Lighthouse

I understand what is being said fine thanks. Some people seem to be under the impression that our worse manager in recent history would certainly be at least as good as where we are now, with the implication that he may well do better. I disagree, really quite strongly.

I don't get this, I can only assume it's part of some collective wind up. Nathan Jones is the worst manager we've ever had. He could have continued to be just as dreadful in the Championship had he stayed. Now for some reason people are arguing that he certainly couldn't be worse than 4th, a possition he's never taken a team to in his life. He once finished 6th with Luton, so what? He could just as easily have replicated the season he finished 12th, or his dreadful season at Stoke. Why is that one 6th place definitely the season he will replicate and even exceed here, this season. Harry Redknapp won this League with Pompey in 2003, then got relegated with us, playing far better than Jones' team ever did. How did 2005/6 go? He was definitely a better manager for us than Adkins, who achieved absolutely nothing at Scunthorpe, right?

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Everybody understands that, we know how a league table works, thanks. It shows how good you were relative to the other teams that season, nothing more, nothing less. The Leicester team which won the league was, by a very comfortable margin, worse than the Liverpool team which missed out on being the invincible Champions ‘by 13mm’.

Yes, he got Luton into the top 6 one time, that’s a decent enough achievement. It’s a heck of a stretch to go from that to him definitely having us up above where Martin’s team is, which is what’s being said openly on this thread. Nobody was walking away from that wolves game thinking, "thank goodness he’s the right man to bring us straight back up."

I’d say it was the opposite. Martin is 4th with a points total that would usually be 2nd. Puel was 8th with a points total that would usually be 13th.

Jones was the worst manager I've ever seen at Saints and by all accounts was equally dreadful at Stoke too. Christ knows what would have happened had he stayed but I can't for the life of me understand why some people are so convinced he couldn't possibly be below fourth. We've just failed to score in a game for the first time since September and people are talking as if Martin is Branfoot in a rubber mask.

And the 6 points we gave Bristol City sent them down.

When he left Luton he was 9th, by the end of that season they had plumetted to 3rd. We are currently 4th. I've no idea how you can extract, "Jones can't possibly be worse than Martin," from that. Jones is the most utterly dreadful manager I've ever seen at Saints, not one redeeming feature. The football was dreadful to watch, the results were abysmal, he wasn't even more likeable than Russ. He looked completely out of his depth, then there was that, "I've been trying to please other people, now I'm going to start doing it my way," interview, when he implied none of it was his fault. They may have been different leagues but Jones' results fell off a cliff from what Ralph was doing, and that was despite having our easiest fixtures and a month long WC in order to prepare.

Selles I’ll give you but wasn’t even a manager. Jones was dreadful, I don’t know if there’s ever been another full time manager in football history who failed to score a point at home throughout his tenure but by golly Jones managed it. Russ is fourth, solidly in the playoffs despite being hampered by (apparently) the worst goalkeeper who’s ever played football. He’s had a decent season, people who are talking about second as being the bare minimum: dream on!

I could forgive people for looking back on someone like Burley or Sturrock with roses tinted glasses but Christ, Jones was barely a year ago. Just a couple of highlights for anyone who has forgotten how utterly dreadful his tenure was:

County Durham in early April wet weather shocker. Who'd have thought.

Finish! I'm going to have to chug a whole bottle of Domestos for this but; come on Utd!

The start of a home triple header. COYR etc.

You can’t just equate a bunch of random stuff which is nothing to do with each other. Deformities like the elephant man had can be recreated with prosthetics and special effects, as clearly there is not going to be a capable actor with his exact, matching disfigurement. An Aussie can play a Scott by putting on a different accent, he can’t become black (well he can but that’s a whole new can of worms). A black African playing Henry V in a Shakespeare production (if that was ever a thing) is clearly because it’s an African production and ALL the local actors are black. Getting a black woman to play Anne Boleyn in 21st century Europe is clearly a choice done for nothing other than cheap shock value. If you’re going to do that, why bother with any pretence of historical accuracy. Just have her walking around Tudor court in a Kappa tracksuit and save on costume budget.

Our system has worked fine for the vast majority of the season, more often than not the games we’ve dropped points have been the result of individual errors in either penalty box than simply being outplayed. Even at Portman Road we were fantastic for 65 minutes. If we’d finished off a couple of chances like Bednarek’s header and the one where Downes didn’t pass to AA and not left them with acres of space in our box three times, we’d have thumped them. Those are individual problems, not systemic problems.

I reckon Miss Teen America should get the former sorted fairly soon. No hope for saints though, dream on.

Any system is crap to watch when it’s not working. When teams found a way to play through Ralph’s press, it didn’t work. Jones’ long, direct football didn’t look good against anyone at all. There’s no universally great system, otherwise every team would be playing it every game and never lose.

We do have a 100% record against them in their 12 year history.

Okey dokey.

Scything away at Leeds and Ipswich, great afternoon lads!

I would

Have we solved peace in the Middle East yet?

I’m sure you will apply that logic evenly and fairly to the upcoming Rosa Parks biopic, starring Vinnie Jones.

That’s fair enough, thanks for clarifying. I don’t have any sympathy to justify, beyond the fact that the whole Middle East has a sorry and enduring history of lost human lives. I don’t sympathise with Israel but there are quite clearly a lot of regional politics which are relevant to this issue. You’re conflating understanding with sympathy, they’re two different things.