Saint86

The only evidence I can find for bitcon is that he was promoted from director of performance, to the title of "Head of Football Operations", nothing seemingly from the club indicates he is director of football and they consciously do not include him on their leadership page listing. By the accounts I can find, the club chose not to hire a DoF and instead split wilcox's duties between Parsons, Mowbray, Martin, and Bitcon. With remaining influence from rasmus. Which to me means that we don't have anyone calling the shots directly, certainly not with a demonstrable good track record, and that we are basically relying on Mowbray's experience and ability (diluted down to a quarter / fifth - subject to rasmus) to chose the next manager.

Southampton fc doesn't have a formal director of football in place. https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/meet-the-saints-leadership-team

I don't think anyone other than Martin will be getting this relegation on their CV.

With no DoF in place, someone like Moyes would be a steady hand in fairness. Think he'd be good for younger players as well. Will be interesting to see how this goes. Moyes, Corberan, Rohl, Potter are all decent names to be linked with. I am not sold on the danish gareth southgate however (okay, that may be harsh), but for me he simply hasn't done it at a serious enough level and i include international football with Denmark within that. We need a manager experienced in english football... Get this right and its not inconceivable that we do make a fight of relegation and at the very least go into the summer in a good place for the championship promotion push next year. Cock this one up with another SR managerial masterclass and we'll be on an extremely low ebb going into the summer, huge toxicity between the board and the fans, and have half the team fighting each other to be first out the exit door again.

He wouldn't my pick because his sides are defensive as hell. But anyone turning their nose up at him from an ability perspective is being harsh. He's a good manager tactically and his sides are very well drilled. Although i'd argue he's the opposite of Martin in that instead of having a prescribed system, his system feels like its whatever will work to counter the opposition... I don't think he'll suit creative players like Dibbling and Fernandes either, but obviously could be wrong on that.

Would be another spectacular own goal by SR if so.

Pretty much unforgiveable, that having taken that long to sack Martin, Rusk is now in charge of this game. Really does make it look like he was sacked on a spur of the moment decision with no plan in place.

No danger of rusk getting the job then.

Had totally forgotten about this - Is it on TV? Edit - unsure why I want to put myself through it if it is 😂

I'm happy with Rohl... never wanted Ralph sacked and at least Rohl will take us back in that direction and has a reasonable level of pedigree behind him (for a new manager) with Ralph, Bayern, and now at Wednesday. I hope it will help to a degree that he has some familiarity with the club (albeit SR have well and truly dismantled the academy, scouting, coaching, and playing setups since his time here 😃😆). I just hope we can keep our hands on Dibling somehow. Maybe Lallana will give him some advice on making yourself at a lower level before stepping up. Unfortunatley the big issue there is that in the nonsensical world of PSR, clubs are encourage to trade their youth players like cattle... A model that Rasmus is all in on.

What do you mean? Rasmus' whole mantra is "if it aint broke, consider breaking it"... Its right there... In red and white 🤣

Fair point on sulemana. All the meh attacking talent kind of blurs into one at this point. I'd far rather have alcaraz, dibling, and fernandes truthfully. That is a tasty set of creative midfielders for most prem sides. Especially if you give them 2 solid defensive mids behind (even Downes and Charles would work reasonably well). Sadly we've wasted so much money on fluff, and lack the quality needed... I would personally have loved to have seen charly and dibling playing together. Up until fernandes, I would argue alcaraz was the most talented and useful attacking player SR purchased (the only one of any merit actually), and he was criminally under used. I guess edozie might still come good at prem level, but honestly though... What was ralph meant to do with that team 😂🤣😭

Ralph was quality and struggled with a lack of backing and fundamentally a decent striker. Form with ings was basically top 4 over 38 games. Form without ings and with broja (or worse without even him) was poor... But anyone would have struggled with that team. Ralph got the most out of the players we had (see ings, jwp, kwp stu etc. ) and he and semmens spent fairly wisely (even with both hands tied behind their backs financially) - tino, kwp, and the groundwork on the lavia signing stand out in particular). Rohl was a part of that earlier on, so I would be fairly welcoming to reverting back to it and bringing him in. The biggest shame in all this is that SR sacked the best manager of their tenure when he has us in touching distance of staying up and that was deapite long running injuries to many of his key players (kwp, tino, lavia, abk, salisu etc) in our relegation season. They spent £160M whilst undermining Ralph's squad and coaching setup, then binned him off to give Jones a crack. What a joke of mismanagement. Ralph really was playing with the bare bones that year... Or maybe that's disengenuous? We did spend 160M to give him the likes of Sulemana and Mara... No replacement for romeu or ings though... What's worse is lego head has binned of alcaraz for archer and BBD. Just unreal 😩

My concern now is the limp leadership from Rasmus and co. In all the major managerial decisions they've shown weak and/or poor decision making. With Ralph (despite him clearly being a good manager that was doing the best he could with what they gave him), they waited until the fans started to turn and then pretty swiftly dumped him... all under just a bit of fan pressure, and despite faffing around with it for nearly a year, undermining him, and giving him a very weak squad to work with. it was a terrible call ultimately, and they also had no serious replacement lined up. Bad decision, no plan. Then Nathan jones was clearly a bad appointment, and in that case they waited until huge negativity delivered overwhelming pressure for him to go (stressed out press conferences, the fan's forum with rasmus etc). It was almost as if they felt burned by the pressure over Ralph and so instead dug their toes in on Jones. Regardless, kept him too long and it was a bad appointment and delayed decision to sack. Costly. The selles. Another weird appointment. If they had so much faith in him it made even less sense to get rid of him. I suspect he would probably have proved as good as Martin ultimately and I'm pleased to see him doing well at Reading after a rocky start at a very messy club. And then Martin. They've kept him and kept him despite clear signs of him being unable to setup a defence. Its a total lack of decisiveness and ruthlessness from them though that has kep him this long. Cortese (for comparison), was brutal with nigel - and nigel would likely have kept us up. But again, they've kept martin past the point of sacking him, then a little bit of fan pressure and they've pulled the plug straight away - and with no replacement in sight. Its alarming as it shows they simply haven't learned and are seemingly hamstrung with very weak decision making and a lack of footballing knowledge. You cannot have a leadership structure seemingly so divorced from footballing knowledge and seemingly so malleable that a bit of fan pressure will force them to act. Historically as a collective, football fans don't make great calls.... and our board even less to. It spells long term trouble.

Martin said himself that he would go when the players no longer had faith in him.... So there is a silver lining at least...

Dibling, fernandes, ramsdale, THB, KWP are all gone mate - don't kid yourself.

I mean, if we want him we should pay it. We've gladly wasted far more than that on shite transfers and wages on a rolling yearly basis under SR - why the hell wouldn't they appoint a good manager who is actually interested?!

Surely even Martin must realise that getting the record lowest points total in prem history isn't going to get him a champions league job?!

More to the point, he doesn't have the players to play the way he wants in the prem, and he won't adapt. Give him unlimited funds to buy the best players and we'd look like a pep team... What Martin can't / won't do, is change style.

If the board are going to keep him regardless, they have managed it horrifically. There has been zero management of fan expectations - no plan or communication etc set out, they're allowing negativity and toxicity to creep in, and they're hanging the bloke out to face the music every week. Board need to own the decision if that's what it is. Martin would get us promoted again next year if suitably backed and if the fan relationship isn't in tatters... But the latter is very questionable now.

There are plenty of things to criticise martin about without trotting out this fairly nonsensical one liner. Did i live in a parallel universe where we weren't the worst of the sides to get relegated, where we didn't then sell £160M of players and completely change the playing style, and where Ipswich didn't exist (let alone didn't get 96points)?! He got us promoted when we weren't one of the best 3 sides in the league. Fair play to him - great memories at Wembley and something we'll all remember fondly. And this season, the reality is that as much as we're all pissed off with him - its fundamentally because the players aren't good enough for his style at this level, and because he refuses to do anything other than go out doing it his way. Which is a recipe for disaster, grates with people, and everyone is tired and fed up of losing... It doesn't mean he's now a manager incapable of getting us out of the championship again. I said it fairly on in the season, if the board are going to keep him regardless, then they need to just come out and say it. If they don't do this, or keep him around just to sack him later on, then all they're going to cause a lot of damage and negativity to set into the club. Also the stress and uncertainty it puts on Martin and his team cannot be healthy and isn't nice to watch on a human level, and publicly stating the plan (is there even a plan) would end any uncertainty with the fans which is now starting to become quite toxic, and similarly it must be getting to the players by now. If we get relegated and keep him, the reality is he'll more than likely do fine in the championship. He's more experienced now than he was previously, he knows his players, and ultimately he got us promoted last year despite not having a top 3 team, and despite having an absolute car crash start to the season re players leaving and arriving from one weekend to the next and being tasked with turning around both player morale and utterly changing the playing style. I say all that after being utterly furious with him at times this season and calling for him to go... but then i ask myself - do i think anyone else will keep us up? No. Do i think Martin will get us promoted next season? Yes probably..... and so, unless we can get someone in who wants the job, who'll stick around next season, and who clearly is a better pick that Martin (all 3 combined is unlikely lets be honest), then i don't see what we gain in sacking him in a hurry to be honest. Even if it is a car crash season, adding more instability to the club isn't going to help us - as Benali said, what we need is stability again.

In all serious, I can't be that angry with him for last night (as much as I wanted to be). We've got one of the worst squads in the league, and last night were without nearly all our best players - especially defensively (THB, bednarek, Downes, ramsdale), plus ofc dibling and lallana both out. Against that Chelsea are something like a billion pound squad that could field a third/second string that routinely wins in Europe 🤷. Yes it was poor at the back, but equally that back 5 was completely ramshackle - which is going to get even worse (somehow) thanks to stephens being suspended (what a statement, how can it get worse? 🤣😭🤣😭🤣).

Whilst i don't disagree. Stephen's still isn't good enough and shouldn't be in the starting 11. THB or Downes would make a better captain figure.

Looks like one of Rasmus' TED talks to me... "if it ain't broke, break it etc etc..."

So apart from being utterly atrocious you mean?