Really? He comes across in interviews as not giving a ****, he has allowed cliques to develop within his team and to top it off, after that disastrous display against West Ham he gave the players two days off and buggered off to Paris. Is that what you call committed? I expected him to go in the summer, when he was linked to other clubs, and he's been phoning it in ever since. Probably would have been better for all concerned if he had gone then.
I must admit that I found his sacking a little odd, not just because he won them their first bit of silverware but because every time I've seen them this year they haven't looked like an outfit in any danger of relegation. That said I did not know about his jolly to Paris. That was clearly a bit of an oversight but I can't agree with this bit Joe. They've signed 14 players this year. That's hardly a lack of backing from the board is it? I think I'm also right in saying that they use the same system as us right through their academy/U21 ranks so continuity shouldn't be a problem.
I think there is a combination of a few issues here: 1. Form has not been great 2. 2 pts above the drop 3. It "sounds" like he hasn't been interested in discussing a new deal (and therefore the Chairman is trying to protect the longer term stability of the club) 4. The Partis trip/two days off - that can be argued either way though; there will be a book somewhere on reverse psychology 5. Someone suddenly realized that they had signed David Ngog 6. The apparent dis-interest from Laudrup
Fulham and Wigan very similar. From the bottom of the football league to the top and now struggling to maintain it. Are those 2 well setup? You don't go from L2 with small crowds to staying in the Premier league forever without investment. There just aren't the hardcore fans there. Teams like Man Utd and Liverpool have a bad season but still finish in the top half because they have continual investment. Teams like Swansea, Wigan, Fulham will lose their hardcore fans when they go down and crowds will diminish. I dare say that if we hadn't been in the top flight so long we would have had much much smaller crowds through the championship, L1, Championship era too. We are pretty much in the same scenario as Swansea were under Rogers. Playing pretty football that everyone loves and compliments yet not scoring that many. Swansea have never changed that though. Still reasonable to watch but still not scoring enough while we seem to be gradually improving. I don't think many will be that bothered about Laudrup going though. I get the impression he a little bit of a Pardew style character in terms of 'look at me' rather than a Pochettino 'look at the team' manager
It's becoming more and more evident that a problem bigger than all of these is that some of the players clearly have attitude problems. There had been rumours before of players just hanging out with those of their own nationalities and not integrating with the rest, and now you've got Chico Flores acting like a complete **** on Twitter. And the players had the nerve to blame the manager for the lack of cohesion in training.
It's not really relevant how many signings they've made. It's the amount of money spent, which isn't a lot. And they've got to be one of the lowest spenders on salaries, if not the lowest. I don't know how they can expect to maintain the level of the past couple of years. It may not be anyone's fault - perhaps they simply can't afford to spend any more, but if that's the case I'm afraid their expectations really shouldn't get any higher than staying in the league. Laudrup was doing a pretty good job of that, all things considered.
You can have that as points 7 and 8 on my list then I didn't know about the internal issues. Still think some players and staff/directors thought "David Ngog!!!!!"
I wouldn't say "blame" but it wasn't his fault that the club couldn't match him with increased budgets etc. And if him and the board weren't on the same page I can't blame him for not being into it. The drop in form was hardly shocking though, they've played 10 Europa games and have two more in a couple of weeks. Michu has been injured and scored two PL goals, and apart from Shelvey and maybe Bony (undecided) I think their signings gave them a bigger squad with not much increase in quality. Also there was a risk of overrating them from one decent year where they still only finished 9th. In other words, when we get to a cup final can we play a League Two team please.
Set-Up & size of crowd are two different things and I agree that to build a fan base you need to have a certain amount of success. We had pretty much 50 years of top flight football and an FA cup when we didn't. Which is why as a club we're better supported over cities of similar or bigger populations. Wigan & Fulham got promotion thanks to sugar daddies and paid their way to the top. Swansea have not been totally short of investment but have had to achieve it with a more sustainable model. They developed a style of football and have employed managers who share the same footballing beliefs to provide that continuity. They did this long before us or any other club. It's a club built on a good set-up
Before anyone goes condemning Fulham as having no history, they've been around for many, many years, and have a loyal fanbase which goes back generations. They are in no way similar to Wigan, other than that they are both professional football clubs. Time was, when Fulham could consider themselves equal to Chelsea, for example. In actual fact, Fulham's history bears reasonable comparison to Saints own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulham_F.C.
Great player and good manager, but, not a great manager. Not yet maybe. I think he is overated at the moment and not a patch on our own manager. Ours has proven to still be able to get a great performance out of the team when the best players are missing through injury or whatever. On the other hand Laudrup has been without one real class player and really struggled. Are Swansea's squad really that bad? I don't think so. Our manager can get an amazing performance out of a team (against Arsenal recently) with all of it's most expensive players missing and without Lambert. It was with the exact same players that Adkins had to choose from and on paper there's noway anyone would of been gutted about not getting 3 points from that game a year ago. But i was, i and know most of you were too. It's why our manager is linked with Real Madrid and Laudrup isn't.
