I don't think that there is any push from the fans or the press to sack Puel. Papers print stories to sell papers and the sack race is a good standby if there is no actual story of note. As for this board, I have seen questions about Puel's tactics and selections but I can sense no groundswell of opinion against him, maybe because some remember having 10 managers in as many years and that not ending so well. As for speculating, almost wishing that season ticket sales drop in order to justify the Puel Out worldview, every time we sell a player we get the same empty threat of non- renewal. And back they all come, once the hissy-fit is over. Purl may or may not succeed but it's far too early to call.
I think Claude is the real deal. He came into a team without much of a strike force, straight into a packed fixture list. He's suffered a serious handicap in the absence for a chunk of the season of a key defender along with the loss of another key defender whose head seems to have been elsewhere for the season. Add in the fact that he's new into what's widely regarded as the toughest league in the world. All that considered, he's done extremely well. In spite of all those factors we look set for 9th or 10th (better than most predicted in the finishing positions competition at the season start). He's taken us to Wembley. I can't imagine what we might do if he gets a settled team, a couple of new long-term signings and a preseason under his belt. I disagree with you Channonfodder; I do think there's a groundswell of opinion agin him. A look at the Echo will show very few people putting their heads above the parapet to defend him and there was a great deal of booing yesterday. I happen to think they are wrong and I'm hoping that our board have much more patience than the fans - on the basis of past performance I think they do. So here's my Mystic Meg bit (and feel free to dig this up when I'm proven abjectly wrong). I suspect that in five or six years we'll look back and wonder why there was ever any doubt about him. Vin
Ian, not wanting him to be manager next season is calling for his head. A quick analysis of Claude's managerial career and I think it shows that he is a great coach of players as opposed to a great tactical manager and I think that fits best with what we've seen. It's interesting to note that his last two jobs, Lille & Nice, both teams went on to have successful seasons after his departure. Meaning he is leaving clubs in healthy positions
Do you know I'm not so sure it is just manager/tactics or the disappointment of not winning against a Side we thought we should win against . There is a heck of a lot going on at the moment including the prospect of new owners. All of which is unsettling.......Opinions are bound to vary.......good thing ......bad thing......right thing .......wrong thing and so on. It is not surprising the variation of opinion. The one thing is certain and that is we know sod all and can only speculate...
To some extent it doesn't matter who the manager is unless we have a strong summer. Last summer was a disaster followed up by a fiasco in January. Given all that puel hasn't done too badly. Saints need to get it right this summer. Enough gloating about black boxes and a little more focus on actually delivering please. Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk
Well, a lot of people said we had to give Puel until Christmas, but now they are saying a whole season is not enough. The fact is we are allowed to judge and come to judgements of our own. If people who pay. To watch matches don't like the entertainment in offer, they are fully allowed to voice that. Believe it or not, football is not a care in the community outreach scheme designed to keep footballers out of harm's way. That said, I have no idea whether Puel is a fantastic manager or not. The board ****ed up with signings last summer and we paid for it all year. Oh, wait, we aren't allowed to say that, right? (Puel did make the comcial assertion he had enough strikers, though). I would give him more time, but if we have another summer like the last one... we might as well just lie back and enjoy getting shafted.
Onionman I agree with you about the Echo. The coverage rarely gets behind Puel and the comments section is usually 9/10th against what has been offered this season. The article that was posted on the Daily Echo website did prompt some very good and lucid reasoning as to why many fans have set against Puel. The arguments presented in the "comments" section are not idiotic rants but well constructed observations about CP's performance. The most hostile criticism , in my opinion, comes from Radio Solent where I feel that Dave Merrington has found it really difficult to hide his contempt . I am not sure I have heard him make one positive assessment about his performance which, on balance, has not been a total disaster. To his credit, I think Puel has brought the best out of JWP this season and the appearance of other players from the academy is to his credit. Furthermore, he has resurrected Stephen's Saints career and it is pretty clear that he is one player who does have a future at the club when previously he looked to have made no progress. I cannot recall Merrington giving Claude Puel any credit for this although I may be mistaken as I do not listen to all the pre-match build up and sometimes feel I have to turn the radio off when DM is on. Other pundits such as Alan Shearer have also expressed an opinion that Saints have not been so good this season. The suggestion that Puel is some sort of "Son of Wenger" is an exaggeration. The main problems most supporters have with CP is the style of football and lack of goals. Such more savvy supporters have questioned Puel's technical nous although the spectacular lack of success with bringing on substitutions is pretty clear cut. The initial home matches revealed a style so alien to the previous managers that it meant he needed results to justify the changes. Unfortunately we were winless for the best part of a month and I feel that a good proportion of fans have not got on board with Puel. I totally agree that he has been unfortunate and he has been exceptionally unlucky. However, I think that the problem for people who don't appreciate his style of football, the games where he has demonstrated that he knows exactly what he is doing have been few and far between. It is a matter of weighing up the risk of making a clean sweep and change the manager in June or persisting with Puel and accepting that his "vision" will yield success in the forthcoming season especially if allowed to strengthen the squad. In my way of seeing things, the latter is perhaps more of a risk than the former. Regarding Redmond, from recollection, Puel was playing him in the centre at the beginning of the season whereas he is much better on the flanks. There was a brilliant interview in one of the broadsheets one Saturday morning where Redmond was interviewed and his desire to play for England was detailed. His call up was merited against his form in Jan and Feb but I am not convinced that he has played so well recently. He was terrific at Wembley and this capped a number of distinguished performances where his true potential was obvious. Despite Qwerty's own opinion, I still think he was our best signing last summer,
For the record spacedsaint and bill hill are two different people despite writing the same thing at the same time. Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk
That is a brilliant comment about coaching and technical ability. I would concur with this assessment although I wonder if the issues with Fonte and now Tadic owe anything to his management skills ? Seem to recall that Koeman had similar issues with players including, I believe, Tadic. I wasn't aware of the performance of Lille and Nice after his departure although I was aware that the Lyon fans turned against him through conversations with their supporters. I was told that he was a perfect fit for Saints because of hos record with provincial sides and his record with academy players. The latter has been borne out so far at Southampton proving that Koeman was wrong in this respect at least. As I alluded last night, you would probably put Lille and Nice on a par with decent Championship teams and certainly Southampton are the highest profile appointment Puel has had after Lyon.
I did a breakdown of it when we hired him, and it's really hard to draw any conclusions from his past work at all. Sometimes the team got much better when he arrived; sometimes it declined substantially. Sometimes it then got much worse the next season; sometimes they rocketed up the table. Sometimes results improved when he left; sometimes they fell. On average, he made teams about as good as they were previous, and his successor made them about as good as Puel did, IIRC. And after a year here I have no idea how much impact he's had here, because it coincided with a truly miserable couple windows for our board. I wouldn't object to moving on if a managerial target that we regard highly was available. But I also wouldn't fire him just because.
I think Puel has earned the right to continue, and to bring in his own players to fit the style of football he wants to play. Yes we've seen some terrible performances, but we have also seen some absolutely blinding performances as well. What we haven't seen is consistency, and given the player rotation in the first half of the season, and the injuries to Chaz and Virgil, in particular, should we really be surprised? I suggested, several weeks ago, that should we be chasing a goal, then I would like to see Tadic and Boufal on the pitch together, just because they are both capable of changing a game. What I don't want to see is the pair of them starting together, because they create an imbalance in the midfield, as typified by our play against Hull, where Hull always seemed to have a spare body in the middle and neither seemed to link well with the deep midfielders. At least with a third specialist midfielder, we hold a better shape. He needs to be backed, in the transfer market, so he can put out his own team, within the framework of the squad he inherited.
The players have to take their share of the blame for Saturday's horror show. It wasn't Claude's fault that professional footballers looked like they couldn't be bothered and I don't mean the current whipping boy Boufal either. Some of the more established players showed no appetite from the off and if anybody deserved to be booed at the end it was them. How anyone can call for the head of a manager who has overseen the club's first major cup final for 14 years (in his first season) is beyond me.
Ian, you still refused to answer the point posed by Onionman. I'll lay it out simply: Does Claude get any credit for working with Redmond this season and helping him get an England cap? You don't have to answer yes or no, but if you don't, only a few words more would be good
FLT I think Claude does deserve some credit but I find it difficult to get the idea out of my head that Koeman would have made him even better. I think under Ronald he would not have been so inconsistent but, as I have said, credit is due to Puel for working with the academy and younger players. This is the one thing he has done really well with this season and deserves credit for. He has proved Koeman wrong. It is odd how some people perceive Redmond as he does have a lot of detractors. I think he is no match for Mane but he is unquestionably a very good player and the best we bought last summer, The two oddities with youth this season have been Harrison Reed and P-E Hojbjorg. Reed always seemed a tiger-ish and aggressive player who looked destined for great things a few seasons back, I would have thought he would have done well this season but he had been poor in his few, brief appearances. Hjobjord looked the better of the summer acquisitions in the autumn yet he has been increasingly left out of the squad and not too consistent when he has played.. Maybe one for next season? The situation with Tadic and Fonte is suggestive that he isn't so great with more senior players which bears out what I was told about his record at Lyon where the "star" players did not respect him. I am guessing that the likes of Pochettino and Koeman would have commanded the respect of the senior players as they had achieved so much during their playing careers.
Bizarrely you address your response to me yet you haven't bothered to address the single question I asked you. Here it is so you don't need to look it up: "I'm interested how you can write this. You talk about how much sharper [Redmond] looks and then use it as a way to beat Puel over the head (by implying he's not been as well coached as he might have been by someone else). What basis do you have for the accusation hidden within your question?" Go on, answer it. It's called "debate". Vin
Ah, OK, you seem to have answered it. It's a feeling about a manager who left us. In that case you are once again deciding that Puel is no good then scrabbling around to invent evidence to support your prejudged conclusion. It's a bit tedious, IMO. I bet it really, really hurt you to type "Claude does deserve some credit". Vin
Ps, Ian - do you think Fonte had a problem with Puel or do you think he strutted back from the Euros a Champion and an attitude to fit? I think the latter and no matter who was the boss, he wanted out for something bigger.
