And choosing the most obvious example of it going wrong to back your point isn't really objective. Like I've said, it was the right choice not to sack Ralph,but let's not kid ourselves he is pulling up trees and we are batting way above our average, cos we're not.
I didnt think GAO was as bad as other owners have been. I mean he was hamstrung and didnt get over meddling in stuff, he trusted people to do the right thing, which they did. Your point on new owners is similar to how I feel, Im not convinced if we carry on this form til the end of the season they will be happy, they could chose to act now, or leave it til early season to see how he performs. I dont think they will tolerate another Jan-May 21 though. I hope they wont, at the least.
Yeah fair play. Still, there are many, many teams who replace managers and do well. I raise you Palace and Vierra. Or Pellingrini and Moyes (2nd time).
I’m usually ok with losses if the football has been attractive and the players have done their best. Unless something drastically changes like all PL teams having the same financial resources (which clearly won’t happen) for me that’s life as a Saints fan.
Yeah this is it really. Us finishing anything about 12th is a fantastic season for us. We can aim/hope for more but reality is we are minnows in this league when it comes to spending power so a top half finish is massively over achieving
Totally agree. Sometimes I think I need to remind myself why I got into football in the first place. I loved the atmosphere at the Dell. I lived for going to every home game as a kid. If we won, I was on cloud nine; if we lost the dark cloud lasted all of two hours. I never thought about where we were in the table. We never even thought about changing the manager, and we mostly had no idea what happened at boardroom level. I just hoped for a good game and a good performance. Sometimes I actually got one! We had some decent players but the real attraction, if I'm honest was seeing how they matched up to superstars like George Best, Jimmy Greaves, Trevor Francis. For what it's worth I think things will pick up before the season ends. Why? Because a win yesterday would have taken us to 9th (10th by tonight) whereas the heavy lost left us just 3 points above Leeds who are viewed by most people to still be in the relegation battle. We always seem to have a good run in when relegation threatens.
And yet Palace and Vieira who are doing so brilliantly on a similar budget to us have…*checks notes*…one more point than us.
My point is that it’s incredibly congested in that area of the league, because all the teams are madly inconsistent, including us. It’s just when we lose we sometimes lose hard, and everyone’s head goes a bit.
And Ralph joined us like Vieira in the summer did he, and re built most the squad? *Checks notes, didn't think so either. To be fair you have a point mentioning that, but Palace don't seem to get dicked or play as bad as we do when on these runs. Maybe they do, I don't pay as much attention to them.
Not totally, although when on bad runs which seem to never end we do generally play consistently bad. Are we forgetting we've lost at home God knows how many games in a row, scored something like 3 goals and let in 19 in maybe 6 games. And we played home to Watford and Newcastle in that run. Not too clever really, is it?
Watford was bad but Newcastle were in good form when we played and we didn't play badly in that game really.
So what if Newcastle were in good form, we still lost to a team near the bottom, and it isn’t a one off, it is part of a much wider issue under Ralph that we go on these long runs where we cant win. We didnt play bad v Newcastle, but didnt play too well either. From me, thinking back our form changed when Ralph changed the Cup game v WHU with reserves, we may have won the game but we never had the same fluidity since. Not sure why we changed line up so much, but it really seems to have knocked us off our stride.
So you think scoring 4 and conceding 19 over 6 games is good. Inconsistent is playing well for a few games, losing a few, then playing well.
