Simon Clifford...

[The Kraken]

For all the mad ideas, it does sound as if Clifford was a pretty much innocent party in the shambles that was going on around him. He also had the decency to walk away without drawing all the salary he was owed.

However, he does paint a disturbing picture of Clive Woodward, and is starting to hint that Harry was up to everything we always suspected. Lowe just looks gullible, Woodward a nutter, and Harry, well nothing about that particular sleaze bag would surprised me.

If Clifford is prepared to say more, I'm looking forward to hearing just what a dinosaur Bassett was, and what an absolute c@ck Dennis Wise is/was.

 

There's no doubt that Bassett and indeed Redknapp were set in their ways and completely resistent to change. That said, what Lowe tried to push through was complete lunacy. Think about it, he was trying to promote a management duo who had zero experience in professional football. Zero. And he was seemingly prepared to allow carte blanche to a rugby coach having a play around with football, and a guy who made his name adopting a system of soccer schools for 10 year old children.

 

Of course Bassett and Redknapp were going to resist what Lowe was forcing on them. And knowing how confrontational and arrogant Clifford is, you can bet that he was busy undermining the work of the coaching team for his own self-promotion and benefit. say what you want about Redknapp (and I'll be happy to say plenty about his time with us), he has a decent track record in football by doing things his own way. To force this comedy duo onto him was a moment of madness from Lowe and was destined to failure right from the very start.

[corsacar saint]

The most deluded man in Gloucesterhire and the most deluded man in Yorkshire what a combination,no wonder the club nearly went down the pan.

[dubai_phil]

Perhaps somebody should approach David Peace to write "The Damned Southampton" - based on Simon Clifford's story.

 

Would be an interesting read.

 

Although the names would not be so well known the actual intricacies starting to appear here make a nice tangled web.

 

To our two uber blogging forum members though - Guys - This is YOUR moment.

 

IF SC is about to talk then it should be to writers who are first and foremost FANS so that you can record this and ensure that it is history. The LAST thing we want is having this serialised in some Sunday Rag with all their various slants and angles.

 

I've nagged FF before that the history should be written and would make a damned good book. Maybe he should go with them oop north

[um pahars]

Think some on here still haven't got over the past. Stop thinking every post has to be ONLY about Lowe

 

 

I'm well over Lowe (I even think I praised him in a post above!!!). That said, when some juicy stuff like this is released it's pretty hard to ignore what a fecking shambles we must have been with Lowe being right in the eye of the storm.

Edited 22 August, 2011 by um pahars

[um pahars]

I've nagged FF before that the history should be written and would make a damned good book. Maybe he should go with them oop north

 

I'm just not sure you would ever get to the bottom of it all. It seems an absolute bugugers muddle with eveyone having their own view of what was going on. Plus I'd prefer a few more years behind us before a *****fest and slanging match got any bigger than a few threads on here.

[Plumstead_Saint]

it does sound as if Clifford was a pretty much innocent party in the shambles that was going on around him. He also had the decency to walk away without drawing all the salary he was owed.

 

So to sum up: according to Simon Clifford, Simon Clifford was an innocent party and very decent bloke?

This from a bloke who is famous for blowing his own trumpet, but has actually achieved nothing of stature in his career so far.

Hardly a revelation is it?

[St Marco]

Interesting read really. Have no reason to doubt what he is saying. If it is true that Lowe told him he could have more money (which he rejected) then that just shows the guy had no clue about finances. Makes you wonder how much cash he wasted while he was here. Also makes you think how lucky we have been in getting ML and Cortese.....

[The9]

Just saw that. Massive revelation to be honest.

 

Pretty sure it's in the Clive Woodward biography I bought for a quid from one of those discount bookshops in Eastleigh about a year ago.

[The9]

Weird, I was in Bishop's Waltham today behind a Socatots van as well...

[VectisSaint]

If ever there was a person that Twitter was named for it has to be this man. Although I suppose if they had called it ****ter instead it may have been more appropriate. The guy is a total ****head. FACT.

Edited 22 August, 2011 by VectisSaint

[CB Fry]

I'm amazed we took our relegation fight to the last day based on all this!

 

 

We were already relegated before Clive turned up.

[The Kraken]

We were already relegated before Clive turned up.

 

Which made it all the more preposterous. We needed to drastically cut back on expenditure, yet we lashed out huge sums on such a badly thought out notion that you couldn't make up the sheer absurdity of it all. Woodward allegedly on £1M per year, Clifford by his own admission on £300K, God only knows where else we threw money down the drain while neglecting the area it was really needed, on the pitch (£90K on Fuller was all we spent during that summer if memory serves me).

 

The post-Strachan era at Saints under Lowe was just a complete catastrophe: Sturrock binned, the Wigley debacle, the whole Redknapp charade, Woodward and Clifford, Poortvliet, Wotte. Disaster zone.

[Dalek2003]

Which made it all the more preposterous. We needed to drastically cut back on expenditure, yet we lashed out huge sums on such a badly thought out notion that you couldn't make up the sheer absurdity of it all. Woodward allegedly on £1M per year, Clifford by his own admission on £300K, God only knows where else we threw money down the drain while neglecting the area it was really needed, on the pitch (£90K on Fuller was all we spent during that summer if memory serves me).

 

The post-Strachan era at Saints under Lowe was just a complete catastrophe: Sturrock binned, the Wigley debacle, the whole Redknapp charade, Woodward and Clifford, Poortvliet, Wotte. Disaster zone.

 

Agree totally. Had we appointed Hoddle we would at least have had a decent football coach. The fans (a vocal minority) were a major reason that we appointed Sturrock who was totally out of his depth and who has now found his level in a struggling League 2 outfit.

If Sturrock was the choice of the board, they were horribly naive. The fact the Lowe allowed it to happen makes me wonder if he wanted failure to prove a point.

The vocal minority were pawns who I am afraid did not act in the best interests of the club.

[Dalek2003]

I still think there is a massive story/tale to be written about the time between the FA Cup Final and ML taking over. One day I will try to look into it.

 

Bang on. The FAILURE TO RE-APPOINT HODDLE in itself will open up a whole canof worms. Understand the embarrassment of a small but vocal number of fans who may have been duped into anti-Hoddle rhetoric.

[The Kraken]

You're trying far too hard now.

[Crazy Diamond]

Bang on. The FAILURE TO RE-APPOINT HODDLE in itself will open up a whole canof worms. Understand the embarrassment of a small but vocal number of fans who may have been duped into anti-Hoddle rhetoric.

 

Had Hoddle been appointed, he would still have worked under Rupert Lowe, and whilst I was not part of the original 'Rupert Out' brigade, things very quickly became farcical and he did have to leave. It would have made very little difference and added to that his record at Wolves and his subsequent career, or lack of it, no. Appointing Glenn Hoddle, or your perceived failure to re-appoint him, would not have changed a thing.

[dubai_phil]

Bang on. The FAILURE TO RE-APPOINT HODDLE in itself will open up a whole canof worms. Understand the embarrassment of a small but vocal number of fans who may have been duped into anti-Hoddle rhetoric.

 

The failure to re-appoint Hoddle is irrelevant.

 

The Board Room make up and discussions that LED to that decision ARE interesting. We all paint Lowe as the man in charge but who WAS on the board and who voted for and against. IF SCW sold Lowe a dud, this destroys a lot of our assumnptions about the "over powering uber ego" How the hell did SCW pull that stunt when it appears even HE did not believe he could do it? Does this make Lowe out to be an even bigger disaster - a WEAK yes man? If so who pulled HIS strings? Who else should we villify?

 

Was this where the divisions were that Clifford mentions or was it the backroom staff?

 

As The Kraken said, just how many people WERE "At the trough" in those days how much did they earn versus what we were paying for players on the pitch.

 

Interesting

[cambsaint]

The true level of the gross mismanagement that Lowe presided over can be judged by just how many ex-Saints players are still playing well in the Prem, five years on.

Any half decent manager could have rescued us, but Lowe insisted on a series of no-hopers.

He failed utterly to realise that a good manager provided with adequate funds is the only key to success in the Prem!

He thought he could break the system and broke the club instead!

[Viking Saint]

Football genius or leech?

 

monumentally overblown self-improtant f*cking t*at........Rupert Lowe, with his extensive Football knowledge from his days playing hockey at Radley College, obviously the Messiah we were after.....it actually hurts me to think my club sunk to this depth.....we have an awful lot to be grateful for......Thank you Markus....

[Viking Saint]

and, as an ex-pro rugby player who played under Sir Clive, enjoyed playing for him and respected him hugely, I still didn't feel you could transplant what he'd achieved in rugby into football.....the two are very different beasts and the inherent structures are incompatible

Edited 23 August, 2011 by Viking Saint

[Fan The Flames]

Lowe thought he could break the system but broke the club instead!

 

The books strap line.

[torsaint]

Don't pay over the odds for Sir Clive's biog. Available for 25p on internet.

[70's Mike]

In the end it did not matter who we appointed, yes better appointments would have brought us more seasons in the premiership but the basic issue was RL and gang were never going to be able to put enough extra money in the club to survive in top flight

[georgeweahscousin]

I think the biggest revelation in this, is that Sir Clive Woodward, someone worshipped in the British sports world (especially rugby) sounds like a money grabbing cretin....

[SaintRichmond]

and, as an ex-pro rugby player who played under Sir Clive, enjoyed playing for him and respected him hugely, I still didn't feel you could transplant what he'd achieved in rugby into football.....the two are very different beasts and the inherent structures are incompatible

 

Very true

 

But Rupert Lowe thought otherwise.............. to our cost

[hughieslastminutegoal]

What most people were saying at the time.

 

Alot of mugs on here believed the nonsense Lowe spouted about Woodward/Clifford at the time tho

 

They invented sports science. Ask NickG.

[Cabrone]

"Had I been Harry and Co I would have hated me too."

 

I wonder, had Rupert actually bothered backing Harry Redknapp.....

 

Exactly, I never disliked Harry, thought the ship was holed below the water when he came and when you read stuff like this you could understand why he probably felt demotivated.

 

I've always maintained that the team Harry assembled in our 1st season in the champ was 1 good striker short of being top 2 and after asset stripping the 1st team what did L**e give him to spend??

 

Something like 90K on Fuller?? ............and all the time whilst Clifford\Woodward were on circa 500k per year.

 

No wonder a top manager like Harry walked, L**e was running this club like a circus. I would have walked too.

 

A pile of mad decisions + 2 relegations make him the worst chairman in our history by a country mile IMO, not even the slimey Askham managed to scale the heights of lunacy that he did.

[corsacar saint]

The most deluded man in Gloucestershire and the most deluded man in Yorkshire what a combination, and I almost forgot a former England international rugby coach.

No wonder we got relegated.

[Guy]

The whole football world seems very conservative and reluctant to change, but I don't think Clifford is in a position to claim any high ground about whether his methods are/were superior.

 

I do think (and am I'm probably in a very small minority here) that there would have been merit in Woodward and Clifford having the reserve team to show what they could do. But, not at the salaries they were offered, and not for the tiny number of hours they did and definitely not with Woodward also being a divisive Director of Football.

 

Clifford seems a Chunter-Monkey of the highest order, if he had a bit of humility and could show that his methods could make a lower (or non-) league club punch above its weight (and that's the level where training methods would make the most difference) then people might start taking him seriously.

[Super_Uwe]

The whole football world seems very conservative and reluctant to change, but I don't think Clifford is in a position to claim any high ground about whether his methods are/were superior.

 

I do think (and am I'm probably in a very small minority here) that there would have been merit in Woodward and Clifford having the reserve team to show what they could do. But, not at the salaries they were offered, and not for the tiny number of hours they did and definitely not with Woodward also being a divisive Director of Football.

 

Clifford seems a Chunter-Monkey of the highest order, if he had a bit of humility and could show that his methods could make a lower (or non-) league club punch above its weight (and that's the level where training methods would make the most difference) then people might start taking him seriously.

 

Agree 100% actually!

[um pahars]

I do think (and am I'm probably in a very small minority here) that there would have been merit in Woodward and Clifford having the reserve team to show what they could do. But, not at the salaries they were offered, and not for the tiny number of hours they did and definitely not with Woodward also being a divisive Director of Football.

 

Would be interesting to find out if you are/were in a minority, as I have to say I would have had no problems with SCW and others coming in to the Club to introduce some perfomance coaching etc in to the set up. Other Clubs did something similar and prospered, so would have been open to bringing in some fresh ideas.

 

However, as you say the way it was implemented, the overall vision, the timing and the protasgonists involved meant it was always likely to be one gigantic clusterfeck.

[Weston Saint]

No wonder Cortese kicked out all the previous club officials if Clifford's tweets are factual (and as HR had said as much to a friend of mine at the time he was still Manager I think it has legs). There is plenty of evidence that football contains many who are milking the game and we the supporters are paying for it in part.

 

I was angry the way HR treated us during his term as Manager. He seemed always to talk about them rather than us. I can see why now. He was being undermined throughout.

 

Thank God we now have a regime in place that appear to be putting this right in SFC.

[Weston Saint]

Would be interesting to find out if you are/were in a minority, as I have to say I would have had no problems with SCW and others coming in to the Club to introduce some perfomance coaching etc in to the set up. Other Clubs did something similar and prospered, so would have been open to bringing in some fresh ideas.

 

However, as you say the way it was implemented, the overall vision, the timing and the protasgonists involved meant it was always likely to be one gigantic clusterfeck.

The young players loved them. Even wanted extra time with them. The older players did not. The latter may have been influenced by the Manager & Coaches if Clifford's tweets are true! I will pass a copy of the tweets to an ex Director I should be dining with sometime this week to see what he has to say.

[The Kraken]

Would be interesting to find out if you are/were in a minority, as I have to say I would have had no problems with SCW and others coming in to the Club to introduce some perfomance coaching etc in to the set up. Other Clubs did something similar and prospered, so would have been open to bringing in some fresh ideas.

 

However, as you say the way it was implemented, the overall vision, the timing and the protasgonists involved meant it was always likely to be one gigantic clusterfeck.

 

I think some of the principles could have been excellent; Woodward was seemingly very good at surrounding himself with experts and raising individual performance levels by one or two per cent at a time to get elite athletes performing at their optimal level.

 

Unfortunately, the costs involved were astronomical at a time when we'd just lost the financial security of the Premier League. We could have put the money spent on Woodward into the team and invested in the sports science as and when we got back to the top table.

 

Trying to put together the costs of the whole exercise would just reduce me to tears. Allegedly £1M per year for Woodward. £300K per year for Clifford. They refurbished parts of the training ground setup, putting in various costly gadgets, gizmos, playstations and such like. I'm pretty sure they hired a "vision coach" too. And I've probably erased from memory various other hair-brained schemes that took up vital funds and neglected the playing side of things.

[um pahars]

Trying to put together the costs of the whole exercise would just reduce me to tears. Allegedly £1M per year for Woodward. £300K per year for Clifford. They refurbished parts of the training ground setup, putting in various costly gadgets, gizmos, playstations and such like. I'm pretty sure they hired a "vision coach" too. And I've probably erased from memory various other hair-brained schemes that took up vital funds and neglected the playing side of things.

 

We certainly did have Cheryl Calder as vision coach and her smarter version of Bash-A-Mole (being a tad facetious there).

 

For me it wasn't so much about the money (although I concede it certainly wasn't a priority and should have been focussed elsewhere), but instead it was the fact that it wasted that vital first season down when we should have been looking to bounce back, but instead we were embroilled in an internecine battle that now turns out to be even more farcial than I feared at the time.

[The9]

I think the biggest revelation in this, is that Sir Clive Woodward, someone worshipped in the British sports world (especially rugby) sounds like a money grabbing cretin....

 

The "financial awareness" of SCW is pretty evident from the biography of Woodward I read as well. He wanted the experience of working at a club to get his footy coaching badges, and offered to bring his "exec services" - evidently at a premium - in the meantime whilst he got his badges. Fine for a Prem side, but by the time he started we were relegated and should have been cutting costs.

 

With hindsight the cost of SCW, no matter how beneficial his services might have been, wasn't worth the money - but there was no reason to think his advice and even coaching abilities wouldn't have been beneficial to Saints alongside more conventional coaches who had the football experience he was lacking. But paying him a huge sum whilst giving him that platform too looks too much like a one-sided deal that bought into Lowe's ego and need to be seen to be revolutionising (see also the Dutch Experiment). Cortese clearly has similar foibles, but it's a fair point that looking like a tit on the cover of the programme is significantly less detrimental than undermining your club manager (even if it was Redknapp) and wasting loads of the club's cash on trying to look revolutionary.

 

Clifford's comments are interesting. There's a ton of stuff to get through though...

 

Offering Clifford and Woodward any kind of TEAM MANAGEMENT role in 2005/6 (relegation season) was extremely ill-advised, but as Redknapp only came in in Dec 2005 it's at least logical that other manager options might have been sought back then.

 

From Woodward's bio (which is mostly from 3rd party interviews) there's plenty about him wanting to be a football manager gradually which makes me think Clifford's "only I refused this for 2005/6" is a little unlikely. The idea that they were to be team managers in 2006/7 is in line with other things I've read, Woodward thinking he could improve the training infrastructure and methods to help the club at first and then stepping up to manage when qualified later. There are also a few bits in the bio about Lowe trying to get Woodward in charge quickly - but as it appears SCW was getting paid the same amount either way, he smartly decided to go at his own pace. Whatever the situation, it looked like whoever the club manager was was being undermined, and makes the war of words between Woodward / Clifford / Lowe / Redknapp as it all fell apart a little more understandable.

 

Realistically though the players would probably have responded to SCW's version of sports science ON the field in a manner that would have cut the "revolution" off at its knees. Just look at the Sturrock ousting - rumours of players feigning injury at the end of 2004/5, then unhappiness, the dreaded "losing the dressing room" stuff, a player power movement supposed led by Beattie and Dodd, Sturrock left, and then the players who'd apparently forced the changes responded by losing shedloads of football matches under the new manager, who was rumoured to be their preferred choice. If even half of the "player power" stuff around Sturrock's ousting is true, they'd have dug their heels in over Woodward(and Clifford)'s new ideas too. That's not to say Woodward couldn't have brought us something around organisation and sports science, though his methods of using drills ad infinitum to achieve perfection certainly wouldn't have been popular - but you can see how that could have worked for set-pieces, or the psychology of penalty-taking, for instance.

 

The Woodward bio indicated that he did a ton of behind the scenes stuff regarding design and planning of the Academy, relaxation rooms (to aid recovery and to ensure players stayed on site between morning and newly-introduced afternoon sessions), and implementing Prozone for analysis. We can all recall Redknapp's p155taking about not knowing how to use the even then widely-used Prozone to show how well he and Woodward were suited to working together, I assume ?

 

There seems to be a lot of honesty in Clifford's tweeting, but I absolutely question his appraisal of the other coaches, and also the "look at the players in Prem and CCC" argument to justify it. The standard of 2006's coaching is irrelevant to the number of ex-Saints senior players still in the top TWO divisions anyway; you can only build a case that the coaching was flawed if loads of those players are back in the Prem and the coaching helped relegate them out of line with their natural ability.

 

A crop of still-current Championship players in a "relegated to the Championship" squad in 2006 it doesn't really tell you anything about the coaching that got us relegated, just that the players weren't good enough. A LOT of the 2005/6 side didn't play in the Prem again; Niemi, Delap, Crouch, Phillips and Camara did, but most of the defence and midfield didn't, Beattie had already left, and Quashie and Ormerod barely count as Prem players since. Good players will overcome a short spell of poor coaching anyway.

 

Similarly, at youth level, where the FA Youth Cup Final class of 2005/6 were all developed before Clifford arrived, I'd say the methods have been proven to be successful from player success since, so Clifford's comments are curious. All the Prem and Championship level players coming through since 2006 but playing elsewhere now just says the youth coaches did their job but the club wasn't able to offer first team places regularly, not that the coaching was poor.

 

Don't forget the first team coaches while Clifford was there were operating under Redknapp's direction, and Dexter Blackstock's father was highly critical of Redknapp's lack of training of the players at the time. Redknapp is also known for his "all 5-a-sides" coaching, and it probably didn't paint a good picture of the coaches at that particular time.

 

Also, for Clifford to say Hugh Jennings wasn't aware of this player or that player just makes Clifford look like a wacko bringing up unsuitable players (viz St. Juste), rather than making Jennings look incompetent for not knowing who they are.

 

Also, am I the only one who thought Futsal was just an abbreviation of Futebol de Salao, i.e. they were just alternative names for the small sided, Brazilian indoor game with a smaller ball, as opposed to two different games as suggested by Clifford's stats comparison ?

Edited 23 August, 2011 by The9
Mr T - I mean "missed a T".

[dubai_phil]

I think some of the principles could have been excellent; Woodward was seemingly very good at surrounding himself with experts and raising individual performance levels by one or two per cent at a time to get elite athletes performing at their optimal level.

 

Unfortunately, the costs involved were astronomical at a time when we'd just lost the financial security of the Premier League. We could have put the money spent on Woodward into the team and invested in the sports science as and when we got back to the top table.

 

Trying to put together the costs of the whole exercise would just reduce me to tears. Allegedly £1M per year for Woodward. £300K per year for Clifford. They refurbished parts of the training ground setup, putting in various costly gadgets, gizmos, playstations and such like. I'm pretty sure they hired a "vision coach" too. And I've probably erased from memory various other hair-brained schemes that took up vital funds and neglected the playing side of things.

 

Agree with the sentiments there, but you forget one small "historical" point....

 

The conversations between RL & SCW began a full YEAR before he came to SMS. (Multiple pictures of them together at games and press articles).

 

SCW was contracted to England Rugby then the Lions (IIRC) but certainly was not available from the moment he (appears) to have sold the concept to Rupes.

 

So the concept was created when we were in the PL with PL revenues so in that case a million here or there would have been covered by anything from Exec Box sales through to some form of Academy sponsorship.

 

Unfortunately, while worrying about this grand plan, the eyes were taken off the bigger ball and we had Bacon Sandwichgate, Wigley Wobbles and everything else.

 

So to "retrospectively" say the money side was insane is unfair - the fact is that the project should have been canned immediately we were relegated, but of course SCW was a real coup (AT THE TIME) and would not have hung around waiting for us to get back up.

 

So SCWgate is just a part of the trail of the effects of the disaster of that season.

 

BUT. With money coming in from the PL for another year (or maybe in Rupe's mind some of the Parachute Payments) financially it was not such a daft idea.

 

Sports Science works.

 

But WTF Rupert was thinking to let SCW become manager???

 

Hmm

[Dalek2003]

Thanks for the summary 'The9'. Very interesting indeed. I have heard that the players wanted Hoddle back in 2004 and the fact that he was not appointed could have led to some of the hostility to Sturrock. Also, the appointment of Sturrock, essentially a League 1 manager from a small time club, still seems strange to me. Aside from Hoddle there were other much better and experienced managers the club could have gone for.

What is undeniable is that 2004 to 2005 was a pivotal moment in the clubs history and the decisions made cost us our premiership status and brough an end to our glorious 27 years in the top flight.

It hurt then and still does.

[Foxstone]

Great post above The9...

 

I am a great admirer of SCW - Certainly in his field of rugby he is the best England have had and did of course mastermind a world cup win in a major sport, away from home no less.

I like many others beleived he could bring some good to Saints when he arrived, especially in terms of methods, preparation and a winning mentality - But quite whether it was the time to do this both from an economic perspective and indeed a strategic perspective at the time was in hindsight wrong.

 

I'm afraid it was Rupert's own vanity where he was convinced he could knock square pegs into round holes that caused as Um Pahars quite eloquently descrbed it - A clusterfeck of a strategy that served us very badly at the time.

[dubai_phil]

Thanks for the summary 'The9'. Very interesting indeed. I have heard that the players wanted Hoddle back in 2004 and the fact that he was not appointed could have led to some of the hostility to Sturrock. Also, the appointment of Sturrock, essentially a League 1 manager from a small time club, still seems strange to me. Aside from Hoddle there were other much better and experienced managers the club could have gone for.

What is undeniable is that 2004 to 2005 was a pivotal moment in the clubs history and the decisions made cost us our premiership status and brough an end to our glorious 27 years in the top flight.

It hurt then and still does.

 

And there it is... Doh how simple.

 

SCW & Lowe talking about the grand plan a year before he joins the club.

 

Conflict between Team Management & SCW after he joins the club ('Arry) - old school manager....

 

So you know you are going to be revolutionary, you know what you will do in a year's time so you need....

 

A pliable Team manager not an old school...

 

Hence Sturrock and NOT a better more available manager

 

Hence our implosion.

 

The damage was done in the year BEFORE SCW joined.

 

And once Rupert had made the desperate gamble of bringing 'Arry in we were always going to be doomed as the grand plan was never going to work.

 

That will be my take on it until we see anything different

[Dalek2003]

And there it is... Doh how simple.

 

SCW & Lowe talking about the grand plan a year before he joins the club.

 

Conflict between Team Management & SCW after he joins the club ('Arry) - old school manager....

 

So you know you are going to be revolutionary, you know what you will do in a year's time so you need....

 

A pliable Team manager not an old school...

 

Hence Sturrock and NOT a better more available manager

 

Hence our implosion.

 

The damage was done in the year BEFORE SCW joined.

 

And once Rupert had made the desperate gamble of bringing 'Arry in we were always going to be doomed as the grand plan was never going to work.

 

That will be my take on it until we see anything different

 

I think this is possibly very close to what actually happened. There is still much to come out of the 2004 decision to appoint Sturrock, and it will all come out eventually !

Could it be the case that Hoddle was put off by the thought of Woodward coming to the club ? Was Hoddle told this just before the deal to bring him into the club was made hence the sudden about turn ? Did Lowe misunderstand Hoddle big time. After all, Hoddle was well known for his interest in new coaching methods etc and Lowe may have seen him as of the same stable as Woodward. In this case was the intention of Lowe to go for a Hoddle-Woodward partnership.

Where it went wrong was Hoddle's refusal to see the same vision ?

The protest at the return of Hoddle by a vocal minority could well have been the excuse that Lowe was looking for in order to save face and the appointment of Sturrock was indeed a panic decision.

[um pahars]

And there it is... Doh how simple.

 

SCW & Lowe talking about the grand plan a year before he joins the club.

 

Conflict between Team Management & SCW after he joins the club ('Arry) - old school manager....

 

So you know you are going to be revolutionary, you know what you will do in a year's time so you need....

 

A pliable Team manager not an old school...

 

Hence Sturrock and NOT a better more available manager

 

Hence our implosion.

 

The damage was done in the year BEFORE SCW joined.

 

And once Rupert had made the desperate gamble of bringing 'Arry in we were always going to be doomed as the grand plan was never going to work.

 

That will be my take on it until we see anything different

 

I don't think Woodward was on the scene before Luggy rocked up in early 2004. I thought things started to hot up early in the follwoing season when he appeared in the Director's Box at Villa Park.

 

Your version could have some truth in it if you perhaps swapped Wigley for Sturrock, as Sturrock was soon axed and Wigley shoe-horned in to a job he didn't want 6 months earlier.

[um pahars]

I have heard that the players wanted Hoddle back in 2004

 

Who??? Feel free to mention some names.

 

Let's say I was friendly with quite a few back then, and although those who were around in 2000/1 appreciated a lot of what Hoddle did, there was still much anger and animosity still being held in 2004 over the way he shot off to South Africa and then straight up to N17.

 

So which players wanted Hoddle back then?

[up and away]

 

Originally Posted by um pahars

Would be interesting to find out if you are/were in a minority, as I have to say I would have had no problems with SCW and others coming in to the Club to introduce some perfomance coaching etc in to the set up. Other Clubs did something similar and prospered, so would have been open to bringing in some fresh ideas.

 

However, as you say the way it was implemented, the overall vision, the timing and the protasgonists involved meant it was always likely to be one gigantic clusterfeck.

 

 

I think some of the principles could have been excellent; Woodward was seemingly very good at surrounding himself with experts and raising individual performance levels by one or two per cent at a time to get elite athletes performing at their optimal level.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the costs involved were astronomical at a time when we'd just lost the financial security of the Premier League. We could have put the money spent on Woodward into the team and invested in the sports science as and when we got back to the top table.

 

Trying to put together the costs of the whole exercise would just reduce me to tears. Allegedly £1M per year for Woodward. £300K per year for Clifford. They refurbished parts of the training ground setup, putting in various costly gadgets, gizmos, playstations and such like. I'm pretty sure they hired a "vision coach" too. And I've probably erased from memory various other hair-brained schemes that took up vital funds and neglected the playing side of things.

 

This to me is the key. Once we dropped out of the Premier we just could not afford these niceties, it was total madness for a Championship club. Not only was it the costs of salaries and specialists, they also copied Arsenals set up with the amount of money ploughed into the training set up. I think it was something like £1M in improving Staplewood at the time. And if I remember correctly, Woodward offered us an out before he took up the post because of relegation, but how much real truth there was in that is speculation. What Cliffords comments clearly show is that Woodward was out of his depth within football, where his knowledge base from rugby did not square with the approach in football. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the things he was suggesting were of value, but he never had the football back ground to be able to implement them properly.

 

 

Exactly, I never disliked Harry, thought the ship was holed below the water when he came and when you read stuff like this you could understand why he probably felt demotivated.

 

I've always maintained that the team Harry assembled in our 1st season in the champ was 1 good striker short of being top 2 and after asset stripping the 1st team what did L**e give him to spend??

 

Something like 90K on Fuller?? ............and all the time whilst Clifford\Woodward were on circa 500k per year.

 

No wonder a top manager like Harry walked, L**e was running this club like a circus. I would have walked too.

 

A pile of mad decisions + 2 relegations make him the worst chairman in our history by a country mile IMO, not even the slimey Askham managed to scale the heights of lunacy that he did.

 

Satchel face was a cant of the first order. Lowe backed him to the hilt to keep us in the Premier (maybe he should not of) that subsequently gave us big financial issues when we did go down. Lowe made something like £4.5M available to Satchel, only to get turned over by that master tactician Bryan Robson without a pot to **** in. Satchel face only came to us in a fit of spite after falling out with Mandaric, clearly evidence when he went as red as a beetroot when holding a Saints scarf at his joining. He never wanted to be here and realised his mistake as soon as he got through the door. he wanted out and was in regular contact with his mate Storey. Taking us into relegation was bad enough, where just a minimal effort would have avoided the drop, but what was to follow was even worse. Lowe spelled out to him what the financial position ahead would be and the youth would have to supply the first team. Lowe made Satchel initial off against a whole range of problems they would face in the future to be 100% on what was expected. This meant nothing to that saggy copped thwat and he stayed on rather than get under Sandra's feet, all the time looking for an out. Blame Lowe by all means, but that twitchy faced thwat was more than culpable irrespective.

[The9]

Thanks for the summary 'The9'. Very interesting indeed. I have heard that the players wanted Hoddle back in 2004 and the fact that he was not appointed could have led to some of the hostility to Sturrock. Also, the appointment of Sturrock, essentially a League 1 manager from a small time club, still seems strange to me. Aside from Hoddle there were other much better and experienced managers the club could have gone for.

What is undeniable is that 2004 to 2005 was a pivotal moment in the clubs history and the decisions made cost us our premiership status and brough an end to our glorious 27 years in the top flight.

It hurt then and still does.

 

Thanks for bothering to read it - also nice to see one of your posts in context.

 

Sturrock was also a UEFA Cup runner up and Scottish Premier League winner as a player with Dundee United, also went to two World Cups, is an extremely highly qualified UEFA coach, got his first club promoted, took Dundee United to their highest position in 30 years until their striker was sold, and took Plymouth into the Championship from the fourth tier.

 

Even since leaving Saints has got Sheffield Wednesday promoted to the Championship, Swindon out of League Two and Plymouth to 10th in the Championship (within the last 5 years, and they're currently 2 divisions lower) which always seems to be forgotten in any debate of Sturrock's merits.

[dubai_phil]

Thanks for bothering to read it - also nice to see one of your posts in context.

 

Sturrock was also a UEFA Cup runner up and Scottish Premier League winner as a player with Dundee United, also went to two World Cups, is an extremely highly qualified UEFA coach, got his first club promoted, took Dundee United to their highest position in 30 years until their striker was sold, and took Plymouth into the Championship from the fourth tier.

 

Even since leaving Saints has got Sheffield Wednesday promoted to the Championship, Swindon out of League Two and Plymouth to 10th in the Championship (within the last 5 years, and they're currently 2 divisions lower) which always seems to be forgotten in any debate of Sturrock's merits.

 

He also won a raft of LMA awards and was mentioned in the Press AT THE TIME as one of the best young managers outside the Premiership.

 

Other choices at the time included the likes of Alain Perrin and uh uh uh....

 

Sorry about the timeline UP but like you said substitute Wigley for Sturrock and that then makes total sense

[Guy]

Also, am I the only one who thought Futsal was just an abbreviation of Futebol de Salao, i.e. they were just alternative names for the small sided, Brazilian indoor game with a smaller ball, as opposed to two different games as suggested by Clifford's stats comparison ?

 

Looking on Wikipedia (so it must be true), Clifford owns the brand name "Futebol de Salao" where as "Futsal" is the generic term used by FIFA.

[JackFrost]

The "financial awareness" of SCW is pretty evident from the biography of Woodward I read as well. He wanted the experience of working at a club to get his footy coaching badges, and offered to bring his "exec services" - evidently at a premium - in the meantime whilst he got his badges. Fine for a Prem side, but by the time he started we were relegated and should have been cutting costs.

 

With hindsight the cost of SCW, no matter how beneficial his services might have been, wasn't worth the money - but there was no reason to think his advice and even coaching abilities wouldn't have been beneficial to Saints alongside more conventional coaches who had the football experience he was lacking. But paying him a huge sum whilst giving him that platform too looks too much like a one-sided deal that bought into Lowe's ego and need to be seen to be revolutionising (see also the Dutch Experiment). Cortese clearly has similar foibles, but it's a fair point that looking like a tit on the cover of the programme is significantly less detrimental than undermining your club manager (even if it was Redknapp) and wasting loads of the club's cash on trying to look revolutionary.

 

Clifford's comments are interesting. There's a ton of stuff to get through though...

 

Offering Clifford and Woodward any kind of TEAM MANAGEMENT role in 2005/6 (relegation season) was extremely ill-advised, but as Redknapp only came in in Dec 2005 it's at least logical that other manager options might have been sought back then.

 

From Woodward's bio (which is mostly from 3rd party interviews) there's plenty about him wanting to be a football manager gradually which makes me think Clifford's "only I refused this for 2005/6" is a little unlikely. The idea that they were to be team managers in 2006/7 is in line with other things I've read, Woodward thinking he could improve the training infrastructure and methods to help the club at first and then stepping up to manage when qualified later. There are also a few bits in the bio about Lowe trying to get Woodward in charge quickly - but as it appears SCW was getting paid the same amount either way, he smartly decided to go at his own pace. Whatever the situation, it looked like whoever the club manager was was being undermined, and makes the war of words between Woodward / Clifford / Lowe / Redknapp as it all fell apart a little more understandable.

 

Realistically though the players would probably have responded to SCW's version of sports science ON the field in a manner that would have cut the "revolution" off at its knees. Just look at the Sturrock ousting - rumours of players feigning injury at the end of 2004/5, then unhappiness, the dreaded "losing the dressing room" stuff, a player power movement supposed led by Beattie and Dodd, Sturrock left, and then the players who'd apparently forced the changes responded by losing shedloads of football matches under the new manager, who was rumoured to be their preferred choice. If even half of the "player power" stuff around Sturrock's ousting is true, they'd have dug their heels in over Woodward(and Clifford)'s new ideas too. That's not to say Woodward couldn't have brought us something around organisation and sports science, though his methods of using drills ad infinitum to achieve perfection certainly wouldn't have been popular - but you can see how that could have worked for set-pieces, or the psychology of penalty-taking, for instance.

 

The Woodward bio indicated that he did a ton of behind the scenes stuff regarding design and planning of the Academy, relaxation rooms (to aid recovery and to ensure players stayed on site between morning and newly-introduced afternoon sessions), and implementing Prozone for analysis. We can all recall Redknapp's p155taking about not knowing how to use the even then widely-used Prozone to show how well he and Woodward were suited to working together, I assume ?

 

There seems to be a lot of honesty in Clifford's tweeting, but I absolutely question his appraisal of the other coaches, and also the "look at the players in Prem and CCC" argument to justify it. The standard of 2006's coaching is irrelevant to the number of ex-Saints senior players still in the top TWO divisions anyway; you can only build a case that the coaching was flawed if loads of those players are back in the Prem and the coaching helped relegate them out of line with their natural ability.

 

A crop of still-current Championship players in a "relegated to the Championship" squad in 2006 it doesn't really tell you anything about the coaching that got us relegated, just that the players weren't good enough. A LOT of the 2005/6 side didn't play in the Prem again; Niemi, Delap, Crouch, Phillips and Camara did, but most of the defence and midfield didn't, Beattie had already left, and Quashie and Ormerod barely count as Prem players since. Good players will overcome a short spell of poor coaching anyway.

 

Similarly, at youth level, where the FA Youth Cup Final class of 2005/6 were all developed before Clifford arrived, I'd say the methods have been proven to be successful from player success since, so Clifford's comments are curious. All the Prem and Championship level players coming through since 2006 but playing elsewhere now just says the youth coaches did their job but the club wasn't able to offer first team places regularly, not that the coaching was poor.

 

Don't forget the first team coaches while Clifford was there were operating under Redknapp's direction, and Dexter Blackstock's father was highly critical of Redknapp's lack of training of the players at the time. Redknapp is also known for his "all 5-a-sides" coaching, and it probably didn't paint a good picture of the coaches at that particular time.

 

Also, for Clifford to say Hugh Jennings wasn't aware of this player or that player just makes Clifford look like a wacko bringing up unsuitable players (viz St. Juste), rather than making Jennings look incompetent for not knowing who they are.

 

Also, am I the only one who thought Futsal was just an abbreviation of Futebol de Salao, i.e. they were just alternative names for the small sided, Brazilian indoor game with a smaller ball, as opposed to two different games as suggested by Clifford's stats comparison ?

 

But the biggest question is,

 

Whatever happened to the fish tank?

[The9]

This to me is the key. Once we dropped out of the Premier we just could not afford these niceties, it was total madness for a Championship club. Not only was it the costs of salaries and specialists, they also copied Arsenals set up with the amount of money ploughed into the training set up. I think it was something like £1M in improving Staplewood at the time. And if I remember correctly, Woodward offered us an out before he took up the post because of relegation, but how much real truth there was in that is speculation. What Cliffords comments clearly show is that Woodward was out of his depth within football, where his knowledge base from rugby did not square with the approach in football. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the things he was suggesting were of value, but he never had the football back ground to be able to implement them properly.

 

 

 

 

Satchel face was a cant of the first order. Lowe backed him to the hilt to keep us in the Premier (maybe he should not of) that subsequently gave us big financial issues when we did go down. Lowe made something like £4.5M available to Satchel, only to get turned over by that master tactician Bryan Robson without a pot to **** in. Satchel face only came to us in a fit of spite after falling out with Mandaric, clearly evidence when he went as red as a beetroot when holding a Saints scarf at his joining. He never wanted to be here and realised his mistake as soon as he got through the door. he wanted out and was in regular contact with his mate Storey. Taking us into relegation was bad enough, where just a minimal effort would have avoided the drop, but what was to follow was even worse. Lowe spelled out to him what the financial position ahead would be and the youth would have to supply the first team. Lowe made Satchel initial off against a whole range of problems they would face in the future to be 100% on what was expected. This meant nothing to that saggy copped thwat and he stayed on rather than get under Sandra's feet, all the time looking for an out. Blame Lowe by all means, but that twitchy faced thwat was more than culpable irrespective.

 

Whilst I'm no fan of Redknapp, and most of this is feasible, Redknapp had also created his own "out" in the immediate aftermath of relegation when he started saying he wasn't sure he wanted to come back for the Championship and similar comments, and implied he could have gone at any point.

 

I said at the time on Saints Forever (or maybe TSF) his prevaricating mere days after relegation should have led to his sacking, allowing Saints to start the rebuilding process in Summer 2005, and not waiting until he finally went in December 2005. Redknapp's Championship spell ruined Saints' chances of bouncing back, as the lack of mid-season managerial stability removed any trace of loyalty the likes of Delap and Niemi had, and also weakened our chances of holding onto Walcott, and saw Matt Mills walk out of the door. All of this undermined the best chance of bouncing back, as instead of launching a "re-promotion" we spent 4 months sliding down the league as Burley struggled to replace the 17 players who'd left before rallying at the end of that season back into mid-table.

 

We either had to "go for it" and push to keep together the majority of Redknapp's side (as opposed to spending a piddling amount on Fuller), or we had to downsize immediately and rebuild on the cheap using our youth talent and some shrewd signings. What we did was half-assed and with the Burley play-off failure too, it's taken us 5 years to even get close again.

 

On the bright side... look at us now !

Edited 23 August, 2011 by The9

[The9]

Looking on Wikipedia (so it must be true), Clifford owns the brand name "Futebol de Salao" where as "Futsal" is the generic term used by FIFA.

 

Right, so it IS the same then. Phew.

 

I'm now assuming I misread the tweet, and what Clifford was comparing was the number of touches per minute in Futsal/Futebol de Salao compared to something like 5-a-side (or maybe 11-a-side), as opposed to Futsal v Futebol de Salao, which are the same thing. Come to think of it, if they were mostly playing Redknapp-approved 5-a-sides that would make sense...

Edited 23 August, 2011 by The9