Saint86

If Bournemouth keep a clean sheet they've basically won. I actually think we'll win - we tend to do alright vs the attacking sides, and then absolute dogshite when teams set up to defend against us.

I'd say this is pretty fair. Decision making this year has been poor though. We've spent £160M, which was our opportunity to rebuild at this level, and have instead destabilised the entire club. The blame for that sits with the main decision maker which is Rasmus / SR - but then equally Sports Republic have clearly invested into the club. All we can do is hope they get it right this summer - i don't actually care whether that means Rasmus takes a step back or whether he starts making the right decisions... We can't afford another summer like this year - and in reality that isn't even the half of it, we have to be so much better on the recruitment front.

Tella will want to go and be part of the Burnley side he helped get promoted. But that doesn't mean he'll be unhappy at saints, down tools, and refuse to play / jeopardise his career. Those are very different things. Ultimately this isn't one of the big 6 or 7 squads, its Burnley... they might have a decent season next year, but they'll be back battling relegation after that at best.

"Understands the Southampton Mantra" .... Yes Rasmus? Harder Rasmus? 👀

Surely as a minimum one of Semmens or Rasmus is gone? Depends where the power ultimately lies - Rasmus or Dragan... Rasmus won't sack himself sadly, and Semmens is just about the last remaining fall guy he can fall on. We have no head of recruitment currently (shields), Hale (academy manager is off), Wilcox yet to start as Crockers replacement in the DoF role, and no one in to Tony Steele? I fear we will once again be at the whims of Rasmus come the summer - at a time when we'll be replacing the manager, trying to work out which players are committed to the promotion fight, getting good deals done for those that are off, and sorting out replacement / new signings... Have to say i do admire the optimism of some - everything about us looks like a basket case at present 😰😂.

No way he comes back surely. He never struck me as the kind of man to go back to someone that binned him off. As others have said, he'll either take a holiday job for a bit, or he'll make good on his intention to retire and enjoy life with his wife.

Funny how "run out of steam" corresponds perfect to us not having a fit or available Danny ings/broja and having bad injuries throughout the side. But yes, despite still achieving good performance metrics with what he had available this year, he did look a beaten man at the end. I suspect turning around and looking at Adam Armstrong, Moi, Aribo, Walcott, and Che Adams in the fruitless and desperate hope of finding someone to covert the plethora of chances we were creating would do that to most managers. Would certainly turn me into a very desperate and stressed out man if my job and saints depended on it.... The first mistake, as has always been the case, was clearly not buying him (or whoever was manager) the requisite attackers in the summer, and then the lavia injury (and lack of cdm cover) really did for him - when paired with the Tino, KWP, and ABK injuries. No attack, a weak midfield, and a badly weakened defence. The second mistake was (having kept ralph over the summer), we bottled seeing it through and sacked him for Jones and a half wasted transfer window. Reality is that Ralph would most likely have had us mid table given the additional backing, the mid season break, and the overall quality of the league. Given the grand plan was to always hire Jones, its a bloody good thing they didn't sack Ralph in the summer... Hopefully he's enjoying a nice break away from football with his family and is recovering his mental well being, because he deserves it. Was a great servant for the club and hopefully comes back and gets a warm reception one day.

Good for him. Hopefully we can keep him but doesn't sound likely.

Well if you read Fabrice's post on the other thread then Semmens, crocker, Hale etc. are to blame for this season, and in actual fact Rasmus is the fall guy... So stop being mean to Rasmus, Ivan!!

We were basically the lowest net spenders in the league under those 3, and yet never in a relegation scrap. SR have come in and spent £160M to achieve a far worse outlook. Its an weird narrative starting to emerge where the blame is constantly being put on people at the club before the current owners...

This is wrong. Discussed clearly in the athletic this past week that lavia, abk, bazunu deals were initiated by the previous recruitment team at the start of last year (2022).

As already demonstrated, Semmens, crocker, and Ralph etc. did a good job with the rescoures available 🤷‍♂️. Crocker was very good at his role and him choosing not to be part of the SR project is certainly a loss for saints.

He does. Always. Clearly a strong favourite side for him, alongside Newcastle obviously.

Agreed he was invisible. Very poor game from him. But he clearly offers pace, and holding (over saliba) forced arsenal to play deeper defensively.

Or...it was a good tactical sub that nullified arsenal's main attacking threats, led to us going 3-1 up, and stopped a top of the table desperate arsenal having a shot on target that half until circa 70min 🤔🙄

The defensive changes were correct, it nullified arsenal's main attacking threat and led to us going 3-1 up. They were reduced to having to play through us which suited us and resulted in arsenal not having a shot on target (second half) until the 70th minute. It's a shame a lot of people can't see / understand that tbh. Ultimatley, Selles has taken a lot of flack for team selections / tactics, but he did alright vs arsenal. The simple reality is that we were away at top of league, who were playing in front of 60k fans to save their season, and ultimatley our lack of overall squad quality showed. Sadly the team just didn't have enough, or got complacent. I distinctly remember having a sinking feeling it was coming when the clip of our fans turning their backs and doing a poznan style dance was showing, talk about tempting fate... Arsenal scored shortly after 😂... I would also say that the ref being incredibly biased/soft towards arsenal and playing circa 18min of inury time didn't help... Martinelli should never have been on the pitch by the end either.

Yes, it won't require anywhere near 39points.... Its going to be 33-34, maybe 35 at most. If we had beaten arsenal i actually think we'd have done it. Feels like we're at best destined to have hope but fall short this season. Wins vs Bournemouth (H), Forest(a), and Fulham (H) will see us to 33. We'd then need to get a couple of points out of Newcastle (A), Brighton (A), or Liverpool (H).... But if we don't beat Bournemouth we're gone regardless imo.

He rallied the team numerous times on the pitch yesterday, he was everywhere in midfield, and he made numerous goal saving tackles or blocks... 2 of which were certain goals prevented... Queue fans wishing for him to leave... Hard to make it up.

Jacob Tanswell on power hierarchy, staff churn, responsibilities etc: Semmens’ role has changed since the takeover. In hindsight, this may have been something of a surprise, given Semmens said Sport Republic will not have a hands-on role in the day-to-day running of Southampton shortly after its purchase was publicly announced. Ankersen was the leading, almost single, voice in Jones’ appointment, which is different to what Semmens had in the past, where he was steering the ship. The distinct ways in which Sport Republic wants to operate is, understandably, not to everyone’s liking and can create a power struggle. It changed the responsibilities of Crocker and Semmens and some parts of their roles were essentially overlapped and covered by the ownership. Even taking into account the most recent departure of managing director Toby Steele, there have been more exits than what’s been documented, too. It is worth saying that Jason Wilcox should be given the autonomy to wield his influence on what will be a crucial summer. Lastly, in response to Max’s question, Ankersen is an erudite thinker who should be applauded for wanting to be bold and get Southampton ahead of the curve. However, it is important there is a correct balance between risk and pragmatism and someone who challenges his ideas — shown when he worked excellently alongside Phil Giles at Brentford. There hasn’t been enough of that this year. He also states within the same article that Bazunu, ABK, and Lavia's transfers were started by the old recruitment team in early 2022 (translation of "early last year").

None of this slow start malarkey please Selles - start with our strongest attack and actually carry a threat. Would be beyond naive to think arsenal won't score if we just stand off them, pass the ball amongst ourselves, and let them chose their attacks at will. Taul paul as the target man. Sulemana and then Edozie/Djenpo as wingers. Alcaraz playing as the supporting central attacking midfield. JWP and Lavia as the Central mids, one anchoring, one supporting. Have JWP dropping off the right wing to whip in crosses for Paul. Also, the tricky wingers should either win us territory or fouls - Or both. Never understand why Selles uses most of the above as impact players, but introduces them in a disjointed fashion with little time to play effectively together.

Deduct £1 for every goal we're going to lose by?

Dan Rice, Matt Crocker, David Thomas, Tony Steele, Joe Shields, a significant part of the data analysis department. Not to mention upheaval throughout the coaching setup and first team. Everyone remembers when SR / Rasmus said they weren't going to get too involved in the day to day running of the club right?

So on wasting of transfer fees then, and according to transfer market (note transfer values are actually listed in euros, but its all relative so used the pound sign for convenience): Season before last (20/21) Hojberg was sold for £16M, Reed was sold for £6.5M, and we got loan fees of about £3M for Lemina and Hoedt. Saores, Yoshida, Carillo, Boufal and simms left the club on frees. Total income was £26.3M and a lot of squad strength was lost. Against that, we signed KWP for £13.3M, Salisu for £12M, and Diallo for £12M - total spend was £37M (a net outlay). Personally, KWP/diallo/salisu for Hojberg and Reed is a more than fair return. Last Season 21/22 We spent £43M and made £60.35M. So an element of profit making clearly required - perhaps to offset previous window's small net spend. Net spend over the two seasons balances out basically. Ings was sold for £29.4M, Verstergard for £17.6M (£47M total). We also saw Gunn, Obafemi, Bertrand etc leave fore free/nominal sums. Therefore a lot of replacements requried. Against that we signed Perraud, A.Armstrong, lyanco, Tino, and added Theo and Broja to the wage bill. We lost Ings - which obviously was not good - all our bad form under Ralph was in parallel with having no fit/available focal point - the chance creation was pretty much always there, just not the conversion. But the squad had major holes. I would argue rock and a bad place on this one. On balance, we strengthened the overall squad (which if people recall was appallingly threadbare at the end of the 20/21 season in particular. If we had gone out and signed another £20-30M striker (plus wages), we would likely have been short 2 fullbacks and CB cover etc. 🤷‍♂️ Broja being in an out of form and getting injured is what largely did for us the next season. But the underlying issue here is we had to sell players to buy, we effectively did not have a pot to piss in, and we had to manage a total squad refresh, most of which is in fairness the legacy of the Les Reed era (and the fact our owner put nothing into the club over multiple years). On balance, I think its harsh to overly blame Semmens or say that the money was "wasted". Could it have been spent a bit better? Okay yeah sure, if recruitment was perfect maybe... but the reality is we had very little financial muscle/flexibility, and over those windows were seeing a lot of players leaving the club - often on loans or for free - Having gone over it, i do actually think its pretty impressive that we were involved in precisely zero relegation scraps under Semmens and Ralph given the resources they had and the rebuild they were effectively undertaking. EDIT - Also having just checked into it a bit further. Semmens became CEO under Gao in June 2019. The season before his arrival (i.e. 18-19) was the year we signed Vestergard for 25M euros, Ely for 18M euros, Gunn for 11.3M, and Stu Armstrong for 8M. The season before that was 17/18 which saw Carillo 22M euros, Lemina 18M euros, Hoedt 16M, and Bednarek 6M. Boufal was 18M the year before. That's 74M euros for the 4 untouchables (Lemina, Carillo, Hoedt, Boufal). As far as I can make out from Transfermarket, we made in total about £22M in transfer or loan fees from them. So a 52M euro loss over a few season (plus wages, and signing on/agents fees) that had to be recovered (in terms of squad quality). Combined with the lack of investment - thats a pretty bad set of cards that Semmens ultimately got dealt as a starting hand... Doesn't seem fair to criticise Semmens for pointing that out? 😄 You could also add in Gunn to all of that - signed for 12M and sold for 5M. In summary, i don't think Semmens has a bad track record... and after years of relative success (i.e. for our modest resources/situation), its unlikely that he's to blame for this season given the elephant in the room (i.e. a complete club restructuring via SR).

Not sure anyone sees Semmens as a saviour figure or gives him hero worship, just treat him with a dose of realism. His biggest mistakes imo stem from publicly implying a lack ambition - which got a fair portion of the fans on the wrong side. I don't disagree on transfers still being hit and miss. But they were certainly an improvement. Reality is we were financially quite poor relative to the rest of the league, which impacts on our attractiveness, available pool of players, and our overall recruitment operation/resources. But players like Salisu and KWP were significant success stories from that period. Others like Djenpo and Diallo were only ever going to be squad players in reality and haven't worked out. Broja was a decent acquisition. Che i would say was a decent aquisition. AA was a "we need a pacey striker who can score" desperately signings - and it hasn't worked at all - but then equally no where near as some of the bad signings under the previous regime. I can't even remember who introduced Moi but obviously hasn't worked. Reed and co certainly oversaw tremendous transfer sales and then wasted a lot of the money on poor players tied to long contracts - I have no issue with anyone throwing them under the bus for that.

We should have backed and kept ralph imo... but we didn't and instead limped on without being decisive. its one of the key decisions in relegating us 🤷‍♂️. His metrics for the season were okay given serious consideration - he had bad injuries, a very young and inexperienced team to gel, and the toughest games. He had us one game of mid table despite the above, and 13th for xG. The main reason the side were struggling under ralph was because they couldn't shoot (18th goals scored), and the defensive injuries were compounded by the Lavia injury. Had Ralph been given the correct tools in the summer, let alone the mid season break and £60M + in January, there is no way we would be in trouble. Also, you have no idea ultimately who was responsible for the semi permanent appointment of Selles? nor the overall mid/long term strategic decision making behind it - i.e. other targets, budget constraints, summer recruitment plans etc. So unfortunatley stating things like that just reads like you're just speculating to suit your narrative / argument 🤷‍♂️. I agree on Ralph/semmens, and given Semmens backed ralph he was probably more likely to be behind looking at a Marsch style appointment than Selles - obviously that all fell through quite quickly and we went for Rasmus' long term welsh love interest... The cynic in me wonders how that happened? Given how the control hierarchy actually seems to work these days, i would say its abundantly clear Rasmus had final say for pretty much the entire season... Its clear Rasmus was behind the Ralph sacking, the jones approach/appointment, jones' prolonged retention, and much of our transfer dealings. Whoever or why they settled on Selles ultimately is fairly irrelevant i'm afraid. He's an assistant thats been left holding the pieces after a year of horrific management at the highest level. But regardless, this new fan spun narrative that Semmens is the issue has very little grounding. He had no pot to piss in for years - yet slowly cleared out the deadwood and made some very positive signings to the team - as well as finally starting to get the youth teams performing. And combined with Ralph, they steered us away from relegation contenders and delivered relative stability. Its a huge testament to the work the two of them did (on no budget) that we were never in a relegation scrap under Ralph. Both should be praised... Now SR come in, and within a year they've dismantled essentially everything Semmens and Ralph had built... the academy coaching/recruitment, the club's scouting setup, the first team coaching etc. Plus they've spent £160M totally changing the squad into some kind of academy flesh market... Everybody knows that Rasmus is the head dog in charge of that - he made it very clear himself at the fan's forum... So the fans blaming Semmens (for essentially dismantling years of his own hard work) just come across as angry/frustrated fans flailing around for anyone to blame - and everyone should be directing their decision making frustrations squarely at Rasmus - because that is where they bloody belong 😄