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Ralph

Kaiser Soze

By Kaiser Soze,
in The Saints

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Bad Wolf

Bad Wolf

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, Kaiser Soze said:

Anyone have him back?

I hated the cunt but would snap his hand of to come back. 

I appreciate this is a troll post but why so horrible? Ralph is a good bloke, he genuinely cared for the club and fans. Yes it went stale toward the end and he had to go but as bizarre as his subs and formations were, he's not deserving of that kind of abuse at all.

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Hawkswood

Hawkswood

Posted
Posted

I think of all the things that made me raise my eyebrows during the summer was the gk situation. Part of me understands why they kept Ralph on. I also believe they tried their hardest to get a decent forward in but I couldn't understand why we put all out faith in an untried youngster in goal. We'd manage to scrape through in the last 2/3 seasons with two very dodgy keepers, mainly due to a lack of funds and inexplicably giving them new contracts. We finally have a bit of money to spend , we have a tonne of goalkeeper options  we could have gone for and our main choice was a young boy who was expected to command respect and command his penalty area. That was an awful decision. 

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S-Clarke

S-Clarke

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Hawkswood said:

I think of all the things that made me raise my eyebrows during the summer was the gk situation. Part of me understands why they kept Ralph on. I also believe they tried their hardest to get a decent forward in but I couldn't understand why we put all out faith in an untried youngster in goal. We'd manage to scrape through in the last 2/3 seasons with two very dodgy keepers, mainly due to a lack of funds and inexplicably giving them new contracts. We finally have a bit of money to spend , we have a tonne of goalkeeper options  we could have gone for and our main choice was a young boy who was expected to command respect and command his penalty area. That was an awful decision. 

The only thing which made me raise my eyebrows and undone all of the other work they'd done was our failing to address the attack. That really should have been the first areas of focus, even more so given that we had become weaker in that area from last year as it was (Broja and Long leaving).

That's why we are where we are, that's why our season has failed. I don't think we can spend time focusing on moments like not sacking Ralph earlier, or signing Bazunu, or not giving DCC more mins etc, our problems are because we didn't add quality to our attack so we have been incapable of scoring goals to turn those 1-goal margin situations into draws or wins.

Give Ralph the tools in the summer (i.e a motivated Broja type) and we'd be midtable now.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Saint86

Saint86

Posted
Posted
On 26/02/2023 at 00:49, Kaiser Soze said:

Anyone have him back?

I hated the cunt but would snap his hand of to come back. 

You've basically got him back with Selles anyway lol. He was Ralph's preffered candidate for the role, they've stayed in contact, and the playbook is back at the fore...

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once_bitterne

once_bitterne

Posted
Posted

Ralph was a good manager, probably too good for the level of the club we are, but we had broken him by giving him very little transfers funds, selling Ings the week before a new season, etc.

What would have been interesting is if we had given the £130m+ of transfer fees that we've spent this season to him in his first seasons.  If we had I don't think the end result would have been us being bottom of the league.

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Saint86

Saint86

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, SotonianWill said:

really? where is this from

Selles said it in one of his early press conferences, but he declined to go into any further details on it. I thought it was quite interesting that he even brought it up to be honest as he wasn't being pushed there by the questions.

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Saint86

Saint86

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, SotonianWill said:

I can see Ralph coming back in a different role if we get relegated

Could potentially see him as a DoF, esepecially as selles and the coaching teams are all sticking to the playbook as a club identity, and given Ralph had the experience of working in the multiclub redbull model.

But how often do people go back to people / an organisation that previously sacked them? Plus he's also said numerous times that he wants to pack it all in and go back to Austria etc. 🤷‍♂️

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CB Fry

CB Fry

Posted
Posted (edited)

Nice to see the beginnings of the James Beattie/Wayne Bridge-ification of Ralph.

Like those two back then, it doesn't matter how much people go on about it, he's not coming back.

Edited by CB Fry
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Fitzhugh Fella

Fitzhugh Fella

Posted
Posted

If it’s a good thing that the players disliked him and “morale was at rock bottom” then by all means cling to the myth we’d be better off keeping him. In my view, he would have struggled even if we had signed Messi in the summer. He talked the talk with the fans which is why he was liked, but back at Staplewood there was an unhealthy lack of respect. His man management skills were near to zero. 

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Saint86

Saint86

Posted
Posted (edited)
17 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

If it’s a good thing that the players disliked him and “morale was at rock bottom” then by all means cling to the myth we’d be better off keeping him. In my view, he would have struggled even if we had signed Messi in the summer. He talked the talk with the fans which is why he was liked, but back at Staplewood there was an unhealthy lack of respect. His man management skills were near to zero. 

The only time that was ever formally stated, was by Rasmus Ankerson / the board... When conforming disgruntled fans at the fans forum.... when defending Nathan Jones and trying to justify he does stuff right behind the scenes 😂 🤔 😂🤣😅 

If Ralph had been given a better keeper, a cdm that was fit, and a Premier standard striker, we'd have been comfortably mid table to top 10... Maybe even higher. Last fully fit squad games under Ralph were the Chelsea win and the narrow loss to united. He certainly doesn't deserve the abuse he's had from some of our more impatient fans, ultimatley he wasn't at fault for our issues no matter how much some of the fans wanted an easy target / thought being a couple of points of midtable was a horrific return that demanded sacking...

🤔🙄

Edited by Saint86
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Micky

Micky

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

...... but back at Staplewood there was an unhealthy lack of respect. His man management skills were near to zero. 

Interesting.  And interested, how do you know? 

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SNSUN

SNSUN

Posted
Posted

 

"I Know What We Should Have Done Last Summer"... the new sequel to the hit movies.

But yeah IMO Ralph should have gone last summer. His tactics were all over the place, his line-ups and subs were weird, his end of season results were awful and the players seem to have been surprised we kept him. I actually liked Ralph as a person and you could see he cared for us but we had a chance to bring somebody fresh in and start the season off with a clean slate. Then perhaps we wouldn't have almost panicked and thought Jones was up to the task. Ironically had we kept Ralph this season instead of sacking him I do think we'd be in a better position now (especially with January signings) but... who was to think Sports Republic would bring in a Championship manager who had already failed at Stoke. We've wasted so much time with the Jones appointment I think we've left Selles too little time to do much.

The appointment of Jones was a worse decision than holding on to Ralph though. Would I have Ralph back for the Championship? Nope, move on.

 

 

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Lighthouse

Lighthouse

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

If it’s a good thing that the players disliked him and “morale was at rock bottom” then by all means cling to the myth we’d be better off keeping him. In my view, he would have struggled even if we had signed Messi in the summer. He talked the talk with the fans which is why he was liked, but back at Staplewood there was an unhealthy lack of respect. His man management skills were near to zero. 

So we’d have struggled if we’d signed Messi but were 11th with Danny Ings… Christ, I knew Ings was decent but I didn’t realise he was THAT good.

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Dellman

Dellman

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

If it’s a good thing that the players disliked him and “morale was at rock bottom” then by all means cling to the myth we’d be better off keeping him. In my view, he would have struggled even if we had signed Messi in the summer. He talked the talk with the fans which is why he was liked, but back at Staplewood there was an unhealthy lack of respect. His man management skills were near to zero. 

Why do you pretend to know these things?  You said much the same about Cortese. Do you like anyone--the Welsh guy probably

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Fitzhugh Fella

Fitzhugh Fella

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, Micky said:

Interesting.  And interested, how do you know? 

Spoken to quite a few players who played under him. Hardly any warmed to him. He never went out of his way to be liked. Some would say that's not a bad thing. I don't. Players will rend to go that little bit extra if they like the guv'nor

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Fitzhugh Fella

Fitzhugh Fella

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Dellman said:

Why do you pretend to know these things?  You said much the same about Cortese. Do you like anyone--the Welsh guy probably

Well I had fair bit of (unpleasant) dealings with Cortese (which cost me quite a lot of money) so I felt qualified enough when I say I thought he was a c**t.

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Lighthouse

Lighthouse

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

Spoken to quite a few players who played under him. Hardly any warmed to him. He never went out of his way to be liked. Some would say that's not a bad thing. I don't. Players will rend to go that little bit extra if they like the guv'nor

Given that…

Ings was sold to Villa, where he immediately dropped to half the number of goals he ever scored under Ralph.

Bednarek also went to Villa and couldn’t get into the team.

Austin was sold to a Championship team and didn’t uproot any trees.

Forster went to Spurs and is nothing other than backup.

Stephens couldn’t get a better offer than battling relegation on loan at Bournemouth.

Vestergaard is one of the most hated players in Leicester’s recent history.

Bertrand isn’t too far behind.

Long can’t buy a goal for love nor money in the Championship.

Boufal, Valery, Romeu, Hoedt and Gabbiadini all went off abroad to relatively small, provincial clubs, never to be heard from again.

The players we do have left at the club have achieved new levels of dreadful under Nathan Jones.

 

…. I can only assume our players are the most belligerent bunch of prima donnas ever assembled in the history of football. They don’t seem to like any manager in Europe and not one of them has managed to find a ‘guvnor’ he is willing to ‘go a bit extra’ for. 

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CB Fry

CB Fry

Posted
Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

The players we do have left at the club have achieved new levels of dreadful under Nathan Jones.

 

.....and The Athletic said the players liked him.

The players liked Steve Wigley, the players liked Stuart Gray.

From most reports they didn't much like aloof/arrogant Koeman which obviously contributed to our disasterous two seasons of finishing 7th and 6th.

Edited by CB Fry
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aintforever

aintforever

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

 Players will rend to go that little bit extra if they like the guv'nor

We must have a brilliant set of players then because Ralph kept this lot up comfortably season after season despite the fact they were underperforming.

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SNSUN

SNSUN

Posted
Posted
42 minutes ago, aintforever said:

We must have a brilliant set of players then because Ralph kept this lot up comfortably season after season despite the fact they were underperforming.

I wouldn't use the word "comfortable" of our finish last season. Hypothetically IMO had the season been, say, 2 matches longer we would have dropped. Our last 12 games' results last season was 1 win, 2 draws and 9 defeats. 5 points from 12 games. Granted that followed a reasonably decent spell of form (which probably saved us from the drop) but it's like the players just gave up or something. 

 

Still I'd take that over this season...

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CB Fry

CB Fry

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, SNSUN said:

I wouldn't use the word "comfortable" of our finish last season. Hypothetically IMO had the season been, say, 2 matches longer we would have dropped. Our last 12 games' results last season was 1 win, 2 draws and 9 defeats. 5 points from 12 games. Granted that followed a reasonably decent spell of form (which probably saved us from the drop) but it's like the players just gave up or something. 

 

Still I'd take that over this season...

We stayed up comfortably last season, we were never in any actual trouble.

Yes we had a ropey end to the season but that dropped us from top half to 15th, not from 15th to relegation threatened.

If we can lose 9 out of your last 12 and not even touch the relegation places for a single week then that is about as comfortable as you can be.

Edited by CB Fry
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Lighthouse

Lighthouse

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, SNSUN said:

I wouldn't use the word "comfortable" of our finish last season. Hypothetically IMO had the season been, say, 2 matches longer we would have dropped. Our last 12 games' results last season was 1 win, 2 draws and 9 defeats. 5 points from 12 games. Granted that followed a reasonably decent spell of form (which probably saved us from the drop) but it's like the players just gave up or something. 

 

Still I'd take that over this season...

If you’re going to make hypothetical arguments, at least make them plausible and within the laws of the game, rather than arbitrarily adding two more fixtures which we lose and the teams below us all win, for some reason. Hypothetically, if we’d played 2007 Derby County 38 times (or 40 if you like) we’d be in the Champions League this season; it’s meaningless.

We were safe at the beginning of March and even our appalling run of form thereafter was never going to send us down.

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