Ralph Krueger Interview Incoming

I'd just as soon not hear any PR at all myself - certainly not from Ralph, and not from Les either. A statement of intemt direct from Gao would be interesting, but all I want to hear right now is
1) Hughes has signed a contract, and
2) We are signing a striker, AM and experienced CB

 

We can all talk about the needs of the club and what we feel is the right road to follow. In the main we as fans get it mostly right but why is it the board of late haven't managed to do that??
It is one thing to acknowledge "the board made mistakes" especially in the selling department, not to mention "taking their eye off the home market".
Can any of us really expect that if we in our place of work, made such bad decisions over a couple of years, would we expect to still be in a job????
Hardly likely In my experience. However, promising to do better in my book is not good enough........Reed especially should be out on his ear........
Trouble is if he stays and gets a couple of decisions partly right because they have been forced on him he will suddenly become the hero of the hour and all the other crap will be forgotten. As a director of football Reed is seriously flawed. As they found out at Charlton before they sacked him. The guy is full of excuses.......
Hughes deserves a shot to bring stability but I have a sneaky feeling Reed has his eye on someone else and talking to my contact yesterday confirmed this as he thought the same.
Has anyone seen Reed at St Marys this week apart that is to a flying visit???? A few things are not adding up for me at the mo...........

 

Oh I do love a good conspiracy theory. Is Mark Hughes being held at gun-point in a sleazy hotel? Will Putin take the job? The questions are endless

 

Putin would be a better bet than mopo thats for sure........in fact get him in and I'll guarantee we win the league, the FA cup the European cup and any thing else going.....

 

Can't somebody put some nerve agent on the door handle of the boardroom at SMS?...

 

Good analogy Beddy. From my own experience within the NHS, I can just imagine my manager at my annual appraisal telling me: “Well you nearly killed a few patients through blind incompetence, but somehow they just about survived, so let’s try and do a bit better shall we?”

 

One thing on which we agree. As we more mature fans know, the Saints ability to screw up royally is second to none!

 

I agree we need a new striker, but there might be a lot happening in that department - Gabbi could go, the jury's out on Carrillo and the futures of Long (goals) and Austin (injuries) are also a bit unclear.

 

Agree. But the problem is that according to what RK has said, the funding for new players will come from player sales, so based on that, no incomings until we've sold? Lets hope they still have the £55 million or so from the VVD sale, left in the buying pot? Only time will tell.

 

Taking out tax i imagine they have £40m of it still. They were reportedly trying to spend £30m on a player in January, i'd be annoyed if that money has just disappeared.

 

Fingers crossed. I don't want stupid excessive spending by any means, however in the last 6 seasons taking into account the VVD sale and Carillo purchase, we have a net spend of around minus £100 million. Just a little bit of ambition and investment would be nice.

 

They are masters of pulling the wool over our eyes, I suspect not a single penny of PL revenue has been spent on our playing staff for a few years, how many other clubs can say that?

 

If you look at 2016/17 the premier league payment was around £122,450 million and player wages around £64 million. Lots of new contracts and wage increases were handed out at the start of that season, so I doubt if that has increased much this season, especially as VVD is now of the books?

That figure does not include sponsorship / commercial deals, Ticket Sales, Merchandising and Match day income. So you would like to think there is a bit of money swirling around somewhere?

 

All businesses (or at least the good ones) like to have some cash stashed under the bed for emergencies and we have other things going on...such as further expansion at the training ground, overseas development, tours (and lots of stuff I can't even think of). However, Ralph seemed to be saying that money from player sales will be spent on signings (and accompanying costs I presume). And he also said that not all business models do that...perhaps in answer to the people who think Gao has pocketed it.

I would be amazed if we didn't have enough money for at least 3 players (the absolute minimum in most peoples eyes), though we want quality not quantity, so presumably some will leave. (Not Yoshi though).

 

Man that new Krueger interview is trash. All defensive and ****

 

I can't. But honestly, that is your problem and not mine. Everyone has decided to blame Pellegrino for all the points lost and all the lousy play that happened while Hughes was in charge, and giving Hughes credit for the few points we won and all the good play.

We were up on Arsenal 2-2 after 80 minutes and lost. We were up 2-0 against Chelsea after 70 minutes and lost. We were up 1-0 against Everton after 90 minutes and lost. We were tied with Man City after regular time and lost. That's 7 points we lost late in games.

Against West Ham we were just brutally awful from the start and were never in a position to do anything other than get our asses kicked. That was the worst game all season.

Which leaves us just three games left. 0-0 against Leicester, 2-1 against Bournemouth, and 1-0 against Swansea. Did we really dominate those games? The easiest win was against Bournemouth. Honestly, that to me was a case where Bournemouth gifted us two goals (and we managed to take them for once). But we'll give that to Hughes as a well earned win. 0-0 against Leicester... not much to say about a bore draw.

So we're really left with a ton of Hughes's reputation right now resting on a 1-0 against Swansea where if Gabbiadini gets to that ball .01 second later, it's a 0-0 draw and we are relegated and probably none of us are even talking about this.

 

it's not just that £40m or what have you, either. We were in a net cash position even before the sale, and apparently some of the debt was forgiven thereafter. Even with revenues falling this year we should be positively swimming in money, whether we sell players or not.

 

I'm not sure why you're so keen to slate Hughes and build up Pellegrino. No is claiming Hughes is the messiah, but Pel was woefully out of his depth and Hughes undoubtedly made an impact. That's not even up for debate surely?

 

I agree. It’s not just about the results, which as ISIRTP says weren’t substantially better than under Pellegrino. What Hughes did was get the team playing for him, and though we’ll never know for sure, if only he’d had more than just 8 League games to work with, we might have finished mid table. It wasn’t just about Pellegrino not being up to the job, it was the length of time it took before the board acted.

 

I often struggle to understand your posts mate but is this one for real?