Lowe v Les

[Batman]

I actually believe Lowe was better for us than Les is.

 

Lowe was a fruit bat but at least fronted to the fans from time to time and told us we had to be prudent. he would fire managers who were clearly not good enough and as good at picking crap ones.

 

Lowe would at least have SMS to his legacy.

 

Lowe's lot were better than Les and Ralph for us who are a pair of chances really.

[Nolan]

Oh please.

[Batman]

Oh please.

go on. you think Les really is better?

[saint77]

I actually believe Lowe was better for us than Les is.

 

Lowe was a fruit bat but at least fronted to the fans from time to time and told us we had to be prudent. he would fire managers who were clearly not good enough and as good at picking crap ones.

 

Lowe would at least have SMS to his legacy.

 

Lowe's lot were better than Les and Ralph for us who are a pair of chances really.

 

Clueless

[Batman]

Clueless

explain why?

[Heisenberg]

Lowe gave us the academy and the stadium.

 

Les gave us...... Transfer profits and an agent the youngsters can trust

[Nolan]

Lowe gave us the academy the stadium and mortgage and tax payments we couldn't afford.

[aintforever]

You get the feeling that without Marcus' millions and Cortese's decision making Reed is ****ing clueless.

[Nolan]

You get the feeling that without Marcus' millions and Cortese's decision making Reed is ****ing clueless.

I think the profits made on players proves that irreconcilably.

[alpine_saint]

The last time we got in this sort of mess, Lowe tried to do the right thing, but for the wrong reason.

 

He realised that being relegated would destroy the bottom line on the overall business, so he tried to address the situation. However, he did the wrong things. I also dont think he gave a sh*t about the football side of the business specifically.

 

F**k knows what has been going through Reed's head this season.

[angelman]

All you attacking Reed and comparing him to Lowe, the two positions are very different and the club's ownership is also very different. Reed is an employee and has to answer to the owner, or maybe our pathetically useless chairman. If the owner/chairman says sell, he has to sell. However, no one knows what remit he works to and if he has a free hand in things. If he is a footballing man, then he will be just as frustrated by it as we are.

[Eric Martin]

Always wondered why they call it the mong board,now I know.

[SKD]

All you attacking Reed and comparing him to Lowe, the two positions are very different and the club's ownership is also very different. Reed is an employee and has to answer to the owner, or maybe our pathetically useless chairman. If the owner/chairman says sell, he has to sell. However, no one knows what remit he works to and if he has a free hand in things. If he is a footballing man, then he will be just as frustrated by it as we are.

 

Les Reed is Vice-Chair. As I understand it, he has control over footballing decisions.

 

Of course he can only spend what the owner is willing to invest (which obviously begs the question about their suitability in owning a PL football club), but if we are to sell / not sell / buy and negotiations all pretty much come down to Les (obviously he has to refer key decision to the board).

[sadoldgit]

Even by your own usual standards Batman, this is a particularly stupid thread.

[Batman]

Even by your own usual standards Batman, this is a particularly stupid thread.

explain why. no one has even tried bar about 1 poster.

 

please, explain away

[Heisenberg]

explain why. no one has even tried bar about 1 poster.

 

please, explain away

 

Truth hurts m8 - hence no disputes or rational responses, just the abuse.

 

Insults are the last resort of insecure people trying to appear confident in their weak position

[Bad Wolf]

Les has done a lot of good for the club. It's only the last 18 months that he's become out of his depth.

[SKD]

Les has done a lot of good for the club. It's only the last 18 months that he's become out of his depth.

 

The further up the chain Les progresses the further the club fall back. Could of course all be coincidence.

 

He got lucky with Koeman (who was the perfect fit for us at that time), who had a clear idea of what he needed (and Paul Mitchel to back him up). As Les gets more influence we see a certain style of manager (possession based football, rotation, 433/4231 formation). "the Southampton / Les Reed way".

 

Also, he's always been pretty catastrophic in transfer windows (think Toby a few years back - that deal was harder to f ck up than get across the line). Then you have the Walcott, Promes & Fonte replacement deals....

 

Without the brains behind the 'black box' his luck has run out and he's pretty much been proven to be a fraud.

 

I've met Les a few times, hes a nice enough bloke - bit of a blagger and I wouldn't trust him at all. He's blagged his way to the top and he's been found out.

[ooh it's a corner]

Trying to be objective about this;

 

Lowe bought us something that no previous Chairman had bought, despite strenuous efforts, and that is a new stadium. He was able to do this because he understood financial management and the needs of those institutions that lend multi-millions to business. He was perfectly skilled to establish credibility with the money lender and £30m of their money (or whatever the stadium cost).

 

He tried to generate further revenue streams for the club, with radio station, credit card, concessions on beers and pies etc. He wasn't especially successful in these ventures, but at least had the imagination to try.

 

On the footballing side, he always wanted to buy cheap, or perhaps more accurately, buy within the financial constraints of the club. This frequently meant buying players from lower divisions, with a mixed bag of success and failure. At a managerial level he knew the financial constraints of the club meant he couldn't attract a manager and give them free reign over transfer fees. This limited his managerial candidates to people who were tolerant of a "selling club". Naturally this caused friction with the higher profile managers (Strachan/Redknapp etc) but seemingly caused less friction with the guys who were happy to be managing SFC (Dodd/Wigley/Poortvliet etc).

 

It was almost inevitable that a continued buy cheap/sell high approach to recruitment runs out of luck eventually and we got relegated. At this point any goodwill aimed at the board disappeared and Lowe became the target man (with a huge amount of justification).

 

Lowe was well reimbursed for his services at Southampton, and being a posh bloke, who admittedly preferred hockey to football, was never a hit with the fans. We couldn't relate to him, and he couldn't relate to us. He left as hated as Brantfoot.

 

Compare the Lowe era to Les (or perhaps more accurately Les and Ralph). Ralph has so many similar traits. He is not a football man. He clearly is able to achieve credibility in certain spheres. He struggles to relate to the fan base, as we do to him. He has tried to raise the profile of the club in overseas markets. I am not sure any of these financial efforts have born much fruit. He is articulate and a credible figure head to put in front of the national press/cameras, but he comes across as an aloof, out of touch, distant, Chairman. He too is well paid for his services and I doubt we would miss him one iota if he jacked it in tomorrow.

 

Les has a history in professional football. He will understand and appreciate the operational needs of a professional football club. This does give him a slight advantage, however any operational leader worth their salt would pick this up very quickly, so I don't see his football experience as a massive advantage (other than the perception that he is a "football man" as opposed to a "hockey man").

 

Les has followed a model of buy cheap and sell high, married seemingly with a promote the youth policy. However the promote the youth policy seems to depend on who the manager is, rather than a mandated "you must play at least.......youth players".

 

Les has come unstuck over recent seasons with both managerial appointments, player retention, player contracts and player recruitment. I cannot understand how repeated record buys have been bought to bolster the first team squad, rather than become first team regulars. This seems odd.

 

Anybody who oversees a relegation is going to be unpopular.

 

Under Lowe's stewardship, his reluctance to spend money on footballers cost us our premier league status. The 11 players assembled were simply not good enough at that level.

 

Under Les's stewardship, his reluctance to fire the manager could cost us our premier league status. The 11 players are clearly good enough at this level, but are being mis-managed.

 

If you look at legacy. Lowe definitely has a legacy. that of the stadium.

 

Les has overseen a meteoric rise from League 1 to Europe and a major cup final. However we have enjoyed Europe before (and presumably will do so again).

 

If we get relegated this season and Les retires, there will be no legacy. Thanks for your hard work Les but adios.

 

Les is probably just about as unpopular now as Lowe was in our first relegation season. Lowe hung around and outstayed his welcome by a long way. This compounded the hatred for him. If Les is here when we get relegated from the Championship, he will be just as unpopular as Lowe.

 

I understand the OP question. I would imagine most fans think Lowe was far worse than Les, but I think if we judge the pair of them after they have both left, I think we will view them both in equal dislike.

 

If we go down Les will be comparable to Lowe on the dislike barometer. If we stay up, Lowe will continue to be perceived as the biggest villain we have ever had as Chairman.

 

Right now, I would guess that Lowe would be comfortably ahead on the dislike stakes.

[Unbelievable Jeff]

I think Lowe has the academy as his legacy as well TBH.

 

I actually prefer Lowe to Reed. Think he was more of a visionary.

[Micky]

Always wondered why they call it the mong board,now I know.

 

Welcome to the madhouse Eric - excellent first post as well, after a quite reserved period of lurking, it would appear.

[Micky]

Les has done a lot of good for the club. It's only the last 18 months that he's become out of his depth.

 

In a nutshell. Exactly. Will be interesting to see if other give him the same sort of credence though.

[Heisenberg]

When you understand the basic physics of momentum (curve) it does slightly diminish Leslie's "Golden era"

 

I credit Les for making money for the owners, but from a football perspective hes been a massive fail imho. He was handed something absolutely fantastic by Cortese and almost immediately started to destroy it.

 

Depends if you're a fan of SFC or millionaires making more millions?

[Crab Lungs]

Lowe was better for this football club hands down. He didn’t do everything right, but I’d swap him in an instant for the current turd.

[Noodles34]

there's me thinking that Lowe actually lost us a stadium at Stoneham and SCC stepped in with Northam.

As for the academy, really? We didnt have Le Tiss, Shearer, Wallaces, Benali, Bridge.... before RL?

[alpine_saint]

Lowe was better for this football club hands down. He didn’t do everything right, but I’d swap him in an instant for the current turd.

 

Steady on. Thats going a bit too far...

[MarkSFC]

The catalyst for Lowe's eventual downfall and the club's admin istration stemmed from not capitalising on the high of 2003 and a string of poor decisions.

Reed has basically done the same. Both poor excuses of leaders, and with their own agenda.

Lose was arrogant. Reed is too but also complacent. One is well away from the club, the needs to be asap.

[Smirking_Saint]

I mean, one was the owner/chairman/dictator/whatever - and so in charge of not only the club, the budgets, playing staff you name it

 

The other is just effectively the footballing director.

 

I'd of said the way unto which Les has handled this transfer window has been pretty poor, but more importantly the way unto which he has handled Pellegrino up to now is why we are in the state we are in, and more than likely added to the problems we had as a club in the window. I believe, from what has been reported that Walcott would have likely ended up here have we been in a more buoyant situation, and I would imagine we would be in a better position to attract talent had we been halfway up the table with a manager that could inspire even an inch of confidence.

 

I genuinely think the problem we have is there is no clear leadership, or management structure, or none that is obvious from the outset anyway. Since ML unfortunately passed away there has been power vacuums, people brought in, and changes here there and everywhere. Who is ultimately responsible for this mess ? Is it Reed ? He likely holds a large portion of the blame, but what conditions is he working under ? What money has he been given to work with, I mean, do you genuinely believe he is in charge of budgets ? You surely are not that dim batman.

 

If the above is correct, then what power and so responsibility does Krueger hold ? Is it him that is holding onto MoPe ? Does the footballing aspect fall under his remit ?

 

What money was provided for Reed to do his job ? Clearly not enough cold hard cash as we saw in the way we as a club handled Promes and to a lesser extent Walcott.

 

The club made a decision to drop Puel, as decision that looked largely a business one more than a footballing decision. Pellegrino was brought in, as far as his record is concerned from the overview it looked reasonable, ticked all of our boxes as a club, I think the majority of us saw him as a progressive young manager. But for some reason he has been deemed as good enough to continue.

 

When we look at Reed we look at a man who was brought in under Cortese as a footballing advisor, and when we take away the stick beating and rose tinted glasses and think about things logically it would have been Reed who advised in one way or another on, transfers, managers, training ground and sports science. All up until around 12-18 months ago all those aspects were doing well. So what changed exactly ?

 

You can't argue that all the above were Cortese and Cortese alone, the man had convictions and was ruthless but a cunning footballing visionary he was not, hence why he is nowhere as far as the footballing community is concerned.

 

So when we remove those agenda's and look at the situation as it is now, IMHO I can't see Reed making a monumental mistake to retain a manager woefully out of his depth. I just can't, as the majority of the rest of his decisions, or certainly decisions made under his tenure have been relatively sound to an extent. Footballing investment I would say isn't really his call, or almost definitely isn't anyway, so we shouldn't burden our criticism on that front. So whats changed ? Krueger, KL and Gao I would say, or more so KL's distancing of herself from the club and the eventual sale.

 

Thats the real issue here IMHO, the issue is the current OWNERS and who ultimately holds responsibility, who I presume is Krueger ? A man that seems too jetset, too nice, and lacking in any real knowledge of the footballing world. And shall we not forget a man who seems to always dodge questions on who holds key responsibility for the actions the club makes.

 

To recap, Reed is definitely not blameless, but criticism for me needs to be aimed at the current owners. And an explanation for who ACTUALLY is carrying the can, and making key decisions. Right now, if I was Krueger/Gao/KL I'd be laughing that Reed is getting the bulk of the vitriol and not them.

[Bad Wolf]

Tbf Lowe would have lost patience by now and sacked Pellegrino. But let's not forget this is a man we had to protest and force out of the club not once but TWICE!!!

Edited 1 February, 2018 by Instant Classic

[hackedoff]

People now saying Lowe ( and Branfoot ) were better than what we have now. Christ we really are in a Crap state, but it,s been coming for a while.