The Southampton Way is the Problem not the Players/Coach - Discuss

Southampton Football Club
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It will not please all fans. Those who wanted us to stop selling, consolidate and challenge. After all we had UCL quality players in our team back when we came up…

So a lot of fans are pissed off today (paging @barry-sanchez )

The interesting point is that Ralph admits trying to change that approach was the mistake. (At this point the masses respond with NO it was Managerial Appointments that were the mistake).

In reality no matter who came in as manager we had the Fonte & VVD sulking undermining the unity of the group AND bad managerial appointments so a double whammy.

In hindsight, what I believe we need to do is to be a lot BIGGER than we are. In that respect it is right to try and expand the fan base, get the Yanks and Chinese on board increasing our commercial revenues, lucrative tours etc AND (eventually) when we have that traction, supersize St Marys). It embarrasses the hell out of us when 10 Saints Fans go down the pub here for a crucial game and around 500 Scousers turn up to see Stevie G (They PAID for that, we only got 30 when MLT came for FREE!)

So I understand growing the business.

So returning to the Southampton way? Buying more Mane’s and having them for 2 years makes footballing sense - it gives a motivated team players trying for the dream move. That model means they would be more likely to come to us than say Bompey or Huddersfield or a Villa, Fulham OR Everton WHU.

The MODEL got us into the top 10, but we moaned, we wanted more.

Well our dream must be Cup Runs and Europa League Football. Maybe UCL via that THAT route. We will not break that top 6 UNLESS one of them screws up. But that is fine, give me a Milan away day every year and a Semi On…

So.

Puel and MoPe were bad fits, in fairness MP & Koeman were good fits. Sparky looks a good fit. 60% success rate - they get another season.

Sparky in charge of the 1st team - Ralph acknowledged his experience - that means he will make his own decisions on tactics shape and style and thank God for that.

Les is no longer the ONLY football man in the management team with experience. That is a positive as well.

I am in the well done Ralph Camp. You admitted you farked it up. You know we want to watch players playing for the shirt and we want to enjoy our football. Home comes first. All transfer income re-invested in the playing side - good.

Now get rid of Forster Ffs.

I migth enjoy this close season. We know we will kick out anyone who doesn’t want to bleed for the club.

So long Soufiane

THE SOUTHAMPTON WAY IS BACK!

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Lots of debate about this point

“Les Reed and Ross Wilson [the recruitment chief] are excellent leaders in our football department,” he said. “We have to see the bigger picture – we don’t need a wholesale change here. We need to take a few percentage points, fix those and we can surge back up. That’s our reality"

That CAN be read two ways.

The bigger picture is where the board look at how parts of the “machine” impact on each other OR it can be just need to adjust the search parameters on the black box.

I still believe it means they are having a long think about Les.

The really interesting comment from Adam’s interview - we have 41 scouts across Europe is amazing. We can do a lot by simply telling them the kind of player Sparky wants rather than the kind Les wants…

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Absolutely…the ones who get annoyed at this buy & sell policy are totally deluded. The whole modern game revolves around buying and selling…trading for success. It irks of course when players sign long lucrative contracts and then show little committment to the cause but then they are simply kids being manipulated by sharks.

Ambition is to be the best of the rest, play attractive football and make ourselves a fuckin nuisance to the top six in everything we do.

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Absolutely @lifeintheslowlane it’s all very well stating that we want to keep talent but we don’t have either the money or the status to be able to do that.

If we manage to keep qualifying for the Euroa league for, say, 3 seasons then I’m sure we could get a “better” quality of player to stay.

Trying to keep talent hat wants to move has proved NOT to work so why bother?

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Dont judge me officer i am so so self critical.

I am so self critical that I am responsible but no one is to blame.

I am so self critical we are going to do what everybody advises against us doing as a football club.

I am so self critical we are going to change what we mean by the Southampton Way. Some people thought that was to get kids from the academy and play them in the first team. That kind of thing only works when you get lucky. No we are going to do something that is unique to Southampton Saints .

I am so self critical and everybody is going to roll up their sleeves inluding all our new brand manager leaders and … wait for it WE ARE GOING TO GO BACK TO A SURE FIRE WAY TO BUILD SUCCESS AND SELL ALL OUR BEST PLAYERS. As soon as they are any good then its pack your bags and go. Seeing Sadio in the Champions league final is going to be such a feel good moment and the credit goes to all of us inot just me and Les but the fans aswell.

Oh and by the way while we are talking about the fans , they are just great. They are like my children. Dont worry about that, we havent forgotten about them we are even going to talk to them more. Its going to be great. Its going to be a great jouney into sustainable mediocraty. Mr Geo and all the board love the plan.

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Don’t get me wrong, I agree with this and ultimately our struggles of the last two years are in my opinion a culmination of factors… however, we hadn’t deviated from the ‘successful’ model by the time things were starting to go pear shaped.

The model relies upon buying equally effective replacements. For one reason or another that is not always going to be possible. Football and people are not an exact science.

Let’s not pretend that Boufal wasn’t signed on the same basis as Mane, ie “Give us two years and then we will let you go to a ‘big’ club”. I recall when we bought him, it took months of discussions because he was essentially waiting for Barcelona etc to come in for him and when they didn’t he settled for us. Our old mate Jack Schitt posted about this you may recall.

The problem with this model is when the replacements, for whatever reason, do not cut the mustard or don’t replace the qualities, goals and assists of the departing player. This is exactly what has happened. Mane averaged about 15 goals a season plus a number of assists. The players bought in to replace him (Redmond and Boufal) managed 3 goals between them last season. As I say, it isn’t an exact science but it is too simple for Ralph to say that we deviated from our model, and that was a cause of the problem. He would only be correct if behind the scenes we had refused Boufal and Redmond moves and that has contributed to their poor form. Clearly this hasn’t happened.

We only deviated from the model in the case of VVD. But we need to remember that problems were set in before that whole shit show kicked off. Fonte and Pelle werent adequately replaced by ‘the model’, the football was already shite and deviating from high energy pressing of the Pochettino era and the pragmatic counter attacking under Koeman, we couldn’t score for toffee (5 consecutive home games without a goal) and then there were the managerial appointments.

As you say though, clearing the deadwood and having a team who want to be there and fight for the shirt, will be a welcome change.

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This is causing comments…

But in my mind this is totally logical.

Our best core academy players actually developed with us in the Championship & league 1 in recent years.

None of the following crop apart from Stephens & JWP have come close to the levels of Bale Theo Ox Lallana even DEL & Fonte…

Chelsea farm out thousands of players to Belgium :sunglasses: so in a long term picture this makes incredible sense.

In an old Lowe ers plan this was called a technology transfer. Where all the systems and processes sports science and coaches are trained at Staplewood delivered overseas and then overseen by the football department.

Everything then funnels both ways our kids play in those leagues their best come to us ready made.

So this is not new the template was in an Office before admin. Having the money to do this is the way ahead.

Normal fans will rant and say we should buy better players with the money but as we have seen spending 150 million did not work for Everton and our last 2 record signings?

Until we get 60,000 A week (yeah right) it is a sensible plan.

Down side is it will mean Les still has a job equally means Sparky will have shackles on him style wise…

Has he signed yet?

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Well, well well.
Where have we (nearly) seen this story before?

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You cannot have success buying cheap and selling your best players - you just can’t. It has been foretold…many many times.

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90

Sh’up Barry! Oops sorry @CB-Saint, my mistake didn’t notice it was you.

:lou_wink:

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