Money in football isn’t enough. It obviously is a huge factor, but look at Everton, the Venkys at Blackburn, Villa previous owners, glazers at United... so many more, There has to be knowledge applied when spending money too. I’m sorry to say but so far these guys don’t understand football at all. They’ve sacked or alienated everyone behind the scenes. They have ignored experience and character. There is no coherent plan. There is a lot of water under the bridge between now and Markus Liebherr/ Nicola Cortese. But I agree with previous posts that Cortese and Markus had a huge influence on this club. We are now missing the infrastructure that they put in place. We went from strength to strength during his reign - and long after it as we had the winning mentality and everything was set up for success. We have lacked a soul/vision/leader as a club for a while now. With Cortese at the helm it was 80% good decisions 20% poor decisions. Since then it’s been 80% bad decisions, 20% good decisions that have slowly eroded us down. I know it was 9/10 years ago but systems take time to implement & pay off. You can replace 1 or 2 higher managers with similar and keep coasting. But you can’t replace the passion, vision & ambition that Markus showed when he bought us. The Markus Liebherr team had the vision to select players based on not just skills but character and to sell a long term project. They built the club back up from scratch with inspired recruiting. Ultimately the whole hierarchy was amazing at scouting for a long time. We were the envy of English football for a few years. Now it’s gone. I think it went with Liebherr, Cortese & Paul Mitchell. We went from 80% good decisions, to 60% under Les Reed, to 40% with Kruger and just getting worse with each new decision maker. Like a wave losing momentum as it travels. We’ve ended up with Semmens who “doesn’t care about league position” and cares more about the woman’s team. Now the club is completely out of touch with football, the fans and most importantly: what it took to get us to the premier league in the first place.
Overall just a feeling of sadness now. The current custodians have let down the people who have worked so hard for the last 13 years. To come straight in and **** it all up speaks very poorly of their judgement. Bummer.
I agree to an extent. But let's face it the club was in a dire place for the best part of the last five years, and it was only Danny Ings' goals that papered over the cracks. Player recruitment was absolutely sh*t, senior players were desperate to leave, the academy was barely producing, and there was no pathway even when it did. SR have ballsed it up, granted, but it is early days still for them, and we are in a transition. Let's see what the summer brings.
Maybe less so but Semmens is definitely a big part of the problem for me and definitely holds some responsibility for this season. As I've mentioned before I read quite a lot of stuff on psychology/motivation. And if you're going to publicly state that it doesn't matter where you finish in the league and that the club is lucky just to be in this league then standards will undoubtedly slip and it's not a surprise for that club to finish bottom of the division. Completely fresh start for me is what we need. In terms of SR while they've undoubtedly made mistakes they've been happy to invest and imo deserve another season to see if they've learned from mistakes mentioned above.
I’d say Danny Ings and Covid are the only reasons we weren’t relegated sooner. Covid was probably more influential in a mini-turnaround before the rot set back in, as it gave us another pre-season and a bit of a reset. Recruitment before SR was also atrocious and one of the biggest factors for this relegation. We replaced Ings with Armstrong FFS. Not saying it’s improved since they took over, but the blame for relegation does not lie solely with SR, and a lot of fans are making out like the board under the previous owners were great. As someone else said, SR could be good owners with the right people around them making the decisions.
i agree with this. I cannot believe how ambivalent I am. The Newcastle takeover going through has a huge impact on my love of football - possibly the penultimate nail in the coffin. The final one being how little effort we’ve put in.
Newcastle haven't exactly splashed the cash though. Since the takeover they've spent what, around 200m? Let's not forget that in that time we've spent 150m. They just went about it the right way. Spent big on just a select number of individuals who they knew would drastically improve the team. Rather than spreading that spending on 15 very average players who would have little or no impact. And they got the right manager in, one who had a proven track record of getting a low-level squad to punch above its weight. Howe changed some of their duds into genuinely top-level players. The likes of Almiron, Joelinton, Wilson.
Why would they sell us now. Surely they would only get a fraction of what they paid for us. Makes me laugh that when they first took us over they said that the club was the right one for them to buy and was a great mix with the right infrastructure and ethos blah blah blah! Makes you wonder what exactly were they after as I haven’t seen any evidence that they know what they are doing
I couldn’t agree more. Last time we went down I was upset. This time it barely registers for so many reasons such as the greed, the cheating, media favouring certain clubs. But the real reason is that last year my twin sister had a heart attack and was diagnosed with cancer, and I needed a heart bypass operation in November. This meant travelling from Derby was getting too much so I gave up my season ticket after 18 years and those events have now given me a different perspective on what are the really important things in life. I accept that to many it is really important but not for me anymore. Fortunately both my sister and me are on the mend. In fact we are going on a cruise to the eastern Mediterranean on Thursday
Tell you what, I'm glad Shields has pissed off. The signings he was involved in - Larios, Bazunu, Aribo, Maitland-Niles and Edozie. Good luck, Chelsea.
Some good things about life in the Championship and perish the thought even League one, gleaned from last time we were there 1. You turn up at a game expecting to win 2. Some of the football is really entertaining 3. If you travel to see Saints away you get to go to some really interesting grounds 4. You meet some really nice fans who support their teams just because they do. They are not glory hunters or the prawn sandwich brigade 5. Also you don’t get to watch saints on tv so much which could be a blessing in disguise
Right ethos and infrastructure. What bullshit. They've completely ripped it apart and we've suffered as a result.
With the new EFL deal Saints are set to be on tv way more next season, 40% of Championship games will be televised.
I know, but that’s the sort of guff they said when they completed the purchase. Made out it was a marriage made in heaven. I guess the honeymoon period is over
