Premier League Thread 2015-16

However, he's not top of the league, he's not top of the form guide, he's not Manager of the Month. He's also got a great hand from Paul Mitchell half-inching Saints' targets, and the core of the world's best international team populating his defence and midfield.

But he has undoubtedly got them playing, like no one before could, and I imagine once you've got a team purring like that - as only them and Leicester currently do, in terms of sheer and utter belief and over-confidence - your job becomes pretty easy.

Can't believe you forgot Steve McClaren!

 

Me too. Weirdly, I think it's only you and me on here that think this. Half the board love them these days!

 

Does he think anyone's going to believe the last part of that? Or any part for that matter.

 

Can't believe we rolled over for Spurs like we did. Talk about bad timing in the fixture schedule. We were rock bottom in the form guide and about the softest team they could play at that point. Was virtually a week off for them. A full strength Saints side might have got a draw or pipped a win, and given Arsenal and Leicester some more space at the top.

 

That's just the old Saints blueprint they nicked wholesale, though, from our talent spotter to our manager. They just decided to eventually change direction from the bloated overpaid model of yore, and chose us to model it on. That's what makes them so deplorable! Its not admirable, and they got lucky as **** with Harry Kane.

 

I don't love Spurs by any stretch, but I have a huge amount of admiration for Poch. Never hidden that.

 

And that's a bad thing when he's at Spurs??

 

No, that's the Pochettino blueprint.

I understand it's tough for some people here to give him credit after the way he left (although I never understood quite the anger there - given the circumstances it was very understandable), but that's his blueprint.

 

That's an unbelievable statement!

 

You don't read posts properly then!

 

We'll I believe the part that said they were **** against Liverpool

 

Mmmm ... Are you saying our blue print was different to that before he was with us? I don't think so. I rate him like you do, but that was our blue print. May have been his too, but I don't know that as I didn't know much about him before.

 

You could have said that about Spurs too.

 

Duplicate!

 

Yes it's ours too, that's why the marriage, brief though it was, worked. But we didn't give him that blueprint, it was there already.

I'm not trying to covert people to some Poch based cause, of course, it's all just opinions coupled with unsubtantiated dislikes and pantomime - that's football for you! Just saying that yeah, I'm a convert when it comes to him. I don't bear him any ill will and I think he's a brilliant manager. If other people don't like him, I totally get that too (though you can't deny his ability really).

I do think he's taken that blueprint on further with Spurs than we have really at Saints with Ron.

 

We were populating our team with homegrown players, Academy prospects, and had Paul Mitchell as our Head of Talent before Pochettino came in. That was at Cortese's insistence, and was an acknowledged model in the public eye as soon as we hit the PL. If Poch was got in because he supported the same, as well as adding the high press etc., doesn't change the fact that Spurs saw something they liked, nicked it, and snatched two of the key players at that point. As far as I remember, Saints really were the only top flight team promoting this model at that point, and got a lot of plaudits for it. We lost Poch and went down a different route, and Spurs now get the plaudits. Spurs have a bigger and better platform on which to impose that style, but it deprived us of progressing with the same.

Not, of course, that I care now, given that I love Koeman. But the way people go on about Spurs is as i they built this concept from grassroots.

 

I heard you the first time

 

Am sure a huge host of PL referees will probably fall for it.

 

Sure, I hear you on that. But fair play to them. As I said just now, they've taken that blueprint on further than we've done currently and should be applauded for that. The main driving force behind that I'd suggest is Poch.