Some great gallows humour in here, cheered me up no end. Most disappointing thing for me is the shambles of the goals we conceded, I said to my old man at half time I don't mind if you're conceding brilliant goals 3 of those goals in the first half were so avoidable it was embarrassing. First goal we just let sterling run through completely unchallenged, 2nd one I'm not sure if it was Wes or Jack but it was an utterly pathetic attempt to win a header he should have comfortably been favourite. 4th one less said the better... My heads hurting trying to thinkof them all
If we appoint Sam then it's the final straw for me and that'll be me done with home games for a couple of years. Even if we don't, time to ramp up the pressure on Reed I reckon.
Give Marian Pahars a go. At least he knows the club! I think it's worth a gamble, as I can only see us going down anyway.
We have to pull the trigger soon. Everything about Hughes has been shocking, from playing 4-4-2 away to city, to signing players for a 5-3-2 and ditching it after 30 minutes, to the horrendously coached defence. We only stayed up because Swansea were beyond hopeless, not because of Hughes. Come on Les, don’t hang about like last season. We are stinking the league out under this dinosaur
I expected a similar result today but felt that the result against Newcastle was unacceptable. I think he was worthy of a punt for saving us at the end of last season but I feel he has gone backwards. The problem is more deep-rooted than Hughes and, as I proposed here last week, everyone knows that a root and branch re-organisation of the club is required - not just to ascertain what we have been poor to watch over the last three seasons but to establish why things were let to slip so spectacularly so dramatically from such a good position. I know we have sold our best players but some explanation is owed as to why the recent recruiting has been so poor. What is odd if that all the supports recognise what the problems are yet the club has been exceedingly slow to address these issues. Identifying the problems seems so easy and everyone can recognise what needs to be improved. The problem for me is that I am not confident that the people in charge will bring in the right changes once the penny drops. The Chinese investment has not manifested itself in improvements in the football and judging by the absence of younger talent, these issues appear to similarly be apparent in the academy. I think Hughes has two games to save his job and am not confident that he will do this. If he remains, we will be in a relegation battle for the remainder of the season.
I was thinking about this as I drove past St Marys this morning. We'd probably be close to the protest stage by now if it wern't for the fact that there are so many other terrible teams in the league that we are somehow not in the relegation zone yet. That doesn't excuse our total plumit though. We need change right from the top. In an ideal world we'd get a new owner who is willing to put their own money into the club, and have a vision to push us on, you know like Kat said she was looking for when selling us... Then with that change you would completely change the structure from the top and get rid of Reed, Kruegar and all their cronies. New recruitment team, new manager and eventually new players. That's dreamland though. All we can really hope for is a change to Reed, Kruegar and maybe the recruitment team and manager, and reconsolidate ourselves. As things stand, theres only one direction we're headed. It's starting to feel inevitable and it's just a matter of how long before we fall.
Agree with most of what you say, but changing managers mid season only produces a temporary outcome, often no better than before. I am more convinced that the top team are the problem as you say. We’re better than a club of no direction or at least we should be. The present option of top management is not up to the job.
I agree with this Ian (apart from I didn’t think he was worthy of a punt after last season), One thing that hasn’t happened to my knowledge is the fans letting the club know. I really think some action needs to happen away from the pitch. It is possibly time that a few hundred fans stayed behind after a game to let the Board and owner know just how we feel. Booing at the end of a game isn’t the way - they’ll just think we’re uoset at a result. Reed, Krueger and Gao need to hear and see the angst of the fans taking action outside the front of reception. They need to know the level of concern against what is happening at the club.
I’m in Southampton next week with work. I’m going to go to reception and ask how I get a communication through to the top team (including Gao) to express my concerns. If I get told to “write to Mr Reed” I’m going to be a politely persistent that I’d like to understand how I get to know it’ll be read and considered.
I support this as long as any protest is outside the ground and before/after the game as we have to give the team 100% support during the game
For various reasons, I've not been able to get to matches this season so have felt I couldn't really comment. But this thread seems to sum up the frustration I'm hearing talking to fellow Saints who have been turning up. The fact that a family member told me recently when I yet again couldn't get down to see a game "Don't worry. You're missing nothing but dross." sums it up. The consensus among most I speak to is that we have a manager who is struggling to find a team when almost without exception every position is occupied or covered by players of equally mediocre standard. I find myself wondering what has happened to the James Ward Prowse about whom Danny Murphy raved a couple of seasons ago as just one example of players going backwards. It's difficult to know just how much damage the Pellegrino era caused, and indeed it may be that even that time was a symptom of greater malaise. I do know that I still feel that the sacking of a manager who, in addition to getting to a cup final we should have won and finishing top half, played a number of younger players was a mistake. Even that may be symptomatic of a more long term illness. Let's discuss managers, by all means. But we need to reognise we appointed a bloke with a slightly patchy record and asked him to make bricks without straw. Swansea last season were beyond awful. When the football gods give you your final two home games against relegation rivals and you conspire to lose them both you deserve to go down. That fact alone is what saved us. Those who argue that we can't keep hoping for 3 Swansea equivalents are right. I'm told we played OK at times against Newcastle. Well OK or not we didn't get the win we had to get. Yesterday was always a free hit and we expected to get stuffed, so let's base nothing on that. The only point worth addressing is whether recovery is going to be best achieved by clinging on desperately to our PL status, and so appoint another sticking plaster manager, or take some time out in the Championship. Those who take the latter view might look at how competitive the Championship is. Not exactly a rest home. Finally, we have to recognise that we are not attractive to any manager with real ambition, so we're going to be looking at a manager with a patchy history and then show them the cupboard is bare. Isn't this where we came in?
Dual carriageway car in front braked sharply which caught me by surprise (there was a queue building ahead but didn't warrant them braking sharply). I went straight into the back of them. I'll probably get the blame but it was 50-50 in my book. I probably didn't react quickly enough but they shouldn't have braked so hard.
