I personally think we are marginally better structurally. Mishaps have been a massive cause of the conceding at home recently. I certainly feel more confident at defensive set pieces than I did under Ralph who I think ignored defending of set pieces over the years.
To be fair the countless contributions on here have, mostly, been spot on and depressing, not a criticism, a fact of life. It's Friday and my 24 hours of increased optimism has started kicking in again, yes even after Wednesday!! So let'move on at least for 26 hours to see if we still have a football team which can create a win somehow and give us a lift in mood etc!!
I’ll change mine, if I see us concede more than 5 after downing tools under Jones this season. One thing I haven’t seen is the team give up yet, even if it’s a disastrous mess
I suppose having been in this situation before, I see things in a different way, in the low ebb of the dark days of the Lowe era, and relegation, I stayed loyal to the cause. The Club were desperately seeking a solution and we came very close to extinction (we seem financially safe now, so that isn't the issue this time) . The truth is, that the Club didn't find the solution, it found them in the form of Marcus Liebherr and Nicola Cortese. I was in the mind set that my loyalty had been rewarded, in truth it had not affected the outcome, no more did all of the quitters who ironically were also rewarded, despite having no effect whatsoever from their actions, they all came back when the going got good. Protesting only points out what the majority are already aware of, it won't change anything. There is a solution out there, but I doubt lightning will strike twice with another fairy godfather. It will have to be achieved the hard way, getting the right people in to the right places, operational and playing staff. Nathan Jones has walked in to an impossible situation. He has the same deck of duff cards that Ralph had. Whether he can deal with them, is another matter, slagging him off and baying for his blood won't solve the problem. All we can do is keep the faith and hope the fates will give us a break, we don't deserve this crap.
I thought that. It's as if he thinks that number is impressive, but he should have watched all of them and more by now. In terms of analysing those previous games, he's just outed himself as not having done the bear minimum that we'd expect from him. His tone in these interviews is so bad. It's like whenever Mourinho gets to the end of a spell with a club and the writing's on the wall. An 'everyone is against me' attitude. Please stop with the 'they', FFS.
I think Solak is pretty good as far as fairy godfathers go, although I suspect Markus would have been better if he'd lived longer. Even so, our net spend on transfers over the last 6 or 7 months is much higher than anything we've seen for a long time, possibly ever, and it appears there's more money available. So we can't complain on that front. It's the people in between the owner and the players that are being questioned. To be fair, I can't really point at any one of our recent signings and say it's unquestionably a poor one. The problem is what we haven't signed rather than what we have. I'm not quite calling for Jones to go but I don't get him so far. Playing long balls up to a 5'9" striker is just weird and I can't stand these interviews from the last couple of days where he's talking down the team and their past performances, calling the team "they" and making excuses for himself. Maybe things will change if he gets some new players in. Maybe. I don't necessarily accept what he says about changes taking time and in any case he's had quite a bit of time. I remember when Poch took over and in his first game against Everton, less than a week after he'd joined, you could already see the improvements and the changes he'd made to the team's play. Jones had the perfect introduction to the club - a throwaway game against Liverpool to look at things in a real match followed by 6 weeks without a game where he could get his message over to the players - but our style of play is currently worse and results are much the same if not getting worse.
Why on earth is no one at the club listening to his interviews and pulling him to a side and saying he needs to drop that divisive tone? Baffling. He's just creating division for no reason. You'd imagine the players have no respect towards him at all.
To clarify, in June 2009 the club was being run by Mark Fry, the administrator, who managed to persuade the whole board to step down. It was Fry who negotiated with Cortese/Liebherr and with other parties including Pinnacle, who were given exclusivity at one point but who couldn’t come up with the money by the time the deadline expired. After that, the Cortese Liebherr bid became the front runner. I agree that a repeat of the administration saga is unlikely. Dragan Solak, the majority shareholder, is very financially stable. I suppose he could always get disillusioned with SR and sell to another Gao, or a fictitious Sheikh like our friends down the road, but it’s not likely. I agree that this situation isn’t any of Nathan Jones’ making, any more than Ralph having no funds under Gao was. I place the blame firmly with Rasmus Ankerson, Toby Steele, and Martin Semmens, who have made Jones their whipping boy. In the long term, they will have to take responsibility for those decisions. But in the immediate, short term, we have an incompetent manager, so what should Ankerson do about that? Does he back him or sack him?
By the way, this article from the Echo totally fails to clarify the Katharina Liebherr position: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/2...er-owns-20-per-cent-shareholding-southampton/ Her shares apparently still have the same value as before, but have been diluted and no longer represent 20% of the total holding. No, me neither.
It was good to remind us about Mark Fry and the administrators, they were never given the credit for what they did. they had much easier options that they could have taken. The other bidders would all have been a disaster. We still need to be careful of what we wish for and not be deluded in to thinking there will be an instant solution. I don't think NJ will be able to do it on his own, but I have no other solution to offer, give him a chance, we are rock bottom, there is only one direction I want to see us go, but how it can be achieved is beyond me.
To be honest I am not so bothered about what he says, more about what he does.Picking him up on his grammar, syntax etc is a bit rich coming from many who obviously never paid attention in their English lessons! NJ doesn't appear to be a good communicator at the moment, just something else to add to the things he needs to learn, but not a priority, better than having a translator.
