The also rans..

Not really directly Saints related, but a good article to read on the state of football for the more traditional bigger clubs like Marseille, Leeds etc.

https://www.ft.com/content/19455408-0b96-11e8-839d-41ca06376bf2

Not really directly Saints related, but a good article to read on the state of football for the more traditional bigger clubs like Marseille, Leeds etc.

 

https://www.ft.com/content/19455408-0b96-11e8-839d-41ca06376bf2

Agree with much of that. PL went through a more interesting 3 or 4 years with Leicester winning the league, us pushing for top 4 and getting Euros, Everton last season. This season it really has been the top 6 and TV companies crushing all opposition, only really Burnley have competed this year. Around Europe this has happened for a long time but PSG have really accelerated this with the Neymar deal so even the Champions League is basically a tournament between them, Real, Barca, Bayern, City and perhaps Juventus.

Just let them and their oligarchs form a super league and the rest of us can make a really interesting and genuinely competitive league and European competition/s worthy of the name.

Link no good without a subscription.

Agree with much of that. PL went through a more interesting 3 or 4 years with Leicester winning the league, us pushing for top 4 and getting Euros, Everton last season. This season it really has been the top 6 and TV companies crushing all opposition, only really Burnley have competed this year. Around Europe this has happened for a long time but PSG have really accelerated this with the Neymar deal so even the Champions League is basically a tournament between them, Real, Barca, Bayern, City and perhaps Juventus.

 

Just let them and their oligarchs form a super league and the rest of us can make a really interesting and genuinely competitive league and European competition/s worthy of the name.

It is not good to use the 'we can't hope to compete with the top six' excuse for a club's lack of ambition. For a start, the top six is different every year. We were in it a couple of years ago and Leicester were top of it while clubs currently in the top six, like Chelsea, have struggled in the recent past. The Premier League is probably the most competitive top flight league in Europe. Four different clubs have won it in the last 5 years. Most other top leagues are dominated by just 1 or 2 clubs and in the 1980s the old First Division used to be much worse, with Liverpool dominating it virtually unchallenged.

Krueger's 'small club' mentality is not acceptable. Our average home gate this cenntury is among the 12 biggest in the country and social media figures indicate our fanbase is one of the ten biggest. What we always have been for a club of our size, however, is an underachieving club. Historically, despite the fact our gates have been limited by small stadium capacities, our all-time average home gate is bigger than Nottingham Forest's, for example, and much bigger than Pompey's, yet look how many trophies we have won in comparision.

It's about time we had some really significant overachievment for a change and just finishing in the top 8 is really not very significant for a club as big as ours. Most other clubs with gates as big as ours have won 4 or 5 major trophies at least. Nottingham Forest, a club with fewer fans than Saints, have won 9 major trophies.

Agree with much of that. PL went through a more interesting 3 or 4 years with Leicester winning the league, us pushing for top 4 and getting Euros, Everton last season. This season it really has been the top 6 and TV companies crushing all opposition, only really Burnley have competed this year. Around Europe this has happened for a long time but PSG have really accelerated this with the Neymar deal so even the Champions League is basically a tournament between them, Real, Barca, Bayern, City and perhaps Juventus.

 

Just let them and their oligarchs form a super league and the rest of us can make a really interesting and genuinely competitive league and European competition/s worthy of the name.

Completely agree. The sooner they all bugger off, the better.