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Thread | Gardening leave for Russell Martin
at 12:02 20 Dec 2024
This is a side point to our change of manager, regarding what I have said about putting Russell Martin on "gardening leave". That is what we should have done with RM to avoid the cost of sacking him and it appears to be what Roma did with Juric. Note the tweet from Fabrizio Romano:
Roma sacked him on 10th November, yet he is now "formally working on exit terms". That means he is still contracted to them even though he was sacked as manager 6 weeks ago. By doing this, Roma will avoid having to pay him compensation because he will now want to be freed from his contract so that he can come to Saints. Now it all comes down to a negotiation where Juric will accept less than his full compensation so that he is free to work here.
If SFC really put themselves in a position where they had to pay RM his full 3 year contract, or the £10-12m that was rumoured, then that would be incompetent. We should have put him on gardening leave and waited until a Championship club offered him a job, like Roma have clearly done with Juric.
Edit: the tweet appears to be censored but anyway you get the idea [Post edited 20 Dec 2024 12:06]
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Thread | Perfect time to play Spurs
at 14:15 13 Dec 2024
Rusty has been complaining about our luck this season. But he can't complain about the scheduling of this fixture. Spurs:
- have only 4 points from their last 5 games
- are now in the bottom half of the table
- have a long injury list
- had 7 youngsters on th bench for their last game
- try to play out from the back with Fraser Forster in the side
- played a Thursday night European away game where they had to work hard
- deserved to lose to Rangers who aren't up to PL standards
- a senior player, Timo Werner, was publicly slammed by the manager
- another senior player, Romero, has just publicly criticised the club
- the manager is not just under pressure but is clearly showing it too
Surely, even a Russell Martin side can't lose at home to this lot???
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Thread | Rumour suggests terrible news
at 18:23 12 Dec 2024
Football Insider seem to be publishing Saints rumours sourced from Mick Brown. No idea if he has an inside track or not, but he seems to have been right so far. The latest from him, if it's right, confirms my fears: if we sack Rusty, they're just going to appoint Rusty Lite.
https://www.footballinsider247.com/southampton-work-on-russell-martin-replacemen
The article says: "If they do make a change, I wouldn’t expect it to be a completely different style. They, rightly or wrongly, want to continue with the progressive football and building from the back."
I only hope that someone on the board has 2 brain cells and can see the contradiction here. To quote the article:
"Their constant defensive errors, which are quickly becoming a feature of Martin’s side, have seen them ship 31 goals in that time – the second-worst in the division. As a result, scrutiny and pressure is continuing to grow both on the manager and the board and a change may have to be made soon."
So, Rusty faces the sack because of the defensive errors, which are mostly caused by trying to play out from the back, yet they want to appoint another manager who plays the same way? If this is true, it is like a scene from Dumb and Dumber.
The consolation would be that at least we'd be one step nearer to ditching this nonsense. Soon they'll be faced with the evidence that any manager that tries to play this way in the PL will fail. So far, 2 have tried it (Selles and RM). One more failure should be enough to get the message across. |
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Thread | Is fan sentiment changing?
at 12:20 9 Dec 2024
Fan sentiment towards RM changed on this board a while ago, but that's probably not representative of the wider fan base. Generally it seemed that most fans were still supportive of him. Now it feels like it's changing and most people want him gone. But I'm not really a social media user and I might be just picking up on a few random comments. What do people think?
As far as I'm concerned it would be a good thing if the majority of fans really turn against him, the atmosphere at games turned poisonous and everyone at the club knew that.
Am I hoping for too much? |
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Thread | Dibling goal involvements
at 13:22 27 Nov 2024
Sometimes when a youngster comes in, you can tell they're a prospect but there's no consistent end product there yet. Dibling is one of the few who have immediately delivered over a number of games at the top level.
Of the league games that we've scored in, he's been directly involved in these goals:
Brentford - directly involved in the move
Ipswich - scorer
B'mouth - put in the free kick that caused chaos and led to the goal after another cross
Arsenal - no involvement
Leicester - no involvement
Everton - no involvement
Liverpool - won the penalty for one and directly involved in the other goal
So, out of our 9 goals he's directly contributed to 5 of them and that's without including the penalty he won against Man U that Archer missed. This is despite the fact that he's only been on the pitch for 60% of our playing time.
So, he's not just promising, he's consistently delivering at the top level which is very rare for a teenager. Hopefully he can take the physical and mental stresses better than most 18 year olds would. Fernandes isn't far behind, he's delivering too. Thank God we've had these 2 real finds this season otherwise there would be nothing positive about Saints at all. I'm sure RM hates the fact they risk losing the ball by moving it quickly and taking people on, but I'm praying they ignore him when he tells them not to do it. |
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Thread | SFC would be better off if we'd lost 10 nil
at 19:46 24 Nov 2024
At least then it would have forced the board to question what they're doing. As it is, we have no more points and it just prolongs the agony of having RM as manager.
Today showed again that 1 rapid counter attack will create a better chance than 90 mins of turgid possession. Expect that lesson to be ignored by RM, just like he ignores the countless lessons that it's too risky for us to play out from the back against a PL side.
The glimpses of what we could do under a decent manager (and with a centre forward in the team) are actually torture. It just shows the opportunity that's being wasted by RM. It would be better to just play pure RM style and suffer a few heavy defeats, but then quickly get shot of him. |
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Thread | Ankersen's propaganda
at 14:49 12 Nov 2024
This BBC article seems a bit ridiculous to me:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/clyr6g4d0weo
For example we're told that "There is a firm belief Saints are not far away - and have not been - from a breakthrough" which is utter bollux. We're no further forward than we were at the start of the season.
But the bit that really takes the biscuit is the bit (obviously propaganda provided by the club media rep) that says:
"The experience of Rasmus Ankersen, co-founder and chief executive of Saints owners Sport Republic, means he remains patient and strategic.
His time at Brentford as co-director of football - helping to oversee the Bees' rise and Premier League promotion - has given him knowledge of how to build a sustainable model and a successful team."
This bit of propaganda was then copied across to the Echo website by Alfie House. But all the evidence says that this is utter tosh. Brentford do things completely differently to Saints. If these were Ankersen's choices at Brentford, then why has he made the completely opposite decisions at Saints?
Three key aspects of Brentford's success have been:
1) Thomas Frank's style of play, which is a world away from possession football.
2) Shutting down the academy to concentrate on recruiting players from minor leagues into their B team.
3) Heavy use of data e.g. to find optimal set piece tactics, which are a special focus, as opposed to the chaos that we see regularly.
It's just a world away from what we do. I reckon if they fed our match data into their machine it would have hysterics. 70% possession and no shots on target? Ha ha ha.
Ankersen obviously knows how to market himself if nothing else, so we keep on hearing what a genius he is. But the reality is that Brentford is the only success he's been associated with and it was probably nothing to do with him. If it was, then why is he implementing the complete opposite here?
"A sustainable model and a successful team", my arse. |
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Thread | We will have 4 points at Xmas
at 19:42 9 Nov 2024
With RM in charge I can't see us getting any more points from this run of fixtures through to Xmas:
Liverpool H
Brighton A
Chelsea H
Aston Villa A
Spurs H
Fulham A
No manager on earth would want to come in after Xmas with 4 points on the board. If we don't get rid of him in the international break then the season is over. |
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Thread | Mixed Feelings
at 10:11 3 Nov 2024
A win is a win and always worth celebrating. Even more so if it is the first of the season when we looked as though we would struggle to get one.
But, in the cold light of day, I think that this was also the worst result of the season so far because I think we'll look back at yesterday and see it as the day that confirmed relegation. This result means RM will be here for the foreseeable future and that confirms that it will be too late when they decide to dump him.
If we had played really well and destroyed Everton it might be different. But the truth is that we were poor and a bit lucky to win. Ramsdale was our best player and that says a lot. There was nothing there to say that we won't go back on our losing streak again soon. Everton were equally poor, but I still expect them to finish above us.
I hope I'm wrong but that's my opinion. |
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Thread | Pep praises Saints for "defending with the ball"
at 14:10 28 Oct 2024
I see that on Saturday's MOTD, Pep was complimentary about Saints, in particular the way we "defended with the ball". What he means is that we recycled possession instead of risking losing it by attacking. This denied City possession and meant that there were periods when City couldn't score because they didn't have the ball.
Wake up Pep lad. Perhaps, like your team, you're a bit tired after your Champions League week, but if this was an effective strategy then we wouldn't be bottom of the table with the worst goal difference. It might work for City, but we're more likely to turn the ball over in the defensive third resulting in an easy goal for the opposition. We managed to avoid that on Saturday (just) but it will happen again.
Meanwhile "defending with the ball" means that we are not attacking. What Pep describes as "defending with the ball" is mostly, when Saints do it, just pointless possession, where we bore the fans shitless and do nothing to threaten the opposition.
I'm from the old skool that thinks when you have the ball you should try to use it to score a goal instead of defending with it. That means moving the ball forward quickly before the opposition form a defensive block which is difficult to break down. Once again our best chances in this match came when we moved the ball quickly up the pitch instead of defending with it. Once again we will probably fail to learn from that.
Pep's compliments actually just sum up the chasm between City and Saints. They show how a tactic can make perfect sense for a team of world class players but be an exercise in stupidity for mediocre players like our lot. The fact that we didn't get absolutely walloped on Saturday doesn't change that. |
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Thread | Can we get 12 points? Not with this manager.
at 19:45 19 Oct 2024
We need 12 points to avoid Deby's worst ever PL record. At the moment we are on course for a total of 5 points, but that might be a bit optimistic. Of our 8 games, 3 have been among the easiest fixtures of the season, and 1 of the others was against 10 men.
I can understand when people say that the players are not good enough for the PL anyway, so changing the manager won't make any difference. But there is a big difference between fighting against relegation and complete capitulation. We are in danger of complete capitulation.
Relegation is almost certain but we need to go down fighting and avoid the tag of worst ever PL team. The players clearly have no belief or confidence in what they're doing and that is only going to get worse the more we lose. If we carry on as now, everything about the club will become toxic. One of the many implications of that will be that we can't attract the players we will need in the Championship next season.
This season is down the toilet already, but we need to get a new manager appointed quickly to stop everything turning to poison. |
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Thread | Why RM teams concede so many goals
at 19:58 6 Oct 2024
We all learnt this about RM's style a long time ago, but it's clear that he never wants to learn. Just watched last night's MOTD and they had a graphic showing the worst teams for "Possession lost in defensive third". Of course we were the worst of the worst and that is the key reason why RM teams concede so many.
I just think it's so ironic that RM's style of play is supposed to maximise possession, but actually what it ends up doing is losing possession in the most dangerous area of the pitch. Yesterday we gave away 2 goals by losing possession near our goal and we were lucky not to give away more before the game had hardly started.
RM claims this style gets us more goals than it gives away, but I think if you look at goals for and against in the PL you'll see that this is total BS. He just doesn't want to deal with the truth.
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Thread | If you thought the Bosman ruling was bad...
at 11:00 4 Oct 2024
Today the European Court found that FIFA's transfer rules are illegal in the EU. It said that “The rules in question are such as to impede the free movement of professional footballers wishing to develop their activity by going to work for a new club,” which basically means that players who fancy a pay rise by moving to a bigger club should be able to break their contract without compensating their old club. I'm no legal expert but this seems to me to be an even more fundamental change than the Bosman ruling.
This, like Bosman, is an EU ruling but it seems to mean that FIFA will have to change the transfer rules to allow players to move mid-contract without compensation. So, if we had Tyler Dibling, for example, on a 5 year contract but he decided he'd rather play for Man City, he could just leave and start playing for them. He would not have to compensate Saints and Man City wouldn't have to pay a transfer fee.
People aren't yet making a big deal of this and it may take many years for the implications to work through, but at the end of it, I can't see any legal basis for transfer fees existing at all. Ultimately any player could move when they wanted to and claim that any transfer fee was a restriction on their freedom of movement. It may take another test case to make it happen, but that seems to be where we're going. There may also be other implications. For example, transfer windows would now appear to be illegal too as they also impede free movement of workers.
As with everything else in modern football, this ruling would benefit the players and the biggest clubs at the expense of everyone else. The Bosman ruling was a kick in the teeth for small clubs, this may be a death knell.
The legal case was brought by Lassana Diarra, an ex skate. |
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Thread | Moments of class
at 08:56 22 Sep 2024
It was a goal of pure class from Lallana and Dibling yesterday. It's no coincidence that they have both been key to the 2 PL goals that we've scored this season because they are our 2 most technically gifted players, which is what you need if you want to play the passing game in the PL.
One of our biggest problems is that our build up play is generally too slow and we end up having to pass our way through a packed defence. Only top class players can do that with any regularity in the PL. We're fortunate that Lallana and Dibling are top class (even if you still hate AL). Lallana has the technique to play for Man City and Dibling probably does too. Neither has the physicality to last 90 mins at the moment, but the technique is top level.
The problem is that we don't have enough of these top level players to play this way in the PL. But when it works, it's magic. |
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Thread | The players are losing belief
at 18:54 14 Sep 2024
The worst thing about today, for me, was that it said that the players are losing belief. We started well and seemed to have improved, but after the penalty (which was taken with no conviction) we just fell away and looked resigned to defeat. The team's confidence couldn't even survive the slightest dent. It's a bit early in the season for a team to be losing hope like that.
I'm sure RM believes in what he's doing, but I don't think the players share that belief. A team that had belief would have been encouraged by winning a penalty and kept going. They showed in the first 30 mins that they could compete if they played positively. The only thing that explains the change in performance after the penalty is a change in mentality (for both sides to be fair).
It will be very difficult to build that belief by playing PL games. If we were a stubborn defensive side, we could grind out some nil-nils and build from there. But any Russell Martin side is going to concede goals. A Russell Martin side has to rely on scoring plenty, but it is difficult to see how those goals will be scored when there is no belief in the side (except for Dibling who was terrific).
Although it is early in the season, the game against Ipswich may be RM's last opportunity to convince the players that we have a chance of surviving under him. He needs a win to change the mentality of the team. If he can't stop the rot quickly, it will just get worse.
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Thread | England
at 18:14 29 Aug 2024
Ramsdale dropped as soon as he's linked with Saints
No left back but Livramento in so maybe he will play there
Gibbs-White in deservedly. I remember us trying to sign him from Wolves. Shame
Carsley picks his U21 squad members including Angel Gomes!
Some interesting selections and some that shouldn't be there (Maguire) |
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