Smirking_Saint

Wilcox is there and I think he’ll reign him in a bit BUT he has literally just got his foot in the door Im not actually convinced Rasmus is an idiot, just that he believes beyond reason in his ‘ideas

Id like to keep him, we need a RW, he’s in the Championship TOTS so should come back to us in good form and high on confidence But Everyone has a price.. and he is almost certainly in discussions with Burnley/Us about leaving

In fairness I think its worse than what you’d expect a club to go through, resignations and removals… its a revolution

My fear is we’ll probably end up with a manager bereft of much of a say, more a head coach then a manager for instance… and the club will be ‘transformed’ around them into whatever vision both Wilcox and Rasmus have… part of me wouldn’t necessarily mind that, Im a fan of aligned thinking, but we’re in a position where basically its a complete revolution and I feel an experienced manager could give valued insights there There is a lot to do, it’s actually quite worrying but effectively we need to recruit the heads of basically every major department Its a mess

We’ll see (Im not sure Carrick is the No.1 target, but I’m not sure Ive heard anyone particularly inspiring in any whispers yet) Not even sure what to make of Carrick, he looks like he is potentially an impressive young coach.. but I just think, with the amount of disruption we’re seeing and will see around the club this summer, we need an intelligent, experienced (sorry Fabrice) coach that is confident and can help shape the club moving forward because there isn’t a lot of experience left at St Marys outside of Rasmus and Wilcox, and lets be frank… we’ve experienced Rasmus already

Russell Martin seems a steady, sensible approach for a team that was progressive in the top half of the Championship But… for me with the potential project, money, stature… Id expect more

This from the same ITK camp as when Selles was definitely being replaced ? Rasmus was always going to have a large say in the next manager, as we’ve said over and over, he’s basically, like it or not, basically the only one left

They won’t be able to afford that I don’t think, they’ll pick up one or two maybe Lyanco has been heavily linked with them, he is the obvious one

Exactly this

My thoughts are he was a very limited manager that got away with it because even then Utd had an incredibly talented squad… despite what their fans would tell you

Yeah I don’t disagree with the move tbh

I don’t put too much stock in the betting markets but; Martin is a decent enough manager, heavily possession based and its a direction the club want to go down so could have legs

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