Thanks Claude. You did the club proud yesterday. Stick with it. Seems the players are getting your message and it's coming together. Ignore the ****wits who expect instant success. Keep doing what you're doing and we'll be back there again, winning, soon. Up the Saints.
Agree with the first part Fats, but I am not sure people are expecting instant success. Fwiw, I think he is a great technical coach, in a similar way to MoPo, and as we have recently seen has lacked the squad he needed and had a bad run of injuries. There have however been a large number of games where he has perhaps got it slightly wrong, and that is fine as he is learning a new club, league etc. But I genuinely can't think of people wanting instant success. Maybe I missed it. On reflection from the game, I'm disappointed but also hugely excited! Anyhow, what it does mean is now we are likely to be only changing two or three for games, which helps, and no one can take that performance away from anyone connected to Southampton. I couldn't get a ticket so settled for the sofa with my two boys, the eldest shed a tear at the end and I nearly poked my fingers through h screen berating the officiating, bet you had a great day out, as dis all who went... Will try to get tickets to a home game soon and meet you all at the Farmhouse. Enjoy the Monday, folks...
"Instant success" should be seen as a expression then rather than a literal meaning. *lacking patience *moanng after 1 game, 3 games, etc Any number of others. I think you get my gist. It's his first season and a lot of fans have been moaning about him from month 1, month 2, month 3 and so on..... I don't know what they expect or why they expect it. Yes some games have been poor or not very exciting, but that happens and happens to everyone. Sounded to me Luke Jose fans expected/wanted it to be right straight away = instant success. But semantics. The point I am making is that he's doing a good job and he should ignore those who have been moaning about him. I think you get that though.
I very much doubt he trawls messageboards looking for criticism or advice. Perhaps someone can let us know the official date when fans are allowed to comment on the manager?
Got to bang my drum (had trouble finding it as my drum cupboard is very full)....Puel puts teams out to control games and create chances. He has done that all season (despite giving most of the squad game time), but didn't get the deserved results because he can't put the ball in the net himself. Not a new phenomenon as Saints in past seasons would have won 5-0 if we were better at converting chances. We knew from the beginning we were short of a quality striker....well we have one now if we can keep him fit. Puel has also been unlucky with injuries. I think the fans have been used to us being exciting under Poch and the LD....Puel has a different style. It was the different style combined with poor results that turned fans against him....didn't help that he isn't a man for rallying calls during interviews. Give him a chance (and a striker) and judge him properly after another full season. I think we have a gem.
Manolo has been a god-send to Puel. We now have a threat up front and intelligent movement. Perhaps this is the formation and style that Claude wanted to play all along and his chopping & changing has been partly frustration at lack of options up top? I hope he continues to play the team this way as both Redmond, JWP, Cedric & Bertrand seem to have improved a lot. I will be disappointed if he started tinkering again.
Tbf, if he has us set up like that from here on in, then I can't see how anyone can complain. An extra attacking body in a 4-2-3-1 formation (which who knows, could become a 4-4-2 when Austin is back). Playing balls wide, cutting in from the by-line. Rather than aerial crosses into a half empty penalty box with no height in there. People running into space. People overlapping. Movement. Romeu and A N Other holding ship in front of the defence. Forget the result, there was so much to like in that performance. If Puel by and large sticks with the blueprint from now on - and in an ideal world, with Virgil staying, and a couple of top additions, in the summer - then there's every chance of us having real success under him.
I was going to write something but this is pretty much the crux of it. Bang on. Yesterday was a really nice display of football and if we tighten up at the back, find a partner for Romeu and carry on as we did yesterday, we'll be flying.
Thanks Fats. Perfectly put. Hopefully now we have our goal scorer and as long as we don't lose key players in the summer, we should be set up for a fantastic season. At the moment I'm not sure I see Charlie getting in the starting 11! As for Pogba - well ..... my mate said he doesn't think he's as good as Morgan at his best, and I agree. I was overly disappointed and my MU supporting fan in South Africa is now upset with me because I've said that I don't see Manure winning anything without spending big and if they lose the big guy upfront they're screwed!!
Dm, cb, gk and another striker with no player sales (apart from Jay and maybe Clasie)..... would be amazing.
I would love to see Claude here long term and see where that takes us. He has had the most difficult fixture schedule to contend with of recent Managers and has been unlucky with injuries, but now he can go forward with a settled team, without the necessity to tinker too much. Some of our football yesterday was breathtaking and Cedric and Bertie were key players with their overlapping runs. the crossing was quality and you could tell that the team benefitted greatly from two weeks preparation for the final. What we need now is stability and continuity, my only misgiving is the form of Fraser (I hope that he gets a break now), but i'm sure that he will come back, we certainly don't need ANOTHER season of transition next year.
Maybe something like Begovic, Kone, Arter and Sigurdsson. Not too much to ask, is it?... (Or is Arter not quite defensive enough? Top 10 PL player this season for both tackles and passes. But yeah, he's not exactly Kante or Gueye. Everton have signed the guy I'd have originally wanted...)
