New Manager Debate

[Hopper]

If a manager has a bit about them and can get buy in from the majority then they don’t need to be a hard case. Those that want to strop can be left in the cold. The issue with Still is he wasn’t up to the job on the pitch at all so he had no leverage with the players that could have bought in.

Edited 4 hours ago by Hopper

[Willo of Whiteley]

Makes you wonder if Oriol Romeu has the inside track on whoever may be coming in?

Or did he have an awareness that Will Still was on his way out?

[Bakovnetski]

28 minutes ago, Zorba said:

We’re a basket case of a club now, there’s no denying it. No-one but a total nutcase would take this job now. I’d rather it be a looney with Championship experience than the latest German Subbuteo champion.

This

[Lighthouse]

33 minutes ago, Zorba said:

We’re a basket case of a club now, there’s no denying it. No-one but a total nutcase would take this job now. I’d rather it be a looney with Championship experience than the latest German Subbuteo champion.

We’re clearly one of the most attractive propositions in the league, in terms of wages we can offer and the squad we have to work with.

[CB Fry]

36 minutes ago, Zorba said:

We’re a basket case of a club now, there’s no denying it. No-one but a total nutcase would take this job now. I’d rather it be a looney with Championship experience than the latest German Subbuteo champion.

Jesus wept.

[AlexLaw76]

40 minutes ago, Zorba said:

We’re a basket case of a club now, there’s no denying it. No-one but a total nutcase would take this job now. I’d rather it be a looney with Championship experience than the latest German Subbuteo champion.

Don't be weird, please

[Zorba]

44 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

We’re clearly one of the most attractive propositions in the league, in terms of wages we can offer and the squad we have to work with.

Rose tinted glasses much? We’ve sacked 5 managers in 12 months. Our owners are clueless. We don’t have a striker or anyone that can score goals. Two awful keepers. Most of our players are overrated (only by our fan base though). We were just relegated as pretty much the worst team in Premier League history. We are a shambles.

Edited 3 hours ago by Zorba

[hypochondriac]

3 minutes ago, Zorba said:

Rose tinted glasses much? We’ve sacked 5 managers in 12 months. Our owners are clueless. We don’t have a striker or anyone that can score goals. Two awful keepers. Most of our players are overrated (only by our fan base though). We were just relegated as pretty much the worst team in Premier League history. We are a shambles.

Can't be bothered to address all the points but this is a stupid post.

[Lighthouse]

3 minutes ago, Zorba said:

Rose tinted glasses much? We’ve sacked 5 managers in 12 months. Our owners are clueless. We don’t have a striker or anyone that can score goals. Two awful keepers. Most of our players are overrated (only by our fan base though). We were just relegated as pretty much the worst team in Premier League history. We are a shambles.

What you’ve done there is make me agree with Delldays, now I need to go and clean myself with Brillo pads and boiling acid. Congratulations, I hope you’re happy.

[ally_uk]

German manager.... David Wagner ? 

Calling it now.

Got Huddlesfield promoted, kept them in the Premier league.

Likes to deploy the gegen-press.

Knows the league, could be exactly who we need......Surprised he has hardly been mentioned. 

Edited 3 hours ago by ally_uk

[Osvaldorama]

3 minutes ago, ally_uk said:

German manager.... David Wagner ? 

Calling it now.

Got Huddlesfield promoted, kept them in the Premier league.

Likes to deploy the gegen-press.

Knows the league, could be exactly who we need......Surprised he has hardly been mentioned. 

He stepped back from management and is currently a youth team coach, can’t remember where. 

Im guessing he wouldn’t be interested in going from looking after a bunch of youngsters to a bunch of cry babies 

[Appy]

5 minutes ago, ally_uk said:

German manager.... David Wagner ? 

Calling it now.

Got Huddlesfield promoted, kept them in the Premier league.

Likes to deploy the gegen-press.

Knows the league, could be exactly who we need......Surprised he has hardly been mentioned. 

Can I be a pedant and say he’s American? 

[AlexLaw76]

2 minutes ago, Appy said:

Can I be a pedant and say he’s American? 

A pedant would say he is German, who qualified to play for the USA due to the nationality of him mam.

HTH

[Zorba]

54 minutes ago, CB Fry said:

Jesus wept.

Is he a Saints fan too?

[Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd]

8 minutes ago, ally_uk said:

German manager.... David Wagner ? 

Calling it now.

Got Huddlesfield promoted, kept them in the Premier league.

Likes to deploy the gegen-press.

Knows the league, could be exactly who we need......Surprised he has hardly been mentioned. 

Most Norwich fans couldn't wait to see the back of him.

On another note, had Watford not just sacked their manager we'd now be equal with them in terms of the number of managers in the last 20 years. 
Everybody laughs about them when they hear that they have another new manager but we're almost as bad. I hd no idea we were that close to them. 

 

[Wade Garrett]

How long are the club going to draw this shit out for?

 

[Doctoroncall]

2 hours ago, AlexLaw76 said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/borussiadortmund/s/qECaIEUlFb

From another thread…

He was brought in to get better results than Rose, which he didn’t. In his first season he got 2 points more than rose, despite the fact that he had the most influence on our squad from any our previous coaches since he was a squad planner before and then became coach.

Let’s look at the results. 3 out of 4 halves of the two seasons were far below average in our terms, only the second half of the first season in the Bundesliga was good. Champions league run was highly lucky, as to the xGa we should have lost PSG and Atlético. So 3/4 of the halves were terrible, why should he get more chances? On top of that, we would have missed the CL for the first time in a long long time due to only placing 5th. Any coach would have been fired for that, rose and Favre got fired for less. Terzic is the neighbor of Watzke and he pretty much didn’t want to kick out his friend. If he was held to the same standards as any other coach, he would have been gone after 6 months.

Transfers were horrific. For over 15 years we have had strikers with depth that could threaten the opponent with deep runs and without any necessity, he changed what made us strong the years before. We got Haller, Modeste and Füllkrug, who were lost up front and didn’t have enough speed to pose a threat, hence we had quite a few problems creating chances.

The transfers he was involved in mostly flopped.

He was unable to integrate any of our big talents. Moukoko, Reyna, Gittens, Adeyemi and all the others did not make a step forward. This creates an issue when we rely on sales to keep our high wages going. So we signed old players and developed no talents anymore, which will hurt us tremendously in 2-3 years.

His playing approach is passive. He wants to overplay the midfield area instead of doing what every top club does: make the opponent tired, control the center. Whoever controls midfield, controls the game. He saw it differently. We were number 1 in long passes (>30m) last season. Ahead of Heidenheim, Köln, Darmstadt. More than double the passes than Bayern and Leverkusen in that department. That’s a big issue because you’ll run into counter attacks because our strikers aren’t good enough technically to keep the ball. So instead of controlling the game, we got pure chaos. Uncountable games where we were up 2:0 and lost 2:3. no big club plays like this, yet he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Lastly, he lost the team with his decisions. Our players wanted to play good football and some spilled the beans in interviews. Füllkrug, Brandt, Kobel, Hummels and others. There were issues with terzic when he started giving excuses and blaming losses on the team not following his plan.

This is the short version, I could go on longer. It was the most unattractive football I’ve seen from a coach that was there longer than a few months.

[Tommy Mulgrew]

A perfect fit, @Doctoroncall.  Well researched.

[Southner]

1 hour ago, CB Fry said:

Jesus wept.

So did I, and most other Saints fans. Weekly occurance usually. 

[ecuk268]

From the Guardian's Football Daily newsletter:

‘FEELS LIKE WE ONLY GO BACKWARDS'

Last December, Wolves and Southampton were the Premier League’s bottom two clubs, seriously at risk of being cut adrift. Both then hit the panic button within 24 hours of each other, Wolves sacking Gary O’Neil after a testy late 2-1 home defeat by Ipswich, and Russell Martin getting the boot for an equally ominous 5-0 gubbing by Spurs. Both clubs rolled the dice on grizzled, combustible European coaches. In the short term, one appointment worked – Vítor Pereira led Wolves on a chaotic pub crawl to safety – and the other did not. Ivan Juric earned four points in 14 games and was sacked before achieving his ambitious goal of not leading ‘the worst team in Premier League history’. Southampton were relegated with seven games to play, while Juric vaulted back on to his feet by getting the gig at Atalanta. What happened next? Well, the Lionesses’ Euro 2025 heroics meant Saints and Wolves were no longer vying for the title of best Hampton. Wolves struggled with a post-survival hangover, but offered Pereira a fresh three-year deal despite four defeats from their first four games. “Now is a time for stability,” cheered chief suit Jeff Shi. Forty-five days later and with two points on the board, Shi decided now was a time for upheaval, and Pereira was given the boot. Perhaps he was panicked by the sight of Southampton sitting 21st in the Championship, like the ghost of relegation still to come. In just 13 games, Saints had shredded the reputation of one of Europe’s most promising young coaches – and revived their strange parallel with Wolves by sending Will Still packing just a few hours after Pereira. That connection has intensified further with both clubs seemingly considering a return to the managers they had sacked 11 months ago. Have they completely lost the plot? We understand successful managers going back to their old clubs is very much in vogue these days, but the key word there is successful. O’Neil appeared all set for a – what’s the opposite of triumphant? – return to Molineux but has walked away from what is surely the last Premier League job he’s likely to be offered. That said, Southampton appear to be actually willing to consider rehiring Martin, burned by a bin-fire stint at Rangers and with a career win percentage of 39% – exactly what’s required for a Championship relegation scrap. If either club really wants to turn the clock back, they should imitate Everton’s move for David Moyes or Martin O’Neill’s romantic return to Celtic. Maybe Southampton could give Gordon Strachan a call. As for Wolves, if they’re going to go down, they may as well get big Mick McCarthy in for the meme potential. As for the bigger picture, it’s worth noting that since the start of last season, 46 of the 94 clubs to play league football have changed manager; Southampton have done it three times, with a fourth poor sap on the way. Like the owner Fosun at their twin crisis club up in the West Midlands, Saints majority owners Sports Republic have dragged a stable Premier League club into turmoil through bad recruitment and impulsive decisions. Perhaps it’s time the suits accepted they don’t know how to run a football club, and marched themselves through their well-used doors marked Do One. On the other hand, Brendan Rodgers is available.

[ally_uk]

Brandon Rodgers would never come to Saints..... Would be a bloody good appointment though.

[Lord Duckhunter]

1 hour ago, ally_uk said:

German manager.... David Wagner ? 

Calling it now.

Got Huddlesfield promoted, kept them in the Premier league.

Likes to deploy the gegen-press.

Knows the league, could be exactly who we need......Surprised he has hardly been mentioned. 

I’m on the Wagner bus. 

On 26/10/2025 at 11:23, Lord Duckhunter said:

As I said, I don’t follow the ins and outs of the managerial game anymore, but one name which maybe a possibly is David Wagner. Bit of a journeyman career, with some decent highs in the league we’re actually playing in, as well as some lows which unlike Nathan Jones (after Stoke), he may have learnt from. Not likely to be poached by anyone even if he does turn things around. I don’t know if he wants to get back in, he may love his present role, but my Huddersfield mate sings his praises and says he transformed their club from top to bottom. 

I believe he’s working for Klopp running the youth side of the group he’s involved iwith. 

[Pamplemousse]

That's a great call. Get Strachan back in,

[saintant]

2 hours ago, hypochondriac said:

Surely you fight for the faint chance that we get someone in and sneak into the playoffs or at the very least build momentum and give a new manager the time to get to know the squad for a promotion charge next season. Currently 10 points off sixth which isn't insurmountable albeit unlikely.

Would prefer it if we get someone in who builds us into a decent team and shifts us up the table to a respectable position then we strengthen next summer ready for a more measured and structured push for promotion next season. This season has been wasted and we now need to make a start on repairing the damage.

[trousers]

37 minutes ago, ecuk268 said:

"Saints majority owners Sports Republic have dragged a stable Premier League club into turmoil through bad recruitment and impulsive decisions. Perhaps it’s time the suits accepted they don’t know how to run a football club, and marched themselves through their well-used doors marked Do One."

Someone pin this paragraph somewhere please. Nail. Head. Nutshell, etc...

Edited 2 hours ago by trousers

[saintant]

1 hour ago, Zorba said:

Rose tinted glasses much? We’ve sacked 5 managers in 12 months. Our owners are clueless. We don’t have a striker or anyone that can score goals. Two awful keepers. Most of our players are overrated (only by our fan base though). We were just relegated as pretty much the worst team in Premier League history. We are a shambles.

This is the reality of it. We continue to need rebuilding but if we just keep signing the type of players we do it will never work. The mix has to be spot on and we remain miles away from having a well balanced squad. We should be learning from the likes of Bournemouth, Palace, Brentford and even Sunderland who are all getting it right.

[Lord Duckhunter]

Whoever it is needs to be given a decent length contract and given the backing to drain the swamp. It’s time for a “bring your dinner” speech from the powers that be. Introduce the new man “you cunts got the last 3 managers the sack, not this time. He”ll be here longer than you lot & you will all fucking leave before he does”. Look at Ivan, clearly a no nonsense manager, but the players knew they’d see him off.
 

The culture of the club is rotten, but I’m sure there’s some decent young pros in there which given decent role models and proper management will flourish. We’ve had to bring an old pro who has never played in this league to instil some professionalism and desire, when Adam Armstrong, AM, Jack Stephen’s, Downes, Manning, THB, should have been doing so. The senior pros at this club should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and somebody needs to fucking sort them out. 

[egg]

Just now, Lord Duckhunter said:

Whoever it is needs to be given a decent length contract and given the backing to drain the swamp. It’s time for a “bring your dinner” speech from the powers that be. Introduce the new man “you cunts got the last 3 managers the sack, not this time. He”ll be here longer than you lot & you will all fucking leave before he does”. Look at Ivan, clearly a no nonsense manager, but the players knew they’d see him off.
 

The culture of the club is rotten, but I’m sure there’s some decent young pros in there which given decent role models and proper management will flourish. We’ve had to bring an old pro who has never played in this league to instil some professionalism and desire, when Adam Armstrong, AM, Jack Stephen’s, Downes, Manning, THB, should have been doing so. The senior pros at this club should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and somebody needs to fucking sort them out. 

Spot on. We've got to stop hiring trendy coaches, and bring in a manager who can impose standards, and bin off anyone not toeing the line. 

It feels like the tail has been wagging the dog. That's got to stop. Now. 

[saintant]

3 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

Whoever it is needs to be given a decent length contract and given the backing to drain the swamp. It’s time for a “bring your dinner” speech from the powers that be. Introduce the new man “you cunts got the last 3 managers the sack, not this time. He”ll be here longer than you lot & you will all fucking leave before he does”. Look at Ivan, clearly a no nonsense manager, but the players knew they’d see him off.
 

The culture of the club is rotten, but I’m sure there’s some decent young pros in there which given decent role models and proper management will flourish. We’ve had to bring an old pro who has never played in this league to instil some professionalism and desire, when Adam Armstrong, AM, Jack Stephen’s, Downes, Manning, THB, should have been doing so. The senior pros at this club should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and somebody needs to fucking sort them out. 

Nail hit firmly on the head. Sure, managers haven't been up to scratch but some of the senior players have acted like petulant kids and it seems AA has admitted they didn't give 100% for Will Still. Weed out the bad apples asap to get rid of the toxic culture that permeates the squad and is sucking the life out of it. These lot will be the first to get all pally pally with the new manager so we need someone who is experienced enough to see through the blaggers.

[trousers]

5 hours ago, hypochondriac said:

Why is there talk of a temporary manager? We are a few games into the season!

I'm not sure being almost a third of the way through the season counts as "a few games into the season"....?

[Wade Garrett]

15 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

Whoever it is needs to be given a decent length contract and given the backing to drain the swamp. It’s time for a “bring your dinner” speech from the powers that be. Introduce the new man “you cunts got the last 3 managers the sack, not this time. He”ll be here longer than you lot & you will all fucking leave before he does”. Look at Ivan, clearly a no nonsense manager, but the players knew they’d see him off.
 

The culture of the club is rotten, but I’m sure there’s some decent young pros in there which given decent role models and proper management will flourish. We’ve had to bring an old pro who has never played in this league to instil some professionalism and desire, when Adam Armstrong, AM, Jack Stephen’s, Downes, Manning, THB, should have been doing so. The senior pros at this club should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and somebody needs to fucking sort them out. 

Fucking tremendous post.

[hypochondriac]

30 minutes ago, saintant said:

Would prefer it if we get someone in who builds us into a decent team and shifts us up the table to a respectable position then we strengthen next summer ready for a more measured and structured push for promotion next season. This season has been wasted and we now need to make a start on repairing the damage.

That's just bollocks.

[Badger]

14 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

Whoever it is needs to be given a decent length contract and given the backing to drain the swamp. It’s time for a “bring your dinner” speech from the powers that be. Introduce the new man “you cunts got the last 3 managers the sack, not this time. He”ll be here longer than you lot & you will all fucking leave before he 

 

11 minutes ago, egg said:

Spot on. We've got to stop hiring trendy coaches, and bring in a manager who can impose standards, and bin off anyone not toeing the line. 

It feels like the tail has been wagging the dog. That's got to stop. Now. 

True on both counts, but to do this we need to identify who will live up to that expectation not just select from who might be available.
 

Goes against the clubs usual practice but it could mean paying compensation. If it means getting the right person then pay it ffs.
 

I’d rather we bring in an experienced manager for the rest of the season if it means getting the right one at the end of it. We have to avoid hiring say Gerrard then regretting it and being stuck with him. 

[Badger]

14 minutes ago, saintant said:

….  it seems AA has admitted they didn't give 100% for Will Still. 

Haven’t seen that, where did he say it ,or where reported? 

[saintwbu]

4 minutes ago, Badger said:

 

True on both counts, but to do this we need to identify who will live up to that expectation not just select from who might be available.
 

Goes against the clubs usual practice but it could mean paying compensation. If it means getting the right person then pay it ffs.
 

I’d rather we bring in an experienced manager for the rest of the season if it means getting the right one at the end of it. We have to avoid hiring say Gerrard then regretting it and being stuck with him. 

Without being pedantic we’ve done that twice in recent times for Jones and Martin, so I don’t think it’s something the club are against if it’s necessary 

[trousers]

5 minutes ago, Badger said:

Haven’t seen that, where did he say it ,or where reported? 

 

 

[egg]

9 minutes ago, hypochondriac said:

That's just bollocks.

In what way has this season (thus far) not been wasted? It's been a complete waste of a golden opportunity to get points on the board. 

[Badger]

6 minutes ago, saintwbu said:

Without being pedantic we’ve done that twice in recent times for Jones and Martin, so I don’t think it’s something the club are against if it’s necessary 

Fair point. Shame about the choices though, 

[hypochondriac]

12 minutes ago, egg said:

In what way has this season (thus far) not been wasted? It's been a complete waste of a golden opportunity to get points on the board. 

We have wasted the start to the season. The season as a whole is not currently wasted.

Edited 1 hour ago by hypochondriac