Ralph Krueger Interview Incoming

Carrillo + Promes (or another quality pacy wide attacker) might've been an entirely different prospect, we probably will never know that now.

 

On the upside there is nobody left in the squad to sell that is worth big money. Bertie and tadic will go for good money. Cedric for a bit less. This master plan of selling our best to achieve success sort of depends on having players to sell IMO (I’m not an expert on running a football club). So when we can’t shift our Carrillo, Redmond, Long, Clasie, Forster types what do we do then. Loan them out till their contract runs down? I don’t see us getting rich off that. We let them go for cheap - can’t see us getting rich off that either. So what do we have to reinvest.. not much. This whole idea is a snake eating its own tail. We have sold more than we have recruited, we have recruited worse players than we sold. This doesn’t end well.

 

This season I will be waiting to see what the club are going to do in pushing forward and going back to The Southampton Way, before I renew my season ticket, as I am not paying to watch the **** of the last couple of seasons any more, for the club to come out saying that in a whole they have go most things right?Think a lot of fans, me included could see the club sleep walking to the Championship, where the board couldn't see this until the Newcastle away defeat, is beyond belief. RK says the timing of Hughes appointment was Perfect? No Ralph, you and LR got very very lucky.

I personally have no problem in selling a few players every season, as long as the money is reinvested in adding quality not quantity to the squad. looking at the sales / purchases in the last 5 seasons, we have roughly sold of £285,500.00 worth of players, and spent £237,800.00 approx, leaving a profit of £47,750 million, this does not include the VVD sale and Carillo purchase, so this would bump top the profit to £100 million approx.

I think most on here believe we will sell a couple of first teamers this season possibly Cedric and Bertie, which should bring in another £40 million or so, plus we need to get rid of a few dead wood players, and have a proper clear out. My list would be Boufal, Yoshida, Forster, Clasie, Carillo and Long, though I think Gabbi will also be one to leave? This should bring in another £50 million or so?

I would like us to get our business done early on most incomings, and after the in demand players have been sold, it will give LR more time to negotiate the other sales.

They need to be organised from the start, unlike last 3 or 4 transfer windows. Yes our manager last season was poor, but also showed ups several players not good enough, and to go back to RK "Southampton Way", they need to get recruitment right, as this is going to be our way of building and going forward.

So lets see if Ralph is full of ****e, or is now going to be a man of his word?????

 

If that's a Ralph soundbite, it's one I actually agree with. A culture of blame in any organisation is toxic. Accepting responsibility and learning lessons from mistakes acknowledged, is another matter. Hopefully that'll be what he means.

 

What does Ralph even do? At least now he can look at his Swansea ticket while he’s sat at his desk doing bugger all.

 

He convinces executives that have never watched football before that we are currently a really good club because we have finished top 8 4 years out of 5 so they they will be willing to invest some their companies money in to us in exchange for promoting binary trading or w/e they do.

 

The best thing about this season is that it is now last season.

 

And never happened.

 

I do like the idea that he's keeping that as an aide memoire....as long as he sees it as a sign of failure not success. This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball.

 

Agreed...learn from it, but you can't undo it. The things is that apart from shaking a purse full of coins, there is nothing he could have said or done that wouldn't have offended somebody. Down and depressed would worry people; upbeat means that he had no idea how close it was....etc

 

I want to know what happens if Ralph turns up to game without a ticket.


Saints supporting steward: can I see your ticket please

Ralph: Oh... sorry I forgot it at home.

Steward: You can't come in without a ticket.

Ralph: don't you recognise me?

Steward: Sir, you need a ticket to watch the game.

Ralph: I'm the chairman of this Club, I'm coming in....

Steward: Stand back sir, I was trained in border control by the Israelis!

 

Markus Leihberr proudly spoke about buying his own season ticket....meant no one else could try for a freebie.

 

Out of interes, why should we be above Burnley and Bournemouth. We have the same shot of league revenue and don’t have anyone pumping money in.

 

If we had a competent manager over the last season, we would have finished above B'mouth. If we had bought a good quality 20M record signing striker (no pun) then we would have been close to Burnleys 'record' season. Of that, I am sure. And I'm not usually very arrogant.

 

This is an interesting point of view although I do not necessarily agree with it. What I think has happened in the last 12 months is that football clubs are bowing to the pressure of fans who want to see entertaining football. Puel was a victim of this with the lack of home wins and absence of goals instrumental in him losing his job even if you are quite correct that he had to overcome some big hurdles with keys players missing through injury. What is interesting is that the perception of producing "boring" football is now a prime mover in dictating the tenure of managers. We have seen this today with both Everton and West Ham sacking managers who delivered football that fans were not prepared to pay to watch. There have been similar grumblings about Mourinho and Man Utd as well as at Leicester where some fans are similarly dissatisfied.

It is a curious situation. I would agree that we would be unlikely to have been embroiled in a relegation scrap with Claude Puel but I think that the matches would not have improved as a spectacle. The problem with Saints was that Pellegrino was appointed as someone capable of turning this around whereas , in reality, he was inept. The is a lot of truth in the statement that there are few really good managers out there and I would add that we probably did not realise just how fortunate we were when Pochettino took charge - he is proving to be a World Class manager and it will only be a matter of time before he out-grows Spurs.

I still feel that Claude Puel's appointment was a mistake even allowing for the fact that, on paper, he looked a good fit and was unfortunate to lose VVD for so long during the season. But the catastrophic errors made by the board in my opinion has been a lack of due diligence in it's appointments and the inability to react soon enough with Pellegrino who lasted about four months longer in his job than he should have done. Everything that had been achieved by Poch / Koeman seems to have been squandered and the ability of Mark Hughes to galvanise the same players over the last eight games is demonstrative to me that something was lacking beforehand within the club's management which had failed to motivate the playing staff. It is interesting that Hughes largely elected to use players who predated Puel and Pellegrino and it seems clear from this fact alone that the player recruitment under both Puel and Pellgrino failed to capture players with the requisite character. It is markedly noticeable that no player seems to have sung the praises of Pellegrino since his departure. I am sure such dissatisfaction would have communicated itself back to Krueger before he pulled the trigger and bought Mark Hughes in. The set up in Southampton is good enough to ensure we finish in the top half of the table each season. We may have punched over our weight with Pochettino and Koeman but it is nothing compared to the under-achievement of the team under Pellegrino. This is why I think Krueger and Reed are on a sticky wicket.

 

Attendances and merchandise revenue and our academy and infrastructure should give us an advantage over those particular clubs IMO.

I'm not belittling those clubs in any way, in fact it is a compliment to them how much they have massively overachieved in recent seasons.

 

The problem with Saints was that Pellegrino was appointed as someone capable of turning this around whereas , in reality, he was inept.
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Have to say, this is what bugs me the most. We all speculated and posted our choices as we waited for the board to make a decision. Then, when the names settled and we all researched & read up on him, nothing related to their description at all. High energy pressing style. Say what.....I got more of a scared retreating notion!

 

I didn’t think you were belittling those clubs, just my view is any club can be top of the rest outside the top 6. We did well for a while, dropped our game at the time when others upped theirs.

Merchandise, we have a good platform but we don’t really know or see what’s going at that level. Maybe the buyout will help us in a huge market, but we need to invest for that to happen as they won’t be interested in teams who are crap.

Our academy has suffered and may take five years or so before we can big that up again.

That’s why I’m not so sure we should be above anyone, we need to reset and earn our way up again.

 

I'm pretty dubious about this. Pellegrino was awful, no question, but a competent manager in Hughes didn't exactly set things alight...we took a grand total of 8 points in 8. A full season of him and good striker worth an extra 18 or so points from there? I really doubt it.