That's true. I believe Cortese based the post-2009 Academy model on Barcelona's. There is a weakness in our model which might seem a little obvious. For Barcelona, players come from the Academy and either make it to the first team [great.!] or don't quite get there [aww, shame], and hence the are sold on. Otherwise, they pretty much stay. For Saints, there is a problem. By and large, players that make the grade and get into the first team want to leave eventually, some far too quickly considering all the effort put into them. Only a few seem happy enough, and they are only really happy because they aren't being pursued by richer, more successful clubs. There is nothing better for them. The problem with pursuing your Barca model academy is that if you intend to keep these players you must start to become a top club. Otherwise there is little higher point in the whole affair. Football is a sport first and a business on the back of that. Not the other way around. Hence, in order for the Academy model to work properly, Southampton FC must start to win things. Coming 5th, 6th or whatever minor placing isn't really good enough. And you can't do it just once either. It's got to become a fairly consistent thing. That's when the model really works. Funnily enough, once the club starts to win things consistently, they can have the occasional 5th or 6th without the sky falling in.
I think this season will be a bit transitional. I don't think we will be higher or as high as last season. However, I'm not going to take this as an inevitable slide to oblivion....I think we've got passed that. I want to see us play entertaining football, have some good results in the Europa and perhaps in another cup, and finish top 10 (perhaps 7/8th). Then I hope we take what is learnt from Puel's first season, buy players to fill any determined gaps, and do better the season after. I understand that some people may be concerned....I certainly want to see another striker brought in...but some of the more hysterical fans (not on here) seem to think that there is a straight choice between top 4 and relegation. And they also seem to think the board don't care....of course they care, but bigger clubs than us have poorer seasons....ask Chelsea fans.
That reminds me of the education minister who said that he wanted every school child to be above average...
Well we had an abject half of last season and an amazing run-in. I hope we play more exciting football than in the middle of last season and I expect us to do OK, however I mean that I do not think that we will improve our position this year as we would have to finish 5th and last season a lot of the 'big' clubs were really poor. I think last season our squad was worse than in the previous year but we got more out of our side than most teams did. If we did finish higher again this year, it would be arguably the biggest achievement yet!
I can't see any reason for pessimism, we will finish in the top ten again and that will be a good achievement for a club of our size and resources (how many similar sized and even larger clubs would give anything to be in our shoes?). We might even surprise a few pundits and "do a Leicester", we have rooted out the disloyal goldiggers and have a good solid core of committed and talented players on long contracts which, as Shane Long says, "feels like a family".
Top 10 in the league, reach the Europa knockout stages, and quarter final onwards in one of the domestic cups and Id say that would be a successful season given the changes over the summer.
Winning the trophy formerly known as the Johnstone's Paint for example? IMO PL academies should be nowhere near this competition. I fully expect those horrible little beasties from SW London to win it. I am sure their hordes of glory hunters will boast very loudly if it happens.
8th and win the Europa league. Therefore qualifying for the champions league only for all our players to get poached again next summer
we are guaranteed 6 games of Euro football arent we as we are in the group / mini league stage already? cant wait. Its always been an ambition to go to saints away game in europe !
Where did that hopeless attempt at Wummery go? Seems to have got quiet after being told our last three seasons finishing positions.
Stats that actually need no interpretation - I guess even he couldn't really carry on trying to wind us up. We do that enough to ourselves already so he was pretty redundant to be fair
please log in to view this image Everton above us. Must be all those new world class signings.......... To be fair to him, he says if they lose Stones and Lukaku they will be 12th.
Tbh, I'm slightly staggered he put us that high. What I mean is I never consider Merson a sensible and logical thinker. He usually has some sort of agenda, whatever announcement he makes. But I can see how he has come to that conclusion. Which actually bothers me somewhat.
