Mr Gao Looking for the Entertainment
10
games into the season and where are we and where are we going? Let’s just say that we are playing in the
same way and getting the same standard of results as we got post-Wembley under
Claude Puel and we can’t ye know where we are going – obviously.
I saw a decent article posted on a Saints blog called the Archers Road End, which posed the question ‘What were the Board’s expectations for the season?’. Personally I thought at the start of the season that the target would be Top 7 and therefore Europa League qualification and entertaining football. One reason I thought that is because we didn’t sell anyone and another was Ralph Krueger’s bullish response to the Virgil sale bandwagon - “when the window closes people will see how serious we are”. I took then non-selling as a statement of us being done with operating like that and now, with players on longer term contracts, we want to push on and just tweak things rather than having to replace 3 or 4 key players every summer. I thought it was an acceptance by the board that running to stand still wasn’t going to be the way any more. So, we didn’t sell Virgil van Dijk or Ryan Bertrand when we clearly could have done. I know it baffled the media because up until the day the transfer window closed, ‘Southampton always sell, it’s what they do’ was often heard and read. I t was annoying to see or read that but you have to say, it’s been the truth up until now.
So why did we change tack if not to challenge higher? I can’t believe that a decision was made based on fans getting fed up with players leaving so it must have been the expectation to challenge higher. That theory falls down a bit when you look at the fact that we didn’t sign any attacking players and decided to make do with what we had but then maybe that was because they expected what we had to do better this season. Feasibly you could have expected Redmond to get better as he’s young and Gabbiadini and Boufal to improve with acclimatisation to the English game. You would also expect Austin to stay fit for longer and that Tadic couldn’t possibly be as ineffective as last season. Maybe the end of the transfer window was compromised a bit by the sale of the club to Mr Gao.
On the other hand, Mauricio Pellegrino’s assertion that he was hoping for 17 points from our first 10 games doesn’t support the theory of lofty ambitions. For that we would have needed 21 points plus from 6 home games and 4 aways where only one game has been against one of the big boys. Losing at home to Watford, drawing at home to Newcastle and Swansea and failing to beat either Huddersfield or Brighton away. For me, we’ve left 8-10 points behind there.
I liked the fact that we stood up to the big boys and didn’t sell players but hindsight is 20/20. I reckoned without the mindset of the modern player which appears to be getting worse with each passing season and after the opening 10 games, I’m beginning to think that maybe for our own benefit that it would have been better to sell the aforementioned van Dijk (not to Liverpool on principle) and Bertrand and reinvested the £100m-ish that they would have brought in. We sign players and make them better. The players see that and want to play for Southampton but we are not the final destination and we never will be in todays game. If a player comes on the radar of a big club then the player is going to want to go... and if we don’t sell them for a huge fee them then more often than not there’s going to be a tail off and a negative effect on Southampton FC. For every Schneiderlin who got his head down and had a great season, there’s a Wanyama who played like he didn’t care.
I saw a decent article posted on a Saints blog called the Archers Road End, which posed the question ‘What were the Board’s expectations for the season?’. Personally I thought at the start of the season that the target would be Top 7 and therefore Europa League qualification and entertaining football. One reason I thought that is because we didn’t sell anyone and another was Ralph Krueger’s bullish response to the Virgil sale bandwagon - “when the window closes people will see how serious we are”. I took then non-selling as a statement of us being done with operating like that and now, with players on longer term contracts, we want to push on and just tweak things rather than having to replace 3 or 4 key players every summer. I thought it was an acceptance by the board that running to stand still wasn’t going to be the way any more. So, we didn’t sell Virgil van Dijk or Ryan Bertrand when we clearly could have done. I know it baffled the media because up until the day the transfer window closed, ‘Southampton always sell, it’s what they do’ was often heard and read. I t was annoying to see or read that but you have to say, it’s been the truth up until now.
So why did we change tack if not to challenge higher? I can’t believe that a decision was made based on fans getting fed up with players leaving so it must have been the expectation to challenge higher. That theory falls down a bit when you look at the fact that we didn’t sign any attacking players and decided to make do with what we had but then maybe that was because they expected what we had to do better this season. Feasibly you could have expected Redmond to get better as he’s young and Gabbiadini and Boufal to improve with acclimatisation to the English game. You would also expect Austin to stay fit for longer and that Tadic couldn’t possibly be as ineffective as last season. Maybe the end of the transfer window was compromised a bit by the sale of the club to Mr Gao.
On the other hand, Mauricio Pellegrino’s assertion that he was hoping for 17 points from our first 10 games doesn’t support the theory of lofty ambitions. For that we would have needed 21 points plus from 6 home games and 4 aways where only one game has been against one of the big boys. Losing at home to Watford, drawing at home to Newcastle and Swansea and failing to beat either Huddersfield or Brighton away. For me, we’ve left 8-10 points behind there.
I liked the fact that we stood up to the big boys and didn’t sell players but hindsight is 20/20. I reckoned without the mindset of the modern player which appears to be getting worse with each passing season and after the opening 10 games, I’m beginning to think that maybe for our own benefit that it would have been better to sell the aforementioned van Dijk (not to Liverpool on principle) and Bertrand and reinvested the £100m-ish that they would have brought in. We sign players and make them better. The players see that and want to play for Southampton but we are not the final destination and we never will be in todays game. If a player comes on the radar of a big club then the player is going to want to go... and if we don’t sell them for a huge fee them then more often than not there’s going to be a tail off and a negative effect on Southampton FC. For every Schneiderlin who got his head down and had a great season, there’s a Wanyama who played like he didn’t care.
Would
we be in a worse league position if Sam McQueen had played left back and Wesley
Hoedt hadn’t been left out to accommodate Virgil? Probably not. Would we be in
a better league position if we’d invested £100 million on midfielders and
attackers? Can’t say for sure but I’d say that it is extremely likely. You also can’t underestimate the effect of
having 11 players out on the pitch who really want to be there and are invested
mentally in what the club is about.
Hang on a minute.... in my little scenario there, Pellegrino is still the manager. He’s come in with his best achievement being taking Alaves to mid table in the Spanish league and getting to a Cup Final. Alaves are the Spanish equivalent of Bournemouth - a traditionally small club who have done remarkably well to get in the top division. He achieved his Alaves success by playing very dour defensive football. Saints are already an established mid-table side with an entertainment problem so we didn’t need what Pellegrino had provided so far in his managerial career. Les Reed will have known this and therefore will have been expected Pellegrino to improve on that and grow as a manager like the relatively unheralded players we brought in. Is Pellegrino a Sadio Mané or is he a Juanmi?
Hang on a minute.... in my little scenario there, Pellegrino is still the manager. He’s come in with his best achievement being taking Alaves to mid table in the Spanish league and getting to a Cup Final. Alaves are the Spanish equivalent of Bournemouth - a traditionally small club who have done remarkably well to get in the top division. He achieved his Alaves success by playing very dour defensive football. Saints are already an established mid-table side with an entertainment problem so we didn’t need what Pellegrino had provided so far in his managerial career. Les Reed will have known this and therefore will have been expected Pellegrino to improve on that and grow as a manager like the relatively unheralded players we brought in. Is Pellegrino a Sadio Mané or is he a Juanmi?
Early
signs are not great. He seems to be throwing a number of theories at the wall
and hoping it sticks but everything seems to be based on fear or caution. He
would rather pick a side that was safe and solid and dull rather than one that
was a little bit unpredictable, exciting and might be brilliant. Another stick that could be used to hit him with is that the Academy graduates, the pride of the club and major selling point, are not being picked
this season and I think this is probably down to inbuilt caution in the
manager. Claude Puel played the youngsters whilst we were in the Europa League but as soon as we were out then in the main, he didn't.
With Mauricio Pellegrino, I think that if you’d offered
him 36 1-1 draws at the start of the season which meant we stayed up then he’d
have taken it. I can’t imagine that was what was wanted at Board level at the
start of the season. Does Mr Gao want to be entertained? At least a bit? Or
maybe he doesn’t care as long as we’re in the Premier League.
Our
attitude in games against teams we should be beating has been very
disappointing. The basic theory that it’s
better to win one, draw one and lose one than to draw all three seems to be
lost on Saints and on a number of teams in the Premier League. Three points for a win was brought in back in
the day to make teams go for it more – maybe it needs to be 4 points for a win –
however, a lot of managers would think their best chance of winning would be to
bore the hell out of everyone for 85 minutes and then hope for a free kick.
At the moment, it’s hard not to see a season ahead which is exactly like the last one only without a cup final and finishing lower than 8th. With no tangible improvement, Pellegrino will undoubtedly be sleepwalking into being replaced at the end of the season. It’s not his fault that patience with him will be in much shorter supply after the season under Claude Puel. It’s up to Pellegrino to make sure that he’s not on the way out in the summer and the only way he’s going to do that is playing some braver, more entertaining football and taking a few risks, especially in home games and against teams we should be beating.
At the moment, it’s hard not to see a season ahead which is exactly like the last one only without a cup final and finishing lower than 8th. With no tangible improvement, Pellegrino will undoubtedly be sleepwalking into being replaced at the end of the season. It’s not his fault that patience with him will be in much shorter supply after the season under Claude Puel. It’s up to Pellegrino to make sure that he’s not on the way out in the summer and the only way he’s going to do that is playing some braver, more entertaining football and taking a few risks, especially in home games and against teams we should be beating.
I
hope he succeeds of course but as I said earlier, the early signs are not good.
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