Match Day Thread Saturday 22nd February 2025, St Mary's Stadium, Southampton v Brighton, 3pm

I was really trying to simplify it with player sales and transfers in. Naturally they'll be other expenses but I didn't include them in the same way I didn't include other revenue streams such as ticket sales/tv rights/club shop.

The reason I bought this up is the only thing those in the Pro-SR camp have is this idea that SR/Dragan have invested a **** tonne as if that's a check in the positive box. It looks to me (and the points per game definitely back this up) like they haven't really invested that much at all.

Again, this could all be guess work because football finances seem pretty bloody complicated, and none of us will be privvy to the real figures

 

Yep, this is pretty much all I'm clinging on to. That and my opinion that most of the damage to this club was done in the years before Solak brought it. Year after year of little to no investment in the squad. Senior players jumping ship at every opportunity. The writing was on the wall as far as I'm concerned.

Also, he hasn't been the one making the footballing decisions thus far, so I don't really get the animosity towards him. Ankersen and Kraft, yes, go nuts.

 

Where did he come from that we are considered a step up?

The only thing SR have got right is appointing Director of Football. Shields was highly thought of enough to be poached by one of the best clubs in the country after 3 months or whatever it was in the job. Wilcox achieved what he set out to do in his one year and then left to go to Man Utd. Their issue has been not replacing the football guy with a football guy quick enough.

Hopefully Spors turns out good and gets poached after winning the Championship

 

777 Group. He's got a more wide ranging role with us, I guess. I want Spors to be a success next year, but moreover to be impactful the following summer (hoping we go up) as that's going to be the critical one. If he helps set us up as a competitive PL team, he'll get poached, but so be it. I'd take that.

 

It’s not necessarily how much we spent but the waste of who we signed. I would have preferred fewer incomings but better quality.
There management recruitment has been so bad

 

You are re-writing history.

I’ve seen a few people do this.

We were a premier league club when they took over. A good managerial appointment and signing 1 or 2 players and we would have survived.

To suggest that the decline was terminal before they arrived is a nonsense. Everything bad has happened because of their decisions.

 

This is nonsense. Gao had put no money into the club whatsoever in the 5 years he owned the club.

 

The bad decisions go all the way back to the end of the Koeman era. I could write a long, long, long list of terrible signings we made. And some of the manager recruitments were awful too.

Yes, SR hired a crap manager to replace Ralph, but the fact that this was all it took for us to suddenly finish bottom of the league, goes to show that over the years the squad was getting worse and worse.

If you look at the squad when Gao joined, compared to when he left, it was much worse.

Can't believe you've forgotten how bad we were under Ralph towards the end. It was horrible.

 

Shhhh you can’t post sensible stuff like that.

 

There’s many who have blanked out that part of Ralph’s reign. We had months of results in decline and this board was getting very heated about ‘how much longer?’ comments and more. It was a shame, I quite liked him but ………

 

Ralph should have gone in the Summer imo and I'll always believe that. That was probably SR's first big mistake.

He never recovered from that 4-0 defeat at Villa. Wonder what his record was from then to his final game v Newcastle.

 

Chelsea Fred required.

 

Do we have to?

I was joking about it earlier in the season but maybe we need a single fred for the last 12 games.

 

Don’t go there! It’s enough getting through this season!

 

We were bad and he had to go.

But we were by no means cut adrift. We were winning the odd game.

Like I said, a sensible manager and some good signings and we would never have been relegated and could have kicked on.

Gao spent **** all, but his decision making was light years ahead of the Circus we have now

 

Semmens decision making in fairness.

Agree with you that a clever managerial appointment at that stage we may just have been able to survive. Unfortunately we were peak Rasmus at that point (who I blame for the mess far, far, far more than Solak) and in his infinite wisdom he chose NJ.

We also spent a bunch of money on players to try and paper over how bad that decision was too.

 

Yes. This. Koeman for Puel was the sliding doors moment for this club and we’ve been on a heavy downward trajectory ever since. The ONLY reason we stayed in the PL as long as we did was because of Hassenhutl pulling off miracles with absolutely **** all and we basically destroyed the man.

We’ve been **** ever since. Terrible across the board and replaced quality with cheapness in every department possible.

We were absolutely torn to shreds by businessmen who only saw our players as profit as opposed to building a club and then they all ****ed off when there was nothing good left to sell. I used to see the Poch/Koeman era as the golden era but now I see it as vultures that sold anything good at the first whiff of profit.

We are not a football club, we are a business and that has not changed under SR. There is literally zero ****ing point of getting optimistic about the future of our club because anything good will get offloaded.

 

Just been reading the Brighton form and interesting to see a fair few of them say they prefer the new away end to the old.

I think they're looking to do a similar thing with moving the away end too.