Given recent threads, fair does big Ron

Thoughts with you FLT. Everyone I know takes the piss out of me when I say "It's only a game", but it is. We may feel passionate about it, but in the grand scheme of things it is not important. Take care

 

Unless they voted Tory. Sorry, not sure where that came from.

 

Well done Ronald -

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/shane-long-reveals-southampton-boss-7078419

 

Glad she's still with you fella. Hope she continues strong.

Thanks to all for the messages and thoughts. Great community this.

 

So... how much longer should Ronald get? Eh? Eh? EH?! FFS.


* not having a pop at any user, just laughing at the up and down nature of football (and Saints!)

 

To be honest, we're just treading water at the moment and we should be doing more than that. We are a top half team and although we haven't got a divine right to be there, we should be aiming higher than 12th. I'm starting to wonder what the ambition of the board is as well. No doubt we'll sell Mane and Wanyama at least in the summer and we'll be back to square one. The board needs to grow a backbone and refuse to sell our best players otherwise we won't progress past being a midtable PL team and risk regressing into a relegation battle if the big signings don't pay off. We can offer bigger wages with the extra TV money coming in and we need more success on the field if the club is to progress. Cortese may have had his faults but he was bloody ambitious and this club made huge progress under him. I just wonder where we would be if he was still here. I accept that getting promotions is easier than cracking the top 6 of the PL.

By the way this isn't aimed at you DTLW. I just responded to your post. My opinion is that the club as a whole, from the fanbase all the way up to the board needs to be more ambitious. For me, it shouldn't be a surprise to get to Wembley in one of the domestic cup competitions. That should be the aim from August each year. Call me unrealistic f you like, but this club needs to think about getting into Europe again. The club should aim to finish 7th or higher. That is what the board should judge the manager on IMO. This season I've lowered my expectation to a top 10 finish. When I read that people would accept 15th or 16th I can't help but shake my head in disbelief. Even if the teams finishing 15th or 16th are a big gap away from 18th, it's still a very, very mediocre place to finish in the table. Remember Aston Villa under Martin O'Neill. They had a cracking squad back then, they finished in the top half a few times and then, inevitably, their best players got poached by the big boys. They starting treading water for a season or two, O'Neill quit and slowly but surely, they've gone downhill. They bought good replacements (Benteke, Delph to name two) but it still didn't stop the rot. Now the next batch of top players have gone and now they're right in the ****. I see the warning signs at Saints. We can't keep replacing our top players and expect to get away with it. The Villa board stood back and allowed a great club to go right down the toilet. Now, I think we've got a better boardroom than Villa had or have but I still think they need to need to show more ambition and not to be content with treading water.

 

Staggered!

Let's go through some example's:
We need to get rid of Curbishly, he cannot take us too the next level - Charlton fans where are you now

Reading, McDermott manager of the month in Jan, sacked in Feb, result relegated, Few years on, get McDermott back, I could go on

Saints on the abyss seven years ago, finish 14th, 8th, 7 th, now 12th in a blip ( having lost a wealth of nurtured talent. And apparently a top 7 finish is a must every year, so too probably for another 15 teams ( a lot bigger than our club, Newcastle, Sunderland etc). Now we would all like to finish 7th or better and yes we may have missed a trick this year, but level of expectation need a serious reality check! That is different to a level of hope, each year I hope we get top six, but do not expect it

 

I find the fascination with "ambition" amusing. Which are the 13 teams that do not have the ambition to finish in the top 7 and who will happily rollover for us?

 

Well that's exactly the point. We should be doing everything possible to keep hold of them. If we keep on losing our best players and talent, somewhere down the line it's going to bite us in the arse.

 

If finishing 12th or below isn't good enough, they should reduce the EPL to say 10 teams...that would sort it out! I hate this talk of ambition (or rather lack of it)....does anyone really think that any team in this league isn't trying to finish as high as they can. Our board didn't suddenly decide in the summer to finish 12th, 13th or whatever. They want to finish as high as they can, but you can't control everything as there are 19 other teams involved. Life is a roller coaster not a slide...finishing lower than last year (if that is what happens) does not mean an even lower finish next season. Look at Leicester. Perhaps the board made the mistake of finishing 14th, 8th and 7th....obviously would have been better to have finished 17th, 16th and 15th....so that expectations of a slow rising trajectory could be met.

 

I voted Tory, and have done every time I have been eligible to do so and am not ashamed to say so either.

 

On the flip side Mark Hughes is showing at the moment that there is more to Stoke than fighting hard for low mid table.

And didn't we show that there was another level or two to go up by, by getting rid of Adkins?

I'm not saying anything about Ron at all (I actually also use the Curbishley example myself on a regular basis when I hear fans of a club wanting more than I believe their club is realistically capable of). I am simply attempting to play devil's advocate with this post.

 

Ron is working within the limitations the board are placing upon him with the wage cap and the policy of buying low/selling high.

As Fran says, it's not that they don't want us to finish as high as possible, but they do have a very (perhaps constrictive) way of working and therefore for us to do that year on year takes multiple strokes of genius. If people want more than that, then.....well.....we need a new board with different philosophies.

If we're happy to try and develop within these limitations, then we carry on as we are. More to the point, we need a manager (and players) that are happy to work within those limitations. That's the tricky part.

 

I just don't get the levels of ambition thing. Why should aiming for #7 be the proper level of ambition?

I want to win it all. Otherwise, why are we playing?

At the same time, to do so requires proper long-term planning. I do not mind semi-punting a season, if doing so means we play some younger guys who are not our best XI now, but can improve and form the core of a future title winning side. Or alternatively, can at least be sold for massive profit to obtain the talent we need.

This is easier said than done, of course. We don't want to get relegated, obviously. Or to fall back so far we can no longer recruit promising players.

But to me, Wanyama and Mane likely both want to go, and there is no point in hanging on to them just to finish top half. Sell them and use the profits elsewhere. Players won't want to come here if they can't leave. And frankly I don't see either of those two putting us over the top. Free some funds and try something else.

 

All you need to do now is write the business plan.

Who is aiming for 12th? I liked ISIRTP's comment about no difference in anything from 7th-16th and that we all want to win it but that's just not enough.

I don't understand the accusations of lacking ambition aimed at the club. Run through the accounts and show where the lack of ambition is. Identify how we stop our players leaving. Inthink. You'll find a massive catch 22 if you think about that part.

Interesting that you use Villa as an example.... Ever wondered why they are where they are now? They are a huge club. Massive compared to us. That's how well we've been doing. Why are they where they are now? Why did the owner stop putting his money in? Why did he have to?

You have said you expect the club/fans to aim to be and not be surprised by, reaching Wembley in a cup AND finish 7th and higher, using that as the judgement of the manager. You said call you unrealistic if we like; I think you're unrealsitic, although I do believe that is what the club aim for. The difference may be that they aim for it and you expect it. I believe your expectations are too high. I Want those things, but I don't expect it and that is probably why people like you and I are sat on opposite sides of the fence on a Saturday evening. You're angry when we've lost a game because you expect us to be top 7, whereas I'm only disappointed because I want us to be but then look at what we're up against.

Chelsea
Man Utd
Man City
Arsenal
Tottenham
Liverpool
Newcastle
Aston Villa


To me these are all teams that are much bigger than us. That's 8 teams. Fortunately 2 of those are in a spell of not being able to compete. Any of the others we could lose a player too.

Then you have these:

Sunderland (I nearly put these in the top list as they are much bigger than us)
Everton (could easily argue they should be up top too)
West Ham
Stoke
Leicester
West Brom

These are all similar (ish) size to us and I'd be disappointed if a player wanted to leave us for one of these.

Then there's these, who I think without being disrespectful are smaller than us (maybe some would argue not so).

Palace
Swansea
Watford
Norwich
Bournemouth

So we have 8 teams bigger than us and 6 teams like us which is 14 teams. What do we have, what must we do, to be expecting top 7 amongst that lot? I am not being facetious, I am just putting it down in black and white. Some of those people recruited well this summer (as did some of the ones beneath us), but equally I'm sure a lot of their fans and management would have liked Pelle, Tadic, Bertrand, Forster, van Dijk, Alderwiereld, Clasie, Romeu, Mane.

At the end of the summer, we could argue that maybe we could have recruited better, but most of the people say that now with hindsight - me included. We still have a lot of players recruited who would play in Premier league sides and we can't recruit everyone and we can't get it right every time. We lost some key players but I don't think we could have done much about that. Rickie wouldn't have featured much, Lallana wanted Champions League football as did Morgan. Clyne had a year left and was offered a new deal. Lovren was just going and Chambers was relatively unproven (we maybe could have said no), so the only one for me that may have been different is Shaw and the person we bought in had the season of a lifetime. The one we may have ballsed up on was Toby.

I've gone through all that just trying to piece together the last two and a half years rather than a snap shot of now. We're 12th and not too 7 and have had a bad run barring the Arsenal game.

Do you think we've recruited poorly in the last two summers? We've had some hits and some misses so overall I'd say it's been fair. I can't think of many clubs that haven't had hits and misses - ask Liverpool and United fans! So maybe it's Koeman. Maybe he's rubbish. I struggle with that because he got us 7th last season, a feat I think fairly miraculous, given the circumstances. Now we find ourselves 12th in the league after a poor run. A run that part way through we'd have gone 6th if we'd beaten Villa by hitting just one of those cows' arses with the numerous banjos available that day.

Our footballing life ain't all that bad. Our management of expectations maybe.

There is a chance that maybe, just maybe we are playing to par, as afterall, how do you distinguish who should be where in that middle block of teams I listed above? I allowed for two in the top group to be out of it (Villa and Newcastle) but I didnt allow for any of the last group to exceed expectation. Bear in mind that currently two are (Watford and Palace) and one of them (Swansea) is possibly below par compared to recent seasons.

Every single one of us wants to be doing better and wants us to be winners, but that can't always happen. Sometimes we just need to manage our expectations.

Imagine being one of the top ones and never winning it.... *cough* Arsenal.

My final thought on this, is about the club (by which I think you mean Board/owner). They have taken us from oblivion to 7th in the Premier League. They have appointed a world famous football figure as our manager. They have invested a lot of money and written off a lot of money to get us where we are today. We wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for them (and thanks to Cortese for that), so I have absolutely zero qualms if they choose to be a little bit prudent wih investment via wages and transfer fees. I'll not moan too much of we have a season or two or even three when we finish between 16th and 8th. I like the fact that we have a stable owner although I do have little worries that she may one day have enough and sell us. We may not like what we get. If we are truly to move to the next level then it maybe that we need a new owner and I'm not sure how I would feel about that. Would you like a gazillionaire oil tycoon owning us?

I'd love is to win everything, but won't mind if we don't.

 

Sorry that turned out to be so long winded. Just got on a roll.

 

Very good Fats, and on point.

Makes a bloody change

 

Yes. It's not that our ambition is any less (or at least I hope it isn't, and don't think it is) but those other teams also have the same ambition.

Clubs have gotten a lot smarter. You look at how West Ham have transformed how they play, and how Tottenham is hired Pochettino from us, and what Leicester is doing, etc. We can take pride in being one of the teams to usher in this new-ish era and show how to compete. But that is also why teams are poaching our players and staff. They are using our formula. Clubs more and more are taking a "Moneyball" approach and identifying good, cheap, talent with upside (both players and staff) and looking outside the domestic system.

I'm a little jealous of some of these other sides that are now competing, because they have it easier. When we first burst onto the scene, we were the only ones. So therefore we were picked apart. Fortunately, we also made a lot of money that way. But now the good, cheap, young players are more evenly distributed so teams will not get ransacked as much. But this also presents a challenge to us, as other teams are using their own Black Boxes and doing analysis similar to ours so there is more competition for the kinds of players we target.

So it's not as simple as "We have to aim higher." We are disadvantaged financially, and clubs are catching on to what we did. Compared to 2 years ago, there are a lot less just crazy goofball owners and Boards that have no clue what they are doing. Everyone has upped their game. We have to constantly stay ahead of the curve. And that is not easy.

One thing about Cortese, too. It's easy to be "ambitious" with someone else's money. When you have skin in the game, you need more than ambition-- you need smart planning, you need to be willing to embrace a certain amount of risk, you need patience, and you need to just grind it out and do the dirty work and sometimes just make do with less than you want and sacrifice in the short term for the long term. When things got tough for Cortese.... he left. I'm not using that as a strike against his character. I'm just saying that he may not have been the right person for this next stage of club development. Cortese was maybe not the guy you want when the seas get choppy.

Anyway, IMO we do not need to try to hang on to our top talent at all costs. We need to allocate our resources as efficiently as possible and generate the maximum value from them. Which means, we should have the guts to sell our best talent if the price is right. I seem to have this argument every year with various people here. Selling players is not a lack of ambition. Done correctly, it can be extremely ambitious. You are willing to blow up let's say a top half side and because you are not happy with "top half." You want #1 and the current squad while perfectly decent, might not be able to get you there.

 

Good. I hate this stigma that if you vote conservative you are in some way inhuman! Labour are good and just, Tories are cruel, mercenary and heartless. I have lots of friends who vote labour and with that comes a santamonious air that they are helping fellow man. It just so happens that they work in the public sector and that suits their pockets best!
Jeremy Corbyn said he wanted to create a "more equal and fair society". Fair is subjective. Is equal really fair?

 

I can't really understand Saints fans that are not satisfied. Cast your minds back to the back end of the Rupert Lowe days, we were being served up absolute tripe and selling off the family silver cheaply and replacing it with plastic. There was no hope at that time and it seemed inevitable that we were going to sink lower and lower with bizarre decisions and managerial appointments.
Now, I can't stop smiling as a Saints fan, in those dark days in seemed inconcievable that I would be watching the current Italian striker and almost a whole first team squad of full internationals with several players costing over £10m (even the GK!), remember Rory Delap being our most expensive signing at £4m?
I believe that most of the Premier League and all of the Football league would love to have our owners and board and we are often held up as the perfect template for other clubs to follow.
We are still only one year after the original 5 year plan, which was to reach the Premier League, we have not only got there, we are established too. It's debatable how much Markus would've invested into the club, but Katharina has been true to us and has reinvested sales back into the squad and Staplewood has been built. We now have to have a sustainable business model accounting for income from attendances and TV revenue. It is a balancing act and I believe a lot faith has been put in producing our own players.
The most important thing is to stay in the Premier League and not to overreach ourselves financially, but if we did happen to make it to the top four, then the extra revenue would mean that we could invest more in players and wages to stay there, but investing until we get that extra revenue would be potentially hazardous to us.