Southampton . . By Clive Whittingham

Winning promotions, not popularity contests - opposition focus
Thu 28th Feb 2013 23:33 by Clive Whittingham
Southampton’s meteoric rise back up through the leagues has been overseen by executive chairman Nicola Cortese – a man not afraid to make an unpopular decision but whose results speak for themselves.

Overview
Southampton’s executive chairman Nicola Cortese is certainly not in football to make friends.

The Italian banker originally masterminded a takeover of the cash strapped club in 2009 by the Swiss Liebherr family and oversaw the 2009/10 season where the Saints overcame a ten point deduction for their spell in administration to stage a late play off charge and win the Football League Trophy. Sadly, Markus Liebherr had a heart attack and died the following summer, leaving Cortese in charge of the investment.What has followed has been a ruthless, brutal management style in stark contrast to the likeable style and image of Liebherr.

It started with manager Alan Pardew, who was widely praised for getting Southampton as close as he did to the play offs in 2010, as well as securing the Wembley win. But Cortese stated publicly that for the money spent in the transfer market missing the top six was not good enough – regardless of a points deduction. He said that Norwich’s lousy start to the campaign meant they were not in a dissimilar position to Southampton after a couple of months and it seemed to grate on him that Paul Lambert subsequently took over the Canaries and they were promoted as champions. Pardew was sacked early the following season and replaced by Nigel Adkins.

Since then Cortese has thought nothing of a public spat with the club’s greatest ever player Matthew Le Tissier, and has become embroiled in a legal row with another former player Francis Benali after renting a house from the retired left back when he first moved to the country. He has banned Benali, and the local Echo newspaper, from attending Southampton home games. Imagine a chairman at QPR daring to ban Clive Wilson from Loftus Road, publicly arguing with Stan Bowles and emptying the press box of all the local newspapers.

Southampton have faced employment tribunals from several members of staff who failed to reach Cortese’s exacting standards and were therefore dismissed. Earlier this season programme sellers, some with 25 years of service, were dismissed days before a home game with Fulham by letter. He’s been rather extreme, even by the standards of QPR’s own Flavio Briatore.

But the fact that they are now playing Fulham, just two years after they hosted Hartlepool and Yeovil on this ground in league fixtures, means all this is, if not quite forgiven and forgotten, then certainly brushed to one side. Two quick fire promotions have been achieved, seemingly vindicating Cortese’s methods in the eyes of many Southampton fans.

Upon arrival back in the top flight for the first time since 2005 they spent £12m on Gaston Ramirez and £7m on Jay Rodriguez showing they meant serious business and results and performances have been impressive at times for a club that was in League One such a short period of time ago. But, having spent that money in the summer, Cortese expected better than simply survival. Despite a run of two defeats in 12 league games through the winter, starting with a 3-1 win at QPR and ending with a 2-2 draw at Chelsea when they’d trailed 2-0, Adkins was sacked and replaced with a relative unknown Mauricio Pochettino. Cortese left club captain Adam Lallana to break the news to the players and then sent Pochettino into his first press conference alone despite his lack of English.

The move provoked an outcry. Adkins has not only been hugely successful for the Saints, and his previous club Scunthorpe, but is also a thoroughly likeable and decent guy. Pundits queued up to brand it a crazy decision, typical of the modern game, and absolutely disgraceful. The Southampton fans planned a Spanish-style white hanky protest at the following home match with Everton.

That never really materialised. Why? Because Southampton, for the first half at least, absolutely tore Everton apart and should have done far better than the 0-0 draw they eventually ended up with. They were unfortunate to lose at Man Utd, unfortunate not to win rather than draw at Wigan, and then they destroyed champions Manchester City. It’s quickly become a case of Nigel who?

Cortese, who gives few interviews, said at the time of the Adkins sacking: “Maybe I need to sacrifice my popularity to get the right decision. If that’s the case I’m happy.” And so, it seems, are the Southampton fans. His attitude is lamentable, but the results have been consistently good, and so nobody cares. Never mind the quality, feel the width.

This is football. Leave your morals at the door.

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Interview
We’re in the rare position of having a sister site on Fans Network for our opposition this week. We welcome Nick from The Ugly Inside who kindly gave us his views on the Saints. If you’re desperate for something to do, you can read the piece I sent the other way here.*** See post no. 3

What was your opinion of the Nigel Adkins sacking at the time it happened? What was the general mood of the Southampton fans?

Initially Saints fans were horrified at his sacking, a poll in the local paper had backed Adkins at the start of January to the tune of 85%, but a well put together PR blitz soon changed the mood of supporters and soon most had bought the party line that Adkins wasn’t good enough for the Premier and that a change needed to be made, although in fairness most still reserved judgement about the timing of the sacking.

Given the results and performances since then, has your opinion and the general mood changed since then?

Initially the performances were good and the mood improved swiftly, however after the defeat against Newcastle suddenly some are realising that the anticipated surge away from relegation hasn’t happened and that the same old problems are still resurfacing. Pochettino's first five games in charge have seen five points gained, Adkins last five saw seven, so the jury still has to be out at present. The result against QPR will go a long way to telling us whether we will get away with the timing of the sacking or whether it could cost us our Premier place.

Nicola Cortese doesn't seem like a particularly likeable, or even very reasonable guy. The results have been good since he arrived but his treatment of Le Tissier, the local press, managers etc less so. What is the general opinion of him?

Nicola Cortese runs the club on a dictatorial basis, although there is nothing new in that at football clubs. He has done many things right during his time and the sad thing is if he had embraced the clubs, history and culture he could truly be a great chairman. His problem though is he seems to feel that the past is in the past and that the only thing that matters is the future - the treatment of Le Tissier and other players has been appalling and the local press are barred from reporting on home games officially. If, as a club, we had utilised the icons like Le Tiss and harnessed the local paper then we have all the ingredients here to secure a Premiership place for many years to come.

Problem is our meteoric rise has seen many long term fans feel alienated and stop going and those that come instead may buy the shirt etc but they don’t seem to have any longevity about them. They believe the hype that we will be challenging for a top six place next season and the problem is if it doesn’t happen then they won’t be around too much longer especially if we are relegated. Judging by what I have seen of other clubs this season I don’t feel this is a trend just limited to Southampton.

Who have been the stand out performers for Southampton this season? Where are the weak links and areas that need strengthening?

Rickie Lambert has been outstanding this season and has got the headlines, but Morgan Schneiderlin and Jack Cork in the centre of midfield are the true engine room without getting the plaudits.

Our weak links are on the flanks where our wide men just can’t seem to defend and protect the full backs and in the centre of defence where, to be blunt, we are paying the price for not signing truly quality Premiership central defenders last summer.

Gaston Ramirez and Jay Rodriguez cost the best part of £20m between them last summer – is that seen as money well spent? Should we expect another big splurge this summer assuming you stay up?

At present neither have justified the cost. In the case of Jay Rodriguez he was bought to replace Lambert but Lambert has played so well he has either played out of position on the wing or, on rare occasions, alongside Lambert so hasn’t had the chance to shine much. I think that he could go on to be worth the money.

Ramirez is a different kettle of fish, when he is on form he is brilliant, but he hasn’t got the work rate for the Premier and is usually shattered by about 70 minutes and has to be subbed. Away from home especially he has been a liability at times. When we are on top in games he is a world class player, when we are on the back foot he might as well not be there. Ramirez will be world class in the right team, but at present it’s not a team at the bottom of the Premier League he needs to be in. Most Saints fans would concur that if we had spent the Ramirez money on two central defenders and a good winger we would be safely mid table by now.

The club has a famously prolific youth academy – who should we be looking out for progressing through your ranks in the next few years?

Luke Shaw is the latest, he has got into the side at left back and although he is raw he is a prodigious talent and it’s hard to believe he is still only 17. Jamie Ward Prowse is another who has seen plenty of first team action as well this season. We have a few others in the squad who may or may not make the grade in the top flight including Ben Reeves currently on loan at Southend to get experience.

continues.... Zzzz

 

Scout Report
I most recently saw Southampton in their home match with Everton, Pochettino’s first in charge. Now this isn’t great from an assessment point of view because, clearly, the manager had only been there for a couple of days and Everton are such a unique side – with their attacking threat so very lopsided in favour of the left – that teams often adopt special tactics to counter that Pienaar and Baines combination which will not be repeated against QPR.

Southampton did that to some extent, although they did line up in the 4-2-3-1 formation favoured by Pochettino and his predecessor Nigel Adkins. Their method of dealing with Everton’s left side had two main thrusts: with the ball they attacked almost exclusively down their right through Jason Puncheon and Nathaniel Clyne which forced Pienaar and Baines back to do defensive work; without the ball Jack Cork would slide over from his deep lying midfield position to add an extra obstacle and close off space. It’s clear from this match, and every other time I’ve seen the Saints this season, that Cork’s partnership with Morgan Schneiderlin at the base of the midfield is absolutely key to everything the team does well.

The goal threat is, of course, carried by Rickie Lambert who should have had a hat trick in this game and was a constant menace to Distin and Jagielka. QPR must watch for him pulling into a deep area in the penalty area and then arriving at the back post onto a cross. He’s doing it to target the smaller, weaker full backs and he’s a master at it. If Redknapp dares to start with Jose Bosingwa at right back again this weekend I can well imagine Lambert having an absolute field day.

Southampton deliberately pressed Everton extremely high up the pitch, and their work rate for the first hour was phenomenal. It was also, as it turned out, unsustainable and once they tired in the second half they were ultimately lucky not to lose the game. Since then they’ve shipped goals for fun – nine in four matches. QPR have got to match the initial tempo and work rate, and then not be afraid to actually attack a game for once. The Saints are weakest in the centre half position and Rangers could be rewarded for a more positive approach than they’ve employed of late.


Miguel Ortiz, LoftforWords’ man in Spain, is a season ticket holder at Espanyol where Pochettino was a long serving player and manager before he came to Southampton.

Miguel said: “I took in three of Southampton’s games recently - against Wigan, Man Utd and Man City. How did they score goals? Like we used to: press on the midfield, steal the ball, move it to the sideline, counter attack, cross and goal scored. How did they concede? Like we used to: from set pieces mostly or counter attacks. At Espanyol, thousands of times we scored like this, at Espanyol thousands of times we concede like this.

“The difference is that he has other players, not used to having the ball all time. At Espanyol the team would spend time trying to get the ball in the channel for the last pass. Sorry but I can’t see this style in England.

“Once he has his own team he will play 4-2-3-1, with full backs ready to attack. It will be very important that Southampton have defenders with a good touch of ball, able to do first construction pass. There will then be the two holding midfielders, two lads on the wings (possibly one of them an ex striker) one in the middle doing the last pass, and the lone striker.

“It’s easy to disconnect this game with high pressure on the man in the middle of three, high pressure on the two holding midfielders and high pressure on the two centre halves. That brings you counter attacks and set pieces, which is a thing that Pochettino and his staff still do not know how to work against. Quite often I feel he reads the game badly and does the wrong substitutions too late.

“You have to press, fight and provoke set pieces where Poche will put a lot of people defending zonally close to the goalkeeper. We always conceded a lot from set pieces when he was here.

“C’mon You R’s give me some happiness.”

 

The Saints on QPR....

A View From The Opposition
Wed 27th Feb 2013 15:37
A view from West London as our colleagues from www.loftforwords.co.uk answer a few questions on the situation at Loftus Road


1. Whats your opinions on Harry Redknapp, most Saints fans hate him for the way he moaned and groaned about things when he got us relegated in 2005 despite having a squad that contained a host of players who went on to play in the Premier over the next eight years including Peter Crouch, do QPR fans feel the same way.

I think Redknapp will pretty much get a free pass from QPR fans this season. He inherited a shambolic mess here from Mark Hughes, far worse than the situation he walked into at Southampton in my opinion, that was always going to require a pretty extreme turn around to save. We hadn't won any of our first 16 matches when he took over and the Southampton fans who were at Loftus Road for the last of those, and the last of the Hughes era, will know just what a state we were in. I don't think any team has survived in the Premier League era after not winning any of the first 16 games so he was always going to be up against it.

2. Has Redkapps popularity waned on the back of the results given that you are no better off than when he arrived. Do Rangers fans feel he is merely there for the money.

. Well I'd take issue with us being no better off than when he arrived. We are at least organised in defence now - we've actually got the best defensive record of the bottom seven teams and have recently kept clean sheets against Spurs, Man City and Chelsea. He's tightened that up and added Chris Samba so that's an improvement. He's also managed to register a couple of wins, including one at Stamford Bridge which we rather enjoyed, which is more than Hughes could. However, while I do think he'll be absolved of much blame by most if the seemingly inevitable relegation, there are murmurings of discontent here and there. We are absolutely toothless in attack - just eight goals scored at home all season and none in the last four home league games. He didn't correct that in January and quite often now we start without a striker at all - playing Adel Taarabt in a "false nine" position that has worked once but mostly just leaves us with a back four and then a six man midfield mess with nothing up front. He could do with getting back to the sort of football you expect from him - two strikers, two wingers, give it a go. He got stung by playing an open, attacking system at home to Liverpool and going 3-0 down before half time, since then we've been unbelievably defensive and cautious which risks us going down with a whimper if it continues.

3. How do QPR fans feel about the clubs owners, obviously many fans of other clubs will be aware about your old regime especially after ther tv documentary, how does the new regime compare

I would never pretend to speak for all QPR fans but from my point of view Tony Fernandes is a good but naive owner - one of my mates I go to the games with disagrees and thinks he's an idiot so there are different opinions about. Flavio Briatore is a supremely arrogant man who seemed to think he was just going to walk in, do exactly what he wanted, treat the fans like ****, the whole thing would be a runaway success and everything would be brilliant - obviously you saw in the documentary that he even thought he could manage the team. It was only when he took a back seat and Amit Bhatia started to run the club that we had a great 18 months under Neil Warnock and got to the Premier League, at which point Briatore swooped back in and spent the summer drawing out a takeover which meant Warnock had his hands tied in the transfer window. Since Fernandes came in he's played it rather like you would expect a naive supporter to operate - certainly not been afraid to back managers with loads of money, always in the market for a big name player. His biggest failing in my opinion is not having a really sharp, experienced football man alongside him as a CEO or director of football. Mark Hughes and Kia Joorabchian saw him coming - Fernandes even said that Hughes interviewed us as much as the other way around - and both they and a clutch of ageing professional footballers got very rich off QPR. I think his heart is in the right place but he's learning on the job and it's costing us. If I was him I'd have had somebody like David Dein on board from very early on.

4. Who have been your stand out performers this season and who have been the scapegoats, where are QPR's weak links

Julio Cesar is, as you would expect, very busy and performing heroics. Ryan Nelsen was bought as cover in the summer but ended up being our best defender and playing every week on bad knees but he has now left to take up a managerial position at Toronto. Adel Taarabt is the attack - teams have now realised that once he's out of the game we've got literally nothing. Andros Townsend has played reasonably well since coming in on loan from Spurs. Other than that the squad is divided into players of limited ability who came up with us from the Championship and seem to really care and be hurting but don't really have the ability to do much about it - Jamie Mackie, Clint Hill, Shaun Derry - and big name players, mostly approaching the end of their careers, earning a colossal amount of money and playing so far beneath the standards they've previously set it's embarrassing to watch them: Shaun Wright-Phillips, Jose Bosingwa, Anton Ferdinand, Djibril Cisse, Esteban Granero, Armand Traore etc. The dressing room is split, the team spirit is non-existent. Bosingwa is the big boo boy target because he was put on the bench for a game against Fulham and stormed off home - Redknapp fined him and revealed that the two weeks wages amounted to £120,000. He has just been recalled to the team but God knows why because he's actually not very good as well as being a tosser. Short answer - we have a great goalkeeper and one good attacker, everything other area is weak.

5.How do QPR fans feel about the new signings, has it been money wasted or money well spent, I heard on the radio someone expressing discontent that you let Cisse go and have no one that can score goals is this a popular opinion, has harry spent money for the sake of it

We brought in Loic Remy in January but we allowed Djibril Cisse to leave, so we're in the same position as we were before where we're totally reliant on the form and fitness of one striker. Cisse was great for us last season but seemed to lose heart and form this term. That said he did still pose a goal threat when serviced correctly. Remy has only managed to start twice - he seems very fragile - so we're now often playing matches without a striker at all. Nobody really understands why we keep loaning DJ Campbell out - he's not the answer by any means but he's better than fielding no striker at all. Six players came in in January and six went out and really - apart from possibly Samba - they don't seem to have improved us at all. Jermaine Jenas for Ale Faurlin is a prime example of a transfer for the sake of making a transfer. But then that QPR obsession of always signing another player rather than working on one you already have to improve him was there long before Redknapp arrived and is a big part of the reason our squad is such a shambles.

 

Lol, it's something different to read compared to the last 48 hrs on here. Your response is exactly what I expected from Swords. Now he has to think of something funnier than your response ( Swords loves a bit of Clive.)

Have a bit of rep for your trouble Andy.

 

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