The Redmond thing was wrong and that’s just my own gripe with that player. However, I don’t see how blaming the players is daft in any way? This is 3 managers in a row that seemingly have had no ability to get these players to play any style or produce any effort or desire to win crucial matches. Most people point to 3 being the sign of a pattern. And the pattern here is that the players are failing to perform. Of course they should take blame.
Would you accept some of the things that have been said in a normal environment. No you wouldn't so why should they?
I’m not trying to be a dick but I genuinely don’t know what you mean. Are you talking about players feelings?
Anyone is allowed to be negative in any situation. It’s just that as much as people think, being negative doesn’t improve your mood, the mood of others or the actual situation.
I don’t even really see it as being negative. It’s the reality of the situation. It doesn’t improve anything to point it out but it also can not be ignored. If you’re at work and people are performing so bad that it actually becomes detrimental then it’s perfectly okay to say it’s bad. Being negative in a bad way is when you’re blatantly missing the good in favour of the bad, which I don’t believe anyone here is doing. I was positive before the Leeds game, I really thought we might be okay but the last two games have pretty much abolished that belief because it’s very hard to see any good right now.
Yes. The players must get the feeling of negativity, and some will respond positively and raise their game but not all all by any means. Yes. The players must get the feeling of negativity, and some will respond positively and raise their game but not all all by any means.
Yeahhh I’m not gonna start giving a damn about players feelings. The pressure from the fans is part of being a footballer, they know that from day 1. If they’re happy to take all the praise when it’s going well they can sure as **** take the negativity when it’s going bad. You have people paying £500 (I don’t have one but I assume it’s around that price) to watch this crap this season and damn right are they going to make their feelings known. I get that that kind of negativity will impact some players in a bad way but I’m sorry if we start putting feelings over performance we’re just going to go down an even worse road. I’m not going to start walking on eggshells on players feelings when they’re going home to their luxury homes and PL wages.
We just need to be rational and not too emotional when weighing up the situation with the club. We've been on a downward trajectory since Koeman left. And the reason; lack of spending. We got very lucky to survive in the season of Pellegrino. Imagine if we'd have gone down then. The goals of Danny Ings papered over the cracks for a bit, but we have been very, very fragile now for far too long. At the end of last season was the breaking point. Yeah maybe Ralph should have gone but how do we know his replacement would have done any better? The irony now of course, is that we've finally got some money to spend, but it came a bit too late. As I said we were already broken. On top of a terrible finish to the season, we then lost Broja, Romeu, Redmond, Tino through injury, and Stuie too to an extent. Even losing the likes of Bednarek and Stephens hurt us in a roundabout way. So, we're going down. Well, that was inevitable anyway in my opinion. Yeah sure if we'd have made better signings we could have stayed up, sure. It wasn't impossible. But thinking 100m is enough to buy practically a new team and do well, is a bit naive. Now the good thing is, we didn't just spunk the money up the wall on has-beens. We will recoup the money on most of the players we brought in, and even make a profit on some. So financially, things are looking healthy, even if we go down. And in the Championship, if you have money to spend (like we will), you essentially become one of the 'big 6' (to use Premier League terminology), because the majority of teams down there are broke (and that's why they're down there). We have some really good players (for the Championship lol) already, and young players who likely need that environment to properly improve. I'm very confident we will come back up, if not in the first season, then the second. That is, unless SR pull the plug, but luckily I don't think they will. So even though it's sh*t now, it's not really any one individual's fault. That's just what happens if you go unfinanced for 5 seasons in the Premier League. Things will improve. We're not headed into liquidation or anything. SR can't keep getting managerial appointments wrong. Before long we will get a competent manager, who, coupled with our half-decent squad, and financial backing, will make us a good team again. Have faith, because it's all we can have at the moment.
Yeah I can’t really argue with any of this. I will always see the Poch/Koeman era as the best and worst thing to happen to this club. The absolute highs it brought was sensational. The fact we were a fingertip away from a champions league finish is just insane, even more so that that wasnt that long ago. It also unfortunately revealed us for the club we actually were. A club interested in instant profit over success, not realising that success would have brought long term profit. I truly believed if we offered Poch/Koeman (Koeman I’m not sure about due to the fact that I think if I remember correctly he was beginning to fracture relationships) and certain players the contracts they actually deserved we’d be one of the top clubs right now. We could have kept hold of players such as VVD, Wanyama, Schneiderlin, Lallana, Shaw, Mane when they were in fantastic form and grew something truly special. But money talked and as soon as an offer came our way we seemed to accept it rather than bend over backwards to keep what we had even if it meant offering players extra. Everyone said you couldn’t keep selling your best players and expect to remain at the top and those people were completely right, and unfortunately it seems to be the nature of the PL for Top 6 teams to rip apart any promising teams working their way up who might be a threat to them. I look at teams like Brentford and Brighton and all I see is what we used to be and slowly but surely they’ll be gutted from the inside too and will slowly drop down. Hell, it’s already happening to Brighton.
I wouldn't go back. With Gao we were only heading down and into the lower league doldrums. With SR it's going to be a bumpy ride, but I'm confident that in the long-term, they will have us heading back in the right direction.
The problem of losing good players, is only a problem if you spend the money badly. And we spent the money really badly. Brighton, up until now, have reinvested very well. When you're in the position of a club punching above it's weight, just one or two bad decisions can bring the whole thing crashing down. It happened to us a little too soon unfortunately. It would have been nice to get a couple of more good seasons from that era, and perhaps if we did, we would have been able to keep our better players, and so on. But I don't really blame players for wanting to leave, and I don't blame the club for selling them when there is ridiculous money being offered. Clubs like us, you just have to dust yourselves off when you find yourselves at the bottom, and go again. Hopefully, we can bounce back straight away. But, it might take ten years. Who knows, that's kind of the fun. I'm just not that upset about not being the Premier League whipping boys again next season. I'd rather become a top-6 Championship team for a while. If we strike gold and come back up, we will be in a better place than we are now, for certain.
I just don’t believe it’s sustainable to consistently replace well. Even our famous little black box set up failed us after a while because it just became impossible to keep replacing immense talent with immense talent, Brighton may be spending well now but that well will run dry eventually. I don’t blame the players for leaving, I do however blame the board for taking lump sum instant profits in favour of what could have been long term consistent success. If I remember correctly I never heard any stories about the board trying to keep what we were building, which was something so special when you rattle off the list of players. Instead they let them go at the very first opportunity. Yes it’s great to get record deals for Mane and VVD but you would have got even more money if you paid them a bit more and got into the champions league and pushed on from there. And that’s what the board lost sight of. Most of the players we had left because they wanted CL football. And well, they’re not going to do that if you’re already in it yourself. The overall issue is that we are in a league where competition is seen as a threat to the big 6 instead of the point of it all. They don’t want clubs like us up there so they dismantle them as soon as they become a threat. And it will happen to those that are trying to make a name for themselves now. I fully expect Brighton, if not this summer, to have all their best players cherrypicked from other teams. I really hope, even if it’s not us, to see a club run by a board that actually back the project they are trying to build instead of letting it all fall away as soon as offers come in.
As fans, we never know the full story behind any player's situation. We don't know, for example, what promises are made to a player in order to get them to join the club in the first place. Maybe Mane was told that we wouldn't stand in his way when the time came. We at least tried to stop Schneiderlin from leaving, so it wasn't as though we always took the money at the earliest opportunity. The Van Dijk situation really showed us that it is the player who ultimately holds the cards, because they simply can down tools, as immoral as it seems to us humble fans. At the time I found the Mane transfer as frustrating as the next fan. That one hurt me more than any of the others. I was happy to keep him and let him run down his contract. But, it's easy for me to say that. It's not so easy for those responsible for running the club, to just wave away that 30m. We did show a slight lack of ambition back then, but, you just have to look at any number of clubs who overspend, and suffer the consequences of poor financial management later on, to justify the actions of our board. Ultimately, you don't build a successful club over night. It takes years and years of good decisions, luck and patience. Leicester won the Prem and played Champions League for several years, and look at them now, back in the sh*t already this season. The most sensible thing for a middle-sized club to do, is to establish themselves as a semi-permanent Premier League team for as long as possible, stay within their means, and just hope at some point they get the recruitment right for a season or two, and they can challenge for a cup or Europe.
This post pretty much sums it up for me. I think that Jo Tessum was on the nail by saying as many as 15 players in our squad are not good enough for the Premier League. The team selection priorto kick off made sense last night other that the inclusion of Armstrong up front. I cannot understand why he gets so many chances to prove himself as it is clear to all supporters that he is blatantly not up to the required standard. He always takes up the wrong positions and is never in an area where goals are likely to be created. This has been said time and time again. After last night I think the biggest question is what level of ability he has. I strongly think he would struggle in the Championship in his current form. League One at best, in my opinion. There is ni need for Armstrong to pull on a Saints shirt again. As for Mara, he has no physical presence whatsovever. As for the fringe players and the new signings, last night was demonstrative as to why the use of statistics does not tell you everything about a player's ability. I did not think any of the players brought in in the window looked up to much. I just think that there are serious questions as to how the club is being run. The data led management is forward thinking but I think that our analysis of the data has been continually flawed. The problems have stemmed from January last year. I just think that SR are incompetent.
i don;t really agree with this. The decline in fortunes over the 14 months SR have been in charge has been spectacular. The decision to sign Lavia is the only decision they have got right so fair. All other decisions with regard to player signings, allowing players to leave and the firing and appointment of managers have gone wrong.
