He got punched for being an arse to the catering lady at Brighton. There’s also the table tennis incident too…
Still a travesty in my book.If we hadn’t been cheated at Wembley he would’ve been lauded by all. AND…he knew how to get the best out of the players he had
The difference was he inherited a very good squad and we had become accustomed to very good football under Koeman and Pochettino. We didn’t realise the best times were behind us, 8th place didn’t seem amazing when we had been fed Cortese’s CL bullshit. If we knew what we know now we would have been clamouring to keep Puel.
Nah. Guy was an absolute plum. Rested key players and ruined our Europa trip. Played boring footy. He was living of previous managers imo and would never have kept that level up
Two articles from The Telegraph and The Guardian, on the Jones situation here.. https://uk.yahoo.com/news/southamptons-nathan-jones-gamble-giant-132432950.html "Ankersen was nuanced in his assessment in Tuesday, stating that he thought it “fair” that Jones now “gets a chance to show what he can do with the new weapons we have” following the January spending of more than £60 million on Mislav Orsic, Carlos Alcaraz, Kamaldeen Sulemana and Paul Onuachu. He also repeatedly pointed out that he would judge Jones according to internal “reference points” such as the quality of the training, the clarity of the plan and his relationship with key players. “I will promise you the ego won’t get in the way with this decision,” said Ankersen. “If we think the right thing is to change the manager we will change the manager. We will make the decisions that we think will maximise the probability of staying in the league. If you keep losing games, you can’t do that forever. At some point you hit the point where it’s enough.”
The performance tomorrow is everything. I fully believe in the notion that there are ways to lose games, you can tell when players are giving their all but just can’t produce the end result. But if the players are visibly downing tools and we lose a comfortable 2/3-0 then he has to go. You can’t lose 4 out of the last 5 then roll over against a team that you’re trying to chase. If there’s no fight tomorrow he simply has to be gone for the best of the entire club. If he can’t get them believing in whatever his style is now then he sure as **** isn’t gonna get it done by the end of the season.
The problem for Puel was that he inherited a fairly good team, yes he got us to the final and 7 th place, but we were closer to relegation than 6th. And when he went to Leicester he inherited a team which won the premiership 3 years before and ultimately got sacked again and disappeared back to France m.
Can’t argue with that really. Big shame we’re past the half way mark tho. Give him too many more games & season will be over.
Don’t disagree with you but they’ll be putting the effort in especially in front of their own fans. Trouble is nowadays in the top leagues, everyone needs to be giving 100% & if just a couple drop few % points everything collapses. I’m very meh today. Can’t say I like NJ but as people have said, if he gets results no one (99.9%) will really care. His PL record is atrocious & I don’t think it’ll get any better today nor for the rest of the month. Still it’s only 8.30 & by 2.30 I’ll be full track, we’re goin to smash em. COYS.
Puel inherited a team without a striker, and had to do without one until Gabbiadini arrived in February. A circumstance that might ring a few bells this season.
Someone has been researching Jones’ claims about being the best in so many areas of the game, when he was at Luton. With the greatest respect, I would suggest that he might have been exaggerating, just a little. Here’s what Jones (right) said: “Statistically, there weren’t many better than me around Europe in terms of aggression, clean sheets, defending the box, balls in the box, xG, all those sort of things. “Pound-for-pound there wasn’t anyone else in the country competing like we did in terms of points-per-pound.” Yes, Jones gave Luton a good run for their money, but many of the stats don’t support his claims. Compared with 177 teams in Europe’s top seven leagues last season, Luton’s 1.28 xG (expected goals) per game was ranked 92nd, 1.23 xG against was 42nd, penalty area entries (29.31 per game) was 56th, duels contested (112.19) was 23rd 0.36 clean sheets per game was 26th.
The interpretation doesn’t work though. People will call a featherweight boxer the best pound for pound, but that doesn’t mean he’ll beat a heavy weight. Think he’s probably saying it relative to the budgets and the size of the club.
How doesn't it work? Luton play against teams on their level so it's a completely relative metric.. He calls himself the best in Europe, equivalent to your feather weight comparison, given they are in one of the weaker top 7 leagues. Yet they are no where near the pound for pound best.. in fact, and to use your analogy, he is an average featherweight. And I think most of us would agree with that assessment.
It has to be remembered that because of the Europa League and a long cup run there was a congested fixture list that had to be managed pragmatically and Puel said that his slow possession style was deliberate to avoid burn out to key players later on in the season (something that Ralph may have experienced) and his football became more expansive after the cup final but the die had been cast in the minds of fans that he was a dull manager and of course his quiet persona didn't help.
