THAT Rickie Lambert Interview

It would be Mauricio's job (as their line manager) to calm things down and provide them with information, but he was too busy sorting his own future out to give a toss. I can't imagine he put much effort into supporting the board.

 

Agree. If Rickie genuinely believed everything about what he said and what Mauricio communicated via the media - then he's gullible.

But Rickie was a central enough figure in that dressing room to be fully aware of the intentions of both his manager and fellow players before the season's end.

Sorry Rickie, but that interview disappointed me somewhat.

 

If you're an owner who wants to make money then yes, it's a good plan. If you want to progress up the league it's a poor plan because it's very difficult to pull off.

The problem for Lowe was the same problem for anyone employing this strategy. When you sell your best players you need to replace them and that's a risk because not all signings work out. Some (perhaps even most) of our signings this summer won't work out and it's unlikely we will finish as high this season as we did last season. It's quite possible -perhaps even probable - that more players will want to leave next summer...

When you employ this strategy at some point there will inevitably be a season when you simply haven't brought in good enough replacements and don't have the quality to stay up.

As far as I can see you're saying the players shouldn't have judged the board's ambition on Pochettino's departure but should have waited to see what they did after Pochettino left. My point is they should already have been told the board's plans and ambitions. I seem to remember you and LTL planning to contact the board about this and explain where they were going wrong? Either they told the players their plans and the players didn't like what they heard or they hadn't communicated those plans and ambitions at all.

It's not just his job. Directors and company boards often send out messages or newsletters to all staff. I'm always getting "To All Staff" emails at work from senior management. So does my girlfriend. This is obviously a different work environment but the board had had plenty of time to meet with the players and explain what was going on.

 

Not really followed this thread too closely Puck, but I'd stand by the assertion that the club's communication strategy through the end of the summer and pre-season was poor, both to fans and players. They also initially used the wrong outlet to make any comms.

 

In fairness to the club and board though, that aspect does seem to be improving, which would indicate to me that they're either beginning to get their ducks in line, board room wise, or they've brought someone in recently with a PR brain to help out a little more coherently.

 

Yes. Apart from anything else I think Koeman contributes a fair bit to the PR side.

My point is that at the time Pochettino left it appears the communications inside and outside the club were poor. You can say the players shouldn't have read too much into Pochettino leaving but if they hadn't been told anything else you can understand why they might have come to the conclusion they say they came to.

 

I think you might have a fair point there Puck. It feels like a perfect storm in some senses. I doubt we'll ever have to go through that process again. Thankfully.

 

Yes you're right about me offering my services, but I wasn't an employee and I wanted to ride in on my white horse and save the day As for the players already being told, do you really think they hadn't already decided to go? The Shaw and Lallana stuff was rumbling on before MP quit, long before. The board also made statements back then saying nothing has changed in terms of club plans. They did that right after Cortese quit. The timelines we now know show that the players chose to ignore that or disbelieve it. Not one player has come out and said the boards ambitions had changed. Only Rickie has made that one comment and that was based on an assumption. They didn't push that assumption because they were already going.

 

What if they ready knew MP was leaving and had already been sorting out their futures based in the knowledge that NC (their leader) and MP (their popular coach) had gone and was leaving? That's the key point for me; definitely two of those three were already of the door in their heads and I believe they have the same agent as Rickie. No way he don't know what was happening.

 

I think Shaw was always going but he hasn't commented on this (that I'm aware of). Lovren has said the ambition changed. Not necessarily the most reliable source but he has said it.

I don't know who knew what or who had decided what and nor do 99% of people. I just think Lambert's version of events is plausible.

 

Fair enough. I just thought his version showed a little lacking upstairs.

 

But one of the first statements made by Cortese's replacement involved him brushing off as unrealistic the possibility of challenging for Champions League in the future. There might be plenty of truth to his statement, and they've since pivoted off that, but for players looking intently at the tea leaves it wouldn't exactly suggest that the club's ambitions are as they were.

 

Yes, that maybe right Schad.

 

The theory that the ambition of the club had changed does not sound right to me, it does not appear that way with the replacements coming in.

A lack of ambition was shown by not pushing for a good cup run and a possible place in the Europa cup this season, only one person seemed very vocal last season on not keen on that competition, so who had the lack of ambition?

Maybe many of those that left only wanted the quick route to the Champions League and all we are hearing are poor excuses for why they jumped ship at the first opportunity.

 

I think the ambition of the club has changed in focus, not the ultimate goal. To put it into perspective: when Cortese was here the challenge was set to get into the Premier League within 5 years. It was achieved in 3. The momentum that generated was tremendous, and in the meantime Cortese began bringing forward a new 5 year plan to match the momentum. I don't believe for a moment that he was irresponsible with the money side. He just brought forward the spending. I have spoken to several people who have absolutely no interest in football, but instead business. They are not tied down with the baggage of Saints fans. They all told me that Cortese was a gem to hang onto, and that he would ultimately make Southampton FC a bigger and better place. The marketing would follow because the club was on a genuine upward rise. If you try to see things without the usual Saints fan cynicism [difficult for many here, I know] you begin to realise what was building here. It wasn't boom and bust but sustainable spending, necessarily brought forward to maintain the upward momentum. That spending would have had to occur anyway, and more of it. The present incumbants will probably do the same. Remember, Saints are not paupers and they haven't been since 2009. All Katharina has to do is nod at the right times and things will be done.

And on the subject of the present owners, I think the ambition is still the same. However, it has had to change focus somewhat because the outgoing players decided they wanted their ambition realised sooner rather than later. To be honest, that's not true of Shaw. Despite his so-called grounded attitude he jumped for the glittering lights and the money. There's no Champions League out there for him and there may not be for a few seasons.

I think Saints do want to get into European competition. First through Europa and then Champions League. The investment and strategy will have to be canny. Katharina could throw money at the problem if she wanted and get the job done quicker. But the infrastructure that Cortese started to put in place is now well on track, so it would be silly not to utilise it fully. It means slower, but better founded progress and some players will eventually quit because, like their former teammates, they'll want the goodies sooner rather than later. It could be that players of the age of Ward-Prowse will be the first to really enjoy the fruits of this ambition. In that scenario I can see why Morgan and Jay would want to jump on some other easier bandwagon.

When I look back at various football clubs success, I have inifintely more respect for the likes of Nottm Forest, Aston Villa, Everton, etc... [before football was invented apparently, so you have to look into some scroll fragments] because everything they've achieved so far has been by out-manouvering their rivals rather than out-spending them. Cortese always said that Saints would have to out-smart other clubs to succeed, rather than out-spend them. Despite the recent setbacks, I think the present board are in the process of trying to do just that. Could be another upward season.

 

It's one thing that I was curious about when Cortese was here, actually. Beyond his business acumen and the rest, he was extremely good at what I'd argue is a rather important part of leading a football club: selling hope. He spoke the language of a dreamer while looking like the very definition of a Swiss banker, and for the talk of him being Rasputin in dress shoes I think that's a large part of what made him so compelling for the players...the combination of his strictly business air and his extreme optimism about the club's future suggested that he could and would take them there, and the fact that he clearly believed it built trust that was cemented when the team just kept achieving. The question with Cortese was whether that hope would survive the first setback...as it turned out, he wasn't around long enough for there to be one.

And if you look at the clubs that hang about the fringes of the top four -- Everton and Tottenham, basically -- I'd guess that their ability to sell that hope is the reason they do better in retaining and acquiring CL-quality players than you'd expect given how infrequently they've actually gotten over the hump (for Spurs, having a large pile of money helps as well). We're close, they can say, why leave when you might see far less of the pitch elsewhere and we're poised to be there next year? We're close; if you sign with us, it'll go a long way to putting us over the top. That reverie wears off eventually and players do leave/choose to sign elsewhere, but they've been able to pick their spots on departures...Tottenham held on to Bale longer than one might expect given the teams circling, Everton to Baines (and now Barkley) in the face of considerable interest. When we were ascending rapidly we could offer similar hope, particularly to young players...you can go to a bigger club, sure, but you'll be one of many there, and you could see a lot of the bench for a couple years. Come here and you'll play all the time, you'll play exciting football...and in short order, we may be just as good as those big clubs, anyway.

Meanwhile, our board appears to have failed to convince anyone. Part of that is perhaps a perfect storm, where they were always going to look like pale imitations compared to Cortese, and took over as a highly-respected manager was eyeing the door (and perhaps eager to deflect blame for eyeing the door). But I also think that they've done themselves no favours in their public statements and apparent lack of internal communication. While Cortese was a salesman in the body of an accountant, Krueger is a classic charismatic salesman, and while that personality type has its advantages in public positions, a lot of people are conditioned to be wary that they're being sold a bill of goods...and when he fluffed his lines a few times (the walked-back CL comment in particular) in the early going, it can't have improved the odds of gaining the trust of the playing staff (heh, or the fans). Les doesn't seem to be well-liked, which isn't a fatal flaw, but also doesn't predispose players to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And that's where I think we've stood. They had a difficult starting position in selling hope in the project, perhaps compounded by who they aren't and an inability to get ahead of the crisis, and almost definitely compounded by the fact that (even if well-meaning) statements about our summer activities ended in a burst of sales and the departure of Pochettino. Rickie being uncertain that they have the club's best interests doesn't mean that they're indeed malevolent, but does suggest that there's very little trust. Thus, they may be perfectly forthright in stating that the project hasn't changed, but it's hard to sell something when the targets ain't buying.

Doesn't mean that their position is irrecoverable, but they're going to have to do uncommonly well to convince the players here now and the players we target that their public and private intentions are one in the same. Or, we need to bring in an executive who can look the players in the eye and tell them that they've built good clubs before, they fully intend to do so with Saints, and they wouldn't have joined if they didn't believe in the project. And be trusted in so doing.

 

TSS, firstly it's very hard to compare success of Forest and Villa; that really was a different game then and although they allegedly did it without spending money, didn't the first ever £1m player score the winner in the first European cup win?

On the bringing forward of spending sustainable money, the one part you missed there is that is a gamble, is it not. Didn't Peter Risdale bring forward the spending at least? I'm not saying we were in that position, but using the worst ever example of forward spending. What is the definition of sustainable? For me, spending forward is ok, until the one time your income doesn't meet your expectations and then you fall behind on your payment plan; then you're in trouble. I understand the view that he could have been focusing on bringing the club's profile higher and therefore in the future making the income higher as we'd be more marketable. However, if he was as great at business as I thought, why could he not have been focusing in the increased commercial income at the same time? You finish on that part of your post with a remark that says all Katharina has to do is mid her head as we are not paupers. If this is inferring a nod of a head to spend money from her (outside of club), that isn't sustainable, it's relying in the owner.

 

The board very much seemed to have convinced Ronald Koeman. Possibly the most important person to convince right now.

The one thing NC couldn't offer that Spurs definitely can and Everton probably an is wages that are higher than ours - that is how they have convinced some of these players to join. Don't underestimate the value of 70-80k over 40-50k

 

They can offer 70-80k whereas we can offer 40-50k...but there are other teams that can offer quite a bit more than that. They've had a fair bit of success convincing players to forgo that payday for an extra year or two to see whether the club can get over the hump.

 

A lot depends on how serious the buying club are.

We've shown in our different stances with Morgan & Dejan that if the buying club don't meet a valuation then we're going to play hardball. If the buying club really want your player then they'll pay that valuation. Using Baines as an example I don't think United were that into him. Moyes obviously would have wanted to sign him, but they turned their attentions to Shaw pretty quickly. I would say the powers that be at united saw Shaw as a better signing and I have to agree that Shaw at £30m is better value than Baines at £20m