Pompey ticket criteria is out https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/portsmouth-h-ticket-information No chance of me going due to home politics
Interesting interview with Bertrand here. 1h 5m plus for Saints gossip; names Koeman as his best manager, Pellegrino as the worst nd goes into great detail on his bust-up with Ralph (who he still respects and likes)
Really interesting, thanks for sticking on here! Mirrors with what an ex-Saints player I know told me about Ralph too
Well, at least now we know why…! Not surprised it was because Bertrand’s mouth wound Ralph up mind you, he was always one of the more confident and opinionated players
Only about 300 tickets left for Wrexham. They've still not got theirs on sale yet though which is beyond odd.
Ah man it’s so good to hear it out in the open from a player. Ralph really was the reason this club went to sh*t. Yes, SR made some terrible mistakes, but Ralph did so much damage that I believe it was practically unfixable by the time he went. I bet all those seniors who left during his time did so for the same reason as Bertrand. Good to hear Koeman getting praise too.
Think it was a combo of things. Some out of our control and the main factor being Gao and not having any real investment at a time when lots of clubs who we were similar to/better than were getting invested in (Newcastle and Villa). Meant we stood still and eventually went back wards
Nah I’ve heard too many excuses for Ralph. Here you have it straight from one of the players. The guy was a total prick. Didn’t want to work with senior players. It’s irrelevant what was happening at Villa and Newcastle.
Im not making excuses for him, just saying it was clearly a combo of things that led to where we are today. And of course it’s relevant, we were spending next to nothing in comparison to most clubs in the PL, and incomings were being funded by outgoings. Impossible to consistently do well/compete in the premier league whoever was in charge. Whatever your/the players opinions on Hassenhuttl was ultimately he probably kept us up longer than he should so in the main did a decent job. Might be an utter **** behind the scenes but I don’t really care about that
I’ve always said his first two years were fantastic, but his last two years were dreadful. So overall, yeah, he did alright. And considering the mess we were in before he arrived, he’ll always deserve gratitude for turning things round. However he totally undid all the good work by the end. All things considered we basically just put off relegation for a few years. There were other clubs also going downhill around then. And Villa/Newcastle were only spending big right at the end of Ralph’s time. The point is, if you don’t have much to spend, then the prerogative is to hang on to the players that you already have. But under Ralph none of them wanted to stay.
I liked Ralph and thought he did a good job initially but I do think the job he did has been overstated somewhat and people conflate early Ralph and late Ralph too much. You say he kept us up longer than he should but I'm not sure that's true. In his early years there were always worse squads than ours so I don't think he particularly overachieved as such. The 11th place finish was good but was heavily related to COVID imo and also not all that surprising when you have a striker who bangs in 20 goals. As I've said many times that's the only full season of his where we didn't collapse at the end and there was an enforced 3/4 month break which says it all. Interesting to hear Bertrand talk about how he massively changed his style towards the end. It was so obvious to all of us watching and clearly wasn't working either. Not sacking him summer it 2022 was SR's first huge mistake imo.
Yeah possibly agree about the squad strength bit but we’d struggled a couple of times before he came in. Even Mark ****ing Hughes kept us up which is probably an indicator that that team shouldn’t have been near the bottom of the league. Completely agree about sacking him prior to the first summer window of SR reign, doubt it would’ve been very popular at the time so can’t really blame them for not doing it. But it is those decisions which make owners standout when they get them right. Who knows what may have been if we had got a new manager in then
If you can see that his first 2 years were fantastic, but his final 2 were dreadful, how do you come to the conclusion that him "being a prick" was the problem? Not that I agree that he was a prick, but if he was then he would have been since the start. In fact, Bertrand actually said he was worse at the start. It makes more sense to me to see that the reason results started well and then declined over time was because a continued investment of f*ck all eventually catches up to you as your squad gets worse and worse with every year that passes.
It can obviously take time to rub people up the wrong way. When he came to the club he was probably just the type of personality we needed. But over time things change, and clearly his man-management skills were atrocious. We've heard this now from quite a few players during his time, and I (and others on here), have heard it from other sources connected to the club too. The players really, really did not like Ralph. That's not just me making it up. I don't know how it was at the start, but definitely this is how it was at the end. Now while the tactics are working and the results are positive, then I'm sure the playing staff are relatively okay with it. But when results turn, the tactics stop working, and the manager starts throwing you under the bus, then I can see why players didn't want to play for him. Yes, there was a lack of investment, we all know that. But we still lost too many players we should have held on to, and we signed too many young players to replace them who didn't have what it takes.
