I sort of agree with what you're saying but think you might be taking it a bit far, surely they deserve some praise for the set up they put in place? Though I agree you can't attribute the league title to them. Would you class our owners/board as lucky? Or would you say they put a solid plan in place, stuck to it and been very shrewd overall?
Luck always comes into football, you can have what looks like a sound plan on paper that makes perfect sense, but a few bad buys, one poor managerial appointment and you can be staring at the abyss. If things go well of course owners / CEO's will take some of the credit for their appointments and / or their strategy.
Well yeah I can't disagree with that, but you make your own luck at the end of the day. Our owners have taken us from -10 in League 1 to 4 consecutive top 8 finishes in the top flight for the first time in our history, qualifying for Europe twice and reaching a cup final. Surely that's down to more than just 'luck'. If you support a smaller club then would you rather have an Ellis Short in charge or our owners? Or have Sunderland been desperately unlucky while we've been very lucky?
Spot on. Success is never down to one person. Our title win wasn't just down to the owners, nor was it just down to Ranieri and despite what Algeria thinks, nor was it solely down to Mahrez (or Kante for that matter). The owners can't have foreseen what we'd do as I don't think anyone seriously did but I seriously think they're right up there with the best owners for the structure they've put in place, what they've done for the city, the club and the fans. They've not made a bad decision in years. The only bad decision I believe they have ever made was removing Pearson first time round when they first bought us and had a bit of a bad time with Sousa and Sven before rectifying it
Short was held up as being a great owner for years, and then he seemed to either lose interest or got sick of chucking his hard earned at it, and the inevitable eventually followed. If Leicester hadn't shot the previous years league winning manager they could well have gone down last season. Is that great leadership by the owners in appointing him in the first place? Or great leadership by shooting him before it was too late? Both maybe, but it shows just how fine the margins are in the game.
Remember our ode to Rupert, TLL?... "Swing Lowe, swing Rupert Lowe, swing him from the Itchen bridge" Sounded great with 30,000 people singing it...
Agreed, just think there's a lot more to it than luck, and you in fact make your own luck. I know I wouldn't swap our owners for any in the league at present. (though they're selling up soon)
Yeah I heard it somewhere last season can't remember where now. I also remember sit down protests stopping traffic on the bridge and on Brittania road
What it goes to show is that good chairmen/owners have to make tough and unpopular decisions for the benefit of the club. Whatever happened behind the scenes at our club it was hardly the owners fault but they got the backlash along with the players for the decision whereas as businessmen with their organisation at risk what else could they have done. That is good leadership
On the contrary Tobes - we have not sold any player that we wanted to keep (absent a release clause) under their tenure ... they are the first oners we have had in my entire lifetime that have taken such an approach / stance .. for me their attitude (and committment to the club) is very much key to all that has been acheived ... no problem with you seeing it differently mind ...
Only because you won the league, that's going to change soon enough. Likely this Summer with Mahrez in fact. Or you gonna do the Spurs fan thing and when he leaves pretend you didn't want to keep him?
If Mahrez goes it'll be for a massive sum. Can't begrudge a player like him wanting Champions League football but FF's point is that we're not looking to flog Mahrez. We're not cashing in on success, we're looking to build on it.
No Fosse is saying that under these owners you haven't sold anyone you want to keep bar Kante who had a release clause. I'm saying that's simply because you won the league, had you fallen away you would have lost Mahrez and Vardy that Summer. And I'm guaranteeing that it will change soon.
It depends on next season. For Southampton it's different because you've been nearly men. Had your teams gone on to breach the top 6/top 4 then you'd have kept them too. If we go onto being top 8 regulars then of course our players will be pinched because we can't offer trophies or European football. But if we sell players it'll be because they want to win things rather than us pushing them out of the door to get the money. I don't think that's the same with Southampton. You've been paid ridiculous amounts for your players and I think you've been happy to sell them because you trust your academy and scouts. I'm not disrespecting Southampton btw. You're happy to continue rebuilding your side to get success whereas we've built success on continuity and team spirit. I think both of our clubs have been excellent in this time of "spend spend spend". We've shown that good scouting and team building is key.
I'd love to keep him ... am a huge fan ... but also realistic. The owners have, however, placed a price on him - if that's not met then I hope they stick to their guns - I suspect they will as we don't need the money We are also quite lucky that, in Demarai Gray, we have a talent of real potential that would be an excellent replacement for the Mahrez role ...
Agree and disagree, no doubt the model is buy low, develop and sell high and there's clearly a few cases where we've been happy to sell. But I don't think we wanted to sell Lallana or Mane for example. If we make Virgil stay another year it will be a big message too. Probably as most the time the true answer is somewhere in the middle And on Gray, if he has a storming season (likely imo, really rate him) and you finish say 8th, you think he won't be off next year?
