SR oversaw the relegation. The fact remains that although our previous signings weren’t great, they kept us up. The signings SR made were worse, because they didn’t keep us up. I don’t know how that can be argued against?
It’s easy to argue against the conclusions you have drawn from the bare facts, because the nature of cause and effect is never straightforward. There are always multiple factors, but in the end we went down because we’d been **** for ages. Then there’s the manager. Ralph kept us up, Ralph got sacked, we went down. How can that be argued against?
^ This I’ve been saying this all season I want to lose in the playoff final That’s the closest we can get Then again I don’t want to lose Can we win and refuse to go up?
I’m sorry to be pedantic, I get what you’re driving at but disagree. We stayed up in 21/22 because although we were deteriorating we were good enough to remain in the league. SR took over and in 22/23 we were not good enough to stay up. You could argue that they just contributed the deterioration, but it was a deterioration from the previous season under SR’s watch. So still worse than before. And it was not inevitable. We flirted with relegation but finished 15th, 5 points off Burnley. It’s not like we stayed up on GD! Not backing Ralph and sacking Ralph were SR’s decisions.
My ideal would be promotion followed by relegation then relegation then promotion then promotion then relegation then and only then mid table
We were getting progressively worse. Our squad was getting undeniably weaker for years. The summer of 2020, for example, we sold Hojbjerg and Harrison Reed, and replaced them with Diallo. A year later we replaced Ings with Adam Armstrong, and Vestergaard with Lyanco. 19/20: 11th place (52pts) 20/21: 15th place (43pts) 21/22: 15th pace (40pts) With Bednarek, Romeu, Redmond and Stephens all leaving in SR's first transfer window (the fans were quite happy about this too, apart from Romeu), that left only JWP, KWP, Stu Armstrong, and Che Adams as players to have been at the club for longer than two seasons. And people wonder why we crumbled.
Read your post again. If anything you’re proving our point for us. Everything fell apart because Sport Republic didn’t value the experience in the squad and tried to re-invent football. People were unhappy about Romeu and Redmond for sure. The CBs going was no big deal as they had been poor and not regular starters anyway. As we have found this season, championship is Bednarek and Stephens level. Their scouting, squad management and recruitment cost us our PL place
No, Redmond and Bednarek left because of Ralph. Romeu because he wanted to go home. Stephens was the only one I'll give you, but all our fans thought he wasn't good enough anyway. It was because of Ralph and Gao that our squad became so inexperienced. You can't just blame everything on SR.
Bednarek and stephens aren’t good enough for PL Redmond people WERE angry about but wished him well - and let’s face it he is easily replaceable if the owners had anything about them. Romeu is a pathetic decision. We should have fought to keep him. But again, all of those players we should have been easily able to replace. But our owners and recruitment team are useless. Romeu is the only one with a slightly unique skill set. All the others were high level championship players. Half decent PL owners should have been able to replace them easily
For me it’s really simple, they made two catastrophic mistakes: 1) massively undervalued squad harmony & experience 2) compounded the loss of that by signing mostly dross Both of these are on the upper management of the club
What makes me laugh on this forum is the comments anyone would think we are fighting relegation. When we had the 25 game unbeaten run everyone were geniuses but when we lose a few we are doomed. I know there is a big gap between 4th and the top two spots but we have two games in hand of Leeds and Ipswich and one game in hand of Leicester. I know we are most likely heading for the play offs (which I believe most of us would've taken at the beginning of the season) but if I remember correctly the 3 teams above us have been dropping points too.
Romeu yes, agree on that but Redmond for me never really cut it for except for a couple of cameo performances.
Jan Bednarek has more than 150 appearances in the Premier League, so it's a bit strange to say he's not at that level. He had good patches of form, and bad, but with the right manager, he's capable. Jack Stephens was absolutely fine at Bompey; because he had a competent manager. Most people weren't that fussed about Redmond. For what it's worth I was one of the few who were, but as I said, he left because of Ralph, not SR. We just don't know enough about the Romeu situation. Only our instincts. I believe he was another that fell out of love with Ralph-ball, but I have no actual evidence for that. Just as you have no evidence to claim we could have kept him, or that SR didn't do their best to do so. You're presenting your gut-feelings as facts. Caleta-Car was a Champions League-playing CB when we signed him; on paper you'd have taken him over Bednarek all day. ABK is arguably a better CB than Stephens. Lavia was an adequate replacement for Romeu, but he got injured. Redmond was replaced with Aribo, Edozie, and later, Sulemana. Yes, none of those did well, but again, I reckon the right manager would have got something out of them. You talk as though it's easy to buy players and fit them seemlessly into a new team and system, but most clubs struggle to do it. Just speak to fans of other clubs. Don't give me the 'But Brighton' response either. Yes, some teams get it right from time to time. That's great. But it isn't easy. Where the blame lies with SR, imo, is keeping hold of Ralph for too long, replacing him with a weirdo, and failing to bring in a top striker. So yes, some pretty huge mistakes. And yes, they played a big part in us getting relegated, of course. But to just blame them for everything is just daft.
