benali-shorts

That may be something to do with the quality of player / squad performing the possession football.

Enjoyable article, nice words too FF https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65599706

Steve Cooper just saying that he’s not sure possession football works that well any more, and high tempo is more effective. Rasmus will use this ignorant waffle to fuel his single-minded conquering of the football world.

Full article by Tom Toddy below for info. Southampton manager: Russell Martin favourite to replace Rubén Sellés Club believe Swansea City boss is right man to take them straight back to Premier League Russell Martin is in the frame to become Southampton’s new manager as the south-coast club look to follow Burnley’s template in making an immediate return to the Premier League. The 37-year-old Swansea City head coach is among the candidates Southampton identified to lead them in the second tier next season, after their 11-year stay in the top flight ended when their relegation was confirmed at the weekend. Rubén Sellés has been in charge as interim manager since February. The 39-year-old Spaniard succeeded Nathan Jones, who was sacked only 95 days after replacing Ralph Hasenhüttl in a chaotic campaign at the club. Southampton have been interviewing other candidates for the role but admire Martin’s work at Swansea, where he has deployed an attractive possession-based style and is about to enter the final 12 months of his contract. Swansea finished tenth in the Sky Bet Championship, three points off the play-off positions, despite having failed to make any signings during the January transfer window. Southampton have looked at Burnley’s approach to bouncing back to the Premier League at the first opportunity by transforming their style of play to a possession-heavy, attacking approach under Vincent Kompany. They have already appointed Jason Wilcox, the former Manchester City academy director, as their new director of football and had hired his former City colleague Joe Shields, who was poached by Chelsea in October instead. Many of the club’s signings during the past two transfer windows have been young players developed at clubs who place a heavy emphasis on possession. The highly rated midfielder Roméo Lavia, 19, goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu, 21, and winger Samuel Edozie, 20, were all bought from City. Martin retired as a player in 2019 after 15 years as a defender, most of which were spent at Norwich City, and ended his playing career at MK Dons, before taking his first managerial job there in 2019. In 2020-21, Martin’s final season in charge, MK Dons were behind only Manchester City and Barcelona in the list of teams in Europe’s top five leagues with the highest average percentage possession. They recorded a British record in March of that season by scoring after 56 consecutive passes against Gillingham. That approach has continued at Swansea and was illustrated in last month’s 3-0 win against Norwich City when Martin’s side completed 888 passes, the second-highest in a fixture in Europe’s top leagues since the start of the 2021-22 season.

Article in Times on Martin being high on the list, including this little Rasmusism.... "In 2020-21, Martin’s final season in charge, MK Dons were behind only Manchester City and Barcelona in the list of teams in Europe’s top five leagues with the highest average percentage possession. They recorded a British record in March of that season by scoring after 56 consecutive passes against Gillingham."

Adam Armstrong. I have come to despise him, even though he is a footballer and I have never met him.

Why wasn’t Ankersen at the game today? Amazing that he didn’t deem it necessary or worthwhile to attend.

Bound to be various articles incoming. Here's the Times' take on it, with a couple of interesting snippets on squad disharmony, French-speaking clique; and the general confusion between aspired playing styles and players' ability ably demonstrated (presumably) by Yan Valery being told to hoof it; and the desire to empower the veterans to curb the youngsters' ill-discipline presumably explains Bednarek's return. I wondered if the source's use of "they" might suggest it's Jones. How arrogance, dithering and flawed policy led to Southampton disaster Once a model of best practice, the Championship-bound club have fallen apart — and they only have themselves to blame. There was a time not so long ago when Southampton were the envy of both ends of the Premier League, a model of best practice for teams at the bottom, and a shining example of how to scout and sign for those at the top. It was the days of Mauricio Pochettino and Sadio Mané, of Luke Shaw and Virgil van Dijk, when the club’s “black box” was overflowing with scouting data that nobody else had and their blend of smart recruits and academy graduates was seeing off Inter Milan and winning at Anfield, the Emirates and Old Trafford. If Southampton fail to win at home to Fulham on Saturday, they will be relegated to the Sky Bet Championship, their fate confirmed mathematically, even if all evidence indicated that the fire in this side burnt out weeks ago. For the Southampton of 2023, read Brentford and Brighton & Hove Albion, Fulham even. For these sides now, the red-and-white stripes no longer represent a paragon of excellence but a cautionary tale, a warning for how quickly things can unravel. Southampton were rarely blown away this season, their demise far from inevitable. For a team that has been bottom of the table since March, they are not last in the Premier League for goals scored or goals conceded, for shots taken or passes made. Their form at St Mary’s has been miserable but away from home, they are only the fifth worst in the division and they have lost by a single goal more than by any other margin. This was a team cut adrift but not out of its depth. A key problem was the lack of harmony and cohesion, with senior players growing disillusioned with the cliques that had formed in the dressing room. Some saw the divide as generational, the result of a team made up of youngsters and veterans, with little in between. Others believed factions were based more on culture and language, with an African and French-speaking group viewed as particularly removed. Either way, there was a disconnect between the old guard and the new, about how a Premier League team should operate and the standards that need to be maintained. Poor punctuality was a source of tension, as was a lack of attentiveness in team meetings. Some of the younger players were accused of complacency. They were told they thought they had made it by playing for a Premier League club and were now letting their standards slip. The decision to target youth and potential, instead of proven performers, had been a conscious one. Rasmus Ankersen and Henrik Kraft, the co-founders of Sport Republic, who acquired a controlling stake in Southampton in January 2022, told staff there was a gap in the market for clubs prepared to take risks on players who others believed were not ready. It was a sporting strategy with financial motivation. Youngsters would flourish and mature. They would benefit the team before being sold at a profit further down the line. Southampton took that policy, adopted by many middling European clubs, to its absolute extreme. Instead of cosseting youth with experience, they removed experience and bought even younger. Of the 10 players who arrived last summer, Joe Aribo was the oldest at 25. To some, the splurge on potential was a risk. To others, it smacked of arrogance. “They thought anything they touched would turn to gold,” says a source close to the dressing room. “They believed they could bring in whoever they wanted and they would be a superstar. You bring in a load of kids who don’t know what the levels are — it doesn’t take a genius to work out it’s going to be a disaster.” Roméo Lavia was one of the few that delivered and he could be sold for at least £40 million this summer. Relegation will cost Southampton more than double that. Regardless of age, players noted a lack of cohesion between recruitment and coaching departments about which arrivals needed time to adapt. There even appeared to be a lack of knowledge and trust in new signings. One player, who unexpectedly started the first game of the season against Tottenham Hotspur, had been feted for his ability to play out from the back, but after repeatedly being caught in possession, he was told at half-time to go long. A lack of leadership made it harder for players to gel and settle. Fraser Forster, Shane Long and Nathan Redmond left on free transfers last summer, a year after Danny Ings was sold to Aston Villa and Ryan Bertrand joined Leicester City. The year before that, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg went to Tottenham. The steady exodus of personality and experience left a vacuum that needed filling last summer. Instead, Southampton doubled down. They let Oriol Romeu, another highly respected figure, join Girona on the final day of the transfer window. By the time Romeu left, the grumbling about Ralph Hasenhüttl was getting louder again. Some players had made it clear to the board they wanted Hasenhüttl gone at the end of last season, but three members of his coaching team were dismissed instead, which failed to have the desired impact. Rubén Sellés, who came in as an assistant, led the first two weeks of pre-season training and the atmosphere improved under the Spaniard. Yet the appreciation for Sellés only magnified the disappointment when Hasenhüttl returned and within three months, the Austrian was sacked. The biggest failing was in the timing. Hasenhüttl had done good work at Southampton during his four years in charge, but if he had left in the summer, a replacement would have had space to implement his ideas. Roberto De Zerbi, who was available after leaving Shakhtar Donetsk, was among those discussed. The World Cup offered the board an excuse to delay, with the mid-season break seen as a useful juncture when they could look again at Hasenhüttl’s position. It was an excuse to dither when decisive action was needed By the time, Hasenhüttl was sacked in November, De Zerbi had been snapped up by Brighton and Southampton lurched to Luton Town’s Nathan Jones, whose direct style of play and confrontational personality was an awkward fit for a young squad, honed in the ways of pressing. His lack of pedigree raised doubts too. If the board were guilty of arrogance when signing a slew of unproven youngsters, here they were putting a relegation-threatened side in the hands of an unproven coach. Jones tried to enhance the authority of the veterans, but there were not many to lean on. This was not a squad designed for a manager who believes in the importance of experience.For all his antics in public, Jones was not unpopular with the players. There was a belief he could have been successful if he had been given a summer to bed in, an extended period to implement his approach. The failing was in the timing and so it proved again with Sellés, who could have offered a smoother transition after Hasenhüttl. Sellés’s interest in the academy, his eye for detail, and his desire to make changes for the long term all pointed to a coach suited for building, not fire fighting. There were signs of improvement, but all too little, too late.Every step of the way, Southampton were a step behind; in their dithering over Hasenhüttl, in hiring a coach like Jones mid-season, and in turning back to Sellés, when the link was broken and the team was dead on its feet. Another squad, with a different dynamic, might have muddled through, but for this youthful team, shorn of its leaders and experience, and lacking good discipline and a hardened culture, instability proved a disaster. Southampton were so fixated on the next, they forgot about the now. On Saturday, it catches up with them.

it could have all been so different if Mickey’s mum hadn’t confiscated his computer.

Refusing to sign a contract extension so being frozen out ahead of summer sale. Think he claimed an injury after the international break which the management doubted, which proved the final nail in his particular coffin.

I was travelling on Mon so had to listen to the Forest game on the radio. Danny Murphy (idiot) repeatedly banging on about how Selles was issuing far too many instructions to the players which would inevitably make them tense; and continually ridiculed the antics of one of his colleagues who kept popping up with an iPad at each of the set pieces. Notwithstanding that Murphy was playing to the gallery, he was correct in stating that the players should know what to do from set pieces by now; and that his description of the whole dug-out performance as "amateur hour" was reflective of the crass decision to put a coach in charge of a Premier League relegation battle whose previous team management experience consisted of a couple of games I/c Valencia U18s. I feel sorry for Selles - he seems a sincere and committed professional, who's been hung out to dry by being given a role for which he is far too inexperienced.

Very rare for young keepers to recover from being exposed in the Prem and having difficult seasons, they tend to be permanently broken. In fact I can't think of any..... Going into the season with Bazunu as No.1 and an multiply-dropped and injury-prone McCarthy as No.2 was utterly incompetent.

Shite lows?

What's actually wrong with Che? Is it a calf strain? Is there any news when he'll play again?

Like chlamydia or syphilis

Does he also like dysfunctional squads and an ego-tastic boss with amazing hair who has singlehandedly uncovered the secrets behind the alchemy of football?

Ralph favourite for the job

I think he was renowned for only managing 60 mins in the Belgian league, so he's unlikely to ever have the stamina to play a full game. He looks an expensive panic buy from our wonderfully coiffeured guru.

1. Lyanco 2. Adam Armstrong 3. Aribo Tricky to narrow it down to 3.

He’d be in my All Time Shit Saints XI

Ha! That's right, Javi the Mentalisto

12 games in 4 years after he nearly joined us. I'd forgotten he joined Blackburn.

Hilarious. Who was the obsessed Spanish guy pimping him on the forum? HE sent me a DVD of Le Tiss's goals I seem to recall.

I’m ambivalent to Marsch. Grateful it’s not Gerrard, Lampard or Rooney. But I’m intrigued when people optimistically say that Marsch will suit our squad, despite all the evidence that our squad is, in fact, helplessly shit.

Yes, Phil Giles was/is definitely considered the football talent spotter at Brentford. Rasmus was seemingly the strategist to align Midtyjlland with Brentford, and as Steve points out, it's notable that they haven't deemed it necessary to replace him (arguably, the processes may have been implemented and therefore not require an ongoing strategist - but interesting nonetheless). In fairness, Rasmus is performing a DofF role out of necessity of Shields leaving, and they're probably spending more on players than they would be normally be comfortable doing without a Director of Football being in place, again out of necessity given our perilous league position so I remind myself that it's harsh to pin the transfer success or otherwise on Rasmus. But let's hope there's substance to him, jury's out at this stage.