Listening to the forum now, Board getting rinsed Rasmus on the back foot using every platitude to get out alive
Does anyone else get the impression that they just don’t seem that fussed about the possibility of relegation? It’s probably not the case, but I get the vibe they just think we have the resources to blow the Championship out if we end up there and it would be little more than a minor inconvenience in a longer term plan. I am sure none of us feel that way and I am more than likely way off, it’s just a feeling I got from those responses.
Everything is **** at saints admittedly, maybe take a moment to put it one side for as long you need, I know it's off topic but just watch what's happening in Turkey/Syria, This is a REAL disaster.
I said as much a while back and I think there is some truth to it. Think about our last few seasons, mostly dog **** really, very inconsistent and frustrating, but now think to when we first came back and that momentum kept us going for 5 seasons . Think about how many other teams come up and smash it for 1, 2 or maybe more seasons, Brentford and Fulham right now, possibly Forest the way they are going. I know there are no guarantees that we will come back up at the first time of asking, but this team are mostly young players who would kick on after this season and be even better while playing against lesser teams, I think we would be ok TBH. Obviously if you don't go down then, it's all good but maybe next year we struggle again before kicking on. If we did go down, we would kick on sooner albeit in a lower league but that could be to our advantage as we then build that winning mentality which we build in and take into the Premier League the next season.
I don’t think they want it to happen, but the reality is that we are as good as down. So they have to start preparing now.
That’s probably true, they just give the impression that they lack any real urgency whatsoever. Like the fan base feels like it’s in full panic mode seeing the writing on the wall. Ankersen just seems totally placid about our entire situation.
Luton lost tonight so Jones won’t be able to gloat after they’d beaten us in the next round, so he may as well **** of now.
If they are as prepared as they claim then they surely would’ve known that relegation this season was a real possibility. We have been **** for a number of years and whilst they invested a fair bit of money on players, they purposefully signed young players who are a risk of whether or not they are good enough now. If anything the fact that they sound so confident about relegation and coming back gives me some hope that, whilst it was obviously not the plan, they had considered that possibility and have a bit of a plan for it
I still sort of feel Fairplay to them for doing this, knowing what feedback they’d receive. I don’t agree with the decision to keep Jones at all but they’re obviously not totally spineless idiots as some would have us believe
So, what I'm taking from this is that Jones has been given the freedom to try it his way. The implication is that he therefore hasn't had that freedom up to this point. The board somehow feel that he hasn't had a fair crack and are confident that he can do what he says he can do and has done in the past. The only thing I'm getting is that other people have been sticking their oar in and messing with the football. This is probably why Jones was brought in in the first place - a lower league manager who will do what he's told and be malleable for the powers that be. They've now found that when you bring in a leader who is no kind of leader with no direction other than where he's told to go you get a great big ****ing mess. Nobody is satisfied with the results (the only metric that actually matters) but apparently the work they do on the training ground and the relationship with the players is all good. Confusingly, there's seemingly no correlation between the work done in training and the results on the pitch because to my mind its not possible to be unhappy with results and happy with the training, WTF is that about?? If you aren't winning games, training is where you fix that and in the weeks he has been here he has made it all worse, not better. This all makes no sense and I doubt any of us are buying the bullshit. Problem for me is that Jones is Jones, he's not going to become Pep because nobody is telling him what to do. I don't buy any of that **** about good relationships and training, these guys are top players from top clubs and they will see through a charlatan in no time at all. He has burned through the goodwill he brought in record time and unless he wins against Wolves with a marked improvement off and def he will be gone. He should be gone now but I suspect we are already screwed so I'm resigned to either relegation or **** football and a goal difference survival at best. De-****ing-pressing.
The biggest risk of relegation is financial and I'm fairly sure there's enough money available to keep things going for some period if we go down. There would inevitably be some player sales but I doubt we'd need to sell half the squad to pay our bills or anything like that. I think they also expect the strategy of buying young players to pay off as they improve. I know fans of other clubs who say something similar about us - there's a Spurs fan I know who said to me this is a Southampton team people will look at in 5 years or so and say "How did a side with so much talent go down?" And hey, maybe a season in the Championship would be good for guys like Edozie, Larios, Bazunu, Livramento, Alcaraz, Sulemana, Lavia, ABK and Salisu. It certainly didn't do Schneiderlin and Lallana any harm. But I can also remember 2007 to 2009 and how a group of kids floundered. Given we'll at least lose the experience of JWP and KWP, our two best players, I wouldn't take an immediate return for granted.
I think Lavia would certainly be off and Salisu might be off, but other than that on paper we could have a good squad for the Championship. I mean we certainly bloody should have given the amount that has been spent. —————-——Bazunu——————- -Livramento—ABK—DCC—Perraud— —————Alcaraz—Diallo?—————- —Sulemana——-Aribo?—-Edozie——- ———————Onuachu——————- Many options too: Sulemana, Tella and S Armstrong available on the right, Edozie, Orsic and A Armstrong on the left. Striker could be Onuachu or Mara. All could hypothetically play well in the Championship. Suspect Elyounoussi will be off, S Armstrong may be off. I don’t think Che will be staying even though he doesn’t seem to be coping well with the PL at the mo. I don’t have a clue who replaces JWP as captain though.
I think some of this is now going into massive hyperbole territory here. Sometimes it's worth stepping away from the computer for a few days. SR aren't going to quit - why would they? Their portfolio is us and one random Turkish club no one's ever heard of, so if relegation dents their portfolio enough that they drop us, their portfolio doesn't amount to much at all. Parachute payments are more investment than most businesses will get in a lifetime.
If only someone had created a thread for this sort of hypothesising. https://www.not606.com/threads/saints-are-relegated.404380/
