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Episode 360- Player Power - Is this the problem?
17 Plays1 month ago
Southampton – A hint at the clique style of the squad at the moment.... is this the problem we are having at the moment?
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Transcript
Introduction & Player Power
00:00:04
Speaker
This is the Daily Saints pod with Zach and Greg.
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Daily Saints pod.
00:00:17
Speaker
My name is Greg and as always joined by my good friend and wonderful co-host Zach.
00:00:23
Speaker
How you doing mate, you alright?
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'm good mate.
00:00:26
Speaker
It's been a long day for me and a super energised one for you.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's it.
00:00:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:32
Speaker
We're here today to talk about player power, right?
00:00:35
Speaker
We had somebody ask us about that question to do with Alfie's tweet.
00:00:39
Speaker
It was last week where he was talking about who he would keep in the team.
00:00:43
Speaker
One of those people who has now permanently left the QPR.
00:00:45
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, look, we've alluded to it, and we talked a lot before about how something changed in the team, right?
Team Dynamics Under Tonda
00:00:58
Speaker
And it was between Tonda becoming the main manager, not the interim anymore, like the actual head coach, sorry, and something changed.
00:01:09
Speaker
And we kind of talked about whether that was...
00:01:12
Speaker
like someone else feeding him instructions that sort of forced that change.
00:01:18
Speaker
And we talked about some of the other things it might be, but something that we didn't really talk about and, like you say, came out with Alfie's article since is this idea of player power and how there's this sort of clique of players in the team who liked Russell Martin and liked his...
00:01:38
Speaker
days off and the way that his style of football required less effort.
00:01:44
Speaker
And, you know, you can sort of read between the lines in that article to, you know, it doesn't take a huge amount of thinking about it to work out, you know, the implications of who those players are.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I mean, we knew it at the time when Russell Martin was the manager.
00:02:00
Speaker
There was very notably Russell Martin players, right?
00:02:04
Speaker
They were all the lads.
00:02:06
Speaker
And we commented on it a lot on the show, right?
00:02:08
Speaker
They were the pally, pally, happy, lads, lads, lads, lads players.
00:02:14
Speaker
So, I mean, look, let's just throw it straight out there.
00:02:16
Speaker
That's Harwood Bellis, Stevens, Flynn Downs, right?
Key Players from Russell Martin's Era
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, arguably Brian Fraser, but I think he's just happy to restart his career because he seems to have been able to pivot no matter what he's been asked of.
00:02:33
Speaker
Brian Manning to an extent, but he always seems to play in that position.
00:02:37
Speaker
However, he still very much plays and makes mistakes like he's in a Russell Martin team.
00:02:42
Speaker
That is what a lot of the criticisms are.
00:02:44
Speaker
People really dislike his inability to defend as a left back and that's completely understandable and how he often leaves the ball to have to be picked up by somebody else.
00:02:53
Speaker
but it's fine because he whipped in a few goals at the beginning of the season.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, I can see it.
00:02:57
Speaker
And I guess to some degree, Aribo and Armstrong, I would also sort of put in that camp of...
00:03:05
Speaker
of Russell Martin players, players who sort of were amongst Russell Martin's favourites.
00:03:12
Speaker
I wouldn't put Ariba in that.
00:03:15
Speaker
I would put Ariba more of, he became more of a breakthrough during the second part of last season, right?
00:03:21
Speaker
So the first half when you had Russell Martin in charge, you could see who it was.
00:03:25
Speaker
He was our top goal scorer and our centre-back.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
Sorry, just remembering how bad it was, right?
00:03:35
Speaker
And then you sort of had players that had either come back from loan or players that had come back to fitness and Juric came in and obviously Juric had his very clear favourites, right?
00:03:44
Speaker
Paul Noachiu, Sulemana, Joe Eribo.
00:03:48
Speaker
They were really, really good friends.
00:03:49
Speaker
They became quite close to these cliques, kind of.
00:03:52
Speaker
He rubbed up
00:03:53
Speaker
people who were big fans of Russell Martin the wrong way, right?
00:03:57
Speaker
And by Franz, I mean, you know, people that were... It's in his clique, right?
00:04:01
Speaker
You can see that because Flynn Downs was already pushing for a move to Ipswich about a year ago this time.
00:04:07
Speaker
So he was trying to make that move.
00:04:10
Speaker
Fraser disappeared off the face of the earth.
00:04:11
Speaker
He basically couldn't get a game no matter what when Juric was asked in his very sort of nonchalantly answers.
00:04:16
Speaker
He was like, better players...
00:04:18
Speaker
That was a simple answer for that.
Rumors of Captain Unhappiness
00:04:20
Speaker
So, yeah, like, I think that there is still that sort of click of players.
00:04:25
Speaker
There is also a really good article by The Ugly Inside,
00:04:29
Speaker
which if you're unaware of, it's like a Saints blog.
00:04:32
Speaker
And I haven't reread it.
00:04:33
Speaker
I think I read it last week.
00:04:34
Speaker
I haven't reread it specifically to ensure I don't accidentally just plagiarize all their points.
00:04:39
Speaker
It's the same reason that whenever I watch TSP or Saints Network, it's after we finish recording our podcast.
00:04:46
Speaker
But most of the time, to be fair, sometimes I catch it live and then decide to watch it.
00:04:52
Speaker
It's a really, really good article.
00:04:53
Speaker
But one of the things that they bring up
00:04:56
Speaker
in that article is the earlier rumours in the season about a player captain being really, really unhappy, right?
00:05:05
Speaker
And we never actually got a resolution to that.
00:05:07
Speaker
Like, there was lots of speculation that it was Watford.
00:05:10
Speaker
There was lots of speculation across the board as to who it was.
00:05:12
Speaker
We kind of dismissed it as we did not think it would be us because of the relationship between Jack Stevens and Will still being quite
00:05:19
Speaker
evident, right?
00:05:20
Speaker
And the days that he was dropped, he was still there and sort of cheering the team on.
00:05:25
Speaker
But as things have been going on, like it does kind of feel a bit different.
00:05:29
Speaker
And as modern football evolves in general, there does seem to be a bit more player
Post-Premier League Cultural Shifts
00:05:35
Speaker
power.
00:05:35
Speaker
And, you know, there is a systematic problem with clearing set pieces and it doesn't matter which coach you put in front of them.
00:05:44
Speaker
I just wonder how fundamentally Russell Martin changed the culture of the football club.
00:05:48
Speaker
And I'm not saying in a sense of the tactics.
00:05:51
Speaker
I think you and I have both talked about that sometimes you can see them kind of default to passing around to the back.
00:05:56
Speaker
But somebody made a very good point to me at one point, which is not every single passing around the back can be blamed on Russell Martin.
00:06:03
Speaker
Sometimes that is just players playing in a way where they go, oh, I don't think I fancy that.
00:06:08
Speaker
But from a cultural standpoint, when it was good, it went well, right?
00:06:13
Speaker
We had probably the best atmosphere we've ever had was that playoff game against West Brom.
00:06:19
Speaker
And that was a Russell Martin side.
00:06:20
Speaker
Let's not forget it.
00:06:21
Speaker
It wasn't the best football to watch most of the time.
00:06:24
Speaker
I don't remember the last time I remember having really good football to watch, to be honest.
00:06:28
Speaker
Probably like Pochettino era, maybe Cuban.
00:06:31
Speaker
Which again, which is why we're so trapped in going back to those times.
00:06:37
Speaker
But yeah, something fundamentally, culturally had to change after we dropped out of the Premier League.
00:06:43
Speaker
And they brought Russell Martin in, and he definitely did that.
00:06:46
Speaker
And, you know, Alfie even questioned Tonda on the scar tissue.
00:06:50
Speaker
And he specifically and weirdly dismissed that almost immediately.
00:06:54
Speaker
Like, I can't talk about the past.
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm like, if you don't learn from the past, how can you plan for the future?
00:06:58
Speaker
Because regardless of whether or not you think it's the past...
00:07:01
Speaker
There are a bunch of the players here, some of whom you would have referred to as Deadwood, that are still here and in those positions.
00:07:08
Speaker
And as the modern game evolves, player power is significantly more important.
00:07:11
Speaker
Have a look at clubs elsewhere.
00:07:13
Speaker
Have a look at Mbappe.
00:07:14
Speaker
Have a look at, you know, I can list everything that everyone's going to know.
00:07:18
Speaker
But I do wonder how much the players have behind the scenes and how much of an impact they have had.
00:07:26
Speaker
Because, yeah, sure, you can blame Sports Republic.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, sure, you can blame the managers.
00:07:31
Speaker
But when you talked about it in that FA Cup game, Greg, when the spine of the team hasn't changed and the spine of the team are the ones that keep causing the problems, what do you
Appease Players or Start Anew?
00:07:40
Speaker
do?
00:07:40
Speaker
So, yeah, I don't know.
00:07:42
Speaker
There's lots of talking points on it.
00:07:43
Speaker
Greg, I know you have to say, I've spoken a lot.
00:07:47
Speaker
for five minutes.
00:07:48
Speaker
You've not interrupted me because you're being nice, but please interject my friend to me.
00:07:53
Speaker
No, I mean, look, you're exactly right.
00:07:55
Speaker
It's just, it's fascinating to me and I can't help, I mean, I'm such a solution-orientated person anyway.
00:08:03
Speaker
My mind immediately jumps to, well, I mean, if that is the case, or I mean, even the fact that it's been hinted at by Alfie House and, you know, we sort of, you see it in, like you say, we saw it with Flindau trying to force a move to Ipswich and, you know, that was quite a public fallout as well.
00:08:23
Speaker
Armour went on loan, remember?
00:08:24
Speaker
For West Brom, he didn't even do a lot, but he went on loan because he wasn't getting game time over.
00:08:29
Speaker
So, like, what's the answer?
00:08:31
Speaker
Is the answer... Give in to these players and get them to actually do something, or just bin them all off and ship them out, start again from scratch?
00:08:43
Speaker
Just... And I don't know if there's a right answer there is the problem.
00:08:48
Speaker
I don't know if you... One of my arguments against is, what do they want?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
Because the problem you had is that
00:08:58
Speaker
If what they actually want, which was rumoured in the summer, right?
00:09:00
Speaker
It was rumoured even after Will Steele went that the players would be open to a return of Russell Monn, right?
00:09:05
Speaker
Which, okay.
00:09:06
Speaker
Again, to be clear, these are rumours.
00:09:08
Speaker
We don't know if they've actually said that.
00:09:10
Speaker
But one of my only counterpoints to this idea of player power is what do they actually want?
00:09:15
Speaker
Is it just that they want to be on the pitch ahead of other players?
00:09:18
Speaker
Well, I guess that's kind of succeeded for some of them.
00:09:20
Speaker
But the captain currently is kind of being rotated with another young centre-back, right?
00:09:26
Speaker
That's happening.
00:09:28
Speaker
You know, Downs gets games, but honestly, it looks like he's had more battles against his own fitness.
00:09:35
Speaker
Arma's getting the most games because, you know, I don't know if he still is, but was the top scorer in the championship.
00:09:41
Speaker
So you're not going to drop him.
00:09:42
Speaker
Manning, well, for a long time, Wellington had an injury.
00:09:45
Speaker
Wellington went out for a while.
00:09:47
Speaker
Then he had the red card incident and has slowly been worked back in and started the other day in the FA Cup.
00:09:53
Speaker
So, okay,
00:09:55
Speaker
what do they actually want?
00:09:57
Speaker
This is the only argument I have against it, which is like, what would be the objective of all of these players in the culture?
Need for a Cultural Reset?
00:10:03
Speaker
Is it, as you said, to just have to do less?
00:10:06
Speaker
Do you think people are content with winning?
00:10:09
Speaker
Like not winning?
00:10:10
Speaker
I just don't see that being the case.
00:10:11
Speaker
Like some of them have got moved and moved on.
00:10:14
Speaker
And as we discussed yesterday, like potentially some of them want to better things.
00:10:18
Speaker
I saw an argument when Baz obviously now confirmed to go to Stoke.
00:10:21
Speaker
It was like, is he going to become suddenly amazing?
00:10:24
Speaker
like the rest of the players that leave us.
00:10:25
Speaker
So I'm like, bar our lady Bednarek, we discussed a string of players yesterday that left us that have not gone on to more illustrious things.
00:10:33
Speaker
They might have gone to a Champions League side for the time being.
00:10:36
Speaker
And then, you know, again, Solomana, I spoke to you yesterday.
00:10:40
Speaker
I had a look, I decided to have a look at his game stats, right?
00:10:42
Speaker
And he's played six minutes in the last three games.
00:10:46
Speaker
So he's on his sub for two of those games.
00:10:49
Speaker
And then he came on as a sub for six minutes.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:10:52
Speaker
It's weird, isn't it?
00:10:53
Speaker
Because what's the argument?
00:10:54
Speaker
Like, what are they trying to get?
00:10:59
Speaker
More money?
00:11:01
Speaker
More days off?
00:11:01
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:02
Speaker
I don't know the answer.
00:11:03
Speaker
I mean, look.
00:11:05
Speaker
I don't know what the answer is.
00:11:06
Speaker
I don't know if we're going to be able to solve it this window.
00:11:10
Speaker
I think that if you factor it into the team as a whole, though, and who we presume, or even assume, we're taking our best guess based off of what we see out of the club.
00:11:27
Speaker
We don't go to Staplewood.
00:11:28
Speaker
We don't really know what's what.
00:11:30
Speaker
But what we see and what we get from the club and what we read from the reporters,
00:11:35
Speaker
And what's presented to us, we can deduce that.
00:11:39
Speaker
So what?
00:11:39
Speaker
We need a centre-back, probably, now, if that's the case.
00:11:45
Speaker
Because it's one or two of them.
00:11:49
Speaker
And if it's a case of break-up the group... I mean, I'm finding it really hard...
00:11:55
Speaker
Zach, to just not fully put the heater on Jack Stevens here, right?
00:12:01
Speaker
Like, he's the person who's been the captain throughout, and we keep hearing about how, you know, great of a leader he is, but we also, through this entire time, have really lacked...
00:12:15
Speaker
leadership and draw and if his name is in this list of the click who were oh it was better when we had different days off under Russell Martin like is it really just as simple as just put someone else's club captain and try and positively affect the culture that way
00:12:35
Speaker
Like, is that really... Is it really going to be just as simple as that?
00:12:39
Speaker
Because it kind of feels like, if nothing else, that's the first step, right?
00:12:44
Speaker
Of sort of reading ourselves of the shackles of whatever it is that's sort of holding this down from the past.
00:12:53
Speaker
I think that's probably what you're going to see potentially with this season, though.
00:12:56
Speaker
Like, I am in a...
Player Transfer Desires
00:13:00
Speaker
I'm far more cynical than you, but it's one of those things where we've kind of talked about the idea of promotion.
00:13:06
Speaker
Looking at where we are in the table, looking at where we are in the seats, I don't realistically think it's a possibility.
00:13:11
Speaker
I think there'll be players that want to move on.
00:13:13
Speaker
There'll be players that have decided that that's kind of it for their time at Salampton.
00:13:16
Speaker
And then we will end up with a full cultural reset because the players that have been here the longest will go.
00:13:22
Speaker
And then when that doesn't solve the problem, then it will be a bigger issue for Sports Republic because they will then go, okay, well, it's us.
00:13:28
Speaker
Because then you run out of people to blame, right?
00:13:30
Speaker
If every single player is left and every single manager is left and you've replaced all of them, it's then a problem.
00:13:38
Speaker
But I don't know if it's as simple as just removing the club captain because I don't know if they're thinking they have the foresight for that.
00:13:45
Speaker
Simply because of like, you look at this Romero transfer that seems to have been at this rate just a sentimental transfer.
00:13:52
Speaker
And, you know, as somebody, I'm sure he won't disclose how he came to his conclusions because, you know, he's a journalist and when people ask him to be
00:14:02
Speaker
to be more harsh than he usually is.
00:14:05
Speaker
People need to remember that you need to be able to get access.
00:14:09
Speaker
You need to be able to have conversations.
00:14:10
Speaker
If you consistently, you know, burn all of the bridges you have around you by, by being really, really harsh, it's a hard game being like, you don't have to look too far into our past as a club to see that either.
00:14:26
Speaker
Right.
00:14:26
Speaker
Like under Cortese, was it the, uh,
00:14:32
Speaker
some of the press, or in fact a whole load of the press and the Echo in full, got completely banned.
00:14:39
Speaker
You see it in Blackburn now as well.
00:14:41
Speaker
They had their whole thing where they basically just stopped their local journalists because they were criticizing them too much.
00:14:45
Speaker
So he's going to have to step between the lines.
00:14:48
Speaker
So with that caveat, reading at the players that he said that we should keep is very, very interesting.
00:14:54
Speaker
And he is, I think, being slightly more expressive with his opinions more recently.
00:14:58
Speaker
And I think probably because it's equally as being as frustrated as us.
00:15:01
Speaker
Regardless of whether or not people believe he actually supports the team because of where he's from, like, I feel like when you spend this much time paying attention to it and reporting on it, like, I don't think, I think it's a moot point, personally.
00:15:14
Speaker
100%.
00:15:14
Speaker
It is very, the list of players that he has is very interesting because, again, it's
00:15:20
Speaker
we probably kind of agree we do need a cultural reset.
00:15:22
Speaker
I just don't think that you're going to see it this season.
00:15:25
Speaker
I don't think you'll see Jack Stevens being slacked off.
00:15:29
Speaker
Also, the weird thing about that is they gave him another contract recently, right?
00:15:33
Speaker
So potentially you've got Fraser going to the end of the season.
00:15:36
Speaker
I don't know whether Armour would want to stay, to be perfectly honest.
00:15:39
Speaker
I guess we'll see what happens when his contract comes to an end.
00:15:43
Speaker
They don't seem to have any qualms with left back as a position.
00:15:47
Speaker
So I don't think you'll see Manning go anytime soon.
00:15:50
Speaker
Downs, I think, hasn't expressed any interest to go anymore since the whole Ipswich incident, but shows you, you know, there's a bit of flakiness there, but then he's been ill.
00:16:00
Speaker
Like, you don't know who they are as human individuals.
00:16:03
Speaker
And the other, like, and I know, again, I'm flicking back and forth because I have lots of thoughts about it and not all of them make sense together.
00:16:11
Speaker
Equally, when I ask, you know, when it comes to power, what they actually want out of it,
00:16:17
Speaker
The other argument is like, how often do people go into their workplace and actually thinking about that?
00:16:23
Speaker
Like who, who is this cold and calculating about the way they do things?
00:16:27
Speaker
Do you genuinely think that they, they have like a book club or like they meet up like once a week for beers and they sit there and be like, right, lad.
00:16:33
Speaker
So this is what we're going to do this week to try and make sure this works.
00:16:36
Speaker
Obviously there's like subtler social engineering things that can happen for sure.
00:16:41
Speaker
But yeah,
00:16:42
Speaker
I also, yeah, they might just be like, yeah, I really like that time under Russell Martin.
00:16:46
Speaker
I miss it.
00:16:47
Speaker
Why?
00:16:47
Speaker
Well, we were winning and winning lots of, winning slash drawing lots of games.
00:16:52
Speaker
It was real big buzz of positivity.
00:16:54
Speaker
He was a real likeable, charismatic guy because, you know, somebody commented the other day on one of our YouTube episodes, Greg, like...
00:17:02
Speaker
Could the problem be the fact that you seem to hire managers with the charisma of a wet blanket or whatever?
00:17:08
Speaker
That's true.
00:17:09
Speaker
The last couple of... One of the first criticisms they had was he's not loud enough.
00:17:14
Speaker
And ultimately...
00:17:17
Speaker
The same with Juric, right?
00:17:18
Speaker
And the same, you know, to some degree with Tonda.
00:17:20
Speaker
Like, he's got this sort of strange charisma about him.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yes.
00:17:29
Speaker
Kind of feels a bit like... It's slightly off-putting.
00:17:32
Speaker
But, yeah...
00:17:33
Speaker
Whereas most of them had like the one word answers, but you know for a fact that he would go into the, into the dressing room and give them a hairdryer treatment, which I think is just well too much of a swap for them from like Russell Martin who, you know,
00:17:47
Speaker
And I think that maybe there's probably a lot of guilt with that.
00:17:51
Speaker
Like, they don't want it.
00:17:52
Speaker
They don't want to go down.
00:17:53
Speaker
They don't want to be that team.
00:17:55
Speaker
And they're going to have to live with it, like, whether they like it or not.
00:17:58
Speaker
And for some people, they can live with it and move on to better things.
00:18:01
Speaker
And I'd say that in Bednarak, like, you know, it's been widely reported that he's won, like, what, four in a row for, like, best defender in the Portuguese league or something, four weeks in a row.
00:18:10
Speaker
You know, rightly or wrongly, some people go on to greater things, but if not, they're the ones that are still here.
00:18:16
Speaker
And because of the way that they think that things should be, we don't have a manager.
Romeo's Signing and Team Mentality
00:18:22
Speaker
We have a head coach, which is why I kept banging on about the Man U comparison so much, because like, who is actually in control?
00:18:29
Speaker
I don't know if the players have as much power that they think that we do.
00:18:33
Speaker
I do know that they are in control of their performances, though.
00:18:37
Speaker
And some of the people that have been criticised heavily for their performances do make up that cohort.
00:18:42
Speaker
So it could just be we're putting two and two together.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:46
Speaker
I mean, look, whether it's like a deliberate...
00:18:49
Speaker
Like you say, it's really unlikely to me that it's like a deliberate, like, oh, we're going to be rubbish today because we want more days off.
00:18:57
Speaker
But, like, it's the sort of thing that it can affect your mood, which can affect the mood of people around you, which, like I say, effectively comes down to the culture and the influence.
00:19:10
Speaker
And maybe, I mean, you said that bringing Romeo in really was like a sentimental signing.
00:19:17
Speaker
But really, maybe, like...
00:19:19
Speaker
that mentality that runs through the team, and maybe that's why Romero was bought in because no one's ever described Romero as soft, right?
00:19:29
Speaker
Like that's not in his repertoire.
00:19:32
Speaker
And so maybe they were hoping that having him just around the locker room, even if he wasn't going to get a lot of minutes in, would sort of instill this fortitude into some of the other players who were...
00:19:45
Speaker
you know, clearly struggling with it.
00:19:47
Speaker
And, you know, like I say, be that as, like, social osmosis or because they miss the better times or because they hurt him, like, whatever it is.
00:19:58
Speaker
Like, it's just... It just needs to get over it and play better.
00:20:03
Speaker
Like...
00:20:05
Speaker
It's hard, isn't it?
00:20:06
Speaker
It's hard to put it into context.
00:20:08
Speaker
So in our job, we've gone through so much cultural change and shifts.
00:20:16
Speaker
And this is the work we do outside this podcast.
00:20:20
Speaker
As most people know, me and Greg work together.
00:20:22
Speaker
And we could sit and talk about the fundamentals and the cultures and how, you know, some days it just kind of almost feels like the air itself can suck out of you.
00:20:34
Speaker
But then there are other times where everything's going really, really great and you go in and everyone's buzzing and...
00:20:40
Speaker
It's got, obviously, with football, those emotions are so up and down all the time.
00:20:45
Speaker
And when you have something like what happened last year, I just think it's really, really hard to get out of you.
00:20:51
Speaker
And we can say, oh, you'll pay thousands of pounds to get on with it.
00:20:54
Speaker
And when I'm angry and annoyed and we've lost, yeah, I'll probably say those things.
00:20:58
Speaker
When I'm cold and hard and logical, like the way that I'm trying to think a little bit today, it's like I just don't think it's as deep as we think it is, and I don't think it's as simple as just a thing that of.
00:21:07
Speaker
It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy as well, right?
00:21:09
Speaker
You try and get out of the mindset of this, of whatever mindset it is that's causing these poor performances or just falling short of whatever, right?
00:21:21
Speaker
Falling short of their expectations or of our expectations or however you want to put it.
00:21:25
Speaker
And then you try and get away from it.
00:21:29
Speaker
And actually, you know, like you say, it's so up and down in football anyway, because of the emotions of the game.
00:21:34
Speaker
So it's also publicly visible.
00:21:37
Speaker
Like, even the fact we're here, you know, having this conversation.
00:21:44
Speaker
A late project, right?
00:21:45
Speaker
Imagine we have a late project and it results in some issues and then you've got two guys a decade older than you chatting about it for 30 minutes where your thought process around it, like sometimes maybe we just overthink it all.
00:22:00
Speaker
But I guess one of the questions I do want to ask off the back of this player power problem, Greg, is
00:22:06
Speaker
is like, obviously there seems to be the sentiment that we're... Are we in a crisis?
Is the Club in Crisis?
00:22:10
Speaker
Because, like, that must feed into the players.
00:22:12
Speaker
It does feel like the way we're acting as a fan base is that we are in some sort of mass crisis.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yet, whenever we chat, we're like, I wouldn't be that bothered if we stayed in the championship.
00:22:21
Speaker
I... I don't think so.
00:22:25
Speaker
I think that perhaps some Saints fans' opinions vary from that.
00:22:31
Speaker
I think that...
00:22:35
Speaker
It depends on your base perspective, right?
00:22:38
Speaker
Because for some fans, their expectation of us comes from that period of time where we were solidly a Premier League team.
00:22:52
Speaker
We got European spaces and went and beat Inter Milan at the San Siro.
00:22:58
Speaker
And my memory of Saints...
00:23:02
Speaker
comes from, like, further back from that, and then, you know, those hard times, like, before Gao, and before Lieber, right?
00:23:11
Speaker
Like, struggling way down in League 2, and back up to the Championship, you know, League 1, and all of that.
00:23:20
Speaker
It's just...
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, like, I don't think, from my base perspective of what I expect from the club, this is a crisis.
00:23:30
Speaker
But I can see why fans would feel that way.
00:23:36
Speaker
If we had the level of football we've had...
00:23:39
Speaker
This is where it's hard to separate, right?
00:23:41
Speaker
If we have the football trajectory we've had and were also owned by absolute madmen who were financially tearing the club apart, that's a crisis.
00:23:56
Speaker
If I had even the slightest doubt...
00:24:04
Speaker
that relegation was a possibility this season.
00:24:08
Speaker
If there was even a tiny little piece of me that thought it was a viable outcome, I would argue that would construe a crisis.
00:24:18
Speaker
But really, I just think we're just languishing in mid-table, which is, frankly, based off of last season...
00:24:29
Speaker
just what I expected.
00:24:30
Speaker
We're not as good as we think we are, which comes back to a point I've tried to make all the season and we've had a nice little spell and that spell has come to an end.
00:24:41
Speaker
What you say is fascinating, though, because that win against Inter Milan, Greg, was almost a decade ago at this point, November 2016.
00:24:49
Speaker
And if you think about sort of, you know, the fan base that are sort of aged 18 to 25 now, which I think will probably make a vast majority of the people that are making a lot of voice on social media,
00:25:01
Speaker
If they were 19 now, they'd have been nine then.
00:25:05
Speaker
That's when they would have seen the... You're right, they'd have grown up with Peak.
00:25:08
Speaker
They wouldn't have grown up with us where it's like there are chants about a certain Mr. Rupert Lowe, which I cannot even begin to...
00:25:16
Speaker
To describe on air because of how extreme they were.
00:25:20
Speaker
And, you know, like I remember far back enough as growing up as Saints, it's like when I grew up as a Saints fan, as a young boy, like Saints were never a team that was supposed to be doing well in the Premier League.
00:25:31
Speaker
Saints were a team that narrowly avoided relegation every single year, right?
00:25:35
Speaker
Like that was it until that one year that we didn't, and then it all got a lot worse.
00:25:40
Speaker
So I think it depends on...
00:25:44
Speaker
on what your base of expectation for the team is.
00:25:47
Speaker
Because, you know, from as long as I can remember, Saints barely staying up is just the expectation.
00:25:55
Speaker
So, I don't know.
00:25:57
Speaker
But like I say, that's not to say that it's invalid for people to feel that way.
00:26:03
Speaker
And like I say, it's hard because...
00:26:06
Speaker
because I see, you know, I spend so much time thinking and talking about the club and the football that it's hard to separate that because you look at other clubs with owners and, you know...
00:26:21
Speaker
our owners are not the best owners in the world and you can openly see that, but they didn't come in and sack our tea lady of 80 years and our club historian and cause ranks an upset.
00:26:33
Speaker
Like they've, they've tried to make the club financially sustainable and, um,
00:26:39
Speaker
you know, tries to go about that in almost the right way most of the time, right?
00:26:45
Speaker
Like, sure, they have questionable decisions, but also it's business.
00:26:49
Speaker
Nobody has, like, the full philanthropy of the world at their hands when they're making business decisions.
00:26:57
Speaker
It's hard, isn't it?
00:26:58
Speaker
Like...
Impact of Ownership & Management Decisions
00:26:59
Speaker
we're not in the position of Sheffield Wednesday.
00:27:02
Speaker
So can you really call it a crisis?
00:27:03
Speaker
But, but also it's not where we want to be.
00:27:07
Speaker
It would be considered to be one.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
I think the thing is, is that the reason that it's such a point of contention is because if people feel like we're in crisis, which a lot of people do,
00:27:19
Speaker
they are looking at the various different ways and places to blame, right?
00:27:22
Speaker
And there will be people that point owners at the ownership.
00:27:25
Speaker
It's hard to just point at the manager because most of the managers have barely been here for five minutes anymore.
00:27:30
Speaker
And clearly, they're not the ones setting things up behind the scenes.
00:27:34
Speaker
You could point to Spores, but realistically, looking at the business that he's done and what he's tried to set up, it's probably made more sense than not.
00:27:44
Speaker
thus far, like, okay, Damien Downs, not a very good decision.
00:27:48
Speaker
Leaving a goalkeeper until this window, not a very good decision.
00:27:50
Speaker
But, but, UCM's a very good decision.
00:27:53
Speaker
That's what I mean, like, the hit, you can't expect a 100% hit rate, and, and you can see what they were going for with Downs, and I just think that they, you know, they got it wrong.
00:28:03
Speaker
In my opinion, they went for a profile of player, and what they got was not what they expected from the profile of the player, because what they wanted was another Ross Stewart, and what they got was another Cameron Archer, just slightly taller.
00:28:16
Speaker
Like, it's...
00:28:19
Speaker
Here's a... So do you think there's actually a problem with player power at all?
00:28:26
Speaker
Or do you just think that people are so disgruntled and frustrated we are basically pointing fingers at anything to be cross about?
00:28:34
Speaker
Maybe.
00:28:35
Speaker
It could be a bit of both.
00:28:38
Speaker
I kind of feel like... I think that there are problems at the club because...
00:28:47
Speaker
Because if there weren't, we should, on paper, be storming the league, realistically.
00:28:53
Speaker
And I don't know where that blame lies.
00:28:55
Speaker
I don't know if it's the players we talked to length about, whether it's in the back room or what.
00:29:01
Speaker
And the real answer is probably a little bit of all of those things, for sure.
00:29:07
Speaker
Are we...
00:29:09
Speaker
a million miles away from it.
00:29:13
Speaker
I mean, that's probably the most frustrating part, right?
00:29:15
Speaker
Because no, I think that we're probably two or three solid signings away from a decent squad that could perform every week, right?
00:29:26
Speaker
And, you know, if it comes down to turfing, turfing people out purely on mentality despite, you know, ability on paper, maybe that's where it comes to and you've got to make those tough decisions.
00:29:38
Speaker
But...
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:29:41
Speaker
The problem is we have shown in that hot streak how capable of a team we are and to take it back to the age-old adage that is probably the tagline of this show over the last 360 episodes.
00:29:57
Speaker
It was just enough hope to drag us along and kill us all over again.
00:30:06
Speaker
Oh, you're right.
00:30:08
Speaker
That's why I got so cross after that Middlesbrough game and why I'm still cross and I'm still apprehensive going into another game this weekend, which sure will be exciting nonetheless.
00:30:18
Speaker
But yeah, I think that there's lots of...
00:30:21
Speaker
thoughts and opinions that we have clearly shared on player power, but also, again, it all comes down to the structure of the club and what's going on.
00:30:30
Speaker
And, you know, is, is the sickness something that's so deep that it's making everyone unwell, or is it actually just significantly more surface than we let, than we think?
00:30:40
Speaker
And we are just so used and so, um,
00:30:43
Speaker
prepared for everything to be so awful all of the time, we just jump to the fact that it is when actually it's not as bad, right?
00:30:50
Speaker
Especially where you say, like, you think we're a couple signings off.
00:30:54
Speaker
And I think that's fascinating because there are lots of people that think that we need to replace the entirety of the squad.
00:31:00
Speaker
I don't think that's true.
00:31:07
Speaker
I think that there are areas we could solidify immediately, like a tall defender who can clear a corner and play in a back four.
00:31:17
Speaker
And that almost immediately shapes up the rest of the team in a way that can play in such a way that they've shown they are able and capable to do.
00:31:27
Speaker
And push them to do that every week instead of just only under an interim manager.
00:31:32
Speaker
I don't know.
00:31:33
Speaker
I don't know what the problem is.
00:31:34
Speaker
But hopefully we'll just start winning games that we don't have to talk about anymore.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really nice period of time where we got to forget about all of the ridiculously crazy conspiracy theories and this idea that when you say all we need is a tall centre-back to play a back four, I think, as Tonda pointed out, it actually doesn't matter what formation we play, we just need to play better,
Team's Potential & Future Decisions
00:31:57
Speaker
apparently.
00:31:57
Speaker
Imagine if we could play a better formation and play better of what we could achieve, right?
00:32:08
Speaker
Wow, that's far too hypothetical for us.
00:32:12
Speaker
That's it.
00:32:14
Speaker
Mate, that's just about all we've got time for today.
00:32:17
Speaker
I told you this would be an easy one.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, just a little bit.
00:32:23
Speaker
Look, who says podcasting is difficult?
00:32:25
Speaker
Just come on and talk about something that you care about for an extended period of time.
00:32:30
Speaker
As always, thank you so much, Zach, for
Conclusion & Listener Engagement
00:32:33
Speaker
joining me.
00:32:33
Speaker
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
00:32:36
Speaker
Let us know on the socials, in the comments, what do you think?
00:32:39
Speaker
Where are the problems?
00:32:41
Speaker
Is it a crisis?
00:32:42
Speaker
Am I just too laid back to see the worrying prospects in front of me?
00:32:48
Speaker
Let us know.
00:32:49
Speaker
We're on all the socials.
00:32:50
Speaker
Love hearing from you.
00:32:52
Speaker
Daily Saints pod on everywhere.
00:32:55
Speaker
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00:33:00
Speaker
You name it, we're on it.
00:33:01
Speaker
Hit us up.
00:33:02
Speaker
We love hearing from you.
00:33:03
Speaker
We will be back tomorrow to talk more about more Saints stuff, as always.
00:33:10
Speaker
But until then, have a great day, everyone, and we'll see you then.
00:33:18
Speaker
This is the Daily Saints pod with Zach and Greg.