I don't think he'd be interested, but given that he's now a free agent and has experience of the PL, I do find it surprising that they haven't given odds for Pellegrini. And yet, as I've said, they have given odds for Enrique.
Yep, I too think Poch is better than Koeman. But as has been mentioned, both are different managers. Poch gives you more possession and more pressing. But not much pace or width, and no real plan B. Koeman gives you pace and width (and with it counter attacking), and multiple formations. But not a huge amount of possession, and dodgy substitutions. I'd suggest that he also opens more doors, when it comes to transfer targets. Both give a relatively solid foundation at the back.
This is going to be a fairly long post and probably is just regurgitating what others have said, but I want to just get all my thoughts and guestimations out on this and here seems the best place to do it. Koeman was going into his last year and I think he wanted to see if Saints offered massive money in terms of transfer budget and possibly wages. I don't think we did and he said he wasn't going to sign. We didn't want a manager who everyone knew was leaving in a years time so probably would be looking at alternatives to Koeman as soon as he said he wouldn't be signing. I think Koeman was intending to honour his contract here and leave next summer for (hopefully in his mind) a really big job, but because of the boards reaction to him not signing it forced his hand a little. If this was what went on then I don't think either can be blamed really, we will never really know what the offer to Koeman was in terms of budget/wages so it will only be people saying "**** THE BOARD" or "GREEDY **** KOEMAN" and people guessing as to what the offer was. So along come Everton, a traditionally much bigger club, with a new owner who appears to be willing to throw the money around ans a very similar squad in terms of ability who have been badly mismanaged in the last 2 years or so. It is a bit of a sideways move, but to virtually every non Saints fan Everton's ceiling is much higher than ours, we have just had our best season in the PL, Everton have had a poor one. It is a fairly safe move as it would be pretty easy for any decent manager to improve Everton after Martinez with the players there and a fat wad of cash. We have no idea what the new owner is going to be like in terms of his demands, but on the surface of it it is a very attractive move for a manager. Everton have finished in the top 8 of the PL in 8 of the last 10 seasons, they have the majority of the same squad/team that finished 5th last year and broke 70 points, it is pretty obvious to me anyway that they are more established and have a better standing within the game than us. Would Koeman have signed a new deal if we had given him what he wanted? I don't know. This summer is going to be interesting because if we continue to operate at about break even we will most likely fall down the league and be overtaken by the bigger spenders. If we insist on playing youth who maybe promising but not that great right now, we will most likely fall down the league. It is ****ing hard for a player just beginning his career to break into a top half PL side, they really have to be exceptional. Just look at other teams successes in bringing through young players, it doesn't happen too often. We have obviously built a reputation for it, but there most likely won't be a Shaw/Chambers every couple of years. If the board want to operate at break even and continue to nurture youth and bring them through only to sell them in their early 20s, then fine, but don't come out with loads of talk about ambition and CL football when it is pretty much impossible to be a regular at the top end of the league with that strategy. I also don't buy into the whole "it was only 2009 that we went into admin, we can't run the risk of that again". We have to spend more if we want to compete as every other team will be spending more. This is an entirely different beast to the 2009 Saints, a multi million pound global brand, with a turnover of over £100m a year. It would take complete and utter incompetency for us to be back to the state we were in 2009, and I think we are in safe hands in that sense. If we want to be seen as a big club then we have to act like one, we have to start paying players £100k a week if they merit it, we have to be spending £20m+ on a player. Otherwise we will always be seen as a club that the clubs who do do these things can take players from. I personally don't really mind either way which way they want to do it, I don't think anyone could be accused of supporting Saints for glory but if they do intend to continue along as they are then just don't come out with stuff like CL football as it gets peoples hopes up and meltdowns happen like has happened the last 3 summers. Think thats it, well done if you made it to the end of my random thoughts TL: DR Just wanted to get my thoughts out, probably not worth reading
Starting to expand to more bookies now (plus as Beefy has already posted, William Hill have a market too).
Betfair in particular are liking John Hughes. I wonder if that has anything to do with Ross Wilson (I don't know what sort influence, if any, he has behind the scenes) - it's possible that him and Hughes crossed paths at Falkirk as director and manager, but I'm not certain.
Like most people have voted Unai Emery. Won Europa League with Sevilla 3 times in row and got Valencia into the Champions League twice with a shoe string budget and his best players being sold from under him.
I can't see Emery knocking back Everton and then joining us. I've backed AVB (my first choice) and Howe.
Has Emery definitely knocked Everton back? Or is it just rumours? I thought Koeman was the main target the whole time? And if he has we have no idea why he might have done so. He might not have liked: scale of rebuild required, loss of best players, what he saw of the base he has to work with, structure of the club/new owners etc. Perhaps he was also offered less than Koeman was. It seems like they significantly increased their offer to Ronald after the initial rejection. Consider that plus the fact Emery might have been on less than Koeman is on here (due to Spain vs. England). The offer to him might have been relative to his initial salary Impossible to know. I do agree it is very unlikely he will come to us
I have no idea, but we must keep Sammy Lee. I'm convinced he was the mastermind of our successful season. Koeman will be badly found out without him.
Saint magic - you start off on the wrong foot. It is fairly well thought that Koeman was happy with our plans (so we have to assume budgets) and agents and lawyers were sitting down to finalise. I think your very first assumption is off the mark as it looked like everything was in place for him to sign. I think it's nothing to do with our budgets but Koeman having his head turned by a massive offer.
Not sure. Both are very good. They did almost identical jobs at Saints, with three seasons all within a handful of points. One could argue Koeman did it from a harder start with so many players leaving. One could argue Poch made a massive improvement to an existing group of players. Koeman has a plan B and a plan C; Poch only a plan A. Poch's starting style is more exciting. Both dishonourable bastards For me, they have different styles but both pretty similar and I don't think the question can be answered properly across two parallel seasons. Ask me again in 5 seasons time.
What makes you convinced of this? What is the main aspect of his role supposed to be? I don't think Lee is part of Koeman's management team. It is just Ron, Erwin and Jan. So I would assume the people (again, I think on SaintsWeb) fretting that Dave Watson will leave and this will make Fraser want to go are wide of the mark...
Well if it is all about the money then fair enough, can't really blame him. Be interesting to see how Everton react if he gets off to a slow start, I know a few Everton season ticket holders and they all expect top 6 minimum next year.
