Be careful what you wish for?? Hasenhuttl v Jones v Selles

[SaintJackoInHurworth]

Earlier in the season we were begging for Saints to replace Hasenhuttl as manager. While the vast majority of fans got to stage of pressing this view by the time he was sacked, some were less quick to call for him to be sacked and one phrase that was mentioned was 'Be careful what you wish for'.

Now, I am not wishing to criticise anyone here - it was clear that we were no longer delivering what we all expected under Ralph this season and so we did need a change - but I do wonder whether our enthusiasm for change failed to account for the possibility that the club may not have a clue what to look for in a replacement. With the benefit of hindsight, I would suggest that it has become clear that in this area Sports Republic have been woefully lacking.

It also leads to the question: Which of our managers has been the worst this season and which has been least bad? My suggestion is that Hasenhuttl has been the least bad of three below-average managers. I find myself wondering whether we might have been in a better position than we are now if we had kept him on - especially with the opportunity to vary things with new signings in January.

[Jonnyboy]

Did Ralph have more points per match than the other two have achieved since? 

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Jonnyboy

[Turkish]

Sacking Hassenhuttl wasn’t the issue it was that we replaced him with idiots 

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Turkish

[Saint_clark]

If we got Dyche in when we got Jones I reckon we'd be out the relegation zone now. 

[Greenridge]

11 minutes ago, Saint_clark said:

If we got Dyche in when we got Jones I reckon we'd be out the relegation zone now. 

Yes, he’s doing an amazing job at Everton….

[Greenridge]

20 minutes ago, Jonnyboy said:

Did Ralph have more points per match than the other two have achieved since? 

Blackmore just tweeted that we had more points in the 14 games under Ralph than we have in the 17 games since. Non-arguable. #fanpower 

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Greenridge

[Pamplemousse]

Things had gone stale under Ralph, but he would have kept us up as a minimum

[Golac's Cunning Stunts]

One of the big mistakes, and there are many, made by the goons in charge is not sacking Ralph at the end of last season. Probably should have gone 6 months before that. As Turkish says, another biggy was successively replacing him with 2 clueless managers

[trousers]

6 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

Things had gone stale under Ralph, but he would have kept us up as a minimum

If we're to believe what we're led to believe, not only had things become "stale" under Ralph but there was also a quorum of senior players that he had fallen out with (or visa versa). You can't keep a manager if he's lost a significant portion of the squad. As I say, that assumes what we're led to believe is true. 

But, as others have said, it's not the sacking of Ralph that has led to where we are today, it's the lack of a decent successor. (That, coupled with a mediocre squad of course)

Edited 15 April, 2023 by trousers

[beatlesaint]

3 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

Things had gone stale under Ralph, but he would have kept us up as a minimum

With the goals coming from???

im sorry but I just don’t see it. I think Pep would struggle given the quality…..or lack of……striker.

Tessem, for once, was right on Solent. This all started to unravel 2-3 years ago.

[Saint_clark]

11 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

Yes, he’s doing an amazing job at Everton….

He would have had a mini pre-season and a transfer window, unlike at Everton.

[West end Saints]

Liked Ralph as person and manager, but he had to go, we would have been relegated under him as well. He was stale, team was stale, the last 12 month period of his tenure was 100% enough to sack him. 

He should have gone sooner. 

 

The problem was the appointment of Jones. 

Many other managers could have easily kept us up at that stage. 

[Lighthouse]

Just now, Saint_clark said:

He would have had a mini pre-season and a transfer window, unlike at Everton.

After beating Arsenal in his first game and following it up with a second win in three games, he now has one in his last eight. He’s just lost 3-1 at home to Fulham and this is from a manager everyone insists is gritty, hard to beat and grinds out results at home. He’s been there three months and Everton look sh*te, no improvement on Lampard at all.

As for the OP, Ralph was never the problem, we just have too many crap players. Ralph had them playing greater than the sum of their parts and was at least in the relegation fight. With him gone, we’re just going to get what this squad deserves; basically losing every game.

[Appy]

Ralph should’ve gone in the summer

 

Jones should never have replaced him

 

Selles should never have replaced Jones, that’s about it. 

[Archers Road Stand]

17 minutes ago, Appy said:

Ralph should’ve gone in the summer

 

Jones should never have replaced him

 

Selles should never have replaced Jones, that’s about it. 

Sums up that utter cunt Rasmus Ankersen. 

[Turkish]

21 minutes ago, Appy said:

Ralph should’ve gone in the summer

 

Jones should never have replaced him

 

Selles should never have replaced Jones, that’s about it. 

And that’s just the cock ups they’ve made with managers 

[sydney_saint]

Those that were frothing at the mouth to get rid of him didn't have a plan. They just wanted him out. There were few reasonable available managers out there available. Replace him for sure if there was an Emery willing to take over. But there was hardly anyone. They seemed to think things couldn't worse. Well they damn well did. People can say 'sacking him wasnt wrong, it was the replacements that was the issues'. But how many good replacements were out there that would realistically have taken the job? We were always more likely to end up with a downgrade like Jones than we were to find Emery or Lopetegui.

If Ralph was still here, we would have about 5 more points. We would still have a chance. But those that frothed will never possibly imagine that they made a mistake. 

As said, happy to get rid for a clear upgrade. But even at the time I scrolled throw the prospective maangers list, and it was underwhelming manager after underwhelming. I felt our best chance was to get Ralph a break with the world cup. Let him try to find his spark and mojo again. The summer was hard cos it was shortened and we had a huge changeover of players. He should have had the world cup period to rediscover that zip.

Edited 15 April, 2023 by sydney_saint

[sydney_saint]

50 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

Blackmore just tweeted that we had more points in the 14 games under Ralph than we have in the 17 games since. Non-arguable. #fanpower 

Also you could argue Ralph had a more challenging set of matches in that 14. We didn't have that run of winnable home games that Jones completely blundered.

[stknowle]

I wished for a new manager that was better than Hassnhuttl. I clearly wasn’t careful enough in so wishing. Next time a wish for a new manager enters my head I’ll be sure to add the words “who is definitely better than the currrent cunt” to the end of the wish.

[JRM]

54 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

Blackmore just tweeted that we had more points in the 14 games under Ralph than we have in the 17 games since. Non-arguable. #fanpower 

Tell me where we were out of 92 teams in 2022? #fanpower #should have gone in the summer 

[Greenridge]

26 minutes ago, JRM said:

Tell me where we were out of 92 teams in 2022? #fanpower #should have gone in the summer 

I’ve told you what happened in 2022/23. You know, this season. Why do you want to know about 2022? But, as you’re asking, we were in the Premier League. Unlike where we will be in a few weeks time. Do you want me to give you the stats on any other random years? 🤷‍♂️

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Greenridge

[Appy]

2 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

I’ve told you what happened in 2022/23. You know, this season. Why do you want to know about 2022? Do you want me to give you the stats on any other random years? 🤷‍♂️

Not sure 2022 is a random year when it correlates to how utter garbage we have been. 

[JRM]

Just now, Greenridge said:

I’ve told you what happened in 2022/23. You know, this season. Why do you want to know about 2022? Do you want me to give you the stats on any other random years? 🤷‍♂️

You seem to think fans were wrong to want him gone, tell me for 12 months before he was sacked how many games did we win? Only one way we were heading . 

[Whitey Grandad]

2 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

I’ve told you what happened in 2022/23. You know, this season. Why do you want to know about 2022? Do you want me to give you the stats on any other random years? 🤷‍♂️

Nothing random about last season. It was the one immediately before this one.

[Lighthouse]

37 minutes ago, JRM said:

Tell me where we were out of 92 teams in 2022? #fanpower #should have gone in the summer 

18th, not 90th. People seem to think this clever stat of 90/92 actually means something; it doesn't. Any stat which would be massively improved if we'd gone down last year and were 9th in the Championship at Christmas is meaningless. Last seasons squad was crap, we didn't improve it enough in summer, so this is where we are. 

[Turkish]

42 minutes ago, JRM said:

Tell me where we were out of 92 teams in 2022? #fanpower #should have gone in the summer 

Quite. Selles record of 2 wins, 2 draws, 5 losses plus a cup exit v league two Grimsby puts him well on track to be up there with the top 10 worst premier league managers of all time by the end of the season. 

Jones is already up there, possibly in first place. Steve Wigley already in there. So we could have 3 of the top 10 by the end of the season. Quite some achievement to have two in the same season though. 
 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/worst-10-premier-league-managers-22173739

their shiteness doesn’t make Ralph a genius 

[Forester]

We had a truly appalling 2022, Ralph should have gone in the summer and a quality replacement appointed with the whole summer to build and develop a team.  That didn’t happen.

However, per the match day thread comments, you could have appointed Pep Guardiola and yet with only three strikers back in August, one who scored two goals last year and a promising French kid who may or may not in three years be a decent player, we were still doomed to have a poor season.

Any discussion about keeping Ralph let’s the board off the hook.

[benjii]

3 hours ago, SaintJackoInHurworth said:

Earlier in the season we were begging for Saints to replace Hasenhuttl as manager. While the vast majority of fans got to stage of pressing this view by the time he was sacked, some were less quick to call for him to be sacked and one phrase that was mentioned was 'Be careful what you wish for'.

Now, I am not wishing to criticise anyone here - it was clear that we were no longer delivering what we all expected under Ralph this season and so we did need a change - but I do wonder whether our enthusiasm for change failed to account for the possibility that the club may not have a clue what to look for in a replacement. With the benefit of hindsight, I would suggest that it has become clear that in this area Sports Republic have been woefully lacking.

It also leads to the question: Which of our managers has been the worst this season and which has been least bad? My suggestion is that Hasenhuttl has been the least bad of three below-average managers. I find myself wondering whether we might have been in a better position than we are now if we had kept him on - especially with the opportunity to vary things with new signings in January.

I don't think a single person wished for Nathan Fucking Jones and Ruben Tapas Selles.

[Fitzhugh Fella]

1 hour ago, sydney_saint said:

Those that were frothing at the mouth to get rid of him didn't have a plan. They just wanted him out. There were few reasonable available managers out there available. Replace him for sure if there was an Emery willing to take over. But there was hardly anyone. They seemed to think things couldn't worse. Well they damn well did. People can say 'sacking him wasnt wrong, it was the replacements that was the issues'. But how many good replacements were out there that would realistically have taken the job? We were always more likely to end up with a downgrade like Jones than we were to find Emery or Lopetegui.

If Ralph was still here, we would have about 5 more points. We would still have a chance. But those that frothed will never possibly imagine that they made a mistake. 

As said, happy to get rid for a clear upgrade. But even at the time I scrolled throw the prospective maangers list, and it was underwhelming manager after underwhelming. I felt our best chance was to get Ralph a break with the world cup. Let him try to find his spark and mojo again. The summer was hard cos it was shortened and we had a huge changeover of players. He should have had the world cup period to rediscover that zip.

A lot of froth in your post and also a load of crap

[JRM]

1 hour ago, Lighthouse said:

18th, not 90th. People seem to think this clever stat of 90/92 actually means something; it doesn't. Any stat which would be massively improved if we'd gone down last year and were 9th in the Championship at Christmas is meaningless. Last seasons squad was crap, we didn't improve it enough in summer, so this is where we are. 

18th, 90th, whatever, we were awful over a sustained period of time and were well set on a downward trajectory 

[East Kent Saint]

It looked like Ralph had run out of ideas , was floundering and wanted to go before he lost the will to live . Lack of a striker last summer was the writing on his wall .

[JRM]

54 minutes ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

A lot of froth in your post and also a load of crap

Agree it wasnt the fans job to research and recruit, the recruitment at the club has been terrible for players and coaching staff, all of them trying to be too clever.

Ironically Saints board did actually have a plan, they'd tracked Jones for a while, then put their money where their mouth is and paid up his Luton contract to get him to join us. 

I think Ralph knew his time was up, remember fans wanted him out at Brentford away last season

[Lord Duckhunter]

Has there ever been a club that’s sacked the whole back room staff in the summer & kept the manager. I can’t recall one. The writing was on the wall for Ralph then. Ridiculous decision to think it would end in anything else other than Ralph leaving sooner rather than later. That was the time to either back Ralph, or have a total reset. For some bizarre reason we took a muddled approach instead of being decisive. 

[Give it to Ron]

I hate posts like this opening one above as if it matters what we think. So a few fans on a forum wanted him out why …..because we were shit. Easy to forget Ralph games  like Villa away under Gerrard who were 1 point above us who sacked him we lost didn’t have a shot in 90 they got in Emery look at them now!

Name me one fan who wanted Jones or Selles no-one wished for them we just wanted a manager who could turn this shitshow around pick a formation that at least creates a few chances and doesn’t conceded 15 goals from free kicks.

All Saints fans want is a team that gives it a go and tries we are 4 points away still although could be 20 we won’t get another ….it wasn’t hard to fix yet we have owners who think we need some blue sky thinking and be cleverer than anyone else some magical formula….it doesn’t work!

Today was a joke formation we had no focal point or outlet Aribo who did ok really was thrown in and hadn’t even gotten off the bench recently. Mara scored last week didn’t get a minute how is that what fans wished for?

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Give it to Ron

[SaintsLoyal]

Just look at Hasemhuttls stats last year and realise the rot started with him and the  boards failure to sack him last sunmmer.

[Give it to Ron]

It’s a few things :
Not buying a forward pre season for Ralph. How anyone though Adams and Armstrong could get us goals!

Then keeping Ralph because we had a World Cup break.

Appointing Jones….why and what mad man thought that would work with his cv.Flying against all what our academy do playing style.

Our appalling recruitment in the last 3 windows. 
Buying young players with stepping stone thoughts they can move on after 18 months why do they give a shit about club or if team gets relegated 

Edited 15 April, 2023 by Give it to Ron

[Viking Saint]

54 minutes ago, Give it to Ron said:

It’s a few things :
Not buying a forward pre season for Ralph. How anyone though Adams and Armstrong could get us goals!

Then keeping Ralph because we had a World Cup break.

Appointing Jones….why and what mad man thought that would work with his cv.Flying against all what our academy do playing style.

Our appalling recruitment in the last 3 windows. 
Buying young players with stepping stone thoughts they can move on after 18 months why do they give a shit about club or if team gets relegated 

Plus letting Romeu go without a like-for-like replacement

[Smirking_Saint]

Ralph had run out of ideas at the end… potentially you could argue if he’d of gotten a striker in the summer then he may of found his way back.. but I’m not so sure

Sacking Ralph late (after admitting he’d lost the changing room before this season had even started), appointing a man that EVERYBODY could see was wrong from the start.. and then replacing him… far too late.. with a guy that has zero managerial experience is atleast 50% of why we are comfortably the worst team in the prem this year

Terrible contractual and transfer dealings over the last 2-3 years are also very much to blame

[Smirking_Saint]

19 minutes ago, Viking Saint said:

Plus letting Romeu go without a like-for-like replacement

We replaced him with Lavia tbf

[Dark Munster]

38 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

We replaced him with Lavia tbf

True, but Lavia was injured when Romeu left. The mistake was not either keeping Romeu as a back up, or bringing in a DM back up.

Of course that is just one of the multitude of mistakes, all mentioned in this thread, in this clusterf**ck of a season.

[LaptopSaint]

Careful what you wish for? I just wished for a decent fucking manager. And don’t tell me there aren’t any out there. A few weeks before we appointed a bloke I’d never heard of called Jones, Brighton appointed a bloke I’d never heard of called De Zerbi. Why is their recruitment so much better than ours? Shambles from Sports Republic. Dragan must be a very patient man, or have an awful lot of money to waste. 

[Pamplemousse]

4 hours ago, Forester said:

We had a truly appalling 2022, Ralph should have gone in the summer and a quality replacement appointed with the whole summer to build and develop a team.  That didn’t happen.

However, per the match day thread comments, you could have appointed Pep Guardiola and yet with only three strikers back in August, one who scored two goals last year and a promising French kid who may or may not in three years be a decent player, we were still doomed to have a poor season.

Any discussion about keeping Ralph let’s the board off the hook.

Very good point. The board is to blame 100% for this. When's the next fans forum, should be interesting...

[SaintJackoInHurworth]

A lot of people are rightly questioning that any of these managers should have been managing Saints. Some people seem to be thinking that in my OP I am suggesting we shouldn't have got rid of Hassenhuttl or that I am in some way suggesting that it is the fault of our fans that we brought in rubbish replacements. None of that is the case!

Let me be clear:

• I believe Ralph was a huge improvement on Hughes and Pellegrino but his star had most definitely waned some time ago. His approach was based on a fixed one-dimensional methodology. As soon as other clubs understood that we were found out, with alarming regularity. The most significant weakness of his approach was that it depended on a slow, keep-ball approach that allowed opposition defences to gather and organise so that any penetration of our attacks was lacking.
• I believe Nathan Jones had some right ideas about how we needed to change (in some of what he said especially a need to be more aggressive), but he had zero ability to achieve it in a way that was relevant in the Premier League. Whatever he may have encouraged in aggression was seriously undermined by poor possession and ball-retention, a lack of pressing and dreadful passing, plus a general feeling that the players were not with him.
• Selles has been nothing short of a second class Hasenhuttl, implementing many of the same methodologies as Ralph, but with even less impact. Whatever success he had at the start was nothing more than a new manager bounce and the relief from the players of playing in a more familiar way. However, he has not instilled the same ability to press that Ralph instilled and has not helped us to improve on Ralph's painfully slow approach to build up play.

My argument then, is not that we should have kept Ralph, but rather that our wish for a better manager was in no way delivered. That is clear testament to a failure by the club and its owners. The fabled black box is well and truly dead!

I will, however, go as far as to answer my own question and say that of the three Ralph is the better manager. Whether he would have been able to keep us up is clearly an unknown, but such has been the poor form of Leicester, Everton and Forest, I suspect we would now be just outside the relegation zone if he had not been sacked... assuming, of course that he had maintained the same level of performance and results as before.

Nevertheless, we would all have felt that was not good enough, just as his results throughout the end of last season and the start of this season were not good enough and led to our appalling record for 2022. For that reason, we all must agree, of course, that it was right to sack Ralph - I am just incredulous that we can have made such a failure at replacing him with someone more capable!

In terms of what we should have done, I don't personally believe Dyche would have been the answer, though he may have kept us up. Nor do I believe that Potter would have been the answer if he had been available. Redknapp - no thanks! Wilder - no way! But there are managers out there who we could have appointed who would have been much, much better - Gallardo and Fonseca to name just two examples. Yet we appointed Jones and Selles!

Finally, yes, of course, there have been many other mistakes and it is hard to argue that any manager could have coped with our singular lack of attacking talent - except that Villa and Wolves and Brighton also used to have problems in that area, but now, with different, more aggressive, fast-attacking managers they suddenly seem to have great attacking ability!

[Fitzhugh Fella]

That’s a long post to basically say out of the 3 Ralph is the least worst. You are probably right but the bar is so low you couldn’t get a puddle under it. The reason Ralph was popular was because he followed three crap managers. So out of the last 6 managers 5 have been dire and Ralph has won the beauty contest just by having a nice smile. No wonder this club are in the shit. Even in our other relegation seasons we still had a chance of staying up on the last day. This time we’ve been down since Xmas. 

[Smirking_Saint]

6 hours ago, Dark Munster said:

True, but Lavia was injured when Romeu left. The mistake was not either keeping Romeu as a back up, or bringing in a DM back up.

Of course that is just one of the multitude of mistakes, all mentioned in this thread, in this clusterf**ck of a season.

The whole Romeu transfer was one of them for me, hindsight says it was a fuck up due to thr Lavia injury and Diallo/AMN being completely inadequate in DM

At the time though, especially as he wanted to leave and I respected the bloke (OR not RA) it didn’t seem too bad but due to how this year turned out we can add it to the growing list of misery

I still think we probably could of got away with no Romeu or Lavia at the time if we had altered our gameplan to suit… this whole year has just been a fucking mess by basically everyone employed at the club by some capacity

[rooney]

We have players that just cannot score goals and that has been our problem whoever is manager.

[aintforever]

If Ralph were still here we would probably be sat where Palace or Bournemouth are IMO.

[ant]

7 hours ago, LaptopSaint said:

A few weeks before we appointed a bloke I’d never heard of called Jones, Brighton appointed a bloke I’d never heard of called De Zerbi. Why is their recruitment so much better than ours?

The Brighton point is interesting, as they take a hugely analytical, stats-based approach.

That tact isn't necessarily wrong (despite what some on here will lead you to believe).

The failure point comes on the human side. Picking the wrong metrics, analysing the data incorrectly, etc. etc.

Ankersen et al are spectacular human failure points.

[Give it to Ron]

7 minutes ago, ant said:

The Brighton point is interesting, as they take a hugely analytical, stats-based approach.

That tact isn't necessarily wrong (despite what some on here will lead you to believe).

The failure point comes on the human side. Picking the wrong metrics, analysing the data incorrectly, etc. etc.

Ankersen et al are spectacular human failure points.

If a stats based approach means going into a game with no centre forward and a player who scored the week before doesn’t get a minute in next game then I’m not convinced it’s correct approach 

[AlexLaw76]

7 hours ago, Dark Munster said:

True, but Lavia was injured when Romeu left. The mistake was not either keeping Romeu as a back up, or bringing in a DM back up.

Of course that is just one of the multitude of mistakes, all mentioned in this thread, in this clusterf**ck of a season.

Letting Romeu leave when we did was insane.  Idiotic fans like me said so at the time, and I am not an elite sports professional.