Daft Kerplunk

This

Because the media team haven’t had time to put a video/photo montage together yet. Can’t just announce a player without all that in place!

Walcott will fit a club narrative of ‘one of our academy players making it to the first team’ so that’s a PR/spin win.

He’s not a coach (yet), he’s the resident cheerleader and bants leader. Which is probably going to be helpful. But certainly a different decision than a leading football club might take.

Bit harsh on the media man there, can only imagine the orders of secrecy come from on high, and the football side will close ranks and not allow any access. We march on to becoming a secretive non family club that was once a selling point.

A first team without a heart.

The person at fault for VVD is Reed. Ultimately he’s the one in charge of contracts and whether players leave or not and he has not been able to convince players like VVD, and Bertrand etc. that they still have a career here with a team doing good things whilst looking for a truly top team to move to. The ‘strategy’ of Reed et. al. has fundamentally not worked and they need to rethink ASAP or we are going to continue on a downward spiral and not towards the European competition that Chairman Gao has been sold. They can sack the manager but it will not stop the problems that come with having a football board that is set up to be average. Unless of course that is the real aim. Problem is, when you aim for average you can miss and go to the lower level. That is Saints right now

Until an arrogant board stop thinking they are headed for the Champions League with the current football leadership then we will continue bumbling along. Rees hasn’t no idea what it take so to get success and neither do the board. And by success, this is to be the best we can be, not about being ready for the Champions League, as that isn’t happening any time soon.

Players don’t give a sh!t about playing for Southampton which is the biggest part of the problem. So much for the ‘due diligence’work on player’s character before they are signed. Absolute tosh. Problems run far deeper than the manager/head of the first team department!

Sell him. He’s not here in spirit and we aren’t in a strong enough position to have players who don’t care. I’m sure the Liverpool fans would enjoy him going to Man City as well.

The game is a results business and Les isn’t on form and hasn’t been for awhile. Academy has got worse under his stewardship too. Time for him to do the honourable thing and leave.

This game will go against type for both managers. Us in a 6-5 thriller

Amazing what can happen when you move the ball forward into space quickly and keep on tryin JK he. Everton look as close to being a relagated side as you can at this stage of the season so the 4-1 is probably flattering but far more positive play.

Because it was bullsh!t and the longer you leave it, the hope is that people forget. Easy when you’re a regular company, not so much when people care passionately about their team and what goes on with the people who are the current people running he clib

Heard from someone who has contacts at the club that the new owner is not likely to (as in not going to) invest anything in the football side of the SFC and has purchased us for other business reasons.

The only reason I’m personally not in the Pellegrino Out camp is that the problem for me is largely with the way the football part of SFC business is run. He has had to use coaches he didn’t appoint, players he didn’t have a say in buying, an academy that is no longer producing players good enough for the first team, a DoF (sorry, Vice Chairman for Football) who has overseen the purchase of more defenders when we were absolutely crying out for creative and attacking players, and a core of players who since Koeman has left have lost their motivation to play for the club, probably because the ambition that they were sold it on has all it gone. Something is clearly just not right at the club overall and Pellegrino will be just another fall guy for the ineptitude that is the club’s football leadership right now. Maybe he is not the right man for the job as far as our situation needs but the board put him there after all their brilliant due diligence, just as they did with Puel who was unsuitable too. How long can he obvious individual be blamed whilst the people who put him there and have given him average tools to do the job skulk away in the shadows without saying a word?

I predict that neutrals will not turn on to endure this match

What is so perplexing about football is that the manager always gets the blame yet we quite clearly have a club situation where he has had to work with coaches and fitness coaches he didn’t bring in to help him implement his ideas (Black and Watson) - Poch and Koeman had control of these appointments - and a structure where he has little say in what players we sign. These two things are surely going to have a degree of impact on his ability to do the job to the best of his abilities.

100% Ralph needs to get his finger out of his butthole and tell us fans why we should be happy with the club right now! We are sleepwalking to a bottom half finish or worse (we fans know what it looks like FFS), two seemingly sh!t managers in a row. Really rubbish football under both our last managers who Les has said are absolutely what we needed. Squad not good enough or not mentally tough enough (so much for all the horse**** due diligence into character), academy going backwards. Total lack of bottle from the club’s leadership right now!

You cannot imagine a new Chinese owner will enjoy being embarrassed by his new purchase having been sold a club he was no doubt told was well on its way to being a force in the league and challenging regularly for European slots with the world’s best academy producing world class players. As the vice chairman for football, Les should have a lot of very serious questions to answer right now about the state of his football side of the business or does he just follow the modern leadership way and blame it one everyone else?

Exactly, but some fans are still head in sand. I admire their optimism

That seems like a direct quote from the manager saying he can’t control the market and it’s up to the owners whether a player is sold or not. That is as close to an admission that it ‘could’ happen as you can get. Surely.

In the latest training session video the boys are scoring plenty of goals. Only there are no defenders again. Maybe it could help if the attackers had sessions relevant to actual footbal when there are defenders trying to stop you scoring. Matbe Les could see how good our attackers (inc alleged creative midfielders) are if they did drills against our first team defensive players perhaps seeing as we seem relatively well stocked in that area. Fancy showing us some vids of these sessions media boys? If they actually take place of course. Can’t wait.

Maybe he is performing the way the boss wants. Just as Puel did.

Sign him up...again