I am sacking my sources in my spiritual home, as the same person has said, no no no, it is still looking like we are going Dutch again. Rumour is De Boer has the same agent as Ron? If that is the case, then double payday!
Some interesting âITKâ snippets from K Billy on swf, although if I remember correctly, he also said clyne was going to sign a new contract.
care to expand? Iâd rather not look mâself
I know K-Billy has poo pooed AVB but I like this article about Saints and AVB being a good fit.
But, detractors be warned: Southampton and Villas-Boas are an ideological match. Should an agreement be reached, the Portuguese will take control of a thoroughly modern club who, unlike his previous English employers, are emboldened by a departmental clarity which would suit his management. Southampton are not a reactionary club and they do not trade away their ideologies every six months. Unlike Chelsea, who still change course on a whim, and 2013-era Spurs, who were plagued by in-fighting and background politics, the south coast club are extremely stable. Their processes are clear and easy to understand and their infrastructure seems to have been designed to allow coaches to actually coach.
Some clubs prioritise media-handling and place extra value on personality, but Southampton arenât one of them: their last two managers have both been components within a larger mechanism. Ronald Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino were training-ground focused and each recruited for their ability to develop players and forge teams. They were able to existâand succeedâwithin a context where progress was encouraged and expected, but not demanded at an unrealistic rate. At St Maryâs, a single loss doesnât lead to job instability and short-term underperformance isnât treated as a crisis.
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Originally posted by @BTripz
I know K-Billy has poo pooed AVB but I like this article abotu Saints and AVB being a good fit.
But, detractors be warned: Southampton and Villas-Boas are an ideological match. Should an agreement be reached, the Portuguese will take control of a thoroughly modern club who, unlike his previous English employers, are emboldened by a departmental clarity which would suit his management. Southampton are not a reactionary club and they do not trade away their ideologies every six months. Unlike Chelsea, who still change course on a whim, and 2013-era Spurs, who were plagued by in-fighting and background politics, the south coast club are extremely stable. Their processes are clear and easy to understand and their infrastructure seems to have been designed to allow coaches to actually coach.
Some clubs prioritise media-handling and place extra value on personality, but Southampton arenât one of them: their last two managers have both been components within a larger mechanism. Ronald Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino were training-ground focused and each recruited for their ability to develop players and forge teams. They were able to existâand succeedâwithin a context where progress was encouraged and expected, but not demanded at an unrealistic rate. At St Maryâs, a single loss doesnât lead to job instability and short-term underperformance isnât treated as a crisis.
Hasnât AVB ruled himself out anyway?
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Interesting what K-Billy said on TSW that FDB and AVB arenât even on our radar. Emery, Howe, Pellegrini and Vitor Pereira are up there plus a left field black box job but we are taking out time. Which is what MLT said on Talksport yesterday morning as well to be honest.
That short list is getting a lot shorter with each day as they sign for other clubs though
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Iâm surprised Pellegrini that donât seem v.saints. The only thing Iâve got against Howe is his name is anagram of Who? and I think that will be reaction of players & potential signings. They will drop an E, and say Who?
Emery & Pereira I never heard of really. I know the first one won the Europa a few times, but I never watch Europa so I donât know if he is Cool.
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Fuck sake boys, upvote him for being a pedant why dontcha 
https://www.clubcall.com/southampton/avb-not-interested-in-saints-job-1812573.html
Well 6 months time it is then? After the next Dutch manager clears off! Ha ha
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Some wanker just won Pointless with Ronald Koeman as the answer.
Letâs hope that describes Evertonâs opening six games.
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Trying to post, bear with me, a long one but software wonât let me post it all properly.
Posting in a few parts.
[Edit again] - donât know why, but every time I try to post, it keeps fucking up my formatting and squeezing it all together into a wall of text. 
[I deleted them]
Trying to post again in smaller segments.
Hey my friends. 
Sorry Iâve not posted for a few weeks. My Dadâs health (long term illness) took a severe downturn, and he was back in hospital. Delighted to say he is now home again, and seemingly doing ok (as well as can be expected) again for now. 
But overall, Iâve just been pretty down, and not really felt like engaging with anyone. Nothing personal, difficult to explain, but I just havenât felt like saying anything to anyone, about anything. Just keeping to my own silence. Itâs wierd, during such a whirlwind of activity around our club at the moment that usually Iâd have been right in the thick of it â but when the potential longevity of someone you love seems in question â nothing else really seems to matter anymore. Even things you usually care deeply about.
Anyway, Iâve been completely off the net for the last few weeks, other than briefly checking BBC Football every few days to look for the expected âKoeman goneâ article, so I have no idea how much of this youâll already know yourselves (probably most I expect), as I have no time to read back through all the threads; but a few days ago I was lucky to run into an old âcontactâ at the club I get on very well with, who used to be my neighbour, but I rarely see anymore.
I bumped into them whilst shopping, and we both had a bit of free time, so stopped for a coffee to catch up on life, and ended up having a very interesting conversation on Saints related topics. Iâm not usually âITKâ on Saints in any way, and I was just sharing this with my nephew in an email, but thought I would stop in to share it here with you too, in case any of it might be new to you.
Obviously Iâm not going to name them, but this person is well connected to hear the talk from âupstairsâ, and whilst they do not often leak info of this nature to me, when they have rarely done so in the past it has always been accurate.
Anyway, what follows is all essentially detail that arose from our recent conversation, with the odd bit of my own side-commentary thrown in.
. . .
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At the end of the season, Koeman _ verbally agreed_ to a new contract with Saints, even down to such details as what players would be leaving [Wanyama (most likely to Spurs), Pelle (most likely to Lazio), Juanmi (to Sociadad, already done) lol, I didnât even know he had gone! 
and Mane (most likely to Man. Utd)] â as well as discussing our transfer targets into the Club. This was all verbally agreed upon, leaving the finer details of Ronâs actual contract itself to be sorted by his agent and settled when he returned from [his first] holiday.
Whilst he was away however, Everton approached Ronaldâs [now former] Agent, Guido Albers, to sound him out on Ronaldâs interest in taking up the Everton Job. His agent, taking Ronald at his word - âI like to honour my contract, I like to shtay at Saintsâ - [bear in mind that the agent had been involved in negotiating Ronaldâs new Saints contract, and therefore believed that he wished to stay] flatly turned down the Everton approach on behalf of Ronald, and instead put forward the name of another of his clients, Frank De Boer, who was indeed interested in the Everton job. [Two agent pay-days for the price of one!] 
Everton, having already been turned down by their first choice, Unai Emery from Sevilla [who is off to PSG] were determined to get their second choice [Ronald Koeman] â and so used Dutch agent Rob Jansen to approach Ronald with an âoffer he could not refuseâ â i.e. ÂŁ6-7 mill a year, and ÂŁ100m transfer kitty to splash. Ronald was furious that his own agent [Albers] had refused the offer without even speaking to him first, and sacked him, taking on Rob Jansen in his place. And here is where things get interesting.
Koeman was not entirely dishonest â as he wasnât really that interested in the Everton job. Who would be, when youâve just got your team into European football for the second year running, already enjoy substantial backing from your board, the adoration of your loyal fan-base â and Everton are nowhere? But what Koeman wanted to do, was to use this interest and concrete offer as a bargaining tool when he returned from his holiday, to say to the Saints Board âthis is the kind of âambitionâ I am talking aboutâ. He wanted to âuseâ the Everton interest to get himself more spending money with Saints â but he grossly overestimated his own âvalueâ to the Saints Board.
. . .
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For quite a while now â Saints have not been entirely happy with Koeman. Many of the agreements he had previously made when he first signed, he had not been honouring. The style of football, formation, and most importantly â the much vaunted âpathwayâ to the First Team from our famed Academy â which under Ronald has been said inside the Club to have become âblockedâ. His attitude toward our young players, never bothering to involve himself with the Academy or even watch their games [he sees himself very much as a âFirst Team Manager onlyâ whereas we want our manager to take a keen interest in helping develop our burgeoning talent], often discouraging them, blankly stating that most of them are simply not good enough, and at one point launching into a very nasty tirade of abuse to young Matty Targett, that is said to have stunned those who were there in its cutting spitefulness and completely unnecessary severity. The âesteemedâ Ronald Koeman callously tore a sensitive young lad to shreds in front of all his mates, and has since been widely regarded as a complete cunt.
Ronald Koeman, despite his very well presented and controlled public image in the media, is not particularly well liked by many at the Club, to make a sweeping understatement. His aloofness and arrogance on the training ground, his unapproachability, and tendency to snap at players and speak to them in a disrespectful tone has not gone down well. Mane, JWP, Harry Reed, and Tadic in particular have an immense dislike of Ronald Koeman, and others only tolerate his tactless approach as theyâre regularly in the Team, were enjoying an element of success under him, and donât want to rock the boat. But you get the general idea.
We are also greatly peturbed at some of Ronaldâs training methods, i.e the lack and short duration of them, the low intensity, and lack of commitment to training in general. He gives the players a lot of time off, and is prone to âdisappearing on golfing breaksâ (youâd love him Phil! ) when we feel that he should be spending his time coaching our players!
. . .
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The Board have been questioning a lot about his management style and not honouring his commitments to playing âThe Southampton Wayâ and his stifling of the pathway for our young players for a while now â but whilst he has been enjoying success and has the firm backing of the fans, they have been loathe to take any firm course of action. Ronald got very lucky during our disasterous run of form over the Christmas period, where we lost seven out of nine games, and we were persisting in that horrendous hoofball style of football, lumping long balls up to a woefully out of form [yet constantly picked anyway] Pelle, and privately among the Board, questions were being asked by some, of whether to get rid of Koeman then. But as I say, he got lucky: Pelle got injured, and Ronald was forced to play the excellent Shane Long [who he previously never game a proper chance to show his qualities], and change back to a style of play more suited to our philosophy. Shlong pretty much saved Koemanâs job at that time.
So thatâs the background. Ron thought his âgravitasâ in the game deserved a certain respect, and coupled with the success he has brought us â he badly misjudged his importance to our Board. He thought he could use the Everton interest, believing his value and position at the Club to be unassailable â to effectively blackmail the Board into agreeing completely to his own terms to sign a new deal. It wasnât so much about the personal money on offer, but more with getting more to spend on new players than was on offer â and forcing Sadio Mane to stay again against his will. Sadio hates Koeman [the phrase used (by Sadio) was âfucking arrogant asshatâ], and the irony is, we now have a higher likelihood of keeping him [Mane], without Koeman around. Not to say that will definitely happen, just that it might.
. . .
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Koeman gave us an ultimatum, that we could either make him an offer much closer to what Everton were offering â or he would simply not sign the new deal, and see out the last year of his contract as promised. This effectively massively backfired on him, as our Board were really not that fussed. We have other excellent candidates on our shortlist who we feel would stick much more closely to our Club philosophies, and therefore be a better fit with the Club â and as stated â many players whoâd be happy to see the back of him.
So the Saints Board effectively called his bluff, and said sorry Ron â either you sign the deal youâve already verbally agreed to â or you can take the Everton job and weâll get in someone who will do things the way we want, according to our Club philosophy. What we wonât have, is a âlame duckâ manager seeing out the last year of his contract, when what we want, is for someone committed to our new Five-Year Plan and hungry to build on what weâve already achieved. Ronald simply wasnât showing the kind of commitment we were looking for, so we gave him the choice to either do so, or fuck off to Everton. Lol.
We gave him two weeks to decide what to do; sign the new contract, or go fuck himself. Ron stormed off in a huff on holiday number two after this, and we shall await the final outcome. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that he yet may end up staying, so donât burn any effigies just yet â although to be honest â I suspect that bridge has now been burnt sufficiently from both ends to be unlikely in the extreme. Though, stranger things have happened â like Ronald Koeman being interested in a club like Everton for example, lol.
And this is why the whole sorry saga has been playing out now for so long. Ronald doesnât really want the Everton job â but his own duplicitous conduct has ended up forcing him down a path he was entirely not expecting! He badly misjudged the situation and his own worth to the Club â and thought that we would bend to his will, to keep such an esteemed figure at the Club at all costs. And now â if he doesnât take the Everton job â he looks like a complete cunt, as he [almost certainly] wonât be staying at Saints. Well, he looks like a complete cunt either way now, whatever he does, lol.
Heâs completely blown the reputation he carefully established for integrity, decency, and being a man of honour and respect.
. . .
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Another thing, is that we will not budge on the finer details of his compensation package with Everton. Some of which (including guarantees that they will not make offers for any Southampton players once Koeman arrives) are proving to be a real sticking point, as is the contract on offer to his brother Erwin, and the fact that both Erwin and particularly Jan Kluitenberg (our fitness coach) are pissed off at Ronald, as they both love being at Saints, and didnât want to leave. Erwin, ultimately, will be loyal to Ron â but Jan (and his family) really love living in the area, have settled really well here and donât particularly want to leave. (He may yet even end up staying). If Everton do not agree to absolutely everything that Saints want â we are quite happy to deny Everton permission to take our under contract manager, and essentially âhang him out to dryâ for a year whilst his contract runs down, and weâll get on and appoint someone who does want to commit to us fully.
Moving on to that now â and some details of our shortlist:
Most of the names in the press are not our preferred targets. Donât worry at some of the horriffic options that have been bandied around. The likes of Moyes and McClaren are nowhere near consideration. Iâve heard Pellegrini linked in the media, and he is on our list, but only as an albeit very decent back up option if we donât get one of our preferred candidates. Eddie Howe Iâve also seen linked, he is on our long-term watch list of potential managers that is constantly updated, and Les Reed in particular is a big fan â but overall we donât feel that he yet has the required level of experience or âgravitasâ to impress our Europe-bound Squad or the names weâre looking to bring into the Club. Frank De Boer has also been linked everywhere, and is on our list â but some way down the pecking order, as we prefer someone with experience and evidence of implementing their philosophy across a range of Clubs to show consistency in application, whereas Frank has so far only managed at Ajax.
My friend [indicated to the existence of, but] will not reveal the names - of two of our most favoured options at the top of the list, as they do not want to risk alerting other Clubs to the possibility of their availabilty, but other than those, I can say that Murat Yakin [currently out of contract after parting ways with Spartak Moscow] Vitor Pereira [of Fenerbahçe], Paco JĂŠmez [of Rayo Vallecano] are all managers who are thought of very highly by the Club, sharing in our philosophy and playing the brand of football we like, and have long been on our watch-list. So if we donât get one of our two unrevealed names, those three are high on our appreciated list. So too very much is Thomas Tuchel, but the fact heâs only just recently replaced Jurgen Klopp at Dortmund crosses him off of our potential targets for now, [heâs unlikely to be interested ].
. . .
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And that is about all I have for now. But suffice to say, that if Koeman does eventually end up at Everton â it is only because we have succeeded in getting everything that we want from Everton in order to release him from his contract. Otherwise, enjoy a year of downtime Ron â and just think of all the holidays and golfing opportunities youâll be able to partake of!
Hopefully it wasnât all stuff youâve already heard, sorry if that is the case, but with a lot of personal stuff going on, Iâm completely out of touch with all things Sotonians and Saints related. If I hadnât met my old neighbour the other day, I wouldnât have a clue what was going on myself.
Hopefully Iâll be back around again more soon. Just donât really have the âmental energyâ to be bothered to read or type words at the moment. If my nephew hadnât text to asked me if Iâd âheard anything about whatâs going on with Koemanâ, and my phone battery wasnât too fucked to have a conversation â I wouldnât have had to type it all up, but seeing as I have, might as well pass it on here as well.
Iâm sure the better my Dad gets, the more time Iâll have, and the brighter my spirits will become, and Iâll feel more like posting again soon.
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