have the quality to execute it well in the premier league which leads to excessive amounts of time passing the ball sideways and backwards waiting for mistakes that don't come easily with premier league players. You might like it and others might too, but it doesn't mean that all of the people who think it is tedious also think that "players only go to massage Russ' ego". You need to give up this condescending nonsense - it really is very tiresome.

I'm enjoying the winning feeling while it lasts - I'm not sure we will get many more this year. Hopefully we can build on the few moves where we attacked with real intent and put in a more convincing performance against wolves.... I should know better than giving in to hope

To be fair it hasn't gone well for us so far has it?

He seriously deserves some shit for that - but I expect he'll still get clapped off by a number of fans when we get soundly beaten by the dugout pioneers.

4 times better than RM at the moment...

It does beg the question of who signs all this off?? We have a ridiculous number of bang average wide attacking players - for instance rather than spunking wages on cornet and BBD couldn't we have just bought one better player (and overpaid a bit to secure them)??

Wait until we get smashed by city, there will be more than enough scar tissue going round to make up for the lack so far

Good to see #4 of Russ' 10 Russball commandments getting a run out again. It's one of my favourites along with #2 "trust the process"

The most important thing to RM is RM. Part of this is making sure he's defined by his philosophy and not by his results, presumably because he hope to do what Vincent Kompany has done. Presumably staying in this league isn't important to SR otherwise they would have acted already. After the next 3 games we'll be sufficiently adrift that it will take a miracle to stay up - at this point SR might as well persist with RM until the end of the season and we can continue to enjoy his self promoting twaddle.

It would be great if everyone on the podcast didn't have the same diplomatic and cautious opinions on everything - there's no real debate about anything just a whole lot of agreement and fence sitting

I'm genuinely interested in what you think is going to change that is going to make it worth persisting with RM?

RM fuck off now please

I can't understand why sulemana is on the bench. He wasnt good enough in the championship - I can't see him suddenly being good enough to help us in the PL

Interesting that in his press conference he mentioned being really proud of the team in the second half against arsenal where we stopped being competitive and lost the game... Beggars belief

Irrespective of my feeling that RM is the wrong man for the job, I hope we win - lose and this is really bleak....

Where Man city are concerned it isn't just about the quality of their players, there is a fundamental difference between our style and theirs - they can (and do) vary it up and go long and also move the ball forward at pace - we avoid doimg either at almost all costs and it makes us so predictable.

The alternative is hope that RM finds a way to win, which frankly isn't going to happen frequently enough taking big risks around our penalty area... Making a change is at least trying something rather than accepting the inevitable

That is by far the most sensible line up and therefore the least likely to come out of Russ' magic selection tombola.

I heard something interesting yesterday on a podcast - I think they hit the nail on the head. Talking about Kieran McKenna the comment was that he's starting to be successful at Ipswich because he always puts the needs of the club first rather than his own philosophy. Whereas other managers such as Kompany and now Russell Martin put their own reputation first and blindly stick to their philosophy hoping that even if they are unsuccessful they will be known for their philosophy and it will enable them to go on to something better. This certainly fits with RMs comments about the journey he and his disciples have been on. Sadly, RM isn't about Southampton Football Club he is about Russell Martin.

But we all know that "must pick" isn't a setting on the RM forward line tombola....

At least we didn't get dicked and we learned that Ryan Manning isn't our saviour after all. So still a complete waste of everyone's time. We're not going to win if we give the ball away in stupid positions so we're not going to win playing Russball which in the PL relies on us having players who are good enough not to make mistakes against the very best players. I just don't get why we continue to do the same things over and over again without learning that it doesnt work...