Well there were people on here saying “look at the Joe Shields effect” when we signed some of these players so maybe those players had a better relationship with him than you think
On recruitment. Having the link to get them to come. But once they are here their day to day wouldn’t involve him at all People seem to not understand his job role. There are some on Twitter claiming that he wants to leave because he wanted Ralph sacked and it hasn’t happened. Which just displays a complete misunderstanding of how the structure / chain of command would work. He would have precisely zero say on Ralph.
He’s been a bit of a Wally of late (IMHO) but he was so badly treated by Venables and Hoddle. He was totally unpredictable and opposition players couldn’t contain him. Thanks for the footie, Matt.
You piqued my interest - NEC Nijmegen[edit] On 26 January 2022, after being without a club for over a year, Bony returned to the Netherlands to join Eredivisie club NEC Nijmegen on a deal until the end of the season.[74][75] He only made one 15-minute substitute appearance for NEC and was unavailable due to injuries in most of the league games.
What this does do though is give Ralph (I'm not complaining) a few more weeks IMO to turn it round. You don't start jumping up and down on a boat if it is already rocking from side to side from a wave.
He's got half a dozen games to find a consistent team and an effective game plan and style which improves on our current play and also gets results. Anything less than a point a game from them and I think he will be gone (he may be on borrowed time already).
This ^^ I mean, he has only had c. 4 years in situ, these other 6 games should make all the difference
For me, time is up, im not even that fussed if he gets a few results in these 6 games. Ralph has proven disaster is just around the corner, god only knows why he hasn’t been slotted already.
In other news I’ve just seen on saints web that Rasmus Ankersen has called us a small club: “As the Sport Republic company, we first acquired Southampton. Göztepe is a bigger club than Southampton. We started from a small club and moved on to a big club.” @RasmusAnkersen Lovely
Firefox is preventing me from accessing the Southampton FC Official site, is it just me or is there a problem? Works fine on Google Chrome.
But if you actually read the article, he's meaning in terms of Göztepe in the Turkish league, versus Southampton's relative size in the Premier League.
I wonder who he was saying that to? Not that it bothers me because we are a small club but it was an interesting comparison to Goztepe who I would think were a small club too. As far as I can see, they haven't won anything of merit for years and their ground holds about 25,000. Big club / small club opinions are fun but quite often subjective and depends on context. It reminds me of a game we went to when we were in League 1. The home fans sung "you're not famous any more" which I thought was quite funny but to someone like Dagenham and Redbridge, I suppose we are. Just seen Laces thread but thought I would still give everyone the benefit of my opinion.