04 Nov 2018 18:12:10
Protests next Saturday? Something needs to change.

1.) 05 Nov 2018
05 Nov 2018 07:57:40
What exactly are you protesting?

Of course you have the right to, but please, please, please, do not protest. As fans we should help not hinder, and I have no doubt people within the club know the seriousness of situation even if MH won't recognise it in interviews.

2.) 05 Nov 2018
05 Nov 2018 15:04:29
I think its fairly obvious why fans may want to protest, not least because of the issues discussed on this site to near exhaustion. Things are broken at the moment and its fair that those paying to support the club be allowed to underline their concerns in the right way.

For an interesting outsider’s view, read this from Daniel Storey from his Premier League Winners and Losers column on Football365:
Losers
Southampton, who stand for nothing
Southampton’s decline was precipitated by a series of poor decisions that undermined their grand vision. They looked to buy low, sell high and develop their own, relying upon clever managerial appointments that worked well in the cases of Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman. The key to it all lay in succession plans.
Claude Puel did not work out. He finished eighth in the Premier League and reached a domestic cup final, but the football was dreary, the league position flattered Southampton and the signings provided for him were largely unsuccessful. But at least Southampton still stood for something.
If appointing Mark Hughes on a short-term deal was not a mistake, giving him a longer deal surely was. In doing so, Southampton instantly became middle-of-the-road. There is no defined style to their football and no defined style to Hughes’ management. The academy pipeline is drying up and the signings made over the summer have again not clicked. The Southampton model has been replicated elsewhere, and bettered.
Three years ago, an elite club facing Southampton would be racked with issues that would take a week to solve. Now they are fodder that big clubs can brush aside – 12 goals conceded against Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City. The only strategy when facing clubs around them is to be resolute and pragmatic. There is little to give comfort to the aesthete.
If Southampton had been relegated two seasons ago, their downfall would have caused great sadness. A club trying to do things a different way had failed in that admirable task. Now, Southampton’s relegation would barely cause a glimmer of sympathy or sadness.
That’s the most damning indictment of all. Southampton have become Stoke, another club that at least used to stand for something and now stands for nothing. Where did Mark Hughes last manage again?

I think previously Saints123 you have said or alluded to the fact that the club owes us nothing as fans and we just have to roll with the punches. I couldn’t disagree with you more on that point. Fans are important to every club but its easy for clubs to grow complacent when fans continue to buy season tickets and come to watch matches. Its all well and good having a grumble but whilst the club continues to receive our money, there is always the risk that those more focused on money than the community spirit of a football club will just shrug their shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that the fans should just put up with watching their club disintegrate.

Here, I think Saints123 makes a very valid point – any protest must be designed to send a message to the right people, rather than simply to make a noise and risk destroying what little positivity may remain within the players. If a protest is designed to improve the fortunes of the club in the long term, it makes little sense to harm its short-term prospects until all other avenues are explored.

So I have no issue with protests provided they are organised, civil and designed to make a statement to the club’s hierarchy rather than the team. The most sensible recent fan protests have been peaceful and arranged to take place after matches outside the stadium, rather than inside the stadium in the middle of a game. Booing at half or full time does not make for a good protest, nor does holding up small sheets of A4 paper that the board may not see or read. Organising a large enough crowd with a common message to stand outside the ground after a match is more likely to resonate. On the money front, perhaps trying to arrange as part of the protest that those fans wishing to join in should agree to not buy food and drink at the stadium, a low attendance for a game, or spend less in the Saints shop on a match day. In sufficient numbers, this could have a financial impact. But if its just 100 people, it will likely go under the radar.

I’ve said previously though that Saints do not appear to have an organised fan club; a focal point to communicate on mass and bring everyone together. Until that happens, I can’t see a protest being organised with enough numbers to make a point.

3.) 05 Nov 2018
05 Nov 2018 17:10:22
articulated exactly what my head was trying to say . thanks figo! 😂.

4.) 05 Nov 2018
05 Nov 2018 18:40:23
Ok first, I agree with almost every word of the article you quoted, which does a great job of summing up our decline. It picks out poor managerial appointments, lack of impact from signings, stalled academy pipeline and lack of identity/ purpose (this is vital for any brand, and that’s effectively what a football club is) .

What I would ask is what we expected the board to do differently to prevent this?

Managerial appointments – I’ll give you that one! Although I would defend Puel and Pellegrino as legitimate attempts to stick to the ‘Southampton Way’ (albeit they went wrong, and the board are not blameless in this) . Hughes, as I’ve said, is the appointment that I really want answers for. This made no sense to me beyond the short term. Although can I just point out, I’d say the balance of opinion from people on here was that he should be hired permanently in the summer.

Signings – controversial view here, but I don’t blame the board. We excelled when we got promoted because we were at the forefront of using big data and an analytical approach to identifying players – the famous “black box”. This gave us an edge on every other club out there. Other clubs caught on, and we don’t have our edge anymore. It was always going to be short lived, because people were always going to take notice of our success. Us losing our edge isn’t a product of the board being asleep at the wheel, it’s just an unfortunate product of a world where nothing is secret.

Stalled Academy – the board have virtually no control over this. Academy investment is always a long-term endeavour, and no board can control the short term output of that academy. It’s very natural that there would be peaks and troughs in this aspect. It doesn’t help that the ambitions our success gave us make it harder to develop from the academy, since there is less opportunity and flexibility to develop youngsters. I firmly believe that to consider this aspect a failure of the current board is absolutely ridiculous.

Identity/ Purpose – the board have come up short here. The appointment of Hughes is the best example. Carillo signing is another great one. I wouldn’t say they’ve completely lost sight of it, but they’re allowing short-term pragmatism to cloud the vision of what Southampton are supposed to be, and what would give us a chance to get back to where we were. Again, can I just say that we, as fans, don’t help with this. Take the Carillo example – we quite rightly criticise them for that signing now. If they hadn’t bought him, though, we’d all have been quite wrongly criticising them then for not spending any money.

Sorry, bit of an essay, but I just wanted to break down why although I agree with all those points about the clubs decline, I think it’s far too simplistic to just say that’s all the board’s fault. It’s a lot of people’s fault, and partly caused by the fact that the task of establishing a club as a consistent top 10 premiership club is unbelievably difficult. Leicester won the league and still don’t feel 100% stable. There are mistakes in there that are the board’s fault, but I don’t believe them to be sufficient to warrant protest.

Re. the fans, we’re not irrelevant. But at the end of the day we are customers. Customers are incredibly important, and everything you should do should be in their interests. But they’re also short-sighted and often blind to the inner workings and restrictions of the club. For that reason, I say the board should, and seem to, worry more about what’s good for the club and for us than what we think is good for us and the club.

So if you want to protest, I urge you first to read this and decide if you’re directing your anger in the right direction, or directing the passion you have for your football club at the easiest scapegoats, rather than realising that a huge number of people have contributed to the decline Figo described, us included. If you still want to protest, that’s your right. I would 100% agree with what Figo said about doing it in a smart way which achieves the benefits you want with minimum negative impact on what is clearly going to be a difficult relegation scrap.

5.) 06 Nov 2018
06 Nov 2018 07:58:17
Good post Saints123.

6.) 06 Nov 2018
06 Nov 2018 14:44:16
We’re going round a little bit in circles here, but as I have said previously, these issues have been on-going for several years now. This has not been a sudden and surprising drop, rather a steady erosion. The board has presided over that and thus must accept responsibility for their failure to take the action required to stop it.

I won’t re-tread managerial appointments and identity here as you accept the board’s failure in these areas. I’ll focus instead on the two areas you feel the board escape culpability. Firstly, in relation to signings, it is correct to say they’ve not chosen the players we sign and have rather entrusted that task to our director of football and our scouting network; the same parties who combined to decide our last three managerial appointments. If the board is to be held responsible for the signings of our managers, it seems inconsistent to excuse them entirely of player signings.

I would also reiterate that you cannot look at one or two poor signings or sales in isolation, but collectively over the period of decline. The board should not be blamed for a couple of bad transfers as there is always an element of luck in whether someone will succeed at a new club or in a new country. But the run of form has been poor for some time and what steps have the board taken to address the issue and arrest the slump? Have scouts been recruited or replaced? Has the black box been revamped? Has there been investment in new technology? Have better data analysts been recruited? The answer is, we do not really know, but I suspect the board would say so to allay any fears that nothing is happening. Why would they not?

Also, if we achieved success by getting ahead of the curve and doing scouting and recruitment better than anyone else, it is folly to just accept that everyone else will poach your best recruiters and steal your secrets. That may very well happen and I understand it has, but then your focus must shift to getting back ahead of the curve. It is inevitable other clubs will look to mirror the success of another, and larger clubs with more money will always be able to lure away staff. But you cannot sit and reminisce about the good old days when we did something well. Succession planning and strategy should relate not only to playing and managerial staff but in training and scouting methods as well. Those who stand still get overtaken and left behind.

Secondly, in relation to the academy production line, when the team is performing well in the league as it was, it attracts the interest and attention of young players. We are one of, if not the largest clubs on the south coast and were building a reputation as a good place for young players to come and cut their teeth as we were a side that would afford them first team opportunities and challenging for European football. That was our main selling point in comparison to a team in the top 6 or 7. With the decline of the club, that selling point has been allowed to diminish and we are no longer such an attractive prospect for the most talented youth in the country.

The board has the power to act to improve coaching of our young players and to ensure that sufficient resources are focused on recruiting the best young players around. This is especially crucial when a large part of your long term strategy is integrating academy products in your first team. There is again, little evidence that any concrete steps have been taken to deal with this. Les Reed told the fan forum that he’s excited about players in our academy at the age of 12/ 13. So in all the time the club was meant to be focused on getting the best, we appear to have only been successful on very young players who are 5 years or more away from the first team. Given that players under the age of 16 have yet to sign professional contracts, it is surprising the club has been unable, even in its successful spell, to attract anyone of a more advanced age to the club.

The point is, if Les Reed is telling us this, the board will know as well and long before us. If it raises questions for us, it must raise questions for them, in the very least in relation to transfer budgets if not to the viability of the long term strategy of the club. With things not improving, is it enough to just accept that there is a dearth of talent, or that players continue to prefer sitting in the reserves of the elite clubs rather than coming to us? Is it enough to accept that our first team now fails to field any of our young players including the likes of Sims, Reed, Hesketh, Targett, McQueen, Gallagher and undermining one of our main selling points to other talented youngsters about first team opportunities? The board has the power to intervene and insist that such an approach is taken. It is not beholden to those it employs. That is why they have the power to hire and fire people. Because they are responsible for the output of those employees.

So the board must surely be held accountable for failing to work on a strategy that incorporates succession planning across the spectrum. They must be held accountable for failing to insist upon the creation of a long term strategy for the club and ensuring it is complied with. The board has failed in identifying the issues at the club and taking action that has either fixed those issues or better, improved our standing. They have failed to adapt and improve the club, most likely instead resting on their laurels and taking their eye off the ball. Ralph Krueger has admitted as much and if he and Les Reed have been afforded the opportunity to do so, that is the fault of the board for not seeing it and dealing with it. As I stated previously, if this was one season of stagnation the board may be excused, but this has been coming for some time. Last season, we were accused of sleep walking toward relegation and the bare minimum has been done over the summer to change things. Unsurprisingly, those steps have been insufficient.

Today, reports are saying MH could be sacked if we lose to Watford at the weekend. Replacements listed include the likes of Allardyce and Moyes as feared. Jardim is also on the list but he is being linked with every managerial job going, including Real Madrid so chances seem very unlikely he would join us. We’ve all said before that one of the draw backs of sacking a manager is having to find someone better to take their place. A protest may underline the fans wish for someone better than one of the Premier League old boys to be given a chance and for the board to understand it has been too inactive in developing the club, before its too late.

7.) 06 Nov 2018
06 Nov 2018 19:06:16
A big circle Figo but a great read!

Let’s not forget though, any company should have succession planning in place and people well paid to do so, as opposed to us fans.

I think the reason people don’t suggest names, such as myself, is because my point is more about identifying a manager capable for driving results by developing the youngsters, firming a clear path to the first team based on slow integration, exciting open football etc. This is the clubs job to find but I am afraid it was never going to be the last 3 appointments.

When Hughes was offered the 3 year contract, the club had several months to find something better. His results did not warrant the 3 year contract regardless ‘if’ he kept us up.

8.) 07 Nov 2018
07 Nov 2018 09:13:53
Figo that was the biggest circle yet! Nothing new there, you're just reiterating what's been said a lot so I'm not going to write another long response. I strongly disagree with the academy stuff, but the one big thing I would like to correct, because it going beyond opinion to factual inaccuracy, is the 'revamp the black box' point: that just isn't how big data analytics works. You can't just click your fingers and pull an innovative new methodology out of your ass which restores your advantage over EVERYONE else who's trying to do the same thing.

Just hiring some new analyst wouldn't make a difference - they'd be analysing the same data and so would reach the same conclusions. That's the whole point of this, it's not subjective like more traditional scouting. Whoever has the best data is king. For a time, that was us, because we understood its value better than anyone else. But now that everyone understands the value of that product - data - we cannot possibly retain that edge over bigger clubs.

{Ed001's Note - actually that is not quite true. You can change the way you analyse the data, it is very subjective because the weight that is placed on each piece of data is extremely subjective. That is why a club like Brentford can compete while spending much less, in the Championship. They use the data differently from others, they look for things other clubs aren't. No one has more or better data, they just analyse it using slightly different approaches, usually based on the style of play you want to use.

For instance, if you are a passing team, you might put a higher weight on passing percentage over distance covered. The problem is that all of the raw data you have is out of context. That is where subjectivity comes in as you use your interpretation to add the context. It is perfectly possible for interpretation to be tweaked and should be done to suit the team anyway, as well as to provide context to the data to make sense of it.}

9.) 07 Nov 2018
07 Nov 2018 18:13:06
Sorry, for any repetition but it is worthwhile if it helps you to see things differently. Obviously I haven't but perhaps Ed001's input may help - thanks Ed001 for saving us all time by putting the it more succinctly than I would have. What you're overlooking is that the data analysis is not about collecting data, its about interpreting it. Different people use different methods and like anything else, some analysts will be better than others. I'm not saying Saints she re-invent the wheel. Instead, simply acknowledge that what they are doing now is not working and needs to be improved. Its my position that has been clear for some time and yet nothing has changed which feeds into the board taking due responsibility for the lack of structure and strategy.

I shan't say anymore on the academy front as I do not know your strong views for disagreeing.

The point is, the problems at the club are greater than simply replacing a head coach or making a new signing, or playing the younger players who are out on loan. The club is without aim or focus and this is impacting on field performances not only in the short term but we have seen it now in the long term. If a more fundamental and far reaching change is not made, things will not improve. The board are responsible for the running of the club and it has nosedived.

{Ed001's Note - welcome mate.}