Russell Martin

[Give it to Ron]

1 minute ago, Fabrice29 said:

I think you’ve missed the point here which is pretty stupid in itself. 

You said we shouldn’t have needed the playoffs. And yes recruitment is the number one factor.

Does not needing the play offs equate to walking the league or a disaster? 
I would take play offs now for next season because it’s going to be a massive task getting rid of some of this squad especially after this season’s debacle.
Spors has a big task .

[Give it to Ron]

2 minutes ago, Fabrice29 said:

Anyway, my overall point from last night still remains: People who are advocating Steve Cooper as our next manager in one thread shouldn’t be pointing out all the flaws of Martin for the benefit of Leicester fans in another. 

One of the reasons Cooper wasn’t popular was his link to Forest he was never going to be welcomed there.

He did get more points than RVN and Martin 🙂

[Fabrice29]

Just now, Give it to Ron said:

One of the reasons Cooper wasn’t popular was his link to Forest he was never going to be welcomed there.

He did get more points than RVN and Martin 🙂

He also took Forest up via the playoffs which you would have criticised right?

[Give it to Ron]

2 minutes ago, Fabrice29 said:

He also took Forest up via the playoffs which you would have criticised right?

For not walking the league or it being a disaster?

Edited 6 hours ago by Give it to Ron

[tdmickey3]

2 minutes ago, Give it to Ron said:

One of the reasons Cooper wasn’t popular was his link to Forest he was never going to be welcomed there.

He did get more points than RVN and Martin 🙂

No point trying to explain to these fan boys, they will never accept it mate, they say love is blind

They will never get over the loss, at least the players like moved on

[Fabrice29]

7 minutes ago, Give it to Ron said:

For not walking the league or it being a disaster?

For all those points dropped because of his tactical decisions that led to his Forest side getting less points than we did last season. Anyway, this is dull. 

[Fabrice29]

5 minutes ago, tdmickey3 said:

No point trying to explain to these fan boys, they will never accept it mate, they say love is blind

They will never get over the loss, at least the players like moved on

Talking of blind, you still predicting things that don’t happen?

[saintant]

7 hours ago, woodsaint1 said:

Cant wait until Leicester do the double over us next season. It'll be fun on here 😂

We'll know exactly what to expect from a Leicester team managed by RM - just press them hard and high and it should be an easy six points 🙂

[Doctoroncall]

32 minutes ago, Fabrice29 said:

He also took Forest up via the playoffs which you would have criticised right?

 

23 minutes ago, Fabrice29 said:

For all those points dropped because of his tactical decisions that led to his Forest side getting less points than we did last season. Anyway, this is dull. 

When did Cooper take over at Forest the season they went up?  Thought it was a couple of months into the season when they were in the relegation zone. 

[trousers]

3 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

'Longest unbeaten run' was a statistical quirk. We didn't get many points out of it.

Every time the 'Defend Martin no matter what' brigade trot out the "yeah, but the unbeaten run, innit" shibboleth a small furry mammal cops it in the Trousers household

[Lighthouse]

3 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

'Longest unbeaten run' was a statistical quirk. We didn't get many points out of it.

16 wins and 6 draws between September and February. 54 points in 22 games. I'd take a similar 'statistical quirk' at some point next season.

[trousers]

6 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

16 wins and 6 draws between September and February. 54 points in 22 games. I'd take a similar 'statistical quirk' at some point next season.

I suspect he was talking in comparison to the teams around us that didn't go on a miracle unbeaten run... but you probably knew that....

Edited 6 hours ago by trousers

[OldNick]

9 hours ago, Dusic said:

Seeing the Spurs celebrations reminded me of Wembley and how great that day was. Those one off games/moments of success are what it is all about as a football fan.

For that reason - I personally find the level of dislike for Russell Martin to be quite bizarre.

He had one full season here, inherited a shitshow and gave pretty much every Saints fan one of their best days supporting the club winning a playoff final at Wembley. Those moments will be remembered by those who were there forever.

I do agree, but on the other hand once he got us back up, to play the way he did so recklessly, seemingly not caring what he was doing to us and club was tantemont to treason. He gave us a high and then demoralised us the next moment. 

[austsaint]

4 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

16 wins and 6 draws between September and February. 54 points in 22 games. I'd take a similar 'statistical quirk' at some point next season.

Yet we finished 9 points and an inferior goal difference from the automatic places.  Plenty of glitches alongside the famous run.

[OldNick]

2 hours ago, Give it to Ron said:

 

I still maintain that had Bazanu not got injured we wouldn’t have gone up no matter what you Martin fan boys think.

Exactly, Baz getting injured was the reason we got up. Macca did very well and the defence were less jitterry once he was there. I love when a keeper comes out and catches the ball to take the pressure off the defence. It was something that Macca didmany times in the last few games

[Lighthouse]

4 minutes ago, trousers said:

I suspect he was talking in comparison to teams around us that didn't go on a miracle unbeaten run... but you probably knew that.... 

Teams around us like champions Leicester, who lost three and drew three in the same period of time? Nobody is calling it a miracle except the people who feel the need to sarcastically undermine what was a pretty good achievement.

[LiberalCommunist]

Got no beef with Russell. I'd like to see him given the opportunity at Leicester for a couple reasons. Firstly, I'm intrigued to see how he does there. Will he adapt and evolve, or stick to his dogmatic approach. What has he learned from the last two years. And secondly, it will save us a few million in restitution. Sign him up Foxes!

[Lighthouse]

5 minutes ago, austsaint said:

Yet we finished 9 points and an inferior goal difference from the automatic places.  Plenty of glitches alongside the famous run.

After Bazunu got injured we lost three of our last five and fell away from the autos. We still finished on 87 points, which for reference is one less than Adkins and I don't hear many complaints about him.

[OldNick]

1 hour ago, gio1saints said:

This sour thinking on RM getting us out of the Championship - based on him failing in the EPL - really does not give him the credit for the promotion season he deserves. 
 

Many Championship clubs would be excited to have him next season. 
 

Whichever new Manager we pick, if they fail to get us promoted first time or even start to look like they won’t get us promoted - I’m worried our fans pent up frustration on our shit show EPL season will be funnelled onto the new guy very early doors.
 

How Russell managed to turn around a poor start after that crap relegation, go on that run and ultimately get us up…well instead of revisionist sneering maybe Saints fans should just allow ourselves a smile. It was bloody great to win and dominate matches for once in our lives as Saints fans! 

Our Championship season was a success.

Our EPL season a shit show. Let’s not confuse the two. 

It was nice to have quite a few enjoyable weekends where we had won, but I cant recall many where I thought 'well we made mincement of them, it was easy' So many were dire. Losing to Rotherhams and Stoke, scrapping (exciting,lucky)win against Huddersfield, Cardiff etc took us close to throwing away our advantage. Playing out with high risk from the back was always a risk that IMO was more an advantage to the opposition than to us. As for passing for passing sake!!

Sadly the players have muscle memory and still dont think to play the ball forward as a first thought. Will take a lot of work to get rid of that

[trousers]

10 hours ago, Dusic said:

Seeing the Spurs celebrations reminded me of Wembley and how great that day was. Those one off games/moments of success are what it is all about as a football fan.

For that reason - I personally find the level of dislike for Russell Martin to be quite bizarre.

He had one full season here, inherited a shitshow and gave pretty much every Saints fan one of their best days supporting the club winning a playoff final at Wembley. Those moments will be remembered by those who were there forever.

It is possible to hold multiple feelings and opinions at the same time.... they aren't mutually exclusive... for example: 

- Praise Martin for having a successful season at Championship level

- Be critical of some aspects of that season, despite the success

- Having a superb day out at Wembley

- Predict pre-season that we're likely to go straight back down again

- Not foresee that we would go back down without a fight

- Criticise Martin for his stubborness and/or inability to adapt to the challenges of the Premier League

- Dislike a manager's character, despite getting us promoted and giving us a memorable day at Wembley

 

In other words, there's nothing "bizarre" or contradictory about disliking Martin and enjoying last season...

 

Edited 5 hours ago by trousers

[austsaint]

1 minute ago, Lighthouse said:

Teams around us like champions Leicester, who lost three and drew three in the same period of time? Nobody is calling it a miracle except the people who feel the need to sarcastically undermine what was a pretty good achievement.

It was a pretty good achievement.   My complaint with Martin is what he did (or didn’t do) following promotion.   He made a virtue of the scar tissue associated with the squad he inherited, yet he showed a derelict naïveté in thinking the squad he shaped for the Prem could be competitive.    His legacy is tainted by the shocking squad he assembled for the Prem and the ridiculous style of play he dogmatically stuck to.

[trousers]

15 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Teams around us like champions Leicester, who lost three and drew three in the same period of time? Nobody is calling it a miracle except the people who feel the need to sarcastically undermine what was a pretty good achievement.

Count me in if we're now (somewhat conveniently for the sake of the argument) labelling it as "a pretty good achievement"... that's a bit of a downgrade on those that have previously held it up as some kind of epiphanistic achievement (the club's social media team at the time, for starters). The bottom line is that we didn't gain any ground on our promotion rivals as a result of it. But, yes, I'll go with "pretty good", on that we can agree

Edited 5 hours ago by trousers

[warsash saint]

3 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

'Longest unbeaten run' was a statistical quirk. We didn't get many points out of it.

I am no Russell fanboy but that comment is hilarious!!

[trousers]

6 minutes ago, warsash saint said:

I am no Russell fanboy but that comment is hilarious!!

Appreciate I'm in danger of going into 'dog with a bone' MLG mode here... but what advantage did the unbeaten run give us over our promotion rivals who didn't have such a run?

As above, I'm not knocking it... it was a good thing, not a bad thing... but what I don't get is those that seem to think it was more than a "statistical quirk" (to borrow WG's way of putting it)

Edited 5 hours ago by trousers

[Lighthouse]

Just now, trousers said:

Appreciate I'm in danger of going into 'dog with a bone' MLG mode here... but what advantage did the unbeaten run give us over our promotion rivals who didn't have such a run?

As above, I'm not knocking it... it was a good thing, not a bad thing... but what I don't get is those that seem to think it was more that a "statistical quirk" (to borrow WG's way of putting it)

😆 You so obviously are and have consistently shown nothing but disdain for anything to do with Martin, even things which are undeniably solid achievements. You talk as if everything we did last season was just a default setting, like we were just get given 'winning the playoffs' as an assumed achievement at the start of the season and it was up to Martin to get us above Leicester.

We were 'only marginally better than' the Champions over a sustained period of 4.5 months unbeaten. If that underwhelms you, then I wouldn't get your hopes up for next season. 

[trousers]

31 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

You so obviously are

Conflation my dear Watson.... I'm 'knocking' those that over-egg the signifcance of the unbeaten run not the unbeaten run itself. I'll repeat for the hard of understanding... it was a good thing, not a bad thing. We both agree that it was "pretty good". The only difference is that some people think it was more praiseworthy than others. Probably more signficant things in the world to disagree on...

p.s. just because someone isn't overwhelmed by something doesn't mean they're underwhelmed... that's the black and white world a certain other poster lives in... I mostly live on Planet Ambivalence...  

Edited 5 hours ago by trousers

[Holmes_and_Watson]

16 minutes ago, trousers said:

Conflation my dear Watson.... I'm 'knocking' those that over-egg the signifcance of the unbeaten run not the unbeaten run itself. I'll repeat for the hard of understanding... it was a good thing, not a bad thing. We both agree that it was "pretty good". The only difference is that some people think it was more praiseworthy than others. Probably more signficant things in the world to disagree on...

p.s. just because someone isn't overwhelmed by something doesn't mean they're underwhelmed... that's the black and white world a certain other poster lives in... I mostly live on Planet Ambivalence...  

I'm just sitting, eating a sandwich! I did nuffink! 🙂

[gio1saints]

41 minutes ago, trousers said:

Conflation my dear Watson.... I'm 'knocking' those that over-egg the signifcance of the unbeaten run not the unbeaten run itself. I'll repeat for the hard of understanding... it was a good thing, not a bad thing. We both agree that it was "pretty good". The only difference is that some people think it was more praiseworthy than others. Probably more signficant things in the world to disagree on...

p.s. just because someone isn't overwhelmed by something doesn't mean they're underwhelmed... that's the black and white world a certain other poster lives in... I mostly live on Planet Ambivalence...  

It’s called a straw man argument trousers and I’m rather surprised at you as a poster of some discretion and no small amount of calibre that you climbed off that fence of yours, got out the tweezers and extracted the biggest splinters, before making a rather elementary error in debate.

There’s NO hardcore bunch on here saying anything like “ worship RM and venerate his unbeaten run”. You’ve created it to in order to knock it down. Classic straw man argument. 

I’m sure that is correct because I’m on the Board of the official Russell Fanboy society and can assure you that nobody in my group was calling that unbeaten run miraculous or world class or overegging adoration of the God-man Russell. His heroic moustache was enough! In any case We were too busy building shrines to his tactical excellence and chanting “ pass it backwards” for 80% of the time during prayers.
 

For a Saints social media team starved of anything like good news for years I can understand them going a bit extra on it-can’t you? Even downgrading it to pretty good is a bit mean - but I’m on the side of Saint Russ of our Possessions so anything below a Good on his report card from that season I’m going to challenge - as is expected from those of us on the Board. 😂

Edited 4 hours ago by gio1saints

[aintforever]

2 hours ago, austsaint said:

Yet we finished 9 points and an inferior goal difference from the automatic places.  Plenty of glitches alongside the famous run.

So the new manager will only be classed as a success if we bounce straight back up at the first attempt without any glitches?

[Doctoroncall]

2 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

After Bazunu got injured we lost three of our last five and fell away from the autos. We still finished on 87 points, which for reference is one less than Adkins and I don't hear many complaints about him.

Although Adkin’s team was competitive for the automatic places all the way through the season. Some thought the title possible achievement which was missed. 
 

Martin’s team wasn’t competitive enough for the automatic places which some thought possible with the squad we had.  In the end Saints went up and it all went downhill rapidly. 
 

different eras, different preparedness. 
 

 

[trousers]

47 minutes ago, gio1saints said:

There’s NO hardcore bunch on here saying anything like “ worship RM and venerate his unbeaten run”. You’ve created it to in order to knock it down.

I disagree, but that's fine

[Weston Super Saint]

25 minutes ago, aintforever said:

So the new manager will only be classed as a success if we bounce straight back up at the first attempt without any glitches?

With the resources we have available compared to the rest of the division, that's not an unreasonable expectation - not sure what glitches is meant to mean, promotion is promotion however you look at it.

[sockeye]

The unbeaten run and whether he 'succeeded' in the Championship is irrelevant. His job did not end in May 2024, it continued into the following season and he failed. Although the board is to blame for a lack of DoF last summer as well as keeping him until December, he spoiled our squad with his woeful style of play, a lack of discipline and a lack of athleticism. 

For what it's worth I wanted to win the league last year. We never threatened that.

Edited 3 hours ago by sockeye

[woodsaint1]

5 hours ago, Give it to Ron said:

They did the double on us under Martin 9-1 aggregate 

Yeah but this time they could be doing it with Martin

[notnowcato]

3 hours ago, trousers said:

Every time the 'Defend Martin no matter what' brigade trot out the "yeah, but the unbeaten run, innit" shibboleth a small furry mammal cops it in the Trousers household

It was actually Whitey that trotted it out having misread 28 wins from that season comment he was responding to.... but then you knew that didn't you.  I feel sorry for your furry mammals.

[trousers]

1 minute ago, notnowcato said:

It was actually Whitey that trotted it out having misread 28 wins from that season comment he was responding to.... but then you knew that didn't you.  I feel sorry for your furry mammals.

At least no beavers were harmed, thankfully.

[Farmer Saint]

4 hours ago, austsaint said:

The quality of the squad in the Championship was not poor.  It measured up favourably to Leeds and Leicester.   The squad was shit in the PL, largely because Martin didn’t have the judgement to re-shape a competitive squad last summer.   Following the Wilcox departure he had considerable say in recruiting and retention.   The result?…… players of the calibre of Manning, Smallbone, Wood, BBD, Arma, Stephen’s were Martin’s picks to give the Prem a red hot go.

 

So you thought our squad was better than Leicester's and Leeds last season? 

Frankly, I think that's mental, and if people think that no wonder they weren't happy with Martin last season. But I also severely question your football knowledge.

[coalman]

There's an argument we got promoted in spite of Martin rather than because of him. I remember being impressed how he'd adapted his tactics in the playoff final against Leeds and thinking it boded well for the Premier League. Only to hear he was annoyed the players didn't follow his instructions because "emotion had taken over".

That's not to say I didn't enjoy a lot of the football we played during our promotion season. In between the good stuff we still conceded a lot of goals and the signs were there.

The other way I'd look at it would be whether the Saints team is in a better or worse state after Martin left than when he joined. I'd argue he's left us in a worse position. Sport Republic have played their part in this too with abject recruitment despite their willingness to open their wallet and spend some cash. Martin alone isn't responsible for where we find ourselves. For a mid table team that flatters to deceive or a squad at the upper ends of the Championship he's probably a decent fit. He just hasn't demonstrated the desire to learn or self awareness to go beyond that level.