Smirking_Saint

We’ll likely bring in 100m or so in sales this year so I’m not really sure we’ll need to sell anybody that we absolutely don’t have too

Id rather keep Tella and go knocking on Coventrys door for Hamer tbh or even knock on Bristols door for Alex Scott (although the latter is unlikely)

I don’t think we should go back, it ended badly at the end of his reign and if reports are to be believed the players had given up under him, so Im a firm believer of ‘don’t go back, unless you absolutely have too’ Im not sure he’d be the worst appointment, but its unnecessary We have the money, stature and ambition to get a decent manager should we want too, I don’t think the likes of Marsch, Vieira, Potter, Van Bronkhorst, Corberan (maybe), Nuno, Juric, Gallardo, Rowett are unreasonable or unrealistic hires if we flex ourselves correctly Right now we’re in a decent position to take in a strong candidate, whether we’ll go for one of them or do something daft is another conversation

Nah… the start of where we are was the Gao takeover, Reed removal and the installation of a boardroom that didn’t really have the ambition required. Puel was in my opinion removed prematurely, but his football was dire, its not like he went on to prove the sacking wrong either.. failing both at Leicester and St Ettiene. We’ve been in decline for years, as a club we’ve gone backwards and were lucky not to be relegated before SR who were unable to stop us/cupable in our eventual relegation

I say that because he did it, it was Selles and Jones job too but how did that go ? Thats a bit of an odd comment really. As per a forward request, clearly he had requested one, we just did a spectacularly terrible job of getting him one. TBH I always took the retirement comments with the pinch of salt they were intended, fairly sure they were said in jest and they were backed up by saying ‘if Saints are on good footing by then’ Reality is its all cost us dearly, change is destructive and we did it too much

Agree, but Im not fully convinced all of the blame lies in his lap, a significant amount agreed, but its not his completely alone I do believe the club had for one reason or another got complacent and disjointed under the Gao reign, relegation was seen as a when, not an if, and the excuses for that eventuality would have already been written due to the incumbent ownership model, or basically the lack there of of one Scouting had become lazy and we were very lucky that Ralph was happy to carry on with his continued ‘rescue’ even if he was spent towards the end We recruited a head of recruitment, who then absolutely abandoned us when we needed him, Id happily go as far to say this was also, in part, on SR because you only have to look at how Shields carries on on social media to see the bloke is a narcissist and hardly professional but it still caused us significant issues Rasmus stepped in, he has a significant arrogance about him, Ive met him, but I wouldn’t of said his tenure as our DoF would have been as disastrous as it turned out to be, in part this is on him, in part our scouting network and in part the previous board team trying to pull in different directions Im told he has learnt, whether this was internal viewership of his own performance or a Solak back hand Im not sure… but realistically he is what we have at the moment, the blokes not an idiot, he just tries to be too progressive… so my hope is Wilcox can tame things or else we are fucked

My understanding was and still is that he isn’t necessarily taking the lead in a similar vein to how he did in January But that isn’t to say he isn’t going to be involved in the short term, we need a new manager, we effectively have a scouting team thats all over the place and Wilcox thats just coming in, Im not even sure when his start date is I tend to find thinking about realities before coming to conclusions works well my friend

Any of those three mentioned would have probably realised Armstrong was fucking useless tbf

He’s only just got his foot in the door though, tbh I expect its just tabloid sensationalism Id fully expect Rasmus to be involved, likely heavily, alongside the likes of Wilcox because frankly there isn’t anybody else left 😂

Who else is there to do it ?

You don’t have the career he has had without having a level of talent, I think his is, looking at it, at helping to mould businesses and obviously has his feet deep in analytics He was a DoF effectively at Midtjylland but the club sizes are vastly different

Exactly… but, in balance to that when we’re attempting to buy players that can impact now ? Its been pretty much universally terrible, and a lot of that is, imo down to what was the scouting set up at the club (now being remodelled) but equally… in the likes of Onuachu, Bree, Orsic… I fail to see how these weren’t signed regardless of scouting because if I can see they don’t ultimately fit our tactics then a seasoned professional should do

I don’t want to sound like some sort of SR luvvie… because Im not, but I’m trying to provide a bit of balance The money could of been spent worse, I don’t have a huge issue on spending on youth because they do provide less risk, for instance we aren’t really going to lose, and will likely make on our under 24 yr old buys Our issue is when we attempted to buy players that could/should of made a difference now then we just got it wrong but Id say its likely a long term issue with scouting as much as anything; Onuachu, Orsic, DCC, Bree, Aribo were all terrible buys but realistically previous to that Adam Armstrong, Lyanco, Diallo, Elyonoussi and even Che Adams haven’t really had the required impact Our youth scouting seems to be pretty good, but our ability to pick a player that is able to actively impact this team has been woeful

It’ll be difficult, in fact the Championship looks like it could be as competitive as I ever remember it next year but from what I hear around the club the motivation is to attempt to spring back on the first attempt, so I don’t necessarily expect any firesales or cost cutting to an extent yet SR aren’t Venky’s… I think Rasmus was pushed into a position that he didn’t fit and was probably arrogant enough to think he could achieve what he needed but with a club that had very little joined up thinking we got what we got really The old guard wanted the ‘SFC playbook’, SR followed their metrics and we had a window that tried to appease both but achieved very little What we need now, is whats coming, a clear out and a club that is following a single vision, now whether that ‘vision’ is correct or not we will see but at the very least it will be consistent

Im not entirely sure why you keep mentioning Venky’s as a parallel to our ownership model really, other than attempting to find another set of owners you deem irresponsible. Venky’s bought Blackburn in 2011 (?) and from memory have done very little other than put money in to keep them afloat, they were almost more akin to Gao then SR, rarely funding player recruitment but attempting to keep their investment in the black where possible. SR have made terrible decisions but I don’t think there is anything but an intention to do right by Southampton FC, their first full year has been a disaster, partly due to the state of decay we were in under the Gao years but agreed certainly because of, what the thought were meaningful decisions that ended up executed badly My understanding is Rasmus has already stood back and we are in the process of remodeling the backroom staff to enable us to move forward, not exactly how I would assume owners with a lack of conviction would act Again I’m not saying SR have done well this year, clearly they have not, but we could very well have worse owners

My honest assessment is that without Ralph we would have got relegated sooner, we are/were a pretty terrible team that somehow managed to punch above our weight enough, at times, to stave off relegation for the previous two years… added to the fact that we were lucky previously that there were enough terrible teams below us… this year we were the worst of the bunch IF he was given a viable striker and Lavia stayed fit long enough then I think our fortunes would have been different but equally I think if we had sacked and replaced effectively early enough then we’d been ok too Our faults weren’t sacking Ralph, they were the constant club upheaval at all levels of the club from players to senior positions

I’m not really sure he’d lost the players tbh, it just went a little stale under him after some injuries and a tough set of fixtures Vieira is a progressive manager that tends to favour a 433 system and tries to play with a bit of attacking flair, in fact it started to go wrong when he tried to flip more defensive. We could do an awful lot worse than Vieira imo

As an outside of the box and potentially slightly ambitious appointment, at least for a championship club, Giovanni Van Bronkhorst Young talented manager that, imo was rather harshly sacked from Rangers recently but a lot of Feyenoords recent success was likely built off the good work he did there in his time in charge Plays a possession based 433, did very well in the Europa league and got the best out of Aribo, tactically very astute We could do a lot worse edit - I think he was potentially at City for a bit so will probably know Wilcox too

Pretty much yeah

Fedel and Ross I couldn’t care less about but Lang was a decent player

In all fairness wasn’t that the guy that said we’d definitely definitely be getting a new manager ?

What… 1 ?

Or stephens tbh

I’m not really sure its all that patronising, but he does have a point that there are quite a few posters on here that like to flap around without actually looking at things objectively. SR are committed to the long term viability of Southampton FC and this new multi club model they are attempting to build, whether you think all ‘owners’ have long term visions or not is largely irrelevant to the point Manji is looking to make Do I think SR are bad owners ? No, but I do think they’ve madd some very very poor decisions that, all things considered are obviously their fault but to an extent can be attributed to the fact that their incoming senior recruitment’s left them in the shit. The backroom definitely needed a refresh, in many areas, they had a divided boardroom and a number of senior heads of departments that weren’t pulling in the same direction but SRs attempted transitions have been handled poorly. My hope is that we can now move forward with the backroom/senior refresh out of the season and move into the championship with a club undivided and ready to tackle the next step in this football clubs future We have an owner that is committed, wealthy and driven to see us succeed. I do believe that Rasmus could potentially be an asset but he needs to be checked by those that have significant experience in the English game. And so, I do think, we are well placed, under these owners, to be able to bounce back, we are certainly in a better position now then we would have been under Gao IMO

Metrics….. 😩