How long has it been?

[SaintLondon]

I was chatting to a mate over the weekend and we were trying to pinpoint the last time we felt genuinely content with everything at the club. Depressingly, for me it was the 2015/16 season - a decade ago.

Of course, no club is ever on a constant upward trajectory; there are always peaks and troughs. But from my perspective, what we’ve experienced since then feels less like fluctuation and more like a slow decline, as we continue to circle the drain.

You can’t lay every problem at SR’s door, but I do think they represent the single biggest issue we’ve faced over that ten-year period.

No one has asked for my opinion, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

 

 

[saintant]

For me the last time I felt contented with the club was the morning of the unexpected 4-0 loss to Villa a few years ago. After that we just went into a tail spin and have never recovered.

[Pamplemousse]

The promotion season. I thought we'd turned a corner. How wrong was I

[Turkish]

Probably was back then. The decline started after Koeman left, Puel took a lot of the wrath for it but he got dealt a bad hand and did a very good job in the circumstances, i know some dont agree and will cite boring football etc but they also dont factor in he lost the two highest goalscorers from the previous season, Wanyama who was a key player and the second half of the season lost fonte and Van Dijk, i would question who else could have done  a better job losing probably his 5 best players which were the spine of the team

It's was death by a thousand cuts since then with a few periods of hope, when we went top under Ralph was great but always a false dawn. SR came in and this new dawn has been more of a disaster than any of us could have imagined. What baffles me about the club since 2016 is that despite it being clear that its has been failing for 10 years now, there is an arrogance about it that we do things differently and better than others. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Turkish

[trousers]

As mentioned on another thread, the 4-0 defeat at Villa Park on 4th March 2022 can be traced back as the most recent 'pivot point' in our destiny...

Up until then, things were looking fine.

The defeat came on the back of a run of 10 games where we'd only lost once and we were sitting comfortably in 9th place. 

Our new owners had been in place for 2 months and we were promised significant investment in the squad. At long last, Ralph was going to be given decent funds to improve the squad that he had thus far managed on a shoestring.

Things were looking relatively rosey but, inexplicably, the wheels came off the track that day....

Edited 5 hours ago by trousers

[Saint Mikey]

For me, it's more about expectations.

In the whole time I've supported the club, there have only been a handful of times that have been 'enjoyable'. I was too young to truly appreciate the Lawrie McMenemy years, but these are those moments:

- That attacking Chris Nicholl team, 4-2-4, finishing 7th in 89/90.
- Strachan's team, Cup Final and 8th.
- Rise up the leagues from League 1 and Championship all the way through to Poch and Koeman.
- Some bits of Ralph's stint.

That's it in c.40 years. That bit in the middle was an anomaly really, it's mostly been shit supporting us.

 

[JohnnyShearer2.0]

3 minutes ago, trousers said:

As mentioned on another thread, the 4-0 defeat at Villa Park on 4th March 2022 can be traced back as the most recent 'pivot point' in our destiny...

Up until then, things were looking fine.

The defeat came on the back of a run of 10 games where we'd only lost once and we were sitting comfortably in 9th place. 

Our new owners had been in place for 2 months and we were promised significant investment in the squad. At long last, Ralph was going to be given decent funds to improve the squad that he had thus far managed on a shoestring.

Things were looking relatively rosey but, inexplicably, the wheels came off the track that day....

Yep, i feel that game was the turning point. Something must have happened.

Went to Villa to watch it and thought WTF happened. Thought it may have been a one-off but little did we know what was in store.

[S-Clarke]

I think all clubs go through cycles like this, certainly at our level. We dined at the 'top table' in the European convo for 2 seasons which for us is somewhat unique, so we were performing outside of our norms!

Certainly the last time it felt aligned from the top down to the manager was during those Adkins > Poch > Koeman years, but in the 2nd Koeman year it started to go a bit sour as that alignment started to drift I felt. The club started to get a bit too big for it's boots, thought it had cracked football, took it's foot off the gas and therein lies the drift we see ourselves in today.

What happened then isn't directly correlated to where we are today, as we have gone through 2 entirely different ownership models - but I think it just stresses how important it is to have alignment down from the ownership, management, players and fans - then the whole club pulls through. When that slips, everything erodes and it's not always immediate. Man Utd are a 'larger' example of that.

[M271]

31 minutes ago, trousers said:

As mentioned on another thread, the 4-0 defeat at Villa Park on 4th March 2022 can be traced back as the most recent 'pivot point' in our destiny...

Up until then, things were looking fine.

The defeat came on the back of a run of 10 games where we'd only lost once and we were sitting comfortably in 9th place. 

Our new owners had been in place for 2 months and we were promised significant investment in the squad. At long last, Ralph was going to be given decent funds to improve the squad that he had thus far managed on a shoestring.

Things were looking relatively rosey but, inexplicably, the wheels came off the track that day....

And in November of 2022 we appointed Nathan Jones as manager and Aston Villa got Emery. The clubs have gone in dramatically different directions since then.

[Harry_SFC]

46 minutes ago, trousers said:

As mentioned on another thread, the 4-0 defeat at Villa Park on 4th March 2022 can be traced back as the most recent 'pivot point' in our destiny...

Up until then, things were looking fine.

The defeat came on the back of a run of 10 games where we'd only lost once and we were sitting comfortably in 9th place. 

Our new owners had been in place for 2 months and we were promised significant investment in the squad. At long last, Ralph was going to be given decent funds to improve the squad that he had thus far managed on a shoestring.

Things were looking relatively rosey but, inexplicably, the wheels came off the track that day....

It was that Villa game and the summer transfer window afterwards. Failure to sign a proper striker and lots of wasted funds. That set the precedent unfortunately.

[tdmickey3]

52 minutes ago, Pamplemousse said:

The promotion season. I thought we'd turned a corner. How wrong was I

Never going to be the case after we kept RM and purchased utter rubbish in transfer market

1 minute ago, Harry_SFC said:

It was that Villa game and the summer transfer window afterwards. Failure to sign a proper striker and lots of wasted funds. That set the precedent unfortunately.

This

[Turkish]

10 minutes ago, Harry_SFC said:

It was that Villa game and the summer transfer window afterwards. Failure to sign a proper striker and lots of wasted funds. That set the precedent unfortunately.

sounds like every transfer window. We've signed strikers the last 3 summers but none of them done the business for different reasons.

[Willo of Whiteley]

The Ronald Koeman era was the obvious one. What was it - three points off the Champions League places?
Coincidentally that’s when transfer started going wrong too.

 

In recent times, two years ago. Yes we should’ve been a certainty of the autos but I remember going to every game thinking we’ll score at least three or four.
You could ready the game, patterns of play, we had impact subs that would make a difference; and above all we kept going until the final whistle.

Equally I remember us going into the play offs and thinking we would be steady at West Brom and we’d demolish them in the second leg.
The powerful social media content going into those games was some of the best around. A passion, a pride.

Then on the morning of the final I remember turning to my Dad on the way up saying “we’re winning 1-0 today, it’ll be scrappy and backs to the wall, but we’re going up”.
I’ve never felt so confident going into games.

As much as Russell Martin was an absolute chancer and is full of shit, having seen us get a promotion under him and a style of play we and the players would be familiar with, have him over Tonda Eckhart.

[die Mannyschaft]

1 minute ago, Willo of Whiteley said:

The Ronald Koeman era was the obvious one. What was it - three points off the Champions League places?
Coincidentally that’s when transfer started going wrong too.

 

In recent times, two years ago. Yes we should’ve been a certainty of the autos but I remember going to every game thinking we’ll score at least three or four.
You could ready the game, patterns of play, we had impact subs that would make a difference; and above all we kept going until the final whistle.

Equally I remember us going into the play offs and thinking we would be steady at West Brom and we’d demolish them in the second leg.
The powerful social media content going into those games was some of the best around. A passion, a pride.

Then on the morning of the final I remember turning to my Dad on the way up saying “we’re winning 1-0 today, it’ll be scrappy and backs to the wall, but we’re going up”.
I’ve never felt so confident going into games.

As much as Russell Martin was an absolute chancer and is full of shit, having seen us get a promotion under him and a style of play we and the players would be familiar with, have him over Tonda Eckhart.

At least with Russell Martin in championship you knew Saints had a chance of winning any game, getting a last minute 97th winner, scoring more goals than opponents. And games were far more exciting like the Huddersfield home game 2 down then win 5-2.

[LuckyNumber7]

1 hour ago, trousers said:

As mentioned on another thread, the 4-0 defeat at Villa Park on 4th March 2022 can be traced back as the most recent 'pivot point' in our destiny...

Up until then, things were looking fine.

The defeat came on the back of a run of 10 games where we'd only lost once and we were sitting comfortably in 9th place. 

Our new owners had been in place for 2 months and we were promised significant investment in the squad. At long last, Ralph was going to be given decent funds to improve the squad that he had thus far managed on a shoestring.

Things were looking relatively rosey but, inexplicably, the wheels came off the track that day....

That Villa game does seem to have been a noticeable turning point, and I would love to see our Premier League record since that match. It would be horrific. I remember coming away from the home win over Norwich in the previous game thinking we might actually have our Saints back.

However I don't think it was that inexplicable. The squad had been on a constant decline since Koeman left and Ralph had us punching way above our weight, it was never sustainable.

SR have been disastrous but the rot had already set in way earlier under Gao, and we were heading in this direction regardless.

We've had the odd glimmer of hope such as the 2017 cup final, the good form under project restart and the playoff win, but overall it has been a steady decline for 10 years and shows no signs of stopping. It's been very hard work and you can tell it's taken its toll on the fanbase.

[skintsaint]

1 hour ago, saintant said:

For me the last time I felt contented with the club was the morning of the unexpected 4-0 loss to Villa a few years ago. After that we just went into a tail spin and have never recovered.

The first game after my son was born, sorry for bringing in this unlucky charm of a fan into this world.

Think we were on a long unbeaten streak at that point and looking good.

[gammon cheeks]

loved the way we played under  Koeman........very demanding manager by all accounts ..players respected  him and he would not take any shit .

[Appy]

Not kicking on when we finished sixth in 2016, allowing Everton to poach Koeman because we didn’t show enough ambition when we qualified for Europe, leaving ourselves with Austin, Long and Rodriguez as our strikers after Pelle and Mane went. 

[danjosaint]

23 minutes ago, gammon cheeks said:

loved the way we played under  Koeman........very demanding manager by all accounts ..players respected  him and he would not take any shit .

People do forget we were poor under RK at a point he was going out the door at Christmas time until results massively improved

[SaintLondon]

8 minutes ago, danjosaint said:

People do forget we were poor under RK at a point he was going out the door at Christmas time until results massively improved

Wasn't it against Sheff United in the cup? We lost 1-0 or something and things were a bit bleak? 

[ErwinK1961]

It’s all gone wrong since Shane got his guitar out.

https://www.sportsjoe.ie/football/watch-shane-long-and-his-guitar-stole-the-show-at-southamptons-end-of-season-awards-ceremony-78420

”we’ll never stop, until we reach the top” 

Koeman leaves, Pelle leaves, Mane leaves, Wanyama leaves, Fonte head goes.

Yeah we’ve had some modicum’s of success since then (League Cup final, Playoff final), but those never felt on solid foundations compared to how the end of 15/16 felt.

[ErwinK1961]

30 minutes ago, SaintLondon said:

Wasn't it against Sheff United in the cup? We lost 1-0 or something and things were a bit bleak? 

That was season before.

We went on a terrible run around winter in 15/16 season. Think we beat Arsenal 4-0 but that was our only win for like 10-12 matches. Think Koeman went 3 at the back for a bit (oh the irony) and we turned it around.

[Turkish]

30 minutes ago, ErwinK1961 said:

That was season before.

We went on a terrible run around winter in 15/16 season. Think we beat Arsenal 4-0 but that was our only win for like 10-12 matches. Think Koeman went 3 at the back for a bit (oh the irony) and we turned it around.

It wasn't that bad a run, we lost 5 out 6, inc a 6-1 home loss v Liverpool in the league cup in a weird game where they seemed to score with every shot they had.  There were rumblings though but never really serious ones, then we beat Arsenal 4-0 but then lost the three after before we went on an unreal run winning 12 of our last 18 games the rest of the season.

[Osvaldorama]

Agreed with most of the above, I do think it’s natural for a club to go through cycles of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ periods.

However, the amplitude of our sin waves seem to be a lot more extreme than most.

Doesn’t feel like we’ve bottomed yet, sadly.