Daft Kerplunk

Matt Holland. 6th June

Lawyers have to take more time than needed. It’s how they make their money!

Confirmed to me that zero money will be coming in from the new ownership for football matters here at Southampton FC. Every bit of football and stadium/training ground investment will need to come from player trading and increased revenue. Essentially, the Gao family have bought into football credibility and history for use in Chinese projects that will use football as part of investment projects (the government is still favourable to football and wants the country to have sport cities across the country) and the owners also have staff here at Southampton - the more commercial directors - who can use the political power of being a regional football club to lobby on their behalf for construction projects (housing) in England, especially Southampton. This last. It is probably pretty minor compared to the potential income in China. Nothing terribly scary but certainly not with a primary objective of taking the football club to the next level, whatever that actually is anyway.

Happy to leave for Olympique Marseille according to a French TV show with him speaking on it

Mark Higehes needs to be announced in the next few days. The players have responded. The club needs consistency. Gone are any European football aspirations for now. Let’s get a manager in who has got the respect of players, knows the league, has an affinity with the club and can settle things for the beginning of the summer. SFC board, this will be the easiest appointment you’ll have made in your tenure so annnouce it in the next week if Hughes is keen.

But VVD left, eventually, but left all the same. Paper talk is what it is but it is almost never smoke without some of fire, even if a mov doesn’t eventually happen. Let’s hope McArthy doesn’t go but nothing is unexpected after a season of major underachievement against expectations.

We’d sogned a pre agreement where Promes would sign for us so unless the club weren’t being truthful, he should join very soon.

I heard Reed still wanted it to happen but others realised it could be a PR disaster. Remember that the football side is probably still convinced of its own brilliance!

The famous player due diligence process wins again

I’d suggest the problem with appointing someone like Potter is that one of the reasons he’s been successful is that he’s had time and a club who’ve bought in to letting him do some creative and different things to what he could do in English football. Plus, there’s no guarantee he’d want to come anyway for the reason he’s got a great situation. Might not be the best league but how many people get the opportunity to create something special and be happy. If we drop to league 1 and need an absolute culture shift then he could be a good shout because there’s be too many people knocking him before he got to create something as special as he has done in Sweden.

Don’t think we should get rid of Mitchell as he is the real ‘black box’...oh hang on!

Imagine being one of the 60% of staff who will lose their jobs because of the shower of **** we’ve been. And you can bet those at the top (something else I heard is that there are a ridiculous amount of directors and heads of departments) will keep their jobs and high wages. I was once told by someone at a meeting they had at the stadium that the commercial director came in to meet them and was boasting about the club being Champions League ready and that the club got rid of Koeman because he didn’t fit the Southampton away. That went really well! But we fans will be here whatever, if we do get relegated, it will hopefully be time to get rid of most of the people at the top who’ve overseen the massive complacency.

Best way to win an argument is to resort to petty childish insults. I wish I was you. Actually no I don’t because you don’t come across as particularly nice individual and you act like the only person who is right. That’s never a good quality in a human being. I’m far from a bed wetter, I was there today as I have been all season. Some of just are just intelligent enough to not have the wool pulled over our eyes. Think about it whilst you just tow the party line. Thinking for yourself could be good do you. Anyway, that’s my three posts so night honey bunny

Glad you care about Saints then. Pompey wind up

Kat sold the club for her own gain, didn’t invest, failed to take the club to the next level with the sale to Gao. Ralph seemed to have a good initial impact but has since gone missing. Les took credit for a large amount of work done by others, has overseen the decline of the first team and academy. And where are they today? Where are the interviews? They need to stand up and accept responsibility. Absolute shambles. Believed their own hype. Arrogant. Regardless of whether we stay up this year or not, they have failed Southampton FC, the fans and the city.

That is what made our absolute shower of sh!te believe we were better than we were. Anyway, wins against Swansea, Leicester and Bournemouth now vital.

The problem is relying on games like this to get points from. Les’ failure to act decisively on transfers and Pellegrino will likely cost us big time.

If he plays that sort of line up for the rest of the season and the players are up for it, things could get positive

I hope he does well, and well enough to get a contract straight away at the end of the season. I don’t think the club can take anymore if Les’ weeks and weeks of dithering to get a new manager in the summer! This move is at least decisive and doesn’t have Les’ fingerprints on it.

He might be the nail in the coffin for Les and Ralph?

Les next to do the honourable thing and leave after two terrible appointments unless he redeems himself and appoints a major name... Massive decision now for him and the club

Genuinely amazing that Les agreed has not appeared in an unstaged (as in club PR) interview since we were in a cup final. Come on Saints, wheel out the man in charge of all football activities so he can explain what is happening, and what is being done about it and where we go from here. Get him to put his neck on the line if you’ve got a pair and haven’t just become yet another faceless corporate (non) entity!

True leaders stand up and make themselves accountable. Les is a politician, or even more accurately a solid internal operating civil servant used to hiding behind people in hard times, claiming the limelight when things that others put in place, especially where it concerns the academy.

Losing to a relegation rival in that way shows the players aren’t willing to fight for survival. Manager clearly isn’t built for this either. The tactics of hoping for most possession and snatching a goal are not what is required but football has become that way sadly. Boring on many ways. Then there is Les, who has appointed two duff head coaches for us (as in what Southampton FC are about; attacking football that came long before the absolute bullish!t self-congratulatory marketing carp) in a row and signed the players who are not right for us either. Both Les and Pellegrino need to go, and the board needs more football people on it to keep the football people on their toes and not have the absolute power Les has because the rest of the board are clueless and fall for his ‘I coached England’ rubbish. At no stage when Les was involved with the FA was it actually any good. Sleepwalking to relegation since the board thought they had conquered football with Les at the helm!

For all our ‘great’ players on paper, who out there yesterday was showing this greatness, and who has the character to dig us out of a hole? In 2004/5 we had good players on paper but it doesn’t mean a thing unless they’re good on grass. For the club’s much talked about due diligence into player’s character it seems the are missing the key ingredient: motivation. Our players yesterday looked like a group of players who have given up playing for this football club, probably because most of them think they will get easy moves in the summer if we go down. They all get their money so why worry. If our ‘great’ players have anything about themselves they would be rolling up their sleeves to get us out of a mess they are also responsible for. I look forward to them showing some character and professional integrity in the 11 matches left to save our premier league status. If they don’t, they will just be average players incable of showing a spirit and hunger for victory that defines truly great players.