A well grounded intelligent analysis of Saints by Ian Holloway! No really! http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/ian-holloway-southampton-saints-showing-2670779 Is he looking for a coaching job?
A lot of people are having to eat their words. Of course everyone was right to criticise Nigel's sacking...he didn't deserve it...but he was not the right man for Cortese's ambition. The fans would have persisted with him because he matched our ambition...which was to stay in the PL with aspirations of mid-table. The feelings were strong, but protests were muted because most of us feared losing Nicola more. Nicola may have limited footballing knowledge when he took over, but he had business acumen....sadly lacking at some clubs. Holloway is a nice guy and a character, but a smooth operator he is not. One of the old school, though his desire to learn from others is a reminder of Nigel. A nice incident was in our behind the scenes shot at SMS...Lambert and Holloway were having a heart to heart and Holloway was saying, You deserve it, mate. you really do.' Obviously was talking about his England call ups.
It is simply what everyone else is saying, so nothing new there. And Jack Cork isn't a homegrown player, in the sense that he's talking about. Always liked Holloway, though, in the main.
Nice to see another convert, but I do feel he kind of just used us as an excuse to complain about Parish more. Obviously it's hard to know really how much Parish dictated Palace's fairly dreadful recruitment policy over the summer, but I do think he's hiding behind it a bit too much when in reality he did a thoroughly average bordering on poor job from start to finish.
Trouble is Ian Holloway isn't to be trusted as we have heard praise before from him only for him to change his mind the next week. He is of course right when he says, he along with others were quick to condemn Saints along with the vast majority of fans over Nigel's dismissal. I have to say though I am a bit concerned at the way the press are currently putting Cortese and to a certain degree Pochettino, on a pedestal and building it higher and higher. It is almost bound to topple at some point then I guess we will be back to being just that "lil ol team on the south coast", not forgetting the usual rubbish about our chairman. Still 'spose it can't be bad to be in the limelight for a while....so soak it up people as we no how the media can change............
Does he not know who he writes for or is this an elaborate plot to get sacked from another job? I didn't think too much of Holloway to begin with, but thought getting promoted with Palace was a great achievement. Now he has quit and walked on them I think even less
Oh I doubt any on here are not aware how quickly the press can turn . If (as I suspect is probable ) we fail to finish in the top 6 this year,Robbie Savage will be the first to say I told you so....... I think we will fail to finish in the top 6 due to a lack of strength in depth in our squad . i think injuries/suspensions willtake their toll over the season .Hope I am wrong though.
I feel bad for Hollaway. Yes he can be a tit but he is entertaining and his teams attack. You would have thought he would want more of a crack at the prem so for him to walk he must have been exhausted and feeling the strain.
He seemed to be upset because his wife was criticised for travelling on the team bus. He said she'd been very ill. Sometimes things are just cumulative.
I can't believe for one minute that he actually wrote that, far too articulate. Nevertheless, good of him to admit that he was wrong about us. Funny how we all think that the articles praising us are 'sensible, intelligent, well researched etc' whereas the others are simply badly researched and/or written by imbeciles!
Back when we beat blackpool in the cup in L1 he did say "saints have fallen from grace, but they will be back". He wasn't wrong!
