Lyanco
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But take heart people
This is as good a place as any for this comment.
So essentially they acknowledged that without Lavia we couldn’t attack with the ball. So became entirely reliant on the press winning the ball in the final third. Basically why we are so shit against the lesser teams.
The club, and the three managers, have also commented on how an 18/19 year old cannot physically play 38 Premier League games, and that he needed to be carefully managed.
So in my opinion this highlights the ridiculous and frankly negligent transfer policy by not signing any viable alternative to him. Hence a big reason why our form went to shit after we beat Chelsea back in August. A run that contributed to Ralph losing his job.
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No. We were just shit.
FML 
.
How can a bunch of tossers like us see it for over a year but people inside the club couldn’t?
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The @sotonians Brains Trust 
I wonder if the drive towards stats is becoming too prevalent
Yes metrics have a place but there is a whole load of intangibles, like is this bloke a divisive twat etc
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Stats hide soft skills. Soft skills include the fundamentals
Communication
Management
Delegation
Motivation
Team Building
All the NJ Stats ignored his complete lack of soft skills
They must be addressed TOGETHER
Anyone got a Telegraph subscription too?
UK NEWS WEBSITE OF THE YEAR
The ‘insane’ decisions that led Southampton to Premier League relegation
It is the third time Southampton have been relegated from the top-flight and they face an uphill task to make a quick return
ByJeremy Wilson, CHIEF SPORTS REPORTER, ST MARY’S STADIUM13 May 2023 • 6:57pm
Southampton’s 11-year stay in the Premier League ended at St Mary’s on Saturday in front of their most famous fan, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Second-half goals by Fulham’s Carlos Vinicious and Aleksandar Mitrovic officially confirmed the inevitable outcome to a feeble season which has seen Southampton lose seven of their last eight games to get relegated to the Championship with two matches still to play.
Ruben Selles, Southampton’s third manager since November, will almost certainly depart at the end of the season and said that he “took all the responsibility” for the dreadful results since his appointment in February.
Captain James Ward-Prowse, who made his debut aged 16 in 2011 in the season that the club were promoted, said: “The standards have slipped away and that is why we are where we are. It will be testing for everybody but these are the times that make you as a player and as a club.”
“If it ain’t broke, consider breaking it.”
It is a favourite Rasmus Ankersen maxim in his talks to business leaders and, while it might seem like clever theory in the context of Netflix or Nokia, the past year has suggested that the brutal reality of Premier League football might require rather more nuance.
was Southampton in need of ‘breaking” 16 months ago when Ankersen, the chief executive and co-founder of new owners Sport Republic, walked through the door?
It was certainly already fragile, but that surely had most to do with owners over the preceding five years with such financial limitations rather than major weaknesses in the club’s key personnel and structures.
And yet that foundation has been largely dismantled and, even after Sport Republic delivered on fresh investment to the tune of £180 million, Southampton find themselves condemned to the Championship in the very season when things really should have got easier.
Not that Ankersen was at St Mary’s alongside Prime Minister (and Southampton fan) Rishi Sunak to see Fulham administer the last rites in front of thousands of empty seats and an atmosphere of dejected apathy rather than anger.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (centre) made a rare visit to Southampton CREDIT: PA/Adam Davy
Ankersen’s regular absence from matches, and indeed the training ground over recent months, has already been raising internal eyebrows.
Southampton had needed to win to retain any flicker of hope - something they have not managed for more than two months - and second-half goals by Carlos Vinicius and Aleksandar Mitrovic duly made relegation official and consolidated Fulham’s place among the upwardly mobile top-10 clubs that Saints once were.
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Ankersen and chairman Henrik Kraft are expected to front up to media once the season ends and, with the billionaire backing of majority owner Dragon Solak and a selling spree from the likes of James Ward-Prowse, Romeo Lavia, Armel Bella-Kotchap and Kyle Walker-Peters that should raise more than £100 million, will have the resources to bounce back.
Whether they will spend that money efficiently is more debatable and there was what felt like a pointed remark from the latest manager, Ruben Selles, in the post-match press conference. “Change is not always the best if you want to build a high-performance environment,” he said.
Jason Wilcox will arrive shortly as the new director of football following the announcement that Matt Crocker is leaving his director of football operations role.
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Matt Hale will also leave as academy director. Assistant academy director Edd Vahid departed last August. Head of senior recruitment Joe Shields left in January. Head of youth recruitment Dan Rice will also leave at the end of the season. Toby Steele, the managing director, will depart later this year. David Thomas, the commercial director left in February and the strong expectation is that chief executive Martin Semmens and Selles will all also be moving on.
Scouts and data analysts increasingly now have contracts directly with Sport Republic, who also own the Turkish club Goztepe SK, rather than Southampton.
There were already doubts about manager Ralph Hasenhuttl from before last summer but, with the mid-season window of a World Cup, the decision was taken to first change the surrounding coaching staff. Hasenhuttl’s strengths were always in his tactical preparation and work on the training ground rather than man-management and the arrival of the personable Selles as ‘first-team lead coach’ went down well with the players. The problem was that the transfer strategy - with Hasenhuttl’s influence - was so flawed. “Insane” is one insider’s blunt description of the policy. Southampton have a long tradition of developing young players but, at their best, it was always nurtured with experienced and highly valued leaders. That critical balance became lopsided in preference for youthful quality and its major potential sell on value.
Two specific mistakes were critical. First, the decision to grant Oriel Romeu - still only 30 and the glue that so often held the team together - his desired transfer to Girona without first signing a comparable replacement. Another dressing-room leader, Jan Bednarek, was shipped off to Aston Villa after falling out of favour with Hasenhuttl but without adding a replacement like Ben Mee or Conor Coady. It left Southampton starting the season with a team that, in the words of one member of staff, was “basically Prowsey (James Ward-Prowse), Theo and a bunch of children”.
James Ward-Prowse is likely to leave Southampton in the summer CREDIT: Reuters/John Sibley
It was a formula actually capable of occasionally threatening the best - Southampton beat Chelsea twice, as well as Manchester City in the League Cup, and drew with Arsenal and Manchester United - but badly ill-equipped for more physical matches against teams around them. Crucially, Southampton also failed to sign a proven striker after the departures in recent years of Danny Ings and Armando Broja. Goncalo Ramos and Cody Gakpo were two targets they could not ultimately get over the line. The season duly began poorly and, while Southampton were only a point off safety in 18th when Hasenhuttl was finally sacked, he did appear bereft and out of ideas following the 4-1 defeat to Newcastle United.
Luton Town’s Nathan Jones had already been lined up by this point in preference to Ivan Juric at Torino and the former Schalke coach Frank Kramer.
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Out of work and clearly proven Premier League managers like Sean Dyche and Roy Hodgson were not seriously considered. “That would have been seen as too obvious,” said one club insider.
In opting for a manager with no Premier League experience, and a solitary promotion as League Two runners up with Luton Town, much was made of a data set that rated Jones in the top five European managers last season for his team’s performance relative to their wage spend. Jones even referenced it in a press conference. The problem was that it was already obvious that the relevance of that one-season metric was being comprehensively out-weighed by intangibles like an ability to connect with Premier League players, and their inevitably wide range of backgrounds, and deal with the hugely heightened scrutiny.
There can be little doubt that Southampton stand comprehensively broken and divided
Significant internal differences became evident. Staff sensed that Jones thought that life was too comfortable at Southampton. They in turn were largely unimpressed by his methods and some regarded him sleeping on the sofa inside his office as a meaningless gimmick. The sixth shortest reign in Premier League history would duly end after just 95 days and, crucially, only three points in what were eight largely inviting fixtures.
There had been further strange decisions in the January transfer market when a good signing like Carlos Alcaraz was backed up by players like James Bree and Paul Onuachu, who were apparently bought for a manager whose days already looked numbered. Bree, Obuachu and Mislav Orsic - combined fee £27 million - have since started five Premier League games. Orsic and Onuachu, attacking players recruited to rescue the season, do not have a single goal between them.
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There was a brief attempt to bring in Jesse Marsch but, when that faltered over Southampton’s desire only for a contract until the end of the season, they simply gambled on the remote hope that Selles would reveal himself to be an utter genius. He does appear to have a good coaching career in front of him but the simple fact is that he was appointed when Southampton were already careering towards relegation.
And so back to Ankersen’s original quote: “If it ain’t broke, consider breaking it.” For the long-term good or bad, there can be little doubt that Southampton stand comprehensively broken and divided. The relevant question is whether Ankersen and Kraft have the real-world judgment to oversee an effective rebuild.
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Sleeping on the sofa???
Fucking hell what a fucking melt that Welsh twat was
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Perhaps his wife wouldn’t unlock the front door at home.
… I’ll resist the obvious joke about smashing in the back doors…
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His support wasn’t enough??
The support of the father, son and the Holy Ghost wouldn’t have got us out of this mess
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Surely if it was extra support we needed, he should have brought Liz Truss.
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Must read, brilliant analysis, with which I totally agree. This is what you get when a guru owner thinks he knows best.
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He’s nailed it.
Unless things change it’ll also be a massive struggle next season.
I don’t see an automatic bounce back, more a reverse Wrexham ( ooh err missus)
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Absolutely and comprehensively nailed the pile of shit we have become. Thanks for posting.
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