In Ralph We Trust ! Thursday, 25th Feb 2021 09:31 The defeat at Leeds United wasn't great to watch in the end, but if Saints are to pull out of this rut, then Ralph Hasenhuttl is the man to do this. In times of crisis a football club's supporters have to pull together and now is the time for Saints fans to do that. Seven weeks ago Saints supporters were pretty happy with their lot, we were handily placed in the top 6 after beating LIverpool and looking forward to a good cup run, but the writing was already on the wall we were picking up injuries at an alarming rate and although we had just about coped in December with key players out, things were now getting a lot tougher. No one back then was foreseeing what would happen in the next 8 Premier League games !
But although we are in our worst run ever, this season is not a normal one and there are mitigating circumstances, we are not alone in having boom or bust periods, David Moyes at West Ham was under fire at the start of the season until the Hammers went on a good run bac in November, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer at Manchester United likewise at the start of the season. Liverpool are like us in the middle of their worst run in living memory and from the viewpoint of the resources they have, for them it is more worrying than Saints. The problem with modern football is that it is now all about instant success with little room for bad periods, the moment a club hits a poor run of form the knives are out on social media and the easy targets are the manager and the owner with changes demanded. But do we want to jump on this bandwagon, yes the current run of form is disappointing, but truth is we don't want to go back to the way we have been over the last 30 years where managers have come and gone at an alarming rate, since Ian Branfoot was appointed in the summer of 1991, we have had a grand total of 23 permanent managers of Southampton Football Club and if he does see out the season Ralph Hasenhuttl will become the longest serving one of the lot.
We need to look now at the longer project, our last 30 years have been poor because we lacked continuity, occasionally when it looked like we might find a manager who could take us forward they were soon poached and had gone. Indeed going back almost 50 years when Lawrie McMenemy was appointed it would have been easy to have sacked him in his first two seasons, relegation followed by mid table in Division Two saw supporters calling for his head, the walk from the tunnel to the trainers bench was not a pleasant one during his second season. He started his third season on borrowed time, luckily he got off to a good start and he had rebuilt the team and by the end of it we were FA Cup winners, it could have been a very different future if the Saints board had taken the advice of the majority of the supporters and sacked him in the summer of 1975.
Likewise at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp was brought in to end their wait for a Premier League title, it took him 4 years to win a trophy, it took him 5 years to bring the League title back to Anfield. But what the Liverpool owners had seen was that for Klopp it was a long term project and that success is built on solid foundations and not by changing at every setback.
In Ralph Hasenhuttl we have a man like Klopp who believes in the club he is at, he is planning not just for now, but also the future, given time he can build those solid foundations and take us forward. Some Saints supporters have lost track of what success is to Southampton FC, it is not winning the Premier League, it is challenging for the top 10 perhaps a little higher and also trying to win one of the domestic cups. There will be some who have bought into the reach for the sky and get the stars philosophy, but is that really achievable ? Target of success have to be realistic, achievable, stretching and moveable. That means going for smaller targets first and when they have been achieved moving forward to the next one, you have to build the foundations and when you have done at each level you can then move forward. To be blunt the Premier League is fast becoming a closed shop at the top, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United have far more financial resources and are being chased by the likes of Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal who have won the odd cup but little else over the, Leicester have built foundations on what was a freak title win, but even they are just scratching for crumbs as the latter three clubs muck it all up with a new manager season after season.
Money is not the key to success anymore, you cannot buy your way into the top six, several clubs have tried to, the latest being Everton, but truth is they have spent £500 million over the past five years, changed managers regularly and not managed above 7th. So for me there is nothing to be achieved by changing managers now, who would we get who is a better fit than Ralph ? Certainly not the ones that have been mentioned by some like Frank Lampard, why would we want a manager who has had only two jobs and only has 2 1/2 years experience, yes he is a big name and a great player, but the great players don't often make great managers, Frank Lampard might persuade a decent signing or two from his contacts, but would he truly be committed, like Glenn Hoddle he would see us as merely somewhere to work whist he waited for another big job to become available. So I say In Ralph We Trust, here is a decent man who has the potential to become our best manager since Lawrie McMenemy, yes this season has imploded but there are reasons for that beyond his control, we can win a game or two and pull away from any worry of relegation and we might just spring a surprise in the FA Cup. This season is still only 5 wins away from being our greatest ever season, if we win two more league games then relegation isn't an issue and if we win 3 games in the FA Cup then this suddenly becomes a historic season and Ralph Hasenhuttl becomes a legend up there with Ted Bates and Lawrie McMenemy.
If 8 games is all it takes to turn some of our supporters against Ralph then that is a very sad state of affairs, but we are not alone amongst football clubs to have a proportion of supporters who are fickle. But it is now what happens in the next 8 games that count not the last 8 and indeed all that counts, Ralph has proved in the past that he can can recover from adverse moments and come back stronger, he can do it again. But he is only human, he needs to see that the supporters are behind him, that they have the same vision that he does for the club, as i say I cannot see a better man for the job than Ralph Hasenhuttl, we need to stick behind him and stand up and let him know that. Truth is that in any time of adversity it is the minority who shout the loudest and social media has helped that, but now the majority need to rise, be proud of their football club and give something back to a manager who has gone a long way to helping us recover from that dreadful time under Mauricio Pellegrino and Mark Hughes. It was only three years ago that we would have been delighted to have been 8 points clear of relegation and 14th in the League, now we see it as a time of crisis. I am not saying that the last two months have not been acceptable, I am just saying they have happened, we can't change them, put them behind us and back Ralph Hasenhuttl.
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