The most laughable thing is that Redmond was the Mane replacement in the first place. Fwiw I wanted us to sell Elyounoussi and keep Redmond, but from memory it was a pretty even split on here as to which of the two people would have rather kept. Neither were good enough to be regular starters for a PL team that wasn't fighting relegation. We've been on a downward trajectory for some time and that got much more pronounced under Gao. Since SR came in they have undoubtedly made a lot of mistakes, some of them really costly mistakes. Relegation could have been prevented if they spent the money better, but imo we would have gone down had they not come in and not spent the money anway. You can't stay in the PL without spending money and when you're relying on player sales to have money to spend, you then need near enough every signing to work out and that just doesn't happen at any level of football. I'm okay with SR personally because there are far worse owners out there, they clearly want us to do well as a club and a business which is necessary and they have been putting in the money to try and make that happen. We're not a million miles away from a successful season, and while I've been as frustrated as anyone with the way we've performed in recent months and our drop off from contending the auto spots, I'm generally happy with the progress and upheavel from last season. That is still ongoing, but we're heading in the right direction.
My take on last season hasn’t really changed from the end of the summer window 2022. SR came in and spent a lot of money (for us) but because of the lack of investment in the squad for a number of seasons prior to their arrival the decision was made, by Ralph/SR/recruitment team I don’t know, to spread the money thin. Sounds great when you say we spent £100m in a window, sounds less great when you say that was on 10 players. My belief was that Ralph asked for quantity as the squad was thin, the hope from SR being that all we wanted to do was survive giving the youth players experience and then we could push on the following season and spend again, but this time on fewer players with possibly more experience/quality. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off, but I can see the logic in what they attempted. The January window was where they really ****ed up as if they had got that right then there was every chance we could’ve survived. They signed a striker who clearly was meant for Jones who they sacked about 2 weeks after the striker arrived and 2 wingers, one who was raw as you like and the other who was 30 years old and never played in a decent league so was most likely looked at by lots of other clubs and deemed not good enough. The manager choices were poor, from keeping Ralph (who lots were in favour of at the time, myself included) to Jones and Selles. How much of the Jones/Selles was due to Joe Shields leaving and no football person being at the club to say “yeah Jones looks good at Luton but it’s ****ing Luton” I don’t know. The same could be said about the January window. I don’t have enough knowledge of how those sort of jobs work in saying SR really ****ed up by not getting a new DoF mid season. Probably could’ve got one who was out of work but naievity/arrogance meant they wanted to wait for Wilcox to be available and roll with Ankerson for the season.
I put relegation last year to one thing and one thing only. If SR hadn't done that one thing IMO we would have stayed up. Nathan Jones
I do think the SR plan to buy decent young players cheap and sell for a huge profit is the way to go to survive proving they re- invest that profit into the team but you still need some decent experienced players around them to help them develop. Gifted young players would see us as an attractive club to come to and develop and put themselves in the shop window. That said they have to find the right balance to still give academy players a path to the first team. Not buying in decent striker though was criminal.
I actually think it was keeping Ralph over the summer (though like Magic, I was in favour at the time, and I get why). That was compounded by the Jones idiocy, which nailed relegation on.
With that being said, even if we had kept Ralph on, he couldn’t have done worse than Jones/Selles. Easy to throw stones and I think the sacking of Ralph is one where I am happy to cut them slack as it was a touch decision. He is a fantastic guy and a great manager, so it was a hard choice. Sacking Ralph wasn’t the catastrophic decision. It was who we replaced him with and the players they brought in
Yeah it’s obviously all hindsight now, but our best chance looking back was sacking Ralph as soon as 21/22 season ended and letting a new man have the summer transfer window and pre season to work. At the time though I was in favour of keeping Ralph as the thinking was that he deserved to have a summer where he was backed financially as he had kept us up for 3 seasons where we spent nothing. There was also an argument for some continuity as we had new owners and a new DoF coming in so they may have not wanted a new manager as well which would’ve been new people at every senior position across all departments of the club. So I’m not really calling it a huge glaring error SR made by keeping him.
what if the new pre season man was Nathan jones? I mean whenever we got rid of Ralph, he was the replacement so…we could have had so much more of his brand of ‘special one.’ I blame gakpo, if he had signed when we wanted him we would have stayed up. Bastard.
I was actually going to say in my original post that if we had a new man in the summer and it was Jones we would’ve binned him around the time we binned Ralph so could’ve still saved ourselves. More likely it wouldn’t have been Jones as he wouldn’t have had the half season he had with Luton under his belt. But yeah anyway it doesn’t matter, all ifs and buts
He wasn’t though. First choice over the summer was De Zerbi. Though he’d now be leaving too so we’d be at square one again!
I still go back to when Jones was appointed. Villa and Wolves had also sacked managers just before us and I think were a place above us and a place below us in the league. They hired Emery and Lopetegui respectively. The multiple Europa League winning manager, who has managed PSG and Arsenal and the Ex Spain and Real Madrid manager. We went for Nathan Jones I know for multiple reasons we couldn’t attract Lopetegui or Emery but there is quite a gap between them and Jones in the manager food chain who we could’ve gone for
Just a thought If Selles had been appointed earlier and we got relegated and Jones was appointed this season (assuming he hadn't got Luton promoted) I wonder if our opinion of him would be different.
As far as i'm concerned the club could have a hell of a lot worse owners than SR, remember Rupert Lowe's Southampton Leisure Holdings PLC (when our record transfer fee was £4m for Rory Delap for many years!) and of course more recently Gao?. I believe that they have proved that they have good intentions for the club and are relatively ambitious and have taken steps to overhaul the entire set up at every level. Of course it is very early days and patience is required but this season has already been a success as far as i'm concerned and at times the team has reached a level of performance better than I had expected at the start of this season considering the total wreckage at the end of last season. There were mistakes made last season particularly in the recruitment of managers but that was before a lot of the staff changes were made and it's clear that progress has been made on the pitch with the current manager. Whether that is enough for the owners, time will tell, I suspect it might depend on which league we are in next season. To all the dissatisfied Saints fans out there, be careful what you wish for, we could be a hell of a lot worse off right now.
I’m sorry but this is rubbish. Lowe got us St Mary’s, can you imagine where we would be if we had remained at the dell? Markus may not have bought us and we may have become one of the many ex-PL clubs languishing in league 1. Gao spent nothing but we somehow remained PL. SR splashed some cash but got us relegated at the first roll of the dice.
