Us and Swansea seem to be doing this. Last season I thought the team to emulate was Everton... The season before I was still happy that we'd "done a Norwich"... I think I'm coming round to "The Southampton Way" in a whole new sense - we don't need to emulate anybody
Eventually LVG will get them up toward the top again. It will likely take a few years as he has to shift out the players that don't fit his style and bring in new ones. I like our path as it keeps everything flowing without the wait. Not sure if RK would attract the players LVG did but we could not have paid for it anyway.
LVG isn't going to suddenly stop being a good manager and, in the long term, United aren't going to become a poor club, but there will be tears before bedtime. They were already going a bit downhill at the end of Ferguson's reign (despite winning their last title), so are now entering a rebuilding phase (pause while I wipe away a tear). Couldn't happen to nicer fans.
The consequences of United's approach is that they have zero continuity throughout the club and they disrupt any progress they make throughout the playing levels. However, if you throw a big enough sack of money at the problem you end up with... well, Real Madrid, but in Manchester. For me that is not the smart way to proceed. People might be impressed by the outrageous attempts to use the financial muscle, but to me it just demeans them even further. People point to the class of 92 or the Busby Babes and say that ManU have been a nurturing club, but they've long given up that idea. Now it's buy big and gain a few more followers on Twitter or sell a load more accounts on a dedicated smartphone app. I'm not even sure it's an efficient way to invest in a business. Saints have been doing it the nurturing way for as long as I can remember. Lawrie made major improvements to it, Lowe improved the facilities a fair bit and changed the name to Academy, but the whole philosophy was professionally ramped up from the takeover. Now they're working very smart. This level can be achieved with relatively small sums [I said relatively] and one philosophy that flows throughout the business. I don't know whose idea it was to do things in this particular professional way, be it Liebherr/Cortese, Reed/Cortese, or Cortese, or Reed alone, but it works well because the business doesn't depend on one person. Every key person is just a department head. Replace them with equal or better and you have continuity and perhaps progression. It must be an European way of doing things, because Brits are always looking for a new broom. Therefore, it doesn't matter that United got the wrong Dutchman. It doesn't matter that both are Dutch. All that matters is that Saints may have chosen well from their list of successors to Pochypoo.
I don't agree with De Boer's assessment. I think Gus Hiddink is brilliant: http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/9516319/de-boer-hiddink-is-
He might. If you check his rcord outside of Netherlands, you'll notice he has inherited a few good teams, been a success in the first season (someone else's team?) and then it's fallen apart. Be interesting to see if the galactico style works.
