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

[shurlock]

What Krueger said in the interview about shifting our ambitions with regards to players suggests we only signed players who were ready to commit long term, which players looking for a platform wouldn't want to do. Hence ending up with players who are limited like Carillo, Redmond etc over the last couple of years.

 

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Not how I understood it all.

[Saint Pete]

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/16227373.BIG_INTERVIEW__Krueger_questioned_over_Saints__failures/

Still way too much emphasis on the decision not to bend over and let Van Dijk leave in the summer. You do get the feeling that Ralph is lining us up for lots of further sales where the club will say "we are just getting back to the successful Southampton way".

 

I get that Van Dijk's strop can't have helped MP with the morale of the team when he took over, but there are many other reasons and mistakes over the last couple of years that you still feel the management are sweeping under the carpet.

 

I don't think the answer to all our problems is "let's sell any player who expresses an interest in leaving" irrespective of what that will do to the quality of the team.

 

I would have liked to have heard more acceptance that the recruitment side has not been good enough lately and that we have failed to replace players with good enough quality in certain areas. He doesn't need to name names but that would have given me more confidence that the club know they need to strengthen to bring us back up to the level that we were at. We can't just expect Hughes to do it all without the support he needs in getting the right players into the squad.

 

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[Saint Billy]

‘We will be more transparent”, I seem to recall that being said before.

[Millbrook Saint]

Still way too much emphasis on the decision not to bend over and let Van Dijk leave in the summer. You do get the feeling that Ralph is lining us up for lots of further sales where the club will say "we are just getting back to the successful Southampton way".

 

I get that Van Dijk's strop can't have helped MP with the morale of the team when he took over

, but there are many other reasons and mistakes over the last couple of years that you still feel the management are sweeping under the carpet.

 

I don't think the answer to all our problems is "let's sell any player who expresses an interest in leaving" irrespective of what that will do to the quality of the team.

 

I would have liked to have heard more acceptance that the recruitment side has not been good enough lately and that we have failed to replace players with good enough quality in certain areas. He doesn't need to name names but that would have given me more confidence that the club know they need to strengthen to bring us back up to the level that we were at. We can't just expect Hughes to do it all without the support he needs in getting the right players into the squad.

 

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As I said elsewhere a decent manager would have handled the situation, look at Mahrez at Leicester. Pellegrino was the wrong guy to do this. Keeping VVD was absolutely the right thing to do, in fact we should have been stronger and kept him till the end of the season for acting such an ass. He could have trained out the way with Boufal, well once Hughes got here and was able to stand up to the players.

[EkonOkereke]

Best part of the interview: No one had heard of Mopo and Koeman before we got them.

 

Yeah Koeman, unknown.

[SuperSAINT]

Did we really stray away from the Southampton way?

 

I just thought we stopped finding really good players to sell.

[doddisalegend]

We've continued to buy and sell. Just because we kept VVD for another six months doesn't change our basic modus operandi. Problem is we've largely bought crap and were reluctant to invest when that became apparent.

 

 

Pretty much this. If you are going to set yourself up as a club that buys good players to sell on for profit a couple of season latter you have to keep buying good players and you really have to put that profit back in to strengthening into the 1st team for the model to work.

 

It's not like you'll get a 100% hit rate on new transfers but you need to be getting a lot more transfers right than wrong. The last two summer we've have made a lot of poor transfers both in terms of the quality of the players themselves and not buying players to cover the obvious gapping holes in the squad.

[eurosaint]

Don't particularly agree with those who make out that RK was honest and upfront in this interview ! Yes, he admitted that mistakes were made and we had a very poor season ( kinda difficult to defend the indefensible really !)

He prattles on about communication but he himself is not good at it, ie. his jargonistic claptrap does not allow people to know where they stand and his refusal to answer direct questions, for me, shows weakness, not strength !

Frankly, Mark Hughes is a better communicator than he is !

Big Adam basically asked the right questions but I reckon he could have pushed a bit more on the owners intentions/plans and perhaps asked if we would ever get to see or hear from them !

As always, we are left 'reading between the lines' and on that score I reckon that Les may not be here for long but perhaps I'm being overly optimistic !

[stevy777_x]

Did we really stray away from the Southampton way?

 

I just thought we stopped finding really good players to sell.

 

So the Southampton way is selling players off for a profit?

Won't be going back to that if we still get our recruitment wrong by signing average players.

 

Krueger doesn't seem to get it does he? He thinks we failed last season because we hung on to VVD for too long.

 

We failed because we appointed a manager without knowing his defensive philosophy and we failed to adequatly replace Pelle Mane and Fonte, the latter who offered leadership we have lacked.

[Doctoroncall]

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.

 

Well said.

 

As a RK was a coach, he should have never been happy to sit back and not realise what was happening with Pellegrino. Did he not raise questions with Reed?

 

Anyway. Didn’t learn from the Puel mistake and got lucky this time. He and Reed need to learn as the club cannot afford a repeat of their mistakes.

[Bit of a plonker]

The VVD money is largely there and he said we will move quickly in the market. To say there is no budget or that we will be near the bottom of the net spenfd league is unfounded hearsay. The club is wealthy and is aware that many of the squad are poor.

 

Hope you are right and I am wrong. But saying that we are financially sustainable, that the model is based on re-investing money from player sales. I will believe it when I see it.

[the saint in winchester]

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.

 

LOL at that. I can give him a single digit if it helps him!

[the saint in winchester]

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.

 

Good comments, Adrian. I agree with all you say. Personally, I like the 'buy cheap, develop, sell high' and repeat approach. Players have come here knowing if they reach their potential they will be fast-tracked to top 6 sides. We get a couple of good years from them and watch them from afar.

[Super_Uwe]

There is some decent stuff, but the overwhelming feeling is that really the board doesn't feel it's done much wrong. RK refers to "excellent player trading" about 4 minutes in. From a financial perspective, we seem to be doing well and more or less living within our means. But the fans know full well that the team has not been getting better. The quality and impact of players that we have bought in the past 18 months just hasn't been good enough.

 

I don't suppose LR and RK are on any sort of "final warning", but I think they must know relegation would almost certainly have seen them lose their jobs. The Hughes appointment IMO saved them big time because they should never have let it get to that stage. But it also showed a willingness to change direction, and as long as they do genuinely learn from their mistakes this season, then I am willing to give them another chance.

[pimpin4rizeal]

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.

 

That's what the likes of Krueger want you to believe that we can't keep unhappy players and vvd is the main cause of our bad season.

 

We have gone from having a ton of players the top 6 sides would like to hardly anyone left that they would like now, the tap has run dry. I think this is more the reason for our dip in form rather then the unhappy players excuse.

 

We had a good run of replacing the players we sold but you can always expect to unearth vvd and name types, sometimes they are not gonna work out that well and you get the likes of redmonds carillo's abd hoedts which is pretty much where we are at now.

[Saint_clark]

Not how I understood it all.

Well then how did you understand It?

 

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[DT]

Best part of the interview: No one had heard of Mopo and Koeman before we got them.

 

Yeah Koeman, unknown.

 

Amazing, isn't it? What clueless individuals. No wonder they like Les. Blind as bats.

[EkonOkereke]

Amazing, isn't it? What clueless individuals. No wonder they like Les. Blind as bats.

 

Insane, also quoted saying MoPe had a similar unknown record to MoPo, which is utter nonsense again. I do worry about them.

[shurlock]

Well then how did you understand It?

 

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Don't think there was a decision to compromise on quality in return for getting players who'd commit longer term. We've just recruited poorly. I genuinely believe club felt that Redmond could be a huge difference maker in the league - just that his potential had been unrealised. Likewise Carrillo was seen as an immediate solution to Austin's injury and our league position. No by shifting ambitions, Krueger meant not forcing players to say against their will.

[shurlock]

Insane, also quoted saying MoPe had a similar unknown record to MoPo, which is utter nonsense again. I do worry about them.

 

It's debatable whether Pochettino had much more of a record than Pellegrino. If it's the case, it's marginal to the point of being a nonfactor.

[Barry the Badger]

It's debatable whether Pochettino had much more of a record than Pellegrino. If it's the case, it's marginal to the point of being a nonfactor.

 

People were angry we’d sacked Adkins for somebody with such an average record on paper

[Doctoroncall]

It's debatable whether Pochettino had much more of a record than Pellegrino. If it's the case, it's marginal to the point of being a nonfactor.

 

We’ve seen it’s more about the character of the person than the stats of the team when it comes to management.

 

It will be interesting to see now Saints have turned on the exit club pathway whether it has an impact on the calibre of player interested in the club and joins.

[Unbelievable Jeff]

We've continued to buy and sell. Just because we kept VVD for another six months doesn't change our basic modus operandi. Problem is we've largely bought crap and were reluctant to invest when that became apparent.

 

Not completely true - apparently we kept Cedric against his will and also Bertrand, but they were happier to put their head down and work.

 

The interview just says to me that we will no longer stand in a players way, like we did last season.

[St Louis]

Best part of the interview: No one had heard of Mopo and Koeman before we got them.

 

Yeah Koeman, unknown.

 

I think he said they were inexperienced in the Premier League as opposed to unknown, and he was right.

[Ewell]

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/16227373.BIG_INTERVIEW__Krueger_questioned_over_Saints__failures/

 

The man fits into 1000 words what could be said in two sentences. It's just complete public speaking bull**** and the sooner this man leaves the club the better. To say he is clueless is understatement of the year.

[Wurzel]

Best part of the interview: No one had heard of Mopo and Koeman before we got them.

 

Yeah Koeman, unknown.

 

Except he didn't say that at all did he.

[EkonOkereke]

Except he didn't say that at all did he.

 

Pretty much did.

[Wurzel]

Pretty much did.

 

No, he correctly said they were inexperienced - the context being managing an English team in the PL. That's something completely different to no one had heard of them.

[beatlesaint]

The man fits into 1000 words what could be said in two sentences. It's just complete public speaking bull**** and the sooner this man leaves the club the better. To say he is clueless is understatement of the year.

 

He's far from clueless. Not many Chairman will come out at the end of the season and admit to making mistakes etc. For once its a good interview. Feel a bit sorry for him really, when everything was roses in the garden it was Reed who couldn't wait to get in front the cameras. When its gone all to **** Ralph has to step up to the microphone !

[EkonOkereke]

No, he correctly said they were inexperienced - the context being managing an English team in the PL. That's something completely different to no one had heard of them.

 

I'll re listen, but im sure he said "Un-Heard of". If im wrong I will send a full apology.

[Wurzel]

I'll re listen, but im sure he said "Un-Heard of". If im wrong I will send a full apology.

 

6min55secs in, to save you having to endure it all again.

[EkonOkereke]

6min55secs in, to save you having to endure it all again.

 

I will listen later. Thanks. Its hard to listen to him waffling on, really. Proper PR man, could say "yes" or "no" but answers with waffle about Under Armour.

[Charlie Wayman]

I gave up after 3mins of listening to his self-serving complacent bull-****, the idiot seems to be in permanent self-denial and if he is implying that he and Reed are here for the long haul then one thing's for certain many fans will stick two fingers up at the Club and walk away. let's see what happens when ST sales take up halves.

[Charlie Wayman]

That's disappointing news about Reed.

 

Admirable self-restraint!

[verlaine1979]

Don't think there was a decision to compromise on quality in return for getting players who'd commit longer term. We've just recruited poorly. I genuinely believe club felt that Redmond could be a huge difference maker in the league - just that his potential had been unrealised. Likewise Carrillo was seen as an immediate solution to Austin's injury and our league position. No by shifting ambitions, Krueger meant not forcing players to say against their will.

 

Quite - absolutely crazy to think that the club took a considered stance to spend more money on inferior players in the hope that they'd never have to sell them. Wouldn't make sense from any sort of perspective, footballing or economic. If anything, I think RK is saying that the club realise they're nowhere near as big as they thought they were, and that between the lure of bigger clubs and player power, there's no point cutting off your nose to spite your face by forcing players to stay. Obviously there are gradations there, but you should already have a good sense of which players will knuckle down (Schneiderlin, Wanyama) and which will go on strike for months (VVD, possibly Mane if we hadn't sold him.

[saint77]

I gave up after 3mins of listening to his self-serving complacent bull-****, the idiot seems to be in permanent self-denial and if he is implying that he and Reed are here for the long haul then one thing's for certain many fans will stick two fingers up at the Club and walk away. let's see what happens when ST sales take up halves.

 

no way will season tickets sales half and we will still have 30 k attendances next season

[Dalek2003]

Adam tried really hard to put Krueger on the spot, but ultimately failed. Lip-service to the issue of accountability. Trying to blame the VVD situation. Clearly everyone who wants to leave will be allowed to. No light at the tunnel whatsoever.

 

And, most worryingly :

 

"When Sadio Mane came and he told us he wanted to be the best football player in the world he truly believed that. He came and played his two years and he went and now he’s playing in the Champions League final.

 

We allowed that pathway and we were an important part of that and we should be proud of that but we got away from that.

 

Maybe our ambition made us reach for a pathway that wasn’t ours. "

 

I see business as usual at SMS next year. And the target is only mid-table.

 

Gonna be another toughie...

 

The target is 'mid table'? No, the target is simply to stay in the Premier League. 17th will do and anything else is a bonus...as long as the cash keeps flowing in and the owners make a fat profit then the Directors keep on taking their generous salary.

[ART]

"IN KRUEGER AND REED I WILL NEVER AGAIN EVER TRUST"

[Saint Benali]

Can't believe some people actually believe the **** these guys say.

I liked the bit where he was going off on one about how successful we were last season and giving themselves a pat on the back. Giving themselves pay rises. Then was basically asked if it was successful why did you sack the manager?

 

He talks about accountability and says they are all accountable etc. And he is right. But the part where he says we learn from mistakes and we gain experience is complete bull****. How many transfer windows have these idiots messed up. If we accept they learned from Puel why the **** did they replace him with a guy who plays exactly the same way?!

Also the we didn't sell players thing. What about Jay Rod? If we kept him we wouldn't have had to spend so much on another striker...

 

In the real world if someone almost lost a company £100m (from being relegated) there would be people paying the price for it. If you are in a job and did something great years ago but recently you have seriously got it wrong you would be out.

The truth is both RK and LR should be held accountable for their mistakes. But they aren't. They are accountable only to themselves. And next season no doubt the same will happen and for a third time people will lap it up and believe it.

[shurlock]

If you're incapable of admitting to mistakes after this season, you're either a psychopath or really s**t at PR.

[eddie]

I don't know what people expect. Many complaining that Krueger isn't honest enough about admitting his/clubs failings, and has a jaded opinion of the clubs success.

 

Find that baffling. We have had top 8 finishes. One 17th finish doesn't halt the upward track we've been on, nor taint the excellent results we've had.

 

Nor does it put into question our operating model.

 

Our model is by nature risky. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad one, since it's the same one that got us MP, RK and a handful of now world class players.

 

The season is a reminder that the model is inherently risky. We can change to a journeyman filled squad, ignoring cup runs, buying from premier league rivals and joining the Hughes-Pardew-Allardyce-Moyes manager merry-go round (which we seem to have done), and be happy to settle on finishing 14th the next 10 years.

 

I personally quite like the risky model, but perhaps that's my nature.

 

So long as we invest in, and continue to field, youth players.

[CB Fry]

Quite - absolutely crazy to think that the club took a considered stance to spend more money on inferior players in the hope that they'd never have to sell them. Wouldn't make sense from any sort of perspective, footballing or economic. If anything, I think RK is saying that the club realise they're nowhere near as big as they thought they were, and that between the lure of bigger clubs and player power, there's no point cutting off your nose to spite your face by forcing players to stay. Obviously there are gradations there, but you should already have a good sense of which players will knuckle down (Schneiderlin, Wanyama) and which will go on strike for months (VVD, possibly Mane if we hadn't sold him.

Don't think there was a decision to compromise on quality in return for getting players who'd commit longer term. We've just recruited poorly. I genuinely believe club felt that Redmond could be a huge difference maker in the league - just that his potential had been unrealised. Likewise Carrillo was seen as an immediate solution to Austin's injury and our league position. No by shifting ambitions, Krueger meant not forcing players to say against their will.

This and this.

 

Redmond was an archetypal SFC signing. If all went to plan he'd be going to the world cup and to Manchester United this summer after two sensational seasons. When he scored on his debut I thought that felt like a realistic trajectory.

 

He certainly wasn't signed to be rubbish and stay. Ditto Hojberg. Ditto Boufal.

 

If they had great seasons a la Victor, VVD and co then we wouldn't have finished 17th.

[Dalek2003]

This and this.

 

Redmond was an archetypal SFC signing. If all went to plan he'd be going to the world cup and to Manchester United this summer after two sensational seasons. When he scored on his debut I thought that felt like a realistic trajectory.

 

He certainly wasn't signed to be rubbish and stay. Ditto Hojberg. Ditto Boufal.

 

If they had great seasons a la Victor, VVD and co then we wouldn't have finished 17th.

 

But 17th is 'great' to a certain extent because the money keeps rolling in. That's all they care about. The talk about being top 10 and having ambition is to keep the fans happy. SFC is a business and a successful one as long as it remains in the PL. If it can be done on a budget, so much the better.

[LGTL]

Do some of you not realise that this is his job, and exactly why he’s here? Pandering to the masses is his job description. I wouldn’t believe a single word that idiot says about anything.

[dellboypete]

This and this.

 

Redmond was an archetypal SFC signing. If all went to plan he'd be going to the world cup and to Manchester United this summer after two sensational seasons. When he scored on his debut I thought that felt like a realistic trajectory.

 

He certainly wasn't signed to be rubbish and stay. Ditto Hojberg. Ditto Boufal.

 

If they had great seasons a la Victor, VVD and co then we wouldn't have finished 17th.

 

If we hadn't had Pellegrino as manager then they might have had a great season!

[CB Fry]

If we hadn't had Pellegrino as manager then they might have had a great season!

Certainly possible. There's still a player in there somewhere and maybe Hughes (Pretty sure Nathan is on the list of players he tried to sign at Stoke) might just turn him into at least a first team regular next season.

[hackedoff]

I will see whether your product has improved by August Ralph, before I " purchase " it.

[hypochondriac]

Do some of you not realise that this is his job, and exactly why he’s here? Pandering to the masses is his job description. I wouldn’t believe a single word that idiot says about anything.

Completely this. Vague platitudes and admissions of failure (whilst showing there are no consequences to that failure) amount to precisely nothing. He has said nothing of consequence and it appears that no one is going to end up paying for this terrible season.

[sadoldgit]

Other than Pellegrino and his colleagues.

[Supersubpuckett]

I get Ralph talks in classic corporate speak but for those of us who work in these environments it's pretty standard fare and his objective would be to handle the questions without getting emotional or being directly and publicly critical. I think if you listen to what he says through the filter of 'he's p1ssd at Les for screwing up the season', then what he says takes on a slightly different meaning. You need to assume that he takes guidance on footballing matters from Les, so even though Ralph is chairman it's Les that ultimately makes the football decisions and Ralph accepts his view. Bad decisions this season nearly got us relegated and I would imagine Ralph squarely blames Les for letting it get this far. Back in Jan his interview talked about how VVD going will improve things - maybe this is the bull Les was spinning to Ralph. Maybe Les was saying back in the summer "no, don't sell VVD, we can make it work" where I would imagine Ralph would have wanted him sold. Along with MoPe being appointed he is looking at a situation entirely of Les's doing to the point where he stepped in a pulled the trigger after Newcastle, hence the rush to get a new man. His emphasis on how well Sparky and his team fitted in could have been a veiled criticism of Les's previous decision making. When a boss steps in to do the job of one his team, it's not usually for positive reasons.