Daft Kerplunk

Has no one mentioned Hoddle?

My guess is that this is what the club want back. Koeman has bought some good times but one assumes that there is probably a wish to get back to the programme. I'm not overly worried, and like when Poch took over, actually quite excited about a new potential dynamic coach coming in. It still works that the club get Ronald to be the bad guy and a new exciting direction is set. Things move fast in football and if RK doesn't believe in it or no longer fits in, I'll say thanks to him for the past two years which have been really good and look forward to the next appointment.

Done, good survey and will no doubt provide interesting results.

From the ITK snippets that have appeared, the glowing praise from Les about Poch and the non-praise given to RK after the season was done, I definitely think Les and the board were looking at another manager/coach/department head some time ago. Ron is going to move on and he will be the bad guy in it all when really, it has probably been on the cards anyway. Reed may, as someone suggest above, a Machiavellian character but football is a dirty business and to move upwards, we need dirty players at the top to compete. It will clearly be dressed up that we (SFC) are the victims and the large majority of fans are going to play ball and hate Ronald. Nothing wrong with that as football feeds itself on this sort of thing. The big bonus for the club is that they get to move on and make the decision they wanted to without having to fire anyone and make themselves look bad. A win win situation if ever there was one.

No to Moyes, McLaren or this type of manager. Yes to someone who wants to continue and build upon a project, and importantly promote youth. We can't afford he bigger names so we need to bring them through, even if those are those we buy from elsewhere and improve.

Or we've played a great hand to get rid of him making sure the blame is all on him disguising our true intentions to get rid of him as alluded to before. Les was hardly gushing of Ronald come end of the season and was very supportive of the work Poch had done whilst here. I'd suggest that this might turn out better than expected for Les and co.

So if (and when) RK goes: He was offered a better deal by Everton, which no one could deny him taking if we weren't matching his ambitions for the football side of things He can see we can't offer him the things he wants on the pitch. No point in blaming or hating him. He's done very good things whilst here just like Poch did. No point in blaming the club either as: They can't offer more money and they can't afford to keep or attract new players to add to the squad whilst keeping those already here. We have a rich owner as people keep banging on about (on Twitter at least) but she's not throwing money at the club so that's a non-argument. In fact it is irrelevant or we'd be investing in a stadium expansion at very least so we could compete better. The most disappointing thing about it is that it happens too regularly to us and despite a certain arrogance and largesse that we will be fine, if not better off, that cannot easily continue. It is constantly destabilising and that's not helpful when trying to build a team. Unless of course, this is what Les has wanted all along and there is another plan, which could be plausible.

One thing is for certain, social media plss takes and belittling of other clubs rarely goes well!

If they're insiders, maybe they are on holiday like many in football at the moment.

If RK leaves because he's going to get a chance to fulfil greater ambitions, that surely says more about SFC than him and you couldn't hold it against him. Of course, Maybe Les is actually happy to let him go, which according to something someone else posted, might be the case anyway. Either way, things will play out the way they are meant to, and hopefully if we do have a meltdown, it ends with us being in a better position again come the end of next season!

They can c**t off!

That is a delightful strip

No surprise if he goes and most importantly, him leaving for a decent amount may mean we can keep others and sign some new talent ready to prove themselves. If Wanyama and Pelle are the only ones who leave this summer (of the key first team squad) and maybe Juanmi if he is not in the plans, and we bring in others to challenge places then it will not be a bad summer. Hopefully we will get our signings done first so the perception is not of another meltdown in the media, however far from reality that is. It is a narrative that sticks sadly. This is the summer we can change that.

All sounds very positive, especially if things have moved to contracts. Must mean Ronald is happy with the ambition shown or it would have have got that far. *may I qualify that by ambition, I don't mean spending a sack load of money, more that he likes how we are thinking we can progress, be it a mix of keeping existing players, developing the youth further and signing some quality additions.

Tierney Now this could be fun

It's all about getting future fans in. Oh, and didn't you call me a c**t on another post. No respect. Oh, and other clubs who we wish to compete with in the top half with are Liverpool, Spurs, Leicester, Crystal Palace even.

Bet you wouldn't say that to my face keyboard hard man. Oh and please explain how it is a wind up?

Best Premier League finish, players love playing for him. Fans love him. Over to you fellas to do the business.

No disputing that but other clubs are expanding so it's not all tax funded. It also doesn't have to be reduced to provide the same income as it does today, it could still be higher but the cost to fans would be reduced. Also, other match day income would increase. An expansion could also be paid off over a long term. It's not impossible, but it would take some bravery from the club to be bold enough to do it.

With cheaper season tickets like WHU we'd easily fill a 45k stadium every week. More families could afford to bring their kids More young people could afford it Older folk might be able to make it work It wouldn't be such a big decision as it is now. Any argument about not filling it is closely linked to the cost of attending, not the size of the fanbase. Come on saints, be brave, make a difference and get more people in and get the next generations involved as well by making it financially easier for them to be at each match.

We should definitely look to add many more seats (15k great but definitely extend the Kingsland upwards by as much as possible) and add more capacity to the footbridge but other than that, finding a solution to us needing a full end of loud fans, the frankly s£$t PA system (it would surprise people how much this would probably cost though) and also more sales points at half time for food and drinks would be my main things to invest some time, thought and money in.

I can't help but think of what Guan 2.0 posted the other day about Ronald not being happy about a meeting with the board when things weren't going so well in the middle part of the season, and then how the club might be looking to go in a different direction followed by the tease that K Billy might know more. Although Les at the player awards (see the clip) said he hoped for a quieter summer, he also wasn't exactly lauding Ronald in the same way he did with Poch the other day in the 'media'. I know people don't want to believe the media but the sheer volume of coverage about this suggests there may be something in it and maybe the leadership at the club isn't worried because it has other plans and Ronald knows he's on his way out. It seems we could do with employing a PR company though to make sure the press see us more favourably than a plucky little south coast club ripe for being picked all the time.

Clearly there is a sense that it needs to be said though. I'm quite happy for this to be said. It's an emotional business after all.

Barcelona are close and have pretty much achieved this in recent years. It's a long term goal though, definitely not easy and if we hadn't been pilfered then we'd be achieving it now.

A totally different scenario with Cortese probably getting to the players before the new leadership had a chance/them also being slightly naive in the early days after Cortese left, their ambitions to move on anyway and then Poch leaving before they knew who the new manager was. You can see in the delight on RKs face that this deal is a massive step in the right direction. VVD is the type of player we should be building a team around, and he's ours for many more years yet with this deal.