The New Master Plan

There doesn't appear to be much consensus here over what our club's aims might be...and increasingly, there are questions about whether the principles at the club itself are pulling in the same direction. Consequently, I'm curious how the bulk of the fanbase would prefer the club to operate. Design your own framework for the future of a large, multifaceted organization one arbitrarily-designed multiple choice question at a time!

If anyone has any other items to add, I will add them. Assuming anyone actually makes it all the way through this.


The Academy

The academy is:

1. Paramount. Insofar as we have ambitions to rise above our current standing, they rely on a steady pipeline of top-quality talent being nurtured and brought through into the first team. We should use the kids in good times and bad, and give them chances even if we are not sure they'll make it. Otherwise, we will never be able to make the pitch to other top talents that SFC is their path to stardom, and any manager of our first team has to understand this.

2. Useful. While the '50% home grown' idea was a pipe dream, we can certainly expect some talent to arise from the academy, to fill in the gaps if nothing else. Winning games comes first, but opportunities should be presented when the quality of our U-18/21s and circumstances allow.

3. Increasingly irrelevant. We aren't in the Football League anymore; given our standing and our aims, it's unrealistic to expect the academy to play a significant role in our squad. Only rare top-quality talents will ever reach the first team, and if we want good players throughout the team, we will need to be prepared to open the chequebook.


Finances

Our short-term aims should be:

1. Pay down the debt. If we can operate on a strict budget for a couple years and eliminate most of the money owed, we will be in a much better position to push on later. We're well-run; we ought to be able to steer well clear of relegation in the interim.

2. Aim for stability, spend the rest. The CFO and others have stated that our debt has peaked. It's at a reasonable level given our revenues (particularly considering next year's revenue jump), and the aim should be to keep it around that threshold. It's too risky to try and pay down the debt while our competitors are spending freely; lose our PL status and we lose everything.

3. Spend, or sell the club. This is the Premier League...if the prospect of investing a bit of money is too much to bear, you're in the wrong business. Find someone willing to push for the top and exit stage right.


Transfer Targets

More often than not, we should:

1. Cast a wide net, and focus on youth. The majority of our resources should be used to buy young, hungry players who have yet to peak; they're generally going to be cheaper in wages/transfer fees, allowing us to add in larger quantities. When we mold them into top talent they can then be sold to repeat the process, and buying young ensures that we'll always have more ready to step up Our scouting and talent development has proven good enough to make this viable. Spurs are the model; beyond the academy products, they're littered with young transfers picked up before their value exploded, like Eric Dier, Dele Alli, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker.

2. Buy quality over quantity. If you're going to buy, buy potential match winners. It's much better to buy a couple top talents a year and fill out the periphery of the squad through the academy or some other bargain basement route than to spread the money around and end up overloaded with average players. They might cost more in wages, sure, but in the aggregate it'll save money, because they will provide more than two maybe-sorta-decent players at the same position. A return to what Cortese envisioned, in effect.

3. Focus on players who want to be here long-term. Our current woes owe to having a squad of foreign mercenaries. We would be far better off aiming for English in-prime/late-prime talent...true professionals who are good, but not likely to targeted by the top clubs, and will help to keep the dressing room pointed in the right direction. You might pay a slight premium in wages/fees relative to talent, but it's worth it.

4. What part of 'spend whatever it takes' is hard to understand? The answer is all of the above, just more of it.


Wage Policy

1. We need to have a strict wage cap, relax it for one player and it will either cause disharmony in the squad or our costs will quickly outstrip our means. That means that players will have to move on when their wage demands exceed those levels.

2. We need to have overall wage controls at or around current levels, but the squad can handle a few top players making significantly more; they'd much rather have as strong a squad as possible, and we can find savings elsewhere.

3. We need to raise our wages considerably. The finances of football are about to change again, and if we don't change with them we will have no end of difficulty keeping up with other mid-table sides, never mind the big boys.


Division of Responsibilities - Transfers

With regards to the decision-making on transfers:

1. The football ops people lead. The manager has input, sure, but he doesn't make the decisions.

2. It should be determined by consensus. The manager should not be able to sign players who are not recommended by the other departments, and conversely the board should not be signing players over the objections of the manager. There are enough good options in the world that it should never be a power struggle.

3. The manager leads. He knows who best will fit his designs. The scouting/research departments are there to assist him, and the board's job is to provide a budget and get out of the way.


Division of Responsibilities - Tactics

In terms of team setup:

1. The tactical approach should dictate the manager. We should have an organizational philosophy, and top-to-bottom unity in how we set ourselves up, to ensure continuity across eras and make it far easier to integrate youth and find the right transfer targets. Stylistically, the U-12s should look much like the first team; managers should be sought who are capable of working within this framework, tweaking as necessary but keeping the overall design intact.

2. We should choose managers with a style in mind, but from there it's on their shoulders. If they feel that a different direction is necessary, back them.

3. The manager is the alpha and omega. The tactics change as the managers do, because we cannot exclude good managerial options because they don't fit some preconceived notion of how we should play, nor should we be forcing managers to play a style that does not conform to their own desires. Choose the best manager regardless of their approach and let them take it from there. The youth squads can be run however best maximizes their talents, sure, but that has no bearing on the first team. Adaptability is crucial to succeed in football...they'll learn to fit the style when the time comes, or their time at the top level was never going to be lengthy.


Kit

1. Stripes. Always stripes. Evenly spaced, traditional stripes.

2. Red and white, but go nuts.

3. That crazy neon thing that was leaked hasn't left my thoughts since. Must have.

 

Maybe I'm being boring, but I'd pretty much go for 1's across the board, I still fancy a return to blue shorts though, as it highlights where those Spanish clubs got their kit from and gives a unique look in England.

 

Academy - 2

Finances - I don't know enough hard facts to make a call there. I'll have to leave this to the Board/owner

Transfer Policy - combination of 1-3

Wages - again, I am undecided. You find a gem in a European backwater earning 1k a week and you bring him over on what 25k? 50k? He is an instant hit and someone whispers 150k in his ear???? You are buggered if you do and buggered if you don't. A slightly more controversial point would be this: who wants a good (not spectacular) CB at the end of his career to be joint highest player at your club (even if he has become a bit of a club legend), as surely this reduces wages that could go elsewhere to keep other top players?

Transfer responsibilities - 3, with a big chunk of input from the scouting/research departments

Tactics - 2

Kit - Option 4 (not there) it's a kit FFS, yeah I'd like red/.white, yeah I like stripes, but it isn't really the be all and end all.


Academy Appendix

I think Schad's option 1 is a little contradictory in itself. Does the Southampton Academy really fit this: " Paramount. Insofar as we have ambitions to rise above our current standing, they rely on a steady pipeline of top-quality talent being nurtured and brought through into the first team." I wonder if having big ambitions actually doesn't fit with having the academy. It is extremely rare when a Bale, Theo or Ox comes through, let alone 4-7 of them in one go, so what I am saying is this: does the Academy reputation actually hinder us from pushing to the next level as maybe to get to the next level it needs big, big money and top, top players at the same time.

Let me point out this last message is a question, not a fixed view or believe... just incase people think that it is my fixed believe because I have typed words on the screen

 

We've already seen that in action; in 2013/14, academy graduates provided nearly 10000 minutes of production in the league, not far from the equivalent of three starters playing every minute of the season, for nothing more than wages that were well below market value, thus shoring up resources to be used elsewhere. In that summer, those same players provided something like 50m in funding when sold. Whatever our feelings about the sales, both their production and later sale provided opportunities for us that would not have been without the pipeline.

Thus, the option is there for those who believe that spending money isn't the way to show ambition (as I didn't think that 'we should not show ambition' was unlikely to be a popular option, heh)...so too can gambling on integrating kids, rather than sticking with tried-and-true-but-average players, be an effort to shake free of mid-table.

And for those curious, I haven't answered the questions myself because I'm betwixt and between on a few of them, which perhaps indicates that all of my proposed answers are terrible.

 

Academy is paramount for me.

We are a small club, with not many fans compared to most. We have very limited finances as proven by the last couple of transfer windows. We are very unlikely to win anything, or even get to Wembley with our budget. With these points in mind, bringing through young English players seems to be the only thing we can be proud of as a club, and the only thing we do better than everyone else!

 

Fair point Schad - I had over looked the number we had playing that season and the money they raised.

 

Your analysis (1) suggests actually the club have conveyed their strategy quite well and you have understood it. The 50% academy presence was more than a pipe dream and if you look back, we have pretty much achieved that on occasions - more than 50% if you include the bench.

I think some fans choose to ignore the message when things don't go well and resort to claims to 'no strategy' , 'no ambition' , 'no plan b' , 'Ralph is useless' , Les is useless' . It's not a criticism. It's what fans do. At the end of the day though, the club do have a good view of the bigger picture and they don't panic when we have a bad run. They stick to the plan and I respect them for it.

 

The many times stated aims of the club are to be regulars in the Champions League. That's good enough for me. I'm not particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of it, and frankly, neither would anyone else once it is done. It makes barely a jot of difference to me how they achieve it as long as they do what they set out to do. They can do it by promoting an entire Academy to the first team, or by purchasing a team of Messi/Ronaldo types, or something in between, I don't care. I've had an entire lifetime of mediocrity - with occasional flashes of poking their head above the parapet - with Southampton FC. This iteration of the Club intends that to end. That's good.

 

I don't think much has changed from the original plan Cortese had. Cortese was the one that veered away from it, the current board took it back to where it was.

The academy is paramount to bringing through players over time that will enable us to have a much better quality of team and squad. They need chances to progress but we don't do a Poortvliet. If we want the best academy talent to come through in the next decade then we need to show their parents now that they will get a better chance here. Our current approach is our tender for the team we want in 10 years time.

Signings are made to complement the areas that we are short of quality. If this year that means we need star players in 10 positions and only 1 academy so be it. If next year it is the reverse we have hit the jackpot. I think we should buy quality rather than quantity and not worry about ages. Get the right players for the positions we need filling that fit into our wage structure and other required parameters (character etc.)

Finances I think we should be trying to break even for real, not break even after KL turns debts into equity. Make ourselves properly sustainable and use that as yet another selling point. We don't have debts, we give players a chance, the other clubs are lying to you that it can't be done.

Wages should fit within the finances. Like Cortese said 'Can you envisage Southampton ever paying a player £100k a week' Only if we are playing in front of 50,000 people each week and in the CL. I think we can alter that because even Cortese would not have envisaged the amount of money the PL is moving onto next year. Fonte is already on £80k apparently so we are nearly at that £100k mark. Should we be matching teams like Stoke? Yes if we can afford it and stay within the FFP and within breaking even.

Kit - I am not a stickler for the traditional stripes but we should never again have the all red whether it be the first Liverpool retro (white pinstripes) or the Liverpool Modern ones we had. Would love the Air Florida/Xerox one back at some point. Has to be red AND white close to half and half and not all red.

Away kit can be anything respectable, not really fussed. I always buy away kits as they are different. I have like most of the recent ones. My fav is the yellow Brazil, but the blue muvi and the green one are cool too. Football shirts are a fashion market these days so if there is a design that would sell more shirts to others whether Saints fans or not then that avenue should be explored.

So basically the Cortese mission statement still applies. Cortese veered away from it. This board has tried to return to it. Only difference is the talk of CL very very soon should be tempered a bit before we all fall for it again

 

You could put me down for 2's all the way down the line. Several topics I was in between 1 and 2.

People have too romantic a view of the academy. Academy players who get a chance to go to big clubs leave just the same. Just look at how many we have lost. It's a potentially good source of cheap talent that can then be moved on for profit, hopefully after putting in a good year or two. But so buying cheap young foreign players accomplishes the same thing. To me, the Academy is an important part of the portfolio, but it's better to have a diversified portfolio.