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Ralph Krueger on the clubs season, trying to keep Mark Hughes and future of Les Reed


Matthew Le God

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@AdamBlackmore

 

#saintsfc started talks with Mark Hughes yesterday morning, chairman Ralph Krueger has told BBC Radio Solent:

 

"Mark Hughes came in and fit like a glove, together with his coaching team.

 

Mark fits perfectly and we're in conversation with him right now"

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I don't mind Krueger to be honest. I know his statements are mostly waffle, but apart cringing at his various soundbites, it's harmless enough. I'm not quite sure what he brings to the table, but when I look at the things that have gone wrong of late they appear to be more Reed's responsibility. I could be totally wrong of course, but it's my perception.

 

Obviously it's good we stayed up, but Ralph must be smarting that we didn't manage a single-digit finish this year.

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Hope people have learned about keeping unhappy players. All we have when Saints are mentioned this season was 'they sold too many players', yet last summer was the first time we didn't sell. The result was an unhappy squad and no time to reinvest when the sale did happen in January.

 

Selling and replacing got us our success. One season of struggle and the pundits just bleat on with the same generic crap, no actual insight or awareness of what's been going on.

 

Bertrand will probably go and people will moan again. Personally i'd rather just sell anyone who doesn't want to be here, get the best price and move on. If you can end up rubbish with Van Dijk in the team, there's zero point keeping anyone who'll force a move like that. Plenty of decent young talent out there. Won't get it right every time but our record has been decent. Even Tadic, Romeu, Hojbjerg were all replacements for players sold and they'd be in most people's teams despite a difficult season.

 

This is nearly as bad as the crap ralph just spouted.

 

To reduce all our failures over the past two seasons to keeping an unhappy VVD -as Ralph comes dangerously close to doing- is utterly blinkered, never mind that strategy worked in the case of Morgan, Wanyama and Mane.

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Ralph saying big mistakes were made

Judge them on reacting to the mistakes next season

 

Adam having a pop saying not a peep from les when he is the head of football at the club

Saying the club bought into their own hype and pellegrino was clearly the wrong man

 

Ralph brushes off the jibe about appointing pellegrino when he was just the same if not worse than the fella they just sacked

 

In talks with Mark Hughes now and he is at the top of the list

The speed is essential to get this done. We were on the side of this new window as it hurts clubs like us

 

We must tap into the window early and have already started that process

Hughes will be part of the transfer committee but he brings a far deeper knowledge base due to his experience of the league and he will be integral part of it with Les Reed with the board for the financial part of the process

 

Was a scary first year for Gao family, they watched the games when in China and always in contact.

We aim to get involved in the Asian market, along with under armour but that is a slower process. The family are important with that

 

Adam pointing out unless you win football matches, all this branding talk is pointless...

Ralph saying this is a tough league, and we are now more humbled to be in it, we have to recognise the importance of fans

 

Will do fans forum and have to improve communication with fans

We must reiterate that it starts at St Mary’s and we got distracted a year ago trying to branch out. We have to make it better at home and reconnect with the fans at home. That must be the priority

 

Adam says Hughes has brought back a bit of aggression that Poch and Ronald brought

Ralph admits that we lost our way and it started to be fun again under Hughes, even during the arsenal and Chelsea games

The amount of draws we got was just unacceptable and we must play to win unlike what we have done recently

 

Management team is in place, lots of conversations started after the Swansea game. We will try and create something and we have learned something after this season. As chairman I see no reason for change and we have to get the manager in and in quickly. Les and Ross are good people and we have to accept this season was not good enough and I will not be self congratulating about it

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To sum up:

 

We we're rubbish.

 

Pellegrino was worse.

 

Hughes will stay.

 

We'll stick to doing things on the cheap.

 

We'll keep all those behind the scenes who contributed to such a **** season and hope they have learned from it.

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"I take responsibility for how, as a board, we thought Southampton really needed to consolidate to go to the next level. It wasn’t. An overambitious club stumbled on its own ambitious and needed a regroup and a reboot.”

 

That's cleared that up then.

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"I take responsibility for how, as a board, we thought Southampton really needed to consolidate to go to the next level. It wasn’t. An overambitious club stumbled on its own ambitious and needed a regroup and a reboot.”

 

That's cleared that up then.

 

In other words, we kept VVD against his will.

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I thought that was actually a very good interview from RK. He has learnt a lot from when he first joined and he is a man that loves sport and competition.

 

The total absence of Les Reed is telling, as were the comments from RK saying he is not happy with how this season went.

 

I actually find myself trusting him with the club. I also think that Les will find his wings clipped within the club at least, if not publicly.

 

I certainly hope I never see another Les Reed interview whilst he is still at the club.

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"I take responsibility for how, as a board, we thought Southampton really needed to consolidate to go to the next level. It wasn’t. An overambitious club stumbled on its own ambitious and needed a regroup and a reboot.”

 

That's cleared that up then.

 

In other words we will use the well publicised and controlled vvd situations to continue selling any and all top players and the niave / dumb fans will lap it up as "we don't want another vvd situation "

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I may be in a minority but at least he admits mistakes were made and they intend to sort out their business quickly.

Talk is cheap and their actions will determine if that is true as I think this could be an even busier transfer window than when Koeman took charge.

We will need to get rid early although with all transfers the buyer has to play ball for this to happen as it sounded like we will only buy from what we sell.

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Ralph saying big mistakes were made

Judge them on reacting to the mistakes next season

 

Adam having a pop saying not a peep from les when he is the head of football at the club

Saying the club bought into their own hype and pellegrino was clearly the wrong man

 

Ralph brushes off the jibe about appointing pellegrino when he was just the same if not worse than the fella they just sacked

 

In talks with Mark Hughes now and he is at the top of the list

The speed is essential to get this done. We were on the side of this new window as it hurts clubs like us

 

We must tap into the window early and have already started that process

Hughes will be part of the transfer committee but he brings a far deeper knowledge base due to his experience of the league and he will be integral part of it with Les Reed with the board for the financial part of the process

 

Was a scary first year for Gao family, they watched the games when in China and always in contact.

We aim to get involved in the Asian market, along with under armour but that is a slower process. The family are important with that

 

Adam pointing out unless you win football matches, all this branding talk is pointless...

Ralph saying this is a tough league, and we are now more humbled to be in it, we have to recognise the importance of fans

 

Will do fans forum and have to improve communication with fans

We must reiterate that it starts at St Mary’s and we got distracted a year ago trying to branch out. We have to make it better at home and reconnect with the fans at home. That must be the priority

 

Adam says Hughes has brought back a bit of aggression that Poch and Ronald brought

Ralph admits that we lost our way and it started to be fun again under Hughes, even during the arsenal and Chelsea games

The amount of draws we got was just unacceptable and we must play to win unlike what we have done recently

 

Management team is in place, lots of conversations started after the Swansea game. We will try and create something and we have learned something after this season. As chairman I see no reason for change and we have to get the manager in and in quickly. Les and Ross are good people and we have to accept this season was not good enough and I will not be self congratulating about it

 

Cheers for the summary

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I may be in a minority but at least he admits mistakes were made and they intend to sort out their business quickly.

Talk is cheap and their actions will determine if that is true as I think this could be an even busier transfer window than when Koeman took charge.

We will need to get rid early although with all transfers the buyer has to play ball for this to happen as it sounded like we will only buy from what we sell.

 

He admits mistakes were made in a generic, boilerplate way - when forced to be specific, he gives the VVD example in the same way everything was about VVD when the s**t was hitting in the fan in January and it was blindingly obvious Pellegrino was the problem.

 

Let's hope the club are a little more forensic and honest in their postmortem. Pinning things on VVD is the easiest trick in the book. Blaming the odd rotten apple shuts down the search for structural causes, especially when that rotten apple is now out of the club. To conflate VVD with overambition is a particularly tough pill to swallow when others might claim that it's our very lack of ambition -not overambition- that accounts for key holes in the squad (e.g. our CBs) and our failure to address them.

Edited by shurlock
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Ralph saying big mistakes were made

Judge them on reacting to the mistakes next season

 

Adam having a pop saying not a peep from les when he is the head of football at the club

Saying the club bought into their own hype and pellegrino was clearly the wrong man

 

Ralph brushes off the jibe about appointing pellegrino when he was just the same if not worse than the fella they just sacked

 

In talks with Mark Hughes now and he is at the top of the list

The speed is essential to get this done. We were on the side of this new window as it hurts clubs like us

 

We must tap into the window early and have already started that process

Hughes will be part of the transfer committee but he brings a far deeper knowledge base due to his experience of the league and he will be integral part of it with Les Reed with the board for the financial part of the process

 

Was a scary first year for Gao family, they watched the games when in China and always in contact.

We aim to get involved in the Asian market, along with under armour but that is a slower process. The family are important with that

 

Adam pointing out unless you win football matches, all this branding talk is pointless...

Ralph saying this is a tough league, and we are now more humbled to be in it, we have to recognise the importance of fans

 

Will do fans forum and have to improve communication with fans

We must reiterate that it starts at St Mary’s and we got distracted a year ago trying to branch out. We have to make it better at home and reconnect with the fans at home. That must be the priority

 

Adam says Hughes has brought back a bit of aggression that Poch and Ronald brought

Ralph admits that we lost our way and it started to be fun again under Hughes, even during the arsenal and Chelsea games

The amount of draws we got was just unacceptable and we must play to win unlike what we have done recently

 

Management team is in place, lots of conversations started after the Swansea game. We will try and create something and we have learned something after this season. As chairman I see no reason for change and we have to get the manager in and in quickly. Les and Ross are good people and we have to accept this season was not good enough and I will not be self congratulating about it

 

Top work, thanks Batman.

 

On the face of it, at least they acknowledge mistakes were made. Good to see they are looking to improve communication/connection with fans and also the need to act quickly, but don't enjoy this continued blaming of the VVD situation for our poor season.

 

Obviously though it could just be a lot of hot air, let's wait and see what happens. Though Ralph asking us to judge them on reacting to their mistakes next season is asking for a lot of (un-earnt) trust, especially when they'll be asking me to part with the best of £700 in a few weeks time...

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That was a good interview and I agree with his assessment in most areas. The most alarming admission was that they didn't feel the threat of relegation until "deep into January", and his comparison between Pellegrino and Poch/Koeman was a bit disingenuous.

 

Back to to buying and selling, which is fine if the buying also goes back to Mane, Wanyama, VVD, Tadic quality not Carillo, Clasie, Hoedt, Boufal.

 

Overall not his worst interview though.

 

Jury's still out on Hoedt I think. He's given me heart attacks too many times this season but if the team is more confident next year then I can see him improving.

Edited by DuncanRG
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It wasn't his usual waffle and my ears did ***** up when he said that they failed the recognise the dangers of all the early season draws and how not playing to win, whilst sucking up the defeats that come with chasing wins, was a mistake, something I know I and others were saying at the time.

 

To my mind it was Ralph's way of saying MP wasn't good enough.

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After listening to the Blackmore interview and then reading this, I noticed a few interesting bits in the Telegraph article...

 

Hughes announcement is likely by end of the week.

 

City still interested in Bertrand, Barcelona interested in Cedric. They “still have two years remaining on their contracts and, should big offers come in, it is clear that Southampton will open their ears and not again want team spirit to be threatened.”

 

Les remaining does not sound certain in the Telegraph piece. It’s “likely to depend on talks with the club’s new majority owners, the Chinese Gao family, about his ongoing control over the football operations.”

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That was a good interview and I agree with his assessment in most areas. The most alarming admission was that they didn't feel the threat of relegation until "deep into January", and his comparison between Pellegrino and Poch/Koeman was a bit disingenuous.

 

 

 

Jury's still out on Hoedt I think. He's given me heart attacks too many times this season but if the team is more confident next year then I can see him improving.

 

He needs an experienced CB alongside him. I'd have him as first choice but not with Stephens.

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He needs an experienced CB alongside him. I'd have him as first choice but not with Stephens.

 

Yep, agreed.

 

City still interested in Bertrand, Barcelona interested in Cedric. They “still have two years remaining on their contracts and, should big offers come in, it is clear that Southampton will open their ears and not again want team spirit to be threatened.”

 

To be fair it doesn't say that City and Barcelona are still interested, only that they have been.

Edited by DuncanRG
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Admits that Dalek right in his prediction and should have taken more notice.

 

Predicting 17th every season means you might eventually get it right, nothing to be pround about.

What are you predicting for next season? 17th again?

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