Smirking_Saint

Id probably only drop Ely, Id even keep Bednarek in the 11 who I thought was excellent today AMN did very little wrong either Keep the same tactics, swap Ely for Edozie and potentially AMN for KWP thats it for me Positive momentum is what we need here

That literally never ever happens outside football manager and they’ll probably lose just as much from agents fees etc There are two trains of thoughts really; - City buy him back because they want him… unfortunately with Phillips looking a predictable bag of shite its a real possibility along with Gundogan potentially leaving this year - City don’t want him but Chelsea or any other club that needs a 6 buys him and City hoover up the sell on fee, (20% I think), my only hope is Enzo is the signing that doesn’t make them picking up RL a priority I don’t think we have a hope of keeping him so hopefully we’ve started scouting a replacement

I thought that, originally I worried we’d lost our out ball but certainly Onuachu and Stu looked knackered

Spoke with just a completely serene confidence pre match, no sense of arrogance, just an authority and a feel of a real positivity I think he deserved and now deserves a chance, for me, short of a capitulation at Leeds OR a big name coming in I think give him the rest of the season Its shit or bust now anyway with very little to lose, the players seem to be really engaged with him, his tactics are back to how I feel we’re set up and play best.. christ… he even got a tune out of Walcott and Bednarek I also fear, after today, considering he seems to have SUCH an affinity with the players that IF we replace him with somebody mediocre then it could have a negative affect on the squad He did brilliantly today 👏🏻

You couldn’t of really got it more wrong tbh - Rasmus hired him - Has asked every managerial appointment to ensure they worked with him - Marsch pulled the plug not Rasmus But you know.. unsubstantiated anger is always best

I think its time to reset, and play what is, IMO our strongest line up, if ABK doesn’t make it then Salisu can drop in, Im not sure there’s a lot in it on current form Id expect him to go back to having the ‘wide’ players as IF and push the FBs forward and both Orsic and Sulemana are more natural at playing narrower

Lets get behind Selles and see where we are, Marsch was, IMO an obvious and available appointment but for whatever reason he didn’t want the gig Lampard/Gerrard I think would just take us backwards and/or waste more money when we eventually sack them Worth giving Selles a chance and see if any other names come out of the woodwork

This is what I’d like to see against Chelsea, its a good start and easily transitions into a 4231 or even 4222 (bit of a stretch) if required, not sure on the fitness of ABK or KWP but these can be easily swapped with Salisu or Bree We need to get in their faces early, they’re as fragile as we are, especially after their midweek loss Stick Onuachu on Silvas toes and try to get Sulemana in behind as Badiashile doesn’t cover him effectively Im not really expecting a win but Id like to see a competetive and full of energy performance

I was involved in some of the redevelopment at Staplewood.. Cortese was.. to put it mildly.. hard work

Has he made the mistake of picking the wrong consortium? We don’t really know what the alternatives were… SR aren’t that bad, I think they’re aligning things were we need to be behind the scenes tbh and putting money where it needs to be I’m not convinced Semmens is that fantastic at his job really, it’s basically all centered around Ralphs good work keeping us up.. thats largely it, that and soundbites… worth noting apparently he was the reason we failed to get a striker over the line in the summer Im also not entirely sure Rasmus is the devil incarnate either, outside of the obvious fuck up in Jones

Its a fair take and a definite possibility yeah, I imagine he’s been redied for Championship football but honestly who knows anymore

Yeah he’s basically an unknown entity at this point outside of having a reasonably good profile from a pure coaching respect inside the game Coaching and managing are an entirely different kettle of fish though and a great many fantastic coaches have struggled to manage and actually visa versa My point really is what impact he had under Ralph/Jones because surely its easy to disregard a coach/voice that you havn’t brought in personally

Selles always felt a bit of a weird appointment, Im sure he is a fantastic coach and ‘hopefully’ he can carry us atleast competetively until the end of the season However It just never felt like a good fit, I understand why they’d want to offer Ralph someone to challenge him, however if Ralphs issue was that his stubbornness, then why would he listen to Selles ? Equally with Jones, the club has effectively said, work with this guy, even though he had his own coaches Naturally a manager is going to resist outside influences, especially one’s appointed by the club It just always felt to me as an awkward and forced dynamic

Agree tbh, outside of Jones its not been that bad but the sheer catastrophe that WAS Jones has damaged things so much. Ralph had to go, I was told pre season that the idea was to give him until the WC break and then back a new manager if required. So that decision, although hindsight says we should of reset in the summer, probably wasn’t ‘that’ bad of a decision to give him time. The issue is around what metrics Jones was signed, because there are very little positives, if any, that came out of his appointment.. tactically he didn’t fit, egotistically he was a problem abd his coaching was sub par… you ‘could’ argue he had the 6 week WC break to embed new tactics so a mid season tactical change shouldn’t have been as huge a problem as it was BUT he utterly failed to use that time effectively

I believe Semmens led far more on the transfer side of things in the summer, atleast as far as negotiations are concerned however actual target acquisition is more of a group discussion. Ankerson took over in January, it ‘should’ of been Shields but obviously that was another clusterfuck of a situation Ankerson is effectively leading now as the DoF until Wilcox takes over in the summer, I think generally its s situation within which SR have attempted to make the necessary changes from a footballing perspective and we’re paying the price for the raft of changes happening now I think Ankerson is probably a half decent DoF, but the Jones debarcle was absolutely awful and shows how metrics really aren’t the be all and end all As far as Dragan and Rasmus/Kraft is concerned, Ive said it before and Ill say it again, I think Dragan is more invested in SR and so Rasmus/Kraft then he necessarily is in Saints so, its more likely they all walk rather than Ankerson/Kraft being sacked. I desperately just want the season tk end now tbh, however it ends. Get Wilcox appointed properly, have a reset and assessment and go from there

Its… to put it mildly… fucking embarrassing

Having seen his conferences im not sure it would of been a short conversation, even if Leeds didn’t have much to say

You ok Alpine ? I mean DT

Agree, we almost certainly have the personnel and depth for the redbull 4222/4231 Ragnick approach now, my only concern is Onuachu as he’d almost certainly need to initiate a press to a certain degree Even Orsic/Sulemana are effectively IF rather than traditional wingers

I think ‘fitness’ levels at top level are greatly exaggerated, top level sportsmen are likely to find their base level + a bit extra reasonably quickly especially as they’re effectively consistently doing some form of stamina based work.. I think a lot of the time is application and perhaps burn out We have a bigger squad now AND 5 subs available so I think we’re in a better spot then we were halfway through Ralphs tenure when it sort of fell apart imo

Just as well we didn’t sign any traditional wingers then

You’re absolutely spot on except for the fact that analytics and metrics is a HUGE approach to how Bielsa sets up and coaches and he has always been a huge advocate for analytics in football and coaching in particular, he’s also pretty egotistical, you only have to remember the whole spygate saga So obviously apart from being completely wrong in your attempt to side swipe SR its a cracking post 👍🏻

Rightly fucking so Up the baldness

Well said 👏🏻 and echos my thoughts completely

Im not ignoring anything, whatever you thought about Ralph we can’t have a manager that lost the dressing room