My view on Poch also shifted when he came to SKD's testimonial....shows there is no real animosity involved.
It id simple Branfoot, took an exciting team over and turned them to clogger's and started the annual relegation battles, ant then there was Matt - nuff said
At least koeman and poch moved the club forward. Bitter when they left, just like hoddle. Redknapp and branfoot by far the worst and hated.
Don't hate any of them but the one I dislike the most is Redknapp. Very overrated, never looked like he believed we would stay up and don't see how he could make the players believe him because I didn't. Dodgy too. I am surprised that I have stopped disliking Poch since I saw the photo of him at Kelvin's testimonial. LD is still on my hit list.
Can't be doing with hating ex-mangers. Some were poor (I would include Souness and perhaps "Gluggy" in that group) and some were good and moved to bigger clubs for more money and I can't argue with that really. No regrets and I wouldn't change a thing. These last few years have been a blast.
3. Whispering Dave Edit: not for most hated, but for reasons to not like Souness as he replaced him and then ultimately cost him his career at Saints. I don't like it when a backroom person gets the top job and then gets booted out for good when it goes wrong. Dave Merrington, Stuart Gray and Steve Wiey are examples of excellent coaches who suddenly disappeared from our set ups just because they weren't right for the top job. Gray had been here 10 years and Merrington about 98 years. He'd done an excellent job with the youth set-up (apart from one very sick coach he employed).
Most disliked for different reasons that will stick: Redknapp and Pardew - I really have never liked either, before or after Saints. Poch I just didn't like how he left and the fact he left when I thought he could really drive us forward. He also chose the dispicable Spuds. I'll probably feel the same about the lying Dutchman soon too - right now I wish all footballing ills and defeats on him. Branfoot was at a time when I couldn't see many games because I was playing myself then, so although I was aware of how poor things were going, it was hard to get wrapped up in it. I missed a lot of those dark years. Souness was a dick, came to us as a dick and left as a dick. Steve Williams beating him all ends up at The Dell is still my favourite memory about Souness.
Redknapp was a pantomime villain. I think his heart was never in it even though it was funny to nick him from Portsmouth at the time. It is quite interesting how his stock has fallen but I think that football is better without managers like him who , rightly or wrongly give the game a bad name. However much he may have been disliked, I don't think anyone was quite as justly vilified as Branfoot. He seems hell-bent on playing a negative, long-ball of football and we weren't very good at it. His signings were always trumpeted but they always palled in comparison with the bunch of players who jumped ship for Blackburn Rovers. I can remember him saying how Steve Woods would be a "fans favourite" but no one believed him once he had signed Terry Hurlock - probably the most uncultured footballer ever to pull on a Saints jersey. My piano teacher used to live behind the Dell ( he was actually a good friend of Ted Bates who I saw around his house on one occasion before a lesson) and his next door neighbour had a toddler at the time amongst whose first words were "Branfoot Out!" Easily the worst manager in Saints history and nearly catastrophic at the point of the creation of the Premier League which would have spelt the end for any aspiration of a new stadium. Dull football, no wins and a stream of has-beens and journeymen such as Perry Groves, Kerry Dixon and the pensioner from Coventry whose name escapes me. A cultural desert of football conjured up by a manager who was oblivious to the fans. I believe that Branfoot is now busking for spare change outside of Wilkinsons in Sunderland , but I may be wrong.
Dislike Redknapp but can't dislike him more than Branfoot. Also, didn't he have to deal with Woodward being hired by the club while he was there? Can't have been easy.
