Biggest mistake in hindsight was sacking Puel. Does anyone seriously think we would have been relegated under him? And it would have given us longer to line up a suitable replacement.
Unlikely that we would have been I would think. I still can't quite bring myself to believe he was the right man for this club, though we managed to get it a lot 'wronger'.
After the Spurs Chelsea game on Sky they had their pundits discussing who would go down as Stoke had played earlier on Super Sunday. We weren't even mentioned. Henry, Redknapp and Defoe said West Brom and Stoke were probably down then chatted how they feared for Huddersfield, Palace would be alright and Swansea are also in the mix.
Very easy for fans/pundits to say that sacking Puel was wrong. But at the time the board would have had to make a very controversial choice to stick with him against the apparent will of the fanbase (in fact it was probably the will of the noisy minority). Upon appointing Pellegrino, many commentators and journalists were impressed by the appointment last summer, but I do think we could ALL see where it was going in November-ish so that's my main criticism, that it took another 5 months for anything ot happen to try and change it. As for Hughes - again easy to criticise if you're not a fan but realistically who else was there?
Sacking Puel and then not bringing in a speedy winger or target man in Jan were the biggest mistakes for me.
Exactly. If I cut my leg badly, and the nearest hospital I could get to wasn't until May, and all I had was a huge plaster in my pocket, I'd use it to hope that my leg doesn't fall off before I can get to hospital and fix it properly. Edit. The problem is we cut our leg back in November.
Outside fans and pundits just look at league position and the fact we got to a cup final and then say "what do they expect?". Which, whilst they have a point, is only a fraction of the story with Puel. The biggest mistake for me was not backing Puel in his time with us and letting him bring in players who suited his style. But looking back over the last few years there have been many more mistakes than positives from the board, that is all with hindsight but these guys are in very senior positions where they live or die by their decisions and they have got them wrong.
It was obvious after we lost to Wolves, back in what, October(!?!) that Pellegrino was a complete fraud. Mind-boggling that we kept him on. In my opinion, it is time for a change at management/board level. Anyone that pays 20mil for Carillo can’t be trusted
The problem goes back further than Puel. The board became over-confident after the Pochettino and Koeman appointments, as well as a couple of good windows for player recruitment. They seemed to think it would be easy to continue being successful in these departments. They even became arrogant, thinking 'we won't be held to ransom' etc. The turning point was letting Mane go without even putting up a fight. You can't build up a good team spirit and passion for the badge, if you allow yourselves to be given a 'stepping stone' label. We let way too many important people leave the club too easily. Starting with Poch.
The beginning of our problems stems from not replacing Mane and Pelle adequately, and then not replacing Ron correctly.
Agree with the getting arrogant about recruitment bit (although I'm not sure it was getting arrogant, more that the genius recruiter was Paul Mitchell who left). I disagree with the put up more of a fight because I can't really see any other option for the club. We either sign the run of the mill PL players or top team cast offs (like West Ham/Stoke do) who the top teams don't want and except mid table nothingness where eventually we go down or sign players who have the potential for the very top. What exactly could we have done to keep the guys who left? If we flat out refused then we most likely would have a VVD situation, and he had far longer on his deal than anyone else we sold and still threw his toys out of the pram. A lot of the players only had a year or 2 left on the contract so we were in a very weak position when it came to keeping them if the wanted out.
It really is comical mismanagement. We have gone from having a young, passionate team fighting for Europe with one of the best managers around, to a team of mercenaries managed by a fraud. In two years.
Although the role of the board, in our demise, most definitely needs to be questioned, just as many questions need to be asked of the players. The same squad who capitulated against Leicester, Spurs (at Wembley), Newcastle and West Ham, matched Man Utd in two games, being unlucky to lose 1-0 at SMS, drew 1-1 at SMS with both Spurs and Arsenal and came very close to taking a point from Man City, at the Etihad. It’s easy to poor scorn and blame onto MP2 (quite rightly in some/most cases), but the same squad, give or take, that finished 8th last season, could and should have done better.
this all started when Cortese left he was a proper boss - not like these useless twats that the club employ now Les and Raplh couldnt organise a piss up in a brewery Kruger is like Clive Woodward situation And Les is a complete ****ing muppet
Ah, spoken like a true "muppet" yourself it seems. Please can you explain why, under Cortese's watch the team (with a relative to their division) had a huge budget but FAILED to win Div. 1 Title, FAILED to win the Championship Title and just managed to win the 'paint pot' trophy at the 2nd attempt? Forgetting the huge debt he ran up when unsupervised, did he get the club into Europe, to a major cup final? He wasn't all bad; but take off the rosy specs and checkout you selective memory a little bit more closely. After he walked (!) SAINTS improved year on year and, yes, it's gloomy now but realism says that we have been (happily) punching above our weight for a few seasons..... and will do again.
Really poor grammar by Charlie, with his use of a double negative. He wouldn't last 5 minutes on here!!
Save the post mortem till May. This season has been a wreck, and we are going down. We have spunked a record fee on Ali Dia's second cousin, & appointed a perennial failure to conduct the last piece of our season. So, we all going to cry about it for the coming months? Screw that, we have a rare semi final to take part in, then we can spend the summer watching Russian people beating up football fans & try and fathom just who the hell has bought us, and what he actually wants. This WILL bring him out of hiding. uts
