| Active Owners. 10:26 - Nov 10 with 2613 views | SaintNick |
On an article on the home page someone suggest that if we had had an active owner Ralph would have been sacked last season, I actually think although that is true, but it is the clubs with active owners who lurch from one manager to another, Everton, Chelsea & Spurs to name just three.
Whereas the ones where the owners sit back and let the professionals they have hired to run the club get on with it, such as Manchester City & Liverpool are the ones that have stability & prosper.
It is about looking at the bigger picture, when results are bad looking to see how much of that is the manager or how much is things outside his control.
A year ago we were all hailing Ralph for getting us to the top of the League and then it went to pot, but it went pear shaped not because of the manager, but because of a big injury crisis due to a small squad, it went wrong due to poor refereeing and VAR.
The 9-0 was bad at Old Trafford, but was it Ralph's fault, no he had a starting XI with two players with only minutes of experience in the first team between them, he had two goalkeeper and a load of academy players on the bench, when we had an early sending off he could not control that, he had to play the game with no options off the bench.
The VAR let us down especially in the last 6 minutes when at 6-0 a penalty was awarded wrongly and a player sent off (later rescinded) which turned a bad defeat into a record one.
We have worked hard in the summer to rectify the things we can change, we have built a bigger squad with more quality in it(a pity Ings didn't stay ) Ralph has learned from the experience, we are no longer gung ho, we are measured and can handle it at the back now. There are those saying that we have scraped three 1-0 wins, on paper yes, but we stuck to a game plan and saw the games out, in the past seasons we would have poured forward and got caught on the break.
Things have changed and Ralph has always been part of the solution and not the problem, of course he has done things wrong and it is a learning curve, but overall he is doing a good job in the circumstances.
If someone could name me a better manager who would firstly realistically come to Saints and secondly would be here for the long haul and not just a short term thing where he will jump ship at the first good offer then I will happily see him appointed.
Thank god we don't have active owners
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| Active Owners. on 10:54 - Nov 10 with 1627 views | saints__fan__73 |
Stability doing wonders for Man Utd. |  |
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| Active Owners. on 11:07 - Nov 10 with 1607 views | DorsetIan |
Gao's arrival just gets better and better!
I agree with you about the 0-9 at Old Trafford, the last 3 goals should be ignored.
You can't let Ralph off the hook for how it went pear shaped last season. He made enough weird selection and substitutions and showed little tactical flexibility so should shoulder a fair bit of the blame. I dare say though having departees Bertrand and Ings in the middle of things didn't help him.
And this year he seems to be learning and changing and it was encouraging to see us playing with 11 decent players for once against Villa, and without Djenepo and Walcott making up the numbers.
There's much to be positive about at the moment. |  |
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| Active Owners. on 11:14 - Nov 10 with 1585 views | SaintNick |
| Active Owners. on 10:54 - Nov 10 by saints__fan__73 |
Stability doing wonders for Man Utd. |
Where would a good thread be without a negative comment from your good self. 
United are in turmoil they have lost a few games and are now 6th in the League, last season they were runners up in the Premier League and lost on penalties in the final of the Europa league
Effectively the second best team in England last season , this season started well but they have struggled in recent games, good to see United are sticking with a good man and hopefully (for him at least I hope they dont win anything personally) he will see things through and restore them to their former glory.
Truth is though they haven't got the buying power of Manchester City so if he won the league it would be a miracle.
Reading an article it was interesting to read that the united fans who go to games back Ole, they have stuck with him so far, it is the social media fans who are demanding he go, a bit like Saints really | |
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| Active Owners. on 11:42 - Nov 10 with 1552 views | saints__fan__73 |
| Active Owners. on 11:14 - Nov 10 by SaintNick |
Where would a good thread be without a negative comment from your good self.
United are in turmoil they have lost a few games and are now 6th in the League, last season they were runners up in the Premier League and lost on penalties in the final of the Europa league
Effectively the second best team in England last season , this season started well but they have struggled in recent games, good to see United are sticking with a good man and hopefully (for him at least I hope they dont win anything personally) he will see things through and restore them to their former glory.
Truth is though they haven't got the buying power of Manchester City so if he won the league it would be a miracle.
Reading an article it was interesting to read that the united fans who go to games back Ole, they have stuck with him so far, it is the social media fans who are demanding he go, a bit like Saints really |
Sorry Nick you wore out any legitimacy you had for criticising negativity. We moved from the foot of L1 to the top half of the PL, winning a cup at Wembley, getting two promotions, playing some amazing football and ending up with a manager who is now at one of the world's biggest clubs.
And all you did was make negative comments.
Day after day.
Everything the club did was wrong.
Every transfer was a bad one
But now, with us doing no more than surviving every season, you suddenly want us to think everything is rosy.... | |
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| Active Owners. on 11:46 - Nov 10 with 1541 views | saints__fan__73 |
| Active Owners. on 11:14 - Nov 10 by SaintNick |
Where would a good thread be without a negative comment from your good self.
United are in turmoil they have lost a few games and are now 6th in the League, last season they were runners up in the Premier League and lost on penalties in the final of the Europa league
Effectively the second best team in England last season , this season started well but they have struggled in recent games, good to see United are sticking with a good man and hopefully (for him at least I hope they dont win anything personally) he will see things through and restore them to their former glory.
Truth is though they haven't got the buying power of Manchester City so if he won the league it would be a miracle.
Reading an article it was interesting to read that the united fans who go to games back Ole, they have stuck with him so far, it is the social media fans who are demanding he go, a bit like Saints really |
Truth be told, to be blunt, you are also talking bollux about Utd's buying power.
Their net spend is actually more than City's...
https://www.givemesport.com/1746128-man-utd-liverpool-arsenal-chelsea-every-pl-c | |
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| Active Owners. on 12:05 - Nov 10 with 1508 views | SaintNick |
| Active Owners. on 11:07 - Nov 10 by DorsetIan |
Gao's arrival just gets better and better!
I agree with you about the 0-9 at Old Trafford, the last 3 goals should be ignored.
You can't let Ralph off the hook for how it went pear shaped last season. He made enough weird selection and substitutions and showed little tactical flexibility so should shoulder a fair bit of the blame. I dare say though having departees Bertrand and Ings in the middle of things didn't help him.
And this year he seems to be learning and changing and it was encouraging to see us playing with 11 decent players for once against Villa, and without Djenepo and Walcott making up the numbers.
There's much to be positive about at the moment. |
I agree that sometimes his selections were a little strange, but tactically for most of the 2nd half of the season he had little scope off the bench to change things, so thats why im letting him off the hook on that one, for most of that time it was a starting XI and if he was lucky a couple of experienced subs on the bench, otherwise it was the likes of Nlundulu as the only other option. | |
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| Active Owners. on 12:18 - Nov 10 with 1495 views | DorsetIan |
| Active Owners. on 12:05 - Nov 10 by SaintNick |
I agree that sometimes his selections were a little strange, but tactically for most of the 2nd half of the season he had little scope off the bench to change things, so thats why im letting him off the hook on that one, for most of that time it was a starting XI and if he was lucky a couple of experienced subs on the bench, otherwise it was the likes of Nlundulu as the only other option. |
That's true. I'm think I'm still smarting from him swapping Ings for Diallo at Spurs though! | |
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| Active Owners. on 12:25 - Nov 10 with 1486 views | SaintNick |
You are obsessed with money being the be all of everything, City have a bigger buying power than United because of their current stature in football, players want to go and play for them as they pay top dollar, they dont have to chase players and they dont have to pay over the top | |
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| Active Owners on 13:07 - Nov 10 with 1443 views | PatfromPoole |
| Active Owners. on 12:25 - Nov 10 by SaintNick |
You are obsessed with money being the be all of everything, City have a bigger buying power than United because of their current stature in football, players want to go and play for them as they pay top dollar, they dont have to chase players and they dont have to pay over the top |
In a weird way, I think that perversely United are having to pay more than anybody else to get players to join them precisely because they are crap. |  |
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| Active Owners on 13:08 - Nov 10 with 1438 views | PatfromPoole |
| Active Owners on 13:07 - Nov 10 by PatfromPoole |
In a weird way, I think that perversely United are having to pay more than anybody else to get players to join them precisely because they are crap. |
That’s United being crap, not the players they are trying to sign, BTW….. | |
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| Active Owners. on 13:23 - Nov 10 with 1424 views | SonicBoom |
Also I think the fact that United have stuck with Ollie this far shows that they too, value stability.
Doesn't mean it always works though. Chelsea are famed for swapping managers and it seems to work for them.
I'm starting to wonder if Ralph is the perfect manager for us. He's never going to be bad enough to get the sack, and maybe he'll never be good enough to be poached by someone else. |  | | |
| Active Owners. on 13:39 - Nov 10 with 1389 views | saints__fan__73 |
Thank goodness for stability. When we were changing the manager every season we were a club battling just to stay up, contrasted to the our recent seasons where we are battling just to stay up. | |
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| Active Owners. on 15:42 - Nov 10 with 1337 views | PaleRider |
| Active Owners. on 13:39 - Nov 10 by saints__fan__73 |
Thank goodness for stability. When we were changing the manager every season we were a club battling just to stay up, contrasted to the our recent seasons where we are battling just to stay up. |
I think conflating Ralph and Gao is incorrect. Whilst Ralph has weaknesses, there are also some positives which means that, on balance, I am happy to give him more time.
Gao is another matter. Under Gao's ownership we have regressed. The best anyone can say is that he's done nothing! Frankly, that's pathetic. The choice often given is either Gao or an Ashley style or some dodgy regime as owners. However, as I've mentioned before, I would love to see us with a Brighton style of ownership - one with a better link to the community and city, which we can all emotionally engage in.
Well run businesses are stable because they are well run - not the other way round! | | | |
| Active Owners. on 15:59 - Nov 10 with 1312 views | saints__fan__73 |
| Active Owners. on 15:42 - Nov 10 by PaleRider |
I think conflating Ralph and Gao is incorrect. Whilst Ralph has weaknesses, there are also some positives which means that, on balance, I am happy to give him more time.
Gao is another matter. Under Gao's ownership we have regressed. The best anyone can say is that he's done nothing! Frankly, that's pathetic. The choice often given is either Gao or an Ashley style or some dodgy regime as owners. However, as I've mentioned before, I would love to see us with a Brighton style of ownership - one with a better link to the community and city, which we can all emotionally engage in.
Well run businesses are stable because they are well run - not the other way round! |
Ralph is a decent manager, he has his flaws but is far too good for our feckless board, absentee and desperate to sell (and make a profit) owner and lapdog yes man Semmens.
He's actually just the sort of manager who, with some financial backing, could take a club like Villa and do what Moyes and Rodgers have done at West Ham and Leicester. | |
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| Active Owners. on 16:16 - Nov 10 with 1299 views | Sadoldgit |
I actually think we have a good Board who are doing an excellent job in difficult circumstances. It can’t be easy running a club like Southampton without investment but Ralph, Semmens, Crocker etc all seem to be on the same page and working well together. You can’t blame the Board for Gao’s lack of investment. |  | | |
| Active Owners. on 16:55 - Nov 10 with 1270 views | saintwizzler |
I was asked on Saturday when I said to a chum that Southampton FC had been on sale for a while when we discussed the Newcastle takeover “Were they not interested in buying Southampton?”
I had no answer. |  |
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| Active Owners. on 17:04 - Nov 10 with 1256 views | saints__fan__73 |
| Active Owners. on 16:55 - Nov 10 by saintwizzler |
I was asked on Saturday when I said to a chum that Southampton FC had been on sale for a while when we discussed the Newcastle takeover “Were they not interested in buying Southampton?”
I had no answer. |
We're a much smaller club in a much smaller city? Billionaires looking to rule world football don't tend to buy provincial clubs. | |
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| Active Owners. on 17:07 - Nov 10 with 1254 views | saints__fan__73 |
| Active Owners. on 16:16 - Nov 10 by Sadoldgit |
I actually think we have a good Board who are doing an excellent job in difficult circumstances. It can’t be easy running a club like Southampton without investment but Ralph, Semmens, Crocker etc all seem to be on the same page and working well together. You can’t blame the Board for Gao’s lack of investment. |
Given they aren't involved in picking the team, the results on the pitch or even I suspect have any input into which payers we sign I'm interesting in what things you think 'the board' have done excellently?
I guess keeping out of Ralph's way?
or our sponsorship clusterfuc ks? | |
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| Active Owners. on 17:44 - Nov 10 with 1224 views | MattFinish |
If active owners mean owners who put their hands in their pockets, then if we had one we wouldn't have gone through the bad spell in the second half of last season.
In the second half of last season, we were forced to put in a high number of youth team players in our matchday squads. You can't do that week in week out and expect to compete. Plus, when Danny Ings realised that he wasn't getting the money he wanted to stay he stopped playing. Bertrand's head was elsewhere as was Vestergaard’s. Against Manchester United we had 9 youth team players in the matchday squad.
Then people wonder why we collapsed.
The same will happen this season. If we get injuries and suspensions our squad is too thin. You can't blame the manager for that.
I think we've got to ask ourselves honestly what we expect this squad to do. We’re 3 points off 6th place having had a horrendous set of opening fixtures yet people think we should have done better. So where should we be? Top 4?
There have been people on here slagging the manager and team off for not beating West Ham, Wolves, Newcastle (a). West ham and Wolves have got vastly superior squads to us. If we had Raul Jimenez we'd have thrashed Wolves. Why should we expect to win away at Newcastle? I think a draw is what we should expect. Notice the bed wetters were conspicuous by their silence when we drew 1-1 at the Ethiad.
There were even people slagging us off for not beating Everton and losing away to Chelsea. There were even people on here complaining about the 1-0 win v Villa last week.
Unbelievable.
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| Active Owners. on 18:10 - Nov 10 with 1205 views | saint901 |
The article implies that an "active" owner is one who is around the club day to day and who has an influence on the players in terms of their quality and perhaps even the tactics the manager chooses to adopt and team selection.
I suggest that very few owners are in that category any more with most Prem League and other Euro top division clubs being owned by sovereign funds or consortiums. Where there are wealthy majority owners, most of them are too busy staying wealthy to worry too much about the day to day.
Where an "active" owner would be a boon is in developing a long term investment strategy for themselves and the club. Unfortunately it seems that many owners have short term horizons and the gap between rich and (relatively) poor clubs is now too wide for many owners to bridge.
I don't know much about Mr Gao so have no real way of knowing how active he is. In many ways though a passive owner is just as bad as the club's fortunes on the pitch rest in the hands of people with no skin in the financial game.
There has to be a link somewhere and the models in some clubs have that. Look at Liverpool and Leicester. Utd will always be an outlier because their commercial muscle is well exercised - how many shirts do they sell in the Far East? City are sovereign owned. Chelsea suffered last season a little when their Russian owner could not get his visa renewed and lost interest.
Community owned clubs sound good in practice and in theory a club with 30,000 shareholders should have all the funds it needs. Thing is, do you want 30,000 shareholders who have disposal income that could go to the club of perhaps a few hundred quid each (£1k each is £30m which will not get you much in the league), or do you want somebody who can put up £200m from petty cash? Community enterprise is good for rescuing a club and bringing it back from the brink, but are not a long term answer.
In the USA, people who own sports franchises (different system) tend to own more than just say the grid iron team. They may own the basketball team, the MLS teams, the hockey team, etc. There is perhaps little scope for that in the UK where football (soccer) is probably larger in economic terms than all the other professional sports combined. Doing that however may be a way to curb some clubs buying a championship.
There is perhaps no real answer here unless we want to see the Prem as a plaything of billionaires. | | | |
| Active Owners. on 18:12 - Nov 10 with 1201 views | saintwizzler |
| Active Owners. on 17:04 - Nov 10 by saints__fan__73 |
We're a much smaller club in a much smaller city? Billionaires looking to rule world football don't tend to buy provincial clubs. |
Would they care?
Do they not know of transport links to IOW and Sandy Balls?! | |
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| Active Owners. on 18:17 - Nov 10 with 1195 views | TripleNiemi |
| Active Owners. on 18:12 - Nov 10 by saintwizzler |
Would they care?
Do they not know of transport links to IOW and Sandy Balls?! |
Where is this 'Sandy Balls' you speak of? Sounds a blast and i could be missing something....... |  |
| Ready and waiting to mop up those European places...... |
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| Active Owners. on 18:56 - Nov 10 with 1167 views | MattFinish |
| Active Owners. on 18:17 - Nov 10 by TripleNiemi |
Where is this 'Sandy Balls' you speak of? Sounds a blast and i could be missing something....... |
If you get sandy balls don't use the new Dyson ball cleaner, it's very misleading as I found out to my own cost  | | | |
| Active Owners. on 19:01 - Nov 10 with 1162 views | Sadoldgit |
| Active Owners. on 17:07 - Nov 10 by saints__fan__73 |
Given they aren't involved in picking the team, the results on the pitch or even I suspect have any input into which payers we sign I'm interesting in what things you think 'the board' have done excellently?
I guess keeping out of Ralph's way?
or our sponsorship clusterfuc ks? |
If you bothered to listen to anything any of them said they are all very clearly involved in what goes on, especially when it comes to buying players. | | | |
| Active Owners. on 20:11 - Nov 10 with 1124 views | Chesham_Saint |
| Active Owners. on 17:04 - Nov 10 by saints__fan__73 |
We're a much smaller club in a much smaller city? Billionaires looking to rule world football don't tend to buy provincial clubs. |
Southampton isn’t a much smaller city and I’d argue is in a better location geographically (being much closer to London). Newcastle are also a provincial club (arguably more so than SFC) so I don’t think your argument holds water. |  |
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