Koeman poll

Wasted tenner for Tom then

Everything has worked out.

 

I genuinely decided not to post that... I give Tom a hard enough time as it is.

 

Wish I had bet a tenner with him rather than him giving it to Corals..

 

Happy to lose a tenner.

 

I said sack him if we lost to Watford and West Brom at home which was fair enough at the time. We beat both so I wanted him to stay.

 

And that is why, as my old nan used to say, you'll never see a bookie on a bike.

 

Not so, DTLW. 15.4% said sack him, either immediately or if we lost the next 2 games. You can't include the undecideds in the "sack" group. Why not include them in the "keep" group instead, in which case 84.6% wanted to keep him.

 

Because, as I said, 21.7% of people's first inclination was not to stand by Ronald and hit the 'keep him' button.

The rights and wrongs of that decision are something I haven't got into, because we're all happy and jolly right now and I can't be bothered with kicking off a row. But the facts are: 78.3% said to keep Ronald in that moment and the remainder did not select that option.

I'm not trying to smear anyone, I was just expressing my surprise because I thought it was (even) more of a landslide for 'keep him'.

 

I don't think we should reimagine history. At this point we were poor and, even in victory, had been pretty dour to watch. Thankfully we improved massively.

 

We have to remember though we were having a very torrid time when this survey was brought into the fray. We did go through a period when whatever Ron seemed to try just didn't work. So it is a little understandable that a percentage of fans seem to doubt him. More of a surprise to me though was how small the percentage of doubters it actually was. Ironic perhaps that this survey seemed to spur Saints in to better times as we seemed to pick up almost straight away. Hey perhaps we should do a weekly survey next year.........

 

I agree...it wasn't just the results...I was disappointed with the performances, especially when you bear in mind what attractive football we had got used to over recent years. We were still creating chances but the finishing was poor. Lessons were no doubt learnt and we are now back on track. I certainly didn't think we had reached the point of sacking Ronald.

 

This was our position when the poll was conducted....13th place, and 24 pts from 20 games...GD of just +2 and we had just lost 6 out of 8* and only drawn at home to Villa.
I think that an approval rating of 78% was remarkable considering all things and nearly up to Nigel Adkins ratings in similar polls.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35180064

So we gained 39 points in just 18 matches, better than 2 points a game and ended up with a GD of +18.

Interesting to note that the upturn in form started exactly when Fraser returned to the first team and also when FLT started his super positive, happy clappy match threads!
PS, I should also credit Ron for changing to 3 CBs to shore up the leaky defence at that time, he was proactive in turning it around himself.

* 8 out of 10 if you include the Liverpool debacle in the C1C and Palace in the FA Cup.

 

I think it was largely down to the super-positivity on here. Frazer's return was merely coincidental.

 

Ron had tried 3 at the back before, but with Yoshida as the 3rd CB. The master-stroke was using Ryan as 3rd CB with Targett as wingback. This coincided with Fraser's return IIRC. Interestingly, we haven't played 3-5-2 for a few games now, I seem to remember we started 3-5-2 against somebody and then someone got hurt, so we reverted to 4-4-2, or 4-2-3-1, and that's been the formation ever since. Was it all about confidence do you think?

 

Went with don't know then. Would go with don't know now. I am not a decisive person.

 

Are You sure about that?

 

Not sure. I'll have to have a think about it.

 

It was all about the old adage of building from the defence. We needed to stop shipping goals first and foremost before working on the other issues. That formation change effectively calmed us down at the back, the the rest started falling back into place until we could move back to our preferred formation. Bit of a masterstroke really.

 

Are you sure you know what it is you're going to have a think about?

 

Football is usually more about confidence than anything else.