Les Reed Appreciation thread

[SaintsLoyal]

On 13/04/2026 at 20:20, Gloucester Saint said:

It didn’t work out well for either party going to Everton yes, it was a needless mistake. Claude Puel wasn’t the puppet Les thought he’d easily control either - the Forster contract extension against the manager’s wishes caused a rift allegedly. 

The 2016 end of season fans forum and the Les Reed comment about Ronald ‘doing alright’ when he steered us to top 6 for the first time since Lawrie fully warranted the nervous laughter in the audience. Les lost my trust from that point. 

Also, the response to the Guido Carrillo question in the 2018 forum was also priceless. Rather than just say the player wasn’t suited, he went into a speech about how he’d be a great asset over time. The laughter was deafening. We’d all seen him marked out of the FA Cup game by Wigan’s centre backs.

The Fonte transfer window mess was awful and cost us a trophy.

Les was fine with an experienced manager but not the brains of the operation.

Reed was the brains of the operation from when Liebherr took over be it as a consultant initially and then being fully employed. So he had some duds, but its him that brought in numerous players for back to back promotions. Top six finishes and european football.  He's done the same at wrexham from non league to the Champ. The Fonte stand off was poor for someone that had done so much for the club. 

[Saint Fan CaM]

Reed managed to somehow get ingratiated with Liverpool and their ability to take influential players off us for very reasonable fees. He was the catalyst to our eventual decline IMO - had he not sold us out at the point we needed to push on, we might have achieved so much more.

[Turkish]

26 minutes ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

Reed managed to somehow get ingratiated with Liverpool and their ability to take influential players off us for very reasonable fees. He was the catalyst to our eventual decline IMO - had he not sold us out at the point we needed to push on, we might have achieved so much more.

How many clubs of similar size to Saints have achieved so much more than we did when he was here?

Edited 1 hour ago by Turkish