I'm not sure on that, he gave JWP & Targett a fair amount of game time. The other reason for this could be we were in touching distance of European football (which we achieved). If others were stronger and we were lower in the table I think we would have seen more of them in the last half dozen games or so.
To be fair, both those players had already come through the ranks when Koeman appeared. I think you are bang on though about where we had progressed to. It's just my opinion but I reckon Koeman has moved on from the manager we initially recruited. He wasn't interested in being the manager that brings through youth anymore but wanted to be the next big thing signing big marquee players. The rumblings about him and th academy had substance and when you compare his approach to pochs record, it all adds up. He publicly disparaged the youth ranks which I thought was bang out of order. There are good players in there and some will move up this season. They may flop. That's fine, but we are an academy club and we should stick to that principle. It will serve us well in the long term and that's the game we're playing, not this season but the next five. If we struggle this year and prosper for two it Will be working.
SaintinNZ: ''He publicly disparaged the youth ranks which I thought was bang out of order''. Absolutely right there....can you imagine what the youngsters and their coaches felt about that? He could have said it privately to Les and done something positive about it....but he chose to go public to cover his own back.
They might have thought... "this is a man's game and I am going to prove him wrong" I'd say, that if they got into a huff and sulked, then the manager was right. Need to be mentally strong to make it as a professional footballer.
Can you imagine meeting him in the corridor after he said that about the youth squad? They would know the senior squad would have heard it as well. Would have changed how they felt about him and the ambience of the place. There is no way that was a good thing.
That is the sign of a short sited manager to be honest.......a good manager will always encourage. You should always talk directly and not publicly to youngsters who are doing their best. If you need to tell them their faults....do that but always finish the conversation with their positives......Publicly running them down is like cutting their legs off at their ankles. They need encouragement always to help them improve...........
Except football is not 'a man's game'. Have you been watching football lately? The players fall over if the wind blows and if someone touches them they go down like they've been shot. The slightest little thing and they are whinging. Compare that to rugby where a player can have his testicle ripped off (I may be using artistic license here) and still get up and finish the game. If a man acted like a footballer in every day life I doubt they would ever live it down.
Interesting how men always think there is only one type of man that is worthy of the name. Would Einstein be a better man if he could swig ten pints and win a punch up (without whinging of course)? All relative, I guess.
Koeman also segregated the academy players from the first team, both on the training ground and in the dining room. If you want young players to learn from their elders and betters, how does that help in any way?
He has already done that at Everton. I am lost to know what that achieves....unless he thinks they are easily distracted.
We finish bottom half this season, they get experience in the PL and Europe. I am looking at this season as a re-building one. I still believe, once we work out the system best for the players we have the bases of a very good team.
Congratulations to RAWMOK for mentioning all the new contracts without adding the word "but". At the risk of reopening a very boring debate... The new contracts are critical. They hugely increase the likelihood we can keep our best players, and if we do sell them we will get a much higher fee. That means we can break out of the cycle of replacing first team players each year, massively increases our stability and makes us more able to attract better players in the future. The problem is that they are not very exciting, which is why no one ever mentions them or even remembers that it happened. But next season it will turn out that Les Reed's plan worked again.
The new contracts may be critical. We'll have to wait and see, though; the argument over the past couple years has been that ultimately, there's very little one can do if a player wants a move, and that might now be put to the test. We'll definitely find out what the board is made of in a year, but until we go through a summer without a sell-off, it's hard to work under the assumption that we're going to succeed in hanging on to our best with regularity.
Oh look, the lazy Rugby comparison. Rugby is crap and has no place in any society. My point stands that if any professional athlete can't take criticism (especially from someone who has reached the pinnacle in that sport), then they shouldn't be a professional athlete.
It's been shown over and over again (e.g. Tversky and Kahneman) that criticism does not improve performance as much as much as encouragement and directed coaching. Saying "you're not good enough" or whatever is counter-productive, so why on Earth would anyone do it, whether in public or private? Deciding that professional athletes should be preselected from the subset of people who, when criticised, see it as a goad to improve is restricting your pool of talent and so should be avoided. Vin
I don't recall Tversky & Kahneman winning the European Cup or taking a team into the top 6 of the Premier League. As with everything in life, you have a balance of what works best for some, may not for others. Some need a kick up the arse, others need a arm round the shoulder. However, by the time Mr Koeman encountered the Southampton Academy lads, they had all received almost a decade (or more) of professional coaching and mentoring and kicking and cuddling. I fully expect a manager of his experience & status would want delivered to him, almost the finished product as the Premier League is not the place to experiment. Puel will be NO different in his expectations of the Academy system.
"...And Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!"
