Perhaps instead of the lap of meaningless bugger all after the City game we could be treated to MP being burned at the stake. I know, I know,old soft hearted liberal that I am. But just trying to stay in the mainstream of vitriol against the poor sod. Personally, I think the recording of his appointment should be played. "Mission Impossible" music fades. Lights up. Les and MP are together in a room. MP's family can be seen being taken hostage by a manically laughing Ralph K. Les: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take this group of players who were ****ed up by the Dutch git, have forgotten how to play, completely baffled a very pleasant if boring Frenchman, and turn them into a team to take on the best in the EPL. To help you, the chairman will spout bollocks, the owner will stay at home working out how much each of his assets are worth and I will screw up transfer deals. MP: But I get to select the team, and can offer advice? Les: Sort of. You can definitely be our sex adviser. MP: Sorry? Les: If we want your ****ing advice we'll ask for it.
Archers - I feel like I’m disagreeing with you a lot at the moment, and it’s absolutely not my intent or done ‘on purpose’ as I usually agree with your posts - but I’m not sure if you’re playing devil’s advocate, or steadfastly trying to fly in the face of the wind, but you have been posting recently as if you see little wrong. That just a little twist of fate would show the doubters that MP2 is the next incarnation of Sir Alex or something. It’s baffling to me.
Having a moan on here isn’t about a lack of backbone. It’s more pointing out the screamingly obvious. I don’t moan or boo at the game, but the point of a forum is to air greivances, make suggestions, discuss stuff.
Yes and Puel wasn't the right man for the job either. Both he and Pellegrino may not be bad managers but they were bad appointments by Saints.
I'm not one for colours either, the only games I've wore colours too in recent years is Wembley and Milan. Both very different!
Maybe so. I’d take Ox in a wide position, and Wijnaldum possibly, but I don’t see a huge difference. Maybe Can over Romeu this season, but not generally. Who would you take, and for who?
I think Puel's relative success at Leicester invalidates that statement, personally. As does the fact that he got us to a cup final without a natural goalscorer anywhere in the team. Our problem isn't the manager(s), or not solely that anyway. If you keep on selling your best players, summer after summer, you will eventually pay the price. Maybe it's better to make the manager the scapegoat, rather than picking out players and scapegoating them - or we could just try the novel approach of supporting both. The campaign to sack Pellegrino has been gathering pace since the first game of the season, as I predicted it would if we drew at home to Swansea. Maybe the board should have listened to the "fans" from the start, and replaced him with a manager sacked by another board elsewhere in the league, as has been suggested on here. Or maybe he's not the problem. And maybe listening to our fans is about the absolute last thing the club should do.
No, having a moan on here is fine. I have no problem with people doing that, so long as they don't expect me to join in, and don't get offended when I push back. The lack of backbone is a referrence to the boos, jeers, and piss-poor atmosphere at St Marys.
Also relevant is the possibility that MoPo2 is quite a good Manager but hasn't got the tools to do the job, his tactics weren't bad, his players were not up to the task.
Would take Can in a heartbeat over any of the CMs, has all the tools to be brilliant. Wijnaldum and Ox would both be more useful than any of our CMs bar Lemina. So basically Liverpool's 3 + Lemina would be pretty great, odds on that being a reality next season at Anfield?. I'd put Henderson on a par with Romeu (on this season) and better than Hojbjerg/Davis. Hojbjerg has room for improvement though.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it. Not saying he's been great, I'm just not rushing to judge as I think it's too soon. Obviously, it might be too late in May, but as you say, he hasn't had the tools.
Or maybe the fans, by hook or by crook, are in this instance right, and he should have been sacked months ago? I don't buy the "if you keep selling your best players" line either. It certainly makes it a tougher job, but we have good players in this squad, and we shouldn't be anywhere near flirting with relegation as much as we are. I also don't agree that Puel was right for this club, or that his success at Leicester invalidates the statement. I don't think we'd be anywhere near as bad as we are if we'd kept him (and I wish we had), but sometimes certain people just suit certain clubs. Eddie Howe is a perfect case in point. Great for Bournemouth. Hopeless at Burnley. Adkins would be another. Great for us, utterly useless since.
In fairness I'd take any of them over SD nowadays. My CM thinking for Saints doesn't extend an awful lot further than PEH/Lemina/Romeu.
As someone who watched Puel's Nice team a lot he relies on fast counter attacking football. This is great to watch and is probably why he looked so appealing to Les & co when looking for a new manager. Plus he has always played youth wherever he has gone and this was obviously a big plus for us. What Les & co didn't factor in was that our squad, once Pelle and Mane had gone, was not suited to Puel's style at all. Last year if you had to name our best 5 players in the squad I would wager that most people would have at least 4 defensive players in it (Romeu, Bertrand, Cedric and VVD). I think Puel realised this pretty quickly, mainly because he is a good manager and tactician, and set us up to get results best utilising the team we had eg be defensive as that is where our strength lies. He is not a negative, defensive manager like the ****tards on Saintsweb will have you believe. He never has been anywhere else except in his one season at Saints where he didn't have the tools to play his style of football. He will not **** Leicester up once he has the summer to get his claws into them like the ****tards on Saintsweb will have you believe because he isn't a negative manager and Leicester do have the tools to play his brand of football. They seem to not be able to get their head around that the reason we went from a "really good team to watch playing fast attacking football under Koeman" to "****ing ****" under Puel was to do with Pelle and Mane. We didn't have the squad for Puel, the board didn't back him with getting players in to make us a "Puel" squad, yes he got some decent results along the way but overall he was a poor appointment because they didn't back him. Someone with some football insight should've realised that if we weren't going to spend big to revamp the squad then we shouldn't have gone with Puel as at best we would've had the season we had, and that turned out not to be good enough. FWIW I wanted him to be given the summer and up til Xmas and be backed in the summer window, I think if we had done that things would be very different now.
Yeah, maybe the fans are right. It's certainly far from unlikely that I'm the one who is wrong here...in fact, hold on a minute, it's not them that's mad, it's me! However, about the squad - it's not for no reason that the vultures only circled over the one player last summer. We have good players, sure; but we only have one natural finisher, and he's always injured. We have a CB pairing that will improve given the chance, but which currently is garaunteed at least one costly blunder per game. Oh yeah, and without Shane Long (whose finishing, lets not go into again), and Redmond whose confidence appears to be permanently shattered, we have NO ****ING PACE. We had a chance to address those issues in January, and appear only to have addressed one of them. If we go down (still a fairly big if imo), I'll probably chalk it up to that tbh.
