Russell Martin

[Sarnia Cherie]

5 minutes ago, tdmickey3 said:

 

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

 

This particular part sums up his arrogance and stupidity, did he not actually bother to watch any Premier League football? 

Anyone with an ounce of football knowledge would have known this...

 

 

 

And the reason why our players are embarrassingly unfit. 

[TheAlehouseBrawlers]

34 minutes ago, tdmickey3 said:

 

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

 

This particular part sums up his arrogance and stupidity, did he not actually bother to watch any Premier League football? 

Anyone with an ounce of football knowledge would have known this...

 

 

 

FFS, even if he wasn’t aware of PL standards (which would be really unbelievable) he also had a number of players in his squad that had already played at that level that should have enlightened him.

And he still hadn’t come to terms with it by December.

Edited yesterday at 15:24 by TheAlehouseBrawlers

[tdmickey3]

7 minutes ago, TheAlehouseBrawlers said:

FFS, even if he wasn’t aware of PL standards (which would be really unbelievable) he also had a number of players in his squad that had already played at that level that should have enlightened him.

And he still hadn’t come to terms with it by December.

Yep, the egotistical fool was deluded enough to think it would come good..

[Graffito]

1 hour ago, saintant said:

It would have been far more interesting if they'd shown some clips of a collection of the ludicrous goals we gave away and let him analyse and explain what went wrong and why he did nothing to try to change things.

They did.

[OldNick]

55 minutes ago, tdmickey3 said:

 

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

 

This particular part sums up his arrogance and stupidity, did he not actually bother to watch any Premier League football? 

Anyone with an ounce of football knowledge would have known this...

 

 

 

He had tried it at Anfield inthe cup the seasn before and their 2nd side beat us comfortably. I think we started ok but then fell away 

[OldNick]

We also have to remember the totally revolutionary playing with 2 small players on each wing and nobody in the middle. 

 

[miserableoldgit]

I don't get the "re-writing" of history that some are carrying out, saying that we should have stayed with him.  P16 W1 D2 L13 GF11 GA36 GD -25 P6 is the reason that he should have gone earlier.  Keeping him for so long was a major mistake......especially after his utterings last night. Should have been 10 games max. Getting Juric (or anyone else who would take the job) in, is like giving somebody a plastic bucket to bail out Titanic. 

[notnowcato]

2 hours ago, miserableoldgit said:

I don't get the "re-writing" of history that some are carrying out, saying that we should have stayed with him.  P16 W1 D2 L13 GF11 GA36 GD -25 P6 is the reason that he should have gone earlier.  Keeping him for so long was a major mistake......especially after his utterings last night. Should have been 10 games max. Getting Juric (or anyone else who would take the job) in, is like giving somebody a plastic bucket to bail out Titanic. 

There's no (little) rewriting going on, the only thing we're 100% certain on now is that the squad is simply and evidently not good enough to compete at this level, no matter what style, philosophy, formation is applied.  It was a classic boardroom move to fire someone when the issue is clearly much greater than who the manager is.

[miserableoldgit]

27 minutes ago, notnowcato said:

There's no (little) rewriting going on, the only thing we're 100% certain on now is that the squad is simply and evidently not good enough to compete at this level, no matter what style, philosophy, formation is applied.  It was a classic boardroom move to fire someone when the issue is clearly much greater than who the manager is.

I agree. The current squad is one of the worst in living memory, but I have seen some on here and Social Media outlets say that we should have stuck with RM.

[Holmes_and_Watson]

6 hours ago, Midfield_General said:

That clip is the exact bit I saw when I turned on MNF last night. It's absolutely hilarious, watching him standing there preaching his knowledge like he's some guru of the game, and not the person who has literally just been sacked for creating a mess so bad that the team he created, coached and managed has a strong chance of being the worst in the history of the Premier League. 

They should have brought up some other clips for him to share his sage wisdom on - for example I'd have loved to hear him talk through a video showing: 

• Each of the 36 goals we conceded in the 16 games we'd played when we sacked him - the second highest of any team in the league at that point
• Each of the 27 errors we made which led to shots for the opposition - the highest of any team in the league
• Each of the 11 errors we made which led to goals for the opposition - the highest of any team in the league

Obviously none of these could be down to him, so presumably he'd just blame the players... the ones he signed, picked and coached? 

 

Like a lot of pundits and football gurus, it's much easier to take a situation in isolation and "fix" it, rather than set up, and train, a side to minimse it happening across a game, and get results.

Martin will passionately talk and excellent game full of the things he wants to see. Getting his side to actually do it was mixed at Championship level, and non existent at PL level.

5 hours ago, SambaMaverick said:

Cheek of the bloke, cares more about his ideology than results. Cares more about how his style comes across than results. Results are the bottom line - and he knows it deep down.

Why else would he rip up his playbook in the playoffs last season? The balance between risk and reward is completely off in his style.

The guy is a grifter and I feel sorry for whoever is taken in by him next. He wasn't a complete failure here but we were realistically a top-six side before a ball was kicked last season.

Having a break from here ATM but watching him last night boiled my piss.

He has always said he'd rather lose playing to what he believed in, than change. He did make changes, but within his core beliefs...right up until McCarthy came in. Our winning goal was a RussBall one, but in a game where we were less likely to muck up defensively because of the change.

4 hours ago, ant said:

To my mind the reason Pep praised Russell is because Martin was/is a bit of a Guardiola acolyte.

Some of the main issues with that are:

1. Pep has City's squad at his disposal (which in itself became too reliant on Rodri);
2. The philosophy was never particularly well-suited to us as a club;
3. Being closely tied to a philosophy is inherently fallible, as what wins out is cyclical.

Just as tika taka was stifled by the gegenpress, possession-at-all-costs football is struggling against raw physicality & quick turnovers of play. Successful managers fall from grace when they're incapable of out-maneuvering the new guard; when City couldn't buy a win, even Pep had to admit their football needed to evolve

Martin talks like an innovator whilst advocating tactics that have been and gone.

SR brought him in knowing how tied he was to that approach. So, their knowledge of what would be competitive tactically was as flawed as their recruitment.

I remember reading posts from , I think, @Maggie Mayr where the penny dropped on just how much the PL had progressed in the last few seasons. As we were stuck at the bottom of it. I'd not been seeing too many other games. So, some players I thought would step up, clearly weren't going to do so as well as I thought they might.

Watching more recently really brought that home. Teams have caught up with it, as happens to all tactics, countered it and are doing something else.

4 hours ago, Sarnia Cherie said:

As much as I enjoy watching football and would have watched the West Ham v Newcastle game last night, knowing he was giving his 'expert' opinion spoiled it for me, so I didn't watch it. I hope he doesn't become a regular. I would prefer Clinton Morrison to him and that's saying something.

As much as I'm not a fan of Morrison, everyone he works with seems to love him to bits. Once in a blue moon there's the hint of something coherent. I wonder if he's much more astute off air, which you'd think would be an issue for a commentator.

3 hours ago, tdmickey3 said:

 

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

 

This particular part sums up his arrogance and stupidity, did he not actually bother to watch any Premier League football? 

Anyone with an ounce of football knowledge would have known this...

 

 

 

SR, coaches, recruitment, data analysts, their own eyes all the way to highlights or you tube videos. But it does seem to have passed them by, as they focused on The Philosophy.

3 hours ago, Sarnia Cherie said:

And the reason why our players are embarrassingly unfit. 

And incredibly unprepared.

3 hours ago, TheAlehouseBrawlers said:

FFS, even if he wasn’t aware of PL standards (which would be really unbelievable) he also had a number of players in his squad that had already played at that level that should have enlightened him.

And he still hadn’t come to terms with it by December.

I get the feeling that a number of our managers aren't interested in anyone not completely on board with their tactic of choice. Then, when we have a squad of samey, unthinking drones they talk about there being no leaders.

 

Edited yesterday at 18:47 by Holmes_and_Watson
typo

[HarvSFC]

Scary thing is Martin had played in the Premier League himself as a player, a number of our players were already failed Premier League players (Armstrong, McCarthy, Downes, Aribo, Smallbone, Stephens, etc...), Liverpool's reserves humbled us last season and Leicester, the closest team to Premier League quality we faced last season, destroyed us for 180 minutes across the two fixtures.

Yet, it still all came as a surprise.

[Whitey Grandad]

We’d better get used to him on Mondays ☹️
 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/33778769/russell-martin-mnf-sky-sports-southampton/

Edit:

Fortunately we won’t have to. As our Farmer Friend has pointed out. 

Edited 12 hours ago by Whitey Grandad

[Fabrice29]

31 minutes ago, Whitey Grandad said:

We’d better get used to him on Mondays ☹️
 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/33778769/russell-martin-mnf-sky-sports-southampton/

Not like you to get something wrong fella. Read it again.

[richardc]

Saw him earlier on in Tesco Express in Shoreham outside Brighton gutted that I didnt tell him what the forums thoughts on him are 

[Whitey Grandad]

11 minutes ago, Fabrice29 said:

Not like you to get something wrong fella. Read it again.

Well spotted! 

I think I saw a similar report earlier that suggested he was going to be a regular and didn’t check the link that I posted.

We are saved!

[Whitey Grandad]

11 hours ago, richardc said:

Saw him earlier on in Tesco Express in Shoreham outside Brighton gutted that I didnt tell him what the forums thoughts on him are 

Did he keep going back to his car, then go back inside repeatedly taking stuff off the shelves and putting it back again without buying anything?

Edited 12 hours ago by Whitey Grandad
Autocorrect

[notnowcato]

5 hours ago, miserableoldgit said:

I agree. The current squad is one of the worst in living memory, but I have seen some on here and Social Media outlets say that we should have stuck with RM.

We could’ve stuck with him, not saying we should have. It’s easier to look back than to look forward. We’re all entitled to our opinion, I think I was in the minority of actually enjoying, in the main, what we were trying to do. There were some low moments, equally we were a shade unlucky at times. One such moment I thought was the Ipswich equaliser, Joe got just enough of a deflection on the shot to make it unsaveable; if that doesn’t go in and we bag the 3 points then with a little confidence added we could’ve been much closer to Ipswich and Leicester. Who knows but we probably wouldn’t be worried about bettering Derby’s record. 

[Saint86]

27 minutes ago, notnowcato said:

We could’ve stuck with him, not saying we should have. It’s easier to look back than to look forward. We’re all entitled to our opinion, I think I was in the minority of actually enjoying, in the main, what we were trying to do. There were some low moments, equally we were a shade unlucky at times. One such moment I thought was the Ipswich equaliser, Joe got just enough of a deflection on the shot to make it unsaveable; if that doesn’t go in and we bag the 3 points then with a little confidence added we could’ve been much closer to Ipswich and Leicester. Who knows but we probably wouldn’t be worried about bettering Derby’s record. 

I don't disagree on the "maybes and what ifs", but it doesn't change the fact that he wouldn't adapt when we absolutely had to - he was determined to put his reputation and style above the club's survival, and that is what fundamentally did it for me. He also tried to be best mates with the players which isn't going to cut it at this level. He was a nice enough guy who did what he had to do last year (and gave us a great day out and fond memories), but his time was up in the prem in the end. Its a shame he wouldn't adapt and try to keep it tight at times - would have kept the fanbase on board and then maybe we would have seen him next season in the champ.

Edited 21 hours ago by Saint86

[tdmickey3]

10 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

Do he keep going back to his car, then go back inside repeatedly taking stuff off the shelves and putting it back again without buying anything?

Yep and then blamed the shelves

[Whitey Grandad]

1 hour ago, tdmickey3 said:

Yep and then blamed the shelves

For not doing what he told them to do?

[Whitey Grandad]

9 hours ago, notnowcato said:

We could’ve stuck with him, not saying we should have. It’s easier to look back than to look forward. We’re all entitled to our opinion, I think I was in the minority of actually enjoying, in the main, what we were trying to do. There were some low moments, equally we were a shade unlucky at times. One such moment I thought was the Ipswich equaliser, Joe got just enough of a deflection on the shot to make it unsaveable; if that doesn’t go in and we bag the 3 points then with a little confidence added we could’ve been much closer to Ipswich and Leicester. Who knows but we probably wouldn’t be worried about bettering Derby’s record. 

Another poster on here pointed out that we seem to suffer a lot of deflected shots. Could it be that our general lack of fitness means that our players aren’t getting out quickly enough to block the shots?

[miserableoldgit]

8 hours ago, Saint86 said:

I don't disagree on the "maybes and what ifs", but it doesn't change the fact that he wouldn't adapt when we absolutely had to - he was determined to put his reputation and style above the club's survival, and that is what fundamentally did it for me. He also tried to be best mates with the players which isn't going to cut it at this level. He was a nice enough guy who did what he had to do last year (and gave us a great day out and fond memories), but his time was up in the prem in the end. Its a shame he wouldn't adapt and try to keep it tight at times - would have kept the fanbase on board and then maybe we would have seen him next season in the champ.

I didn't dislike RM as a person....in fact i quite liked him. Last season I backed him although his style of football was an issue. When it worked it was brilliant to watch. Seeing teams get frustrated because we wouldn't let them have the ball was brilliant, but when it didn't work it was diabolically frustrating.  It was painfully obvious that he didn't, even remotely, have the squad to take his style successfully into the EPL and that he wouldn't change his style whatever happened. His quotes on Monday compound this even more. He HAD to go and should have gone before when there was still an oportunity to get somebody in to give us at least a fighting chance of staying up.

[Patrick Bateman]

31 minutes ago, miserableoldgit said:

I didn't dislike RM as a person....in fact i quite liked him. Last season I backed him although his style of football was an issue. When it worked it was brilliant to watch. Seeing teams get frustrated because we wouldn't let them have the ball was brilliant, but when it didn't work it was diabolically frustrating.  It was painfully obvious that he didn't, even remotely, have the squad to take his style successfully into the EPL and that he wouldn't change his style whatever happened. His quotes on Monday compound this even more. He HAD to go and should have gone before when there was still an oportunity to get somebody in to give us at least a fighting chance of staying up.

Agreed.

I watched Monday Night Football just to see what he had to say. It's interesting and he can definitely pitch a story really well and break down analysis nicely - maybe his role would be great as an assistant to someone rather than being the guy at the top of the day to day tactics / decision making?

Anyway, just to say the end summed up why he and we needed to move on; what would he change or tweak, he was asked by an unsure Carragher, who you could tell was under pressure after trashing Martin so much. Martin's answer; "be more aggressive".  Sigh. Oh well, we plod on. 

 

[Gloucester Saint]

1 minute ago, Patrick Bateman said:

Agreed.

I watched Monday Night Football just to see what he had to say. It's interesting and he can definitely pitch a story really well and break down analysis nicely - maybe his role would be great as an assistant to someone rather than being the guy at the top of the day to day tactics / decision making?

Anyway, just to say the end summed up why he and we needed to move on; what would he change or tweak, he was asked by an unsure Carragher, who you could tell was under pressure after trashing Martin so much. Martin's answer; "be more aggressive".  Sigh. Oh well, we plod on. 

 

Yeah, that underscored that Russell hasn’t quite matured as a manager yet. If he’d learned from the experience of this season, I’d have expected him to say ‘we needed more physical power and pace in central midfield and the spine’ and ‘we should have mixed the pattern of play up a bit more’ then given the PSR limits after Rasmus’s January 2023 clusterfuck, I’d probably have been impressed that he’d taken it on board and expected him to do well in his next role. 

[OldNick]

14 hours ago, richardc said:

Saw him earlier on in Tesco Express in Shoreham outside Brighton gutted that I didnt tell him what the forums thoughts on him are 

was he collecting the trolleys

[tdmickey3]

58 minutes ago, OldNick said:

was he collecting the trolleys

He was round the back messing about

[Lord Duckhunter]

2 hours ago, Patrick Bateman said:

It's interesting and he can definitely pitch a story really well and break down analysis nicely

So can Gary Neville, Roy Keane  & Alan Shearer who were all pretty horrendous in the dug out. 

It’s easy, I can pitch a story well & break down analysis nicely as well. My analysis is this; Lego head is an arrogant cock who isn’t half as good as he thinks he is…

 

[notnowcato]

3 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

Another poster on here pointed out that we seem to suffer a lot of deflected shots. Could it be that our general lack of fitness means that our players aren’t getting out quickly enough to block the shots?

Firstly I’ve not seen any evidence on the lack of fitness, I would be genuinely interested in seeing numbers on this rather than the subjective view. 
 

You could argue that had Joe not managed to get into position (through a lack of fitness) to deflect the shot then the ball sails into Ramsdale’s hands and we bag the 3 points. 

[richardc]

15 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

Did he keep going back to his car, then go back inside repeatedly taking stuff off the shelves and putting it back again without buying anything?

Actually he did - I was behind him in the self service check out and he buggered off half way through and came back with 4 cans of lager 

[Lord Duckhunter]

2 minutes ago, notnowcato said:

Firstly I’ve not seen any evidence on the lack of fitness, I would be genuinely interested in seeing numbers on this rather than the subjective view. 

Open your eyes man….

[BranfootsLoveChild]

Deleted

Edited 8 hours ago by BranfootsLoveChild
Wrong thread

[Whitey Grandad]

29 minutes ago, notnowcato said:

Firstly I’ve not seen any evidence on the lack of fitness, I would be genuinely interested in seeing numbers on this rather than the subjective view. 
 

You could argue that had Joe not managed to get into position (through a lack of fitness) to deflect the shot then the ball sails into Ramsdale’s hands and we bag the 3 points. 

‘Sails into’ the corner more like. It was a well hit shot. 
 

As for fitness why are we always second to the ball and running at half the speed of the opposition?

[Whitey Grandad]

29 minutes ago, richardc said:

Actually he did - I was behind him in the self service check out and he buggered off half way through and came back with 4 cans of lager 

One for each of his mates?

[Patrick Bateman]

4 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:

One for each of his mates?

Rhino, Flynny and Fraze?

[Lord Duckhunter]

On 11/03/2025 at 14:49, tdmickey3 said:

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

Damning admission that just shows how complacent, unprepared, and out of his depth he really was. This is the fucking 2024/25 season not 1953/54. For somebody to be surprised by the athleticism, power and quality in these data driven days, multiple cameras at every game and statistics coming out left right and centre, is fucking unprofessional …