Simon Clifford

[Colinjb]

1 hour ago, Turkish said:

That’s where we teach, every thing is done with both feet. Hundreds if not thousands of touches per session inside, outside, lace, sole and both feet. People take the piss out or repetition and keep ups they moan it’s boring but it’s like anything with muscle memory, if you can do 100 keep ups with your weaker and stronger foot you’ll have a first touch better than 95% of the people in the world 

Sounds like the Coerver method.

[Turkish]

23 minutes ago, Colinjb said:

Sounds like the Coerver method.

Yep that’s exactly what it is. The 30/30 challenges are brilliant but so simple. 

Edited 17 October, 2024 by Turkish

[Holmes_and_Watson]

On 13/09/2024 at 17:34, spyinthesky said:

Interesting post.
Made me recollect when I was a kid, we used to play one touch in the road on our estate as hardly anyone had a car.
if the ball hit the kerb you lost a point.
We played for hours and myself and a couple of pals were proficient with both feet as a consequence
I also spent a good deal of time throwing and kicking a ball against our back wall to develop reactions.
We had very limited money or options to watch a screen so these sort of skills were developed by many kids when I was young but the football boots, balls, pitches, kit etc etc were very different to what is available to youngsters nowadays.

Reminds me of a number of years, particularly summers, as a kid. I played with a pretty large group of kids, a lot of whom were friends of my older brother.

We lived next to a park, where we could set the size of our pitch, and play loads of small sided games. Lots of fun games with small groups, or individuals, against a single 'keeper.

If not with a group, also lucky to live within parental supervision of large walls where you could chalk out zones for points or accuracy. Hour after hour doing that, alone, with a brother or pal.

As a smaller kid already, plus playing with older kids, and in those games, you really develop a lot of close ball control, and with both feet. Also a lot of awareness, anticipation and self preservation ahead of challenges. As we played every night, along with cricket, every night reinforced all those skills. You'd also learn from others and develop edges to your game. Every skill set up as a game to make it fun.

[Turkish]

Interesting podcast with him here, worth 45mins if you're interested. talks about his time at Saints 20-25 minutes

 

 

[JohnnyShearer2.0]

I wasn't opposed to Woodward or Clifford coming in. However the implementation wasn't great. If they focused on the youth side of things and worked that out along with leaving the senior squad, I think it would have given Southampton an advantage over the long run.

[Turkish]

18 minutes ago, JohnnyShearer2.0 said:

I wasn't opposed to Woodward or Clifford coming in. However the implementation wasn't great. If they focused on the youth side of things and worked that out along with leaving the senior squad, I think it would have given Southampton an advantage over the long run.

It was ahead of its time really. No one had heard of futsal and I remember when he was here he was dismissed as a school teacher with a big ego. You’re right in what you say they should have stuck with it just being in the academy and not interfering with the first team. 
 

he’s a great guy Simon and you can’t argue with his methods. You can tell the kids in our area who have done his Brazilian Soccer school which is now run by his mate, if they stick with it they become very good technically. 

Edited Monday at 18:33 by Turkish

[Badger]

2 hours ago, JohnnyShearer2.0 said:

I wasn't opposed to Woodward or Clifford coming in. However the implementation wasn't great. If they focused on the youth side of things and worked that out along with leaving the senior squad, I think it would have given Southampton an advantage over the long run.

I think the bizarre timing of it, just after a relegation, was the other issue at a time when we couldn’t afford it (and had made a series of redundancies that summer). 

[Holmes_and_Watson]

Wow! It's odd to see a glimpse back to an era where we brought in people with no managerial or football experience, resulting in destabilising the ....oh...

[Turkish]

On 12/01/2026 at 20:57, Holmes_and_Watson said:

Wow! It's odd to see a glimpse back to an era where we brought in people with no managerial or football experience, resulting in destabilising the ....oh...

Imagine Rupert and Rasmus in a room 🫣

[Weston Super Saint]

59 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Imagine Rupert and Rasmus in a room 🫣

Rupert would never be in the same room as a stinking foreigner.  That's just how he is now.

[Midfield_General]

He was an interesting one. In 2006, he predicted that he’d have Garforth Town top of the premier league within 25 years, so they’d better get going seeing as that’s in five years time and they’re still in the seventh tier. He made himself a bit of a figure of ridicule coming out with stuff like that. 

At the same time, he also predicted that within 25 years the English league and national team would end up being dominated by players from a skills-based background, which you could argue he wasn’t that far from the truth with, when you see how top level football is generally being played 20 years later. 

The main problem that we had when he was with us was that he came into a back room team being headed up by Harry Redknapp, the ultimate dinosaur and general all round c*nt. Lowe had just let Jim Smith go, and brought in Woodward and Clifford, and no matter whether their ideas were any good or not, a spiteful, prehistoric wanker like Redknapp was never, ever going to cooperate with them or do anything to try and make it work, so it was doomed to fail from the start. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Midfield_General