For a team that played their best football as a counter attacking side, Puel seems like a weird appointment. Interestingly enough I said before the transfer window I would use Leicester as a barometer to how well our transfer strategy is working. Club with similiar resources who had a very good season with big clubs coming after their best players, but took a different approach in giving out 100k+ contracts to keep them. Wasnt expecting us to keep Virgil or them to take Puel though. Looking forward to seeing what puel can do with them.
The worry for us is more conceding goals (two clean sheets all season). I think the best defensive display from a side at the KP came from you lot last season. We rarely fail to score in the league at home *unless it's against one of the big, big teams* yet you came and did a number on us. I remember being particularly impressed with Soares and Romeu. Just had a re-read through the BBC match report from that day, apparently you'd gone 6 games without conceding. For us that's pretty unimaginable at the minute Overall I'm on the fence with this apparent appointment. I think we'll do okay, I don't think we'll really look like going down with him but I also don't think we'll do much to really push for the 7th/8th spots. How was your League Cup run? It's a competition I adore having grown up watching us treat it with the respect it deserved for a good few years under Martin O'Neill. (3 finals in 4 years). Did you stumble your way to the final with favourable drawers and your reserves or was he genuinely out to win it? I get the feeling that the consensus from Saints fans is that Puel didn't really do brilliantly well (without really doing all that bad) at Southampton, but that we shouldn't really judge him yet. Is that fair?
Our owners have been very generous in rewarding the players that won the league. Cars, watches, houses, massive wage increases etc. It's split the fan base somewhat. I think they went overboard and the players lost a bit of their determination or motivation. We've relied too much on keeping the players we had rather than continually developing. Since Walsh left the transfer policy has altered significantly.
We got the LC Final after playing mainly PL clubs....so certainly didn't stagger there. Remember we beat Liverpool twice to get to the final. I will be very interested to see how he does with a different team. We have got used to exciting play under Adkins, Poch and Koeman....so we are spoilt. Puel set us up to score...we had a lot of chances....just couldn't put them away.
We got to the final without conceding a goal. And we were rather unlucky in the final, thank you Stuart Burt.
Puel's hard to judge and there have been many arguments on the subject. We have always been good defensively. Both under Koeman and Poch and Puel continued this to a degree. He conceded more but for half of the season he was left with what started as our 3rd and 5th choice centre backs. In dealing with that he struggled to find the balance between offence and defence and alternated between high scoring matches and 0 -0 's. And a lot of our lost points came from having a keeper who had a 50% save ratio for much of the season. I think the squad didn't really suit him, we were styled to play down the wings and puel wanted to play through the middle but we did create chances but just couldn't put them away, same as this year. One thing that can be said it that Puel is an awful counter attacker and we failed to beat a single top 6 team in the league. I don't see him improving much at that. In terms of the cup, as others have said we beat only PL teams including arsenal and liverpool without conceding a goal despite having Europa to deal with.
As I recall: We had a bye in the last 64, due to being in Europe. Then we beat Palace at home 2-0 in the last 32, with both sides slightly weakened. Then we beat Sunderland at home 1-0 in the last 16, in one of the worst football matches you will ever see, and with a very weakened side. Then we beat Arsenal's third string side away 2-0. It was only really come the SFs, vs Liverpool, that we had a proper test. And one that we dug deep to come through. Yes they were without Mane due to the ACON, but not many sides will stop Liverpool scoring over 180 minutes.
Anyone seen Hartsons comment ref Sean Dyche? Hartson believes Dyche’s success at Burnley means the 46-year-old should be allowed to leave the club “whenever he wants”. Hartson says Sean Dyche might not get another opportunity to manage a club as big as Everton. Wow, just freaking wow. We should all bend over when the the seemingly bigger fish rolls in. Man this makes me angry.
No reason for him to get a bad reception....he may not have suited us, but he didn't do anything wrong and he got us to Wembley.
That would prove what we are beginning to suspect...it's the team more than the manager. However, I'm expecting us to improve as the season goes on.
