Daft Kerplunk

Don’t be surprised if the new signing is Vingergaard. He’s got a great engine 😎

Dear Sports Republic, here is your strategy: Win football matches playing entertaining football as much as possible. Some matches may require neutralising tactics but to win is always the first objective. To achieve this, we will sign or develop players who can help us achieve this outcome. Coaches, players and staff will understand that winning matches in an entertaining fashion is the priority for football departments. We will represent the city of Southampton positively with our step of play and how we interact with our fans, and commercial partners. The first answer to community and commercial activity should be yes and how do we make it work. We will be a can-do organisation that has an emphasis on action.

Whisper it but it’s because the academy isn’t as good as it used to be.

Having thought about it, perhaps this should be the time to just let the youngsters enjoy the experience of no expectations and show people what they’re capable of. Drop all the shit players who are leaving, although that would leave less options I guess! However, Selles will still be trying to show that he’s up to the job so expect two banks of five to stop us conceding early, before conceding and getting absolutely tonked. Silver lining would be Brighton being closer to finishing above Spurs in the table.

Ankerson, get that deal done son 👍

Ralph was averaging less than a point a game before he was sacked. That’s more than flirting with relegation. Ralph’s last 38 games with us saw us get 37 points, but that includes a spell that effectively ended after 12 games on 25th February with a win against Norwich. After that, 26 matches with 4 wins and 5 draws. Ralph was good for us for awhile and our pathetic board didn’t help him but something had gone wrong and at the point he was rightfully let go, the trajectory of Ralph’s tenure was going in one direction only. What happened after was a continuation of a club that was befuddled yet arrogant.

You can’t have separate factions in a successful organisation, and SR and the Semmens and old school people are clearly at loggerheads. It’ll need a complete clear out for SR to succeed. Whether they are right or not will take proof. But it’s clear Semmens and the rest, including some of the old school at the training ground, need to go to allow the club to be freshened up.

And now, we finally read what had been alluded to for awhile. We are not a well run club, and we have been relegated as a result of it. The momentum has been poor for years and there’s every chance we will be down for a good while yet. I’d like to avoid the Liverpool match but I have a feeling that might be our last premier league game for a good few years. We deserve relegation as a club. And as a fan base who unquestioningly accept the bullshit of sheisters like Semmens and Ankerson, we probably deserve it to.

Silver lining might be that clowns like Semmens, Greenwell etc. will also be gone. Absolute clean sweep of leadership is needed, including those the layer down (another layer of directors and a second tier senior management team - no good organisation has two!) who are as useless as those at the top. Clear the decks. Reduce the PowerPoint presentations that lead nowhere, be a club who wants to win.

That Fulham performance was fantastic, although the one where we beat them 0-3 at theirs with 3 brilliant goals by Lallana, Lambert and Jay-Rod stands out too. Agree with most of this. Other than Ralph crying, which was embarrassing for us; made it look like we were small time. Which we are of course.

Oof, that is damning. Well-run they said. Cripes.

If that caused our numerous problems, then it sits just behind blaming Che for our relegation because he alone is quite obviously why we are getting relegated 😂 The problems are quite numerous. Nothing to it. File under coincidence, or the bin.

Something like: We are the biggest club in a region of over 1 million people. We are going back to representing our fans by delivering competitive football teams. Competitive players who want to succeed are welcomed. If you outperform expectations, a bigger club might approach us to sign you and we will listen to offers that value you correctly. If you perform to expectations, you’ll become an important player for this club, and likely a hero to fans. We won’t accept players who don’t want to win. You’ll be loaned out. Our mission as a football club is to win as many matches as possible. If we as a club do well, you’ll do well too.

In 2005, we were a football club. I was gutted we went down. Today, we are a low-end asset management company that is also a social media content creator. The board treats ‘customers’ like idiots and apart from the foundation, it is disconnected from the community it traditionally represents. From Kat’s sale to Gao to take us to the next level, to Sports Republic’s disastrous first full season, we have been run horrifically. Heads must roll. When and if we go back to being a football club, it might become more meaningful.

The Sports Republic Odyssey continues. Who knows the destination!

Agree with all apart from the ‘wokery’ bit. That’s just about being good human beings who don’t dislike people for being different, and don’t buy in to the false culture war being stoked to take people’s attention from the important things in life. He’s wrong about women’s football become more popular than men’s football any time soon but that’s not a ‘woke’ thing, that’s just being stupid and saying stuff that’s meaningless in reality.

He did indeed, remember it well. Different times

The proof will be in their actions of the summer. If they realise that to develop youngsters, you need some experience alongside them, and that you don’t buy more than you need unless it’s an outstanding talent, then things could get better. I am hopeful that there is a focus on a decent squad that is lean and hungry. I’m not convinced that Che and Armstrong will be good in the championship any more because their confidence will need rebuilding. But perhaps with a decent manager, it might be possible. A good clear out of staff behind the scenes to make it leaner is needed. In the past few years the accompanying staff on a match day have almost matched the number of players. That is apparently the same at the youth level too. And the commercial and legal teams that became bloated too apparently. That’ll probably happen anyway as whatever Semmens says, it’ll be difficult to justify a marketing team of 20+ people in the championship. Plenty to do.

We were on our way to relegation under Gao. The problems of this year are just a culmination of what has been happening for awhile. Apart from the early days of Kat Liebherr, we’ve been on a downward trajectory since 2018.

Not in any way a Sam Allardodgy fan but this post has eloquently argued for it, tongue firmly in cheek, and therefore, I’m in.

At least Semmens and Co are succeeding with the Women’s team. Priorities.

And no centre forward. Not that we really one of those who’s functional in their role, other than Che.

And Lyanco

Under Gao, we would have eventually been in this position as so much damage was done under his reign. Remember that he allowed the board to get on with what they did, and largely, those same people were in charge whilst we nosedived in the second half of last season. Momentum is a big thing. Performances like the other night were like stagnant pool of piss-ridden water that hasn't moved forward for some time. There's a comment about Man City above saying they didn't expand their model until they got it right. I think SR bought the bullshit of Semmens that suggested we were already steps ahead, when the reality was that we were becoming relegation fodder. SR need to go back to the drawing board, become leaner and probably meaner on the football side (no long contracts to 19 year olds who'll likely never make it), and produce a model that works. So many people have wanked off over Moneyball but what none of them seemed to grasp was that Oakland A's were always maintaining a very tight budget and were brutal with players who didn't fit the system, unlike us who have tons of players who aren't good enough. Baseball is also a game largely of individual v individual, team spirit is important but apart from fielding, players don't interact in anywhere near the same frequency as football and that makes it significantly different from an analytical perspective. The club needs a major overhaul, big time.

The team is pathetic. But they’ve been put together under the stewardship of Semmens, and then Ankerson. One has been here for years and needs to go now, and the other should be on borrowed time.