Lord Duckhunter

Nobody is blaming him for all our problems, not one person. Pony post.

About 18 months too fucking late….

I can see him going full Sitton. “You, you little cunt, and you, you big cunt” “ I run this club until the clowns upstairs tell me otherwise” “if I’m going to get abuse from the cockroaches behind me, I’ll do it playing my way”, “as for you, you’ve got 2 weeks notice”.

Did the players bring their dinners?

Weren’t there rumours that Selles laid into them verbally when Ralph got sacked.

The days of the player manager have gone, I also think there’s licensing issues nowadays. You have to have Les Reed or some other FA chump teaching you to pass an exam. Being an international, an intelligent top flight player and playing as well as learning under some innovative managers won’t cut it. I doubt he can read a spreadsheet either….

Fucking hell, I guess you’re a glass half full type of guy. Only Boscombe and possibly Leeds are in our bag, the rest are better by quite a bit. Wolves, Leicester, West Ham, Everton have far superior squad. The ones with a few ropey players likeFulham have done the biso already.

Adams did, but he missed his target.

If we’re getting the old band back together, I’d rather have Lallana or Fonte.

Wolves are fucked then

Not being in the squad for one game is hardly “banishing” someone. Jones can speak for himself but I imagine he thought 90 mins in the B team was better for him than sitting on the bench. I don’t know, and don’t really care. I’m just surprised someone who has been poor is apparently miffed. There’s enough to attack Jones over without using this player.

Yeah, I’d have had him on bench, but he has been pretty fucking poor so far. I felt he couldn’t cope with the physicality of Newcastle, but he also struggled against Blackpool. It’ll probably next season before we see the best of him, but unlike the Argie lad we were carrying him and we just can’t afford that atm. I’m not writing him off in case anyone tries to claim I am, but if I was advising him I’d tell him to put a couple of performances in before posting cryptic messages.

I’m miffed, that he’s miffed. If he thinks he’s played well so far, he’s deluded. Both games I’ve seen he’s looked weak and ineffective, his performances so far have been poor and he doesn’t deserve a start even in our shite side. Don’t let the hatred of jones blind you to that.

I think Turkish has a lot more work to do. The police are still employing homophobic horses.

It’s not.

Exactly. Which makes Blackmores “Firstly, I don’t wish ill of anyone & I try to be positive & fair to people always” a bit revisionist. Letting someone come on and say an international centre half was faking an injury, that Lyanco couldn’t get in a non league side, is disgraceful & undermines his new found “honesty”.

No, no & no….

I agree, but I’m just passing on what I heard. They want a manager who will make the players better, ( im not saying he is) not one that’ll bin the ones he doesn’t fancy. Personally, I’m all for freezing useless players out but I’m not running the club. If you’re running a club by spreadsheet it it probably makes sense.

But we didn’t have good enough experienced pros around them. The keepers shit, and the jury is out on the rest of them apart from Lavia.

Did I say it was a strength? It’s the way it is, or the way I was told it was. I don’t see why a Jones family member would make it up, as it doesn’t reflect particularly well on him. Yes Janny B is a good example of a player frozen out by Ralph but I imagine Jones rates him as he’s chucked him straight back in. It’s about players Jones doesn’t rate. The example I was given was Adam Armstrong, instead of sending him out on loan or freezing him out, he is willing to work with him and make him a “better” player. Hence protecting SR’s “asset”.

Ralph was a yes man when it came to signings, they all are pretty much nowadays. He didn’t take a hard line, he’d have gone in the summer if he did. As I’ve said, it’s what they’d do with players they don’t rate that was the difference, not who they’d sign. To make it simple. If Big Paul is shite, Ralph won’t play him, Jones will.

There’s loads examples where players have been given to managers & managers haven’t rated them, and therefore frozen them out. These are assets, and freezing them out devalues them in SR’s eyes). The words used were “that’s my job”, when he was discussing making poor signings better.

His in laws live in the same town as me, one works with a good mate of mine. I’ve been priming him for info, but none has been forthcoming. The work colleagues tip toe around the subject of Saints, & he himself (family member) has told my mate that Jones’ family tip toe around it with him. One snippet he gave me back in Nov before it went tits up was about player recruiting . They would give the manager the players, and as far as SR are concerned they’re assists. Clearly some won’t be rated by the manager and whereas they thought Ralph would freeze them out, Jonesy told them he was prepared to work with these players . He told them making players better was “his job”, one that was specifically mentioned to my mate was Adam Armstrong. Obviously the Bree signing casts doubt on this theory, but it’s peanuts in modern terms, so maybe a case of chucking jones a bone. Assuming that’s true (and I’ve no reason to doubt it, and it’s 100% fact my mate knows the bloke), I don’t think SR are dictating formations, but they maybe giving him players that lend themselves to certain formations.

I’ll defend him when it’s pony. When people claim he’s a Sunday league manager, or Lyanco couldn’t get in the Havant side. Some of the pony written about the Newcastle game was ott as well. But yesterday was every bit as bad as Ralph’s “effort” up there last year, so I’m not going to defend that. I didn’t mind him calling out the twats in our fan base or our useless spineless players, but yesterdays interviews weren’t that and weren’t appropriate. I get where he’s coming from, he hasn’t played the Jones game. But I think the conflict is with himself rather than others telling him how to play, but he’s not man enough to admit it. Like Graham Taylor did at England, he’s compromised his natural game and pulled back from going for his own style because he probably thought he needed a more sophisticated version at the higher level. Once you go away from your core beliefs you’re fucked. He looks like he’s trying to buy himself time, but the time to impose your “play book” is the first few weeks, he’s now going to try from a position of weakness. A more or less impossible thing to do.

I stand by what I wrote on Jan 5th Personally, I prefer to see who comes in during the window before pulling the plug, see if there’s a change in attitude and culture within the club. Somebody needs to take it by the scruff of the neck, get rid of the losing mentality and upset a few of the precious darlings. Personally, I think he deserves the chance to do this. I understand peoples anger and don’t think I’m a “better fan” than them. But with this shower of shite, the next bloke that comes in will face exactly the same problem. As he’s SR’s man, and the loss of face that’ll come with sacking him, he maybe given more leeway to do the nasty stuff and kick a few arses. Making a few tweaks to Ralph’s playbook won’t cut it.