CanadaSaint

I’m trying to get a bigger picture “read” on the rollercoaster ride of the last two games. It seems to me that we’re in the mental transition phase between Martin’s painfully slow, possession based approach and a more aggressive style focused on getting the ball forward earlier. But the Russball mentality is so deeply ingrained that it’s almost instinctive. One of its most frustrating characteristics shows in the passing – even simple passes to open players. Instead of playing the ball ahead of the target, allowing us to maintain forward momentum, we still play it to feet and often even behind the target. Aribo does it a lot, but he’s far from the only one. Sure, some of it is an ability thing but it’s just as much a mentality thing. When we revert to the Russball instinct we look awful but when we make the mental shift from a possession focus to a penetration focus we look far better. Same players but totally different mindset, and the more creative forces like Dibling, Sulemana and Fernandes get a chance to show their skills.

That’s a lot of what’s going on here. As fans we just want to win the game. Juric wants to win as well but he also needs to figure out who he can rely on and who he can’t. Now he knows.

It’s pretty impressive that Juric has flushed the Martinball instincts so quickly - I thought it would take longer. But to inject that rapid player and ball movement up front is even more impressive. Long way to go but this is major progress regardless of the final score.

As many have said, we won’t know how good our squad is until Martin is nowhere near it. It isn’t top half but it’s nowhere near as bad as Martin made it. Hopefully we’ll keep taking it to United because they can’t deal with the pace and movement.

And another 'novelty' is that he represents an early out-ball target. That will temper United's attempts to push up and trap us in our own half, and throw everyone forward for set pieces. Keeping someone "high" normally forces the opposition to keep two back - with Dibling it might be three. Sure the odds are stacked against us, but at least we're doing things to stop stacking the odds against ourselves.

I don't disagree - I said it would be a project, but it's one with a high upside. It's difficult to see a downside when you look at the table and watch us trying to defend. I didn't claim to know best - I just offered an opinion. If you'd criticized me for talking out of my arse I would have been more inclined to accept it because I know that's your area of expertise. Was it the criticism of Russ that got your panties twisted?

Whether or not the “rumours” are true, I think we’d be a much stronger side with ABK at the back, allowing KWP to move back to his best position. Right now they’re both devalued assets who have been highly rated internationals. ABK’s a player who needs a strong manager who will call him out if he steps out of line. Selles wasn’t strong enough, and Martin only picked players with blind allegiance to him and his system - even if they ball-watched incessantly and took halfwitted red cards. Juric has a project on his hands, but there are big “upsides” to taking it on. A better-performing side, higher valuations for two good players we’ll probably lose when we go down. What’s the downside for a team with six points after 20 games?

I was just typing some similar thoughts when your post popped up. There’s no way we’d hire a Croatian manager unless it was what Dragan wanted, so I think he’s been taking control for a while - this move just formalizes it. He’s had a gutful of the current lot and he’s now putting his people in place. I can’t see Juric committing if he would be required to adhere to Rasmus’s ideological bullshit, so hopefully Rasmus is in the group now being marginalized. The next moves should be interesting.

It doesn't qualify as a talisman but one thing I think we've really lacked in the last two years is a good dressing room leader. The best ones are respected by the other players for their contribution, commitment and consistency - not necessarily silky skills. They're willing to call out players (on or off the pitch) whose standards drop below required levels - or who keep making the same mistakes, and they support younger pros who are learning their trade. While they are loyal to the manager, they have a good finger on the dressing room pulse, and they're willing to have frank conversations with the manager, in private, when they think he's missing stuff he should be seeing. A good captain can make a team better, and can make a manager better - especially a manager with narcissistic traits. If ever a manager needed a strong captain to help him make his theory-football work, it was Russell Martin. He needed to temper his possession-obsession with some pragmatism, but I suspect that he valued loyalty to him above everything else (including ability), and picked his captain(s) accordingly. So I'm not sure that he ever got to hear any of the "home truths" he desperately needed to hear from the players.

This is exactly what has been doing my head in. We supposedly went after Marsch and were in discussions with Juric two years or so ago, and both of them are committed to fast transition using both flanks. Marsch's Canadian men's team is exhilarating to watch, punches well above its weight, and gave fits to some of the best sides in the world at Copa America, including a full-strength Argentina. Just what a club like Saints needs to be, not Russell Martin's version of Monty Python's Fish Dance. The point isn't that we didn't hire Marsch or Juric, or even why we didn't, but that we went after them in the first place - and then settled for Jones, Selles and Martin. That's not a carefully-orchestrated philosophy at work, being guided by people who know football. Hopefully, we're now on the right track but a lot of damage has been done.

I suspect you’re absolutely right on both counts. There’s no way this would have gone ahead without Dragan’s sign-off, and it may even have been at his instigation. The credibility of Rasmus’s ‘master plan’ can be gauged from the tactical diversity of the managers we have seriously considered and/or appointed - Marsch, Juric, Jones, Selles and Martin, and now back to Juric. That’s not a masterplan, it’s a fart in an egotistical thunderstorm, and I think/hope that Dragan has rumbled him. He doesn’t have to get rid of Rasmus, just stop letting him make the big decisions.

I think Downes’ game will start improving when he can focus more on his main role - protecting our back line from the opposition, and breaking out when safe to do so. A lot of his time under Russball involved trying to protect the back line from itself. So much so that he became part of it and started falling victim to the same failings.

Archer's moment of directness and positivity, so alien in Martin's approach, seemed to inspire others to adopt a similar approach, and then the whole tide of the game turned. We were looking to move forward instead of sideways, and even Sulemana was working his ass off defensively but always looking for the chance to break. I think we need to get used to having Tall Paul in the side - he looks like Bambi on ice at times but he adds dimensions we really need and he's quite a handful; I wish he'd started tonight. At times it was hard to believe that they were the same players. Getting Ramsdale back into the team and utilizing his long, flat out-ball more frequently should blunt the opposition press and make us much more enjoyable to watch.

Same players, drastically different intensity and positivity. Trying hard to suppress anger that Martin wasn’t shown the door after Bournemouth.

Big moment, that - aside from being a cracking goal. It’s the kind of take responsibility, go at ‘em mindset that had no place in Russball. Now that mindset needs to spread.

It was always going to take time to de-program the daleks Martin created. If we’re going longer earlier it makes no sense to leave a target/holdup player on the bench. Surprised that Tall Paul isn’t on already.

I don’t want to overplay this, but opening the door and pushing Russ out actually creates a kind of transfer window by letting some fresh air in. There are some decent players in our bloated squad (not great but decent) who haven’t had a sniff under Martin because they aren’t the conformists he demands. There are others who have been in and out of the side, or asked to play unfamiliar roles, due to his constant chopping and changing. And most of the squad have been cowed into submission and have seen their self-confidence, performance and reputation plummet. They know they’re being required to do things they’re not capable of doing at this level, and “playing scared” has triggered some negative body language that has been apparent for weeks. All those players can ‘improve’ with Russ’s departure. Something else could make a big difference. I’ve long felt that Russ had a loyalist inside the dressing room who made sure that everyone toed his line. This suppressed the squad feedback that Russ desperately needed to hear. We’ve seen his reaction to anyone who dares to question his tactics, so I can understand why nobody “inside the room” would speak up. We won’t automatically become a mid-table side with all those negative dynamics removed, but I think we’ll start seeing much more positive energy from both players and supporters. It’ll hopefully be a good example of addition by subtraction.

The number of 12 million has been bandied about for cleaning house on the coaching side but I don't think anyone on here really knows. The fact that we just accept numbers of that magnitude as plausible - and the entire notion of lengthy “gardening leave” - is indicative of everything that’s wrong in the spoilt, cosseted, cloud-cuckoo world of the PL. In the real world, people aren’t free to produce dire results without consequences; there are termination provisions in contracts, and employment law to cover those without contracts. As I remember it, the law addresses “dismissal for cause” and “dismissal without cause”, and cause has to be proven: “M’Lud, I cite 5 points from 15 games, recurrent mistakes, criticism from almost all of the football world, widespread anger in the fan base, and open disrespect shown to paying customers – including, allegedly, an instruction to ‘fuck off’. I could go on, M'Lud.” But regardless of whether it’s for cause or without cause, the departing employee has a duty to mitigate his/her loss by actively seeking employment to replace at least some of the lost income. That doesn’t mean waiting for another job as a PL head coach – it means employment in his/her field. There’s no licence in the real world to sit on their ass and do nothing, or nurture the veggies in their allotment, while their contract runs down. It’s difficult to imagine that Martin’s contract is completely silent on this stuff – even accounting for the fact that we’re talking about the PL in general and Sports Republic in particular. Every employee is subject to reasonable supervision, and this – to me – is where SR have been utterly inept. Martin acts like, sounds like and looks like someone who only reports to his own ego. If SR really don't intend to fire him, they need to wake the fuck up and start telling him as pointedly as necessary what he needs to change. That's certainly not my preferred option but they need to either piss or get off the pot before it cracks wide open.

THB can say what he wants (or what he’s encouraged to say) but I see a demoralized side going through the Russell Martin motions. No fight, no desperation, just nothing.

It’s mental that we completely negate Fernandes’ vision and passing ability by compressing his space with our own short-passers.

It doesn’t help that we don’t have a solid left side CB on the books. Oh, wait … we do but he’s got an attitude issue that’s apparently a much bigger problem than a ball-watcher who gets two red cards in twelve games.

There are lots of “I hate playing for this prick” signs out there.

Warning: Lengthy vent inbound. I can’t believe I’m typing this when I’ve long felt little sympathy for spoilt, ludicrously-overpaid athletes who live cosseted lives and don’t face the day to day challenges most of us face. But I really sympathize with our guys because they’re like the crew of the Costa Concordia, as our version of Francesco Schettino takes them on his ego-triggered journey onto the rocks. Or, to use another metaphor, they are the cannon-fodder that “General Lead-From-Behind” sends out to meet their inevitable fate. The last words they hear from him are “Be brave, men, be brave”. Russell Martin says “brave” constantly but only focuses on the first word of the definition: courage in the face of danger. He arrogantly refuses to focus on the last word (the word that pretty much the entire football world keeps using), and is dismissive of what that last word means for the players. So what does it mean for the players? I have little doubt that, if the real truth were told, the vast majority hate playing for him. You can see the fear in their eyes, the panic as they try to find the “Russball” pass when all their football instincts are telling them to do something else. They know they are being transformed into football robots. They know that being robotic and sycophantic with the manager will get you in the team ahead of far more talented players. They know that not being sufficiently robotic will get them a one-way trip to the sidelines. They know that when they make the inevitable mistake, all eyes will be focused on them. And then their mistake will be replayed and replayed again, before making its way to YouTube for even more people to see. They know that their career trajectories are heading ever-lower with each game under Russ. Having played the position myself, I see Martin as a “keeper killer” because he forces his keepers to play in a way that compromises their positioning, and try to make Russball ‘contributions’ that A) are well out of their comfort zone and often beyond their capability, and B) damage their ability to actually be keepers. We can criticize Bazunu and McCarthy until we go blue in the face, but when we spend 25 million on a high-quality, ultra-confident keeper and can see the fear in his eyes two games into his stint with us, something is very, very wrong. Despite their huge pay checks it's very sad to watch, and I’m really starting to feel for them. Here’s another thing I can’t believe I’m typing, given our disastrous results so far. There are numerous very solid elements of Russball, and I’d be sorry to lose them. It can be great to watch until it hits the point at which it turns from great to suicidal. The problem is back to that definition of “brave”. Martin’s self-besotted arrogance only allows him to see the courage part, not the danger part. The bit where everything falls apart. Just as there’s a “trigger” for pressing tactics to kick in, there needs to be a trigger for Russball to end. But he just won’t accept it – won’t even pick fast, wide players who are targets for quick transition from Russball to penetrating offence. He says he wants fast transition but does nothing to make it happen, and sometimes even shows exasperation if someone tries it. I doubt that he took anything from Tall Paul’s excellent play on Sunday, other than the fear that it might derail Russball and make other talented but non-robotic players think that there’s a route from the doghouse to the starting lineup. I’d love to know what was said in his little chat with Dibling on Sunday – it didn’t look like they were on the same page but young Dibling seemed to be holding his ground. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Russ isn’t leaving, so we can only hope that he is somehow forced to face some realities. It won’t come from SR – that’s like being up shit creek with Rasmus for a paddle. The fan opinions don’t work with Russ or Rasmus because they’re the smartest guys in every room they enter. It needs a new dressing room leader (i.e. not Jack Stephens or Ross Manning – good guys but …) to have enough gonads to step forward, on behalf of what I suspect is a large majority of the squad, and have a frank conversation with the manager. It wouldn’t be a player “revolt” but a very pointed discussion. So who’s going to have a chat with our Francesco Schettino?

I’ve voted Yes even though it’s just a plaintive cry if the reality is that he CAN’T be moved on because the cost would cause us to breach the Profit and Sustainability Rules, because of the understandable lack of decent candidates willing to pick up the poisoned chalice we’ve become, or because (like many on here) they fear that we’re doomed regardless of whether he stays or goes. If that’s the case our only realistic option may be to hire someone with football knowledge and a powerful-enough personality to supervise him. There are pacy, wide players in the squad who can add the fast-break dimensions we need, but Martin refuses to play them. They may be short of PL standard but the important thing is that they offer us the early out-ball and the through-the channels target we need in order to break out of our self-created quicksand and get an earlier delivery into the box. AA contributed nothing out-wide yesterday, and playing BBD out there was ludicrous. I can’t imagine that Martin’s contract gives him unfettered control over team affairs regardless of his performance. He has to report to someone, and that “someone” is also doing a really shitty job right now.

Stunning save from Ramsdale after Stephens yet again demonstrates that he thinks that ballwatching is the key to effective marking.