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Episode 354: Managers and chaos...
14 Plays1 month ago
Southampton – Man Utd, Chelsea, Celtic, all with manager sackings in the last couple of days, and all with one commonality with saints, structure, directors of football, and turmoil.
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Transcript
Introduction and Recent Game Disappointments
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.
00:00:16
Speaker
My name is Greg and as always today, I'm a good friend and wonderful co-host Zach.
00:00:22
Speaker
How are you doing today, mate?
00:00:23
Speaker
You alright?
00:00:24
Speaker
I mean, comparison to my absolute crash out yesterday, I did a bit better.
00:00:31
Speaker
I was just really bad.
00:00:33
Speaker
It was a really, really bad game to watch.
00:00:35
Speaker
And it was the post-match antics of the players and then even the manager.
00:00:41
Speaker
And then just watching the world of social media start a fire under the Saints fan base that has kind of remained dormant during this spell of positivity.
00:00:51
Speaker
And even when it was like lost draw, lost draw, it was like, maybe we can come back.
00:00:55
Speaker
But
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, after yesterday, you know, it just
Managerial Decisions and Roles
00:01:00
Speaker
annoyed me.
00:01:00
Speaker
But then today we've had the crazy news of Ameren being sacked, which a lot of people couldn't believe had happened, considering it's our former sports director, right?
00:01:11
Speaker
There's probably the reason for that after he was criticised for the first time ever, right?
00:01:16
Speaker
Not the first time ever, but...
00:01:18
Speaker
It is weird that he gets a little bit of stick and they fire him outright.
00:01:22
Speaker
The guy comes 15th and loses a final.
00:01:25
Speaker
Doesn't get fired.
00:01:27
Speaker
It feels weirdly topical when you relate it back to Saints.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:32
Speaker
That's why we wanted to talk about it.
00:01:33
Speaker
Think about the conversations we've been having about, you know...
00:01:38
Speaker
I mean, what is a manager?
00:01:40
Speaker
What is a coach?
00:01:42
Speaker
How much of what happens on the pitch is decided by Tonda?
00:01:47
Speaker
And how much is down to, I mean, who?
00:01:50
Speaker
Spores?
00:01:51
Speaker
Well, at this point, it would be Spores, right?
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, this is your theory, right?
00:01:55
Speaker
So again, the conversations we have are fair sometimes because we do that.
00:02:00
Speaker
And we were talking about it yesterday after we finished recording.
00:02:04
Speaker
We probably should have added it into the recording, to be honest, but we'd already stopped by that point.
00:02:08
Speaker
But it is absolutely wild to me that, you know, you're looking at sort of Maresca, who's been fired from Chelsea because he disagrees with a lot of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes and
00:02:20
Speaker
can't do things his way.
00:02:23
Speaker
Amorin, who had a distinctive style before he was brought to Manchester United, and they wanted him and his distinctive style, has been fired for continuing to persist with his distinctive style and complaining that he's not had a say.
00:02:37
Speaker
On top of that, just before we started recording, you've had Wilfred Nancy fired from Celtic, who obviously have become, after Rangers started the season as the banter club of the Scottish League,
00:02:48
Speaker
they've now become the follow-up, right?
00:02:50
Speaker
They got beaten in the old firm at the weekend.
00:02:53
Speaker
And he's been under a lot of pressure for playing a bit weird.
00:02:57
Speaker
And it's sort of, you wonder, you know, it's a really, I think you spoke about before, Greg, when we were talking, you know, we're talking about still being fired.
00:03:06
Speaker
And however many managers we've had sacked off at this point, it feels like 100.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
The point that you made that like, does it even matter?
00:03:14
Speaker
Because they bring in somebody else and, you know, they actually allowed to play.
00:03:21
Speaker
And your controversial take from yesterday is,
00:03:23
Speaker
which I will throw you a little bit under the bus for, was like, it just goes back to that Nathan Jones quote from like January 2023, 24, where he was like, yeah, I'm going to start doing things my way now.
00:03:35
Speaker
And then like, wasn't able to, and then got fired after what, 38 days.
00:03:39
Speaker
You know, I mean, drawing parallels, his exact words were very similar to...
00:03:46
Speaker
I'm a manager, not a coach.
00:03:48
Speaker
So I'm here to do what I want.
00:03:50
Speaker
And then, well, he got fired too.
Club Owners and Systemic Issues
00:03:53
Speaker
Right.
00:03:53
Speaker
And, and you know, who was in charge of the director of football at that time?
00:03:57
Speaker
Well, it was, it was Jason Wilcox.
00:03:59
Speaker
So, I mean, if that's the systems and the sort of things we go through, you have to, you have to put these questions in place.
00:04:08
Speaker
Like it's easy to lay the blame on the manager, but,
00:04:10
Speaker
But what we've seen time and time again, manager after manager, is that we still play the same way, right?
00:04:21
Speaker
Like, how many times under Tonda in this disappointing period have we said...
00:04:27
Speaker
Well, it looks like a Will Steele game, or it looks like a Russell Martin game.
00:04:30
Speaker
And how many times when Juric came in, and he was supposed to bring this heavy metal football, did we say, but it's just defaulting back to Martin Ball, so what's the point?
00:04:40
Speaker
And you have to question, is it the manager?
00:04:45
Speaker
It's the manager that sticks their neck out and gets the blame, but who...
00:04:50
Speaker
Is there a power above that's making these calls that the manager can't go against?
00:04:54
Speaker
I don't know.
00:04:55
Speaker
We had an episode similar to this back then where we were like, what is a football manager?
00:04:59
Speaker
And the fact of the matter is, you call the game a football manager, but how many managers, quote-unquote, of clubs now are just head coaches?
00:05:08
Speaker
They don't make those decisions.
00:05:09
Speaker
Decisions are being made.
00:05:11
Speaker
It's like you are able to put someone in that position and they are able to be a convenient full guy, right?
00:05:16
Speaker
Because then what you do is you replace them when things aren't going well.
00:05:20
Speaker
But what I think is absolutely mad about it is that, like, okay, so you've brought this guy in specifically and you've backed him, and you're supposed to back him to the hill, and you don't.
00:05:30
Speaker
So then you continue to do things exactly the same way the next time around and you hope for change.
00:05:35
Speaker
And that seems to be the case in not just us, but multiple clubs, right?
00:05:39
Speaker
And it's like even, you know, there are more overt versions of it, right?
00:05:44
Speaker
You're looking at the owner of Forest, right?
00:05:47
Speaker
He is very, very clearly sticking his neck in things that probably shouldn't do, right?
00:05:53
Speaker
And that resulted in, you know, it was this season, Greg, that Ange Postacoglu also had a couple of games as Forest manager.
00:05:59
Speaker
Doesn't feel like it, but it was this season, right?
00:06:03
Speaker
And they got rid of Nudo because he was cross with Nudo because they'd fallen out over, I want to say, transfer strategy.
00:06:08
Speaker
And now Forrester languishing just above the relegation zone.
00:06:12
Speaker
You know, West Ham is where Nudo ended up, who are also in the relegation zone, who are also under the same levels of criticism.
00:06:19
Speaker
Wolves, another club, same levels of criticism, constantly changed the managers, not been able to really do anything to a level of success since, ironically, Nuno was in charge.
00:06:28
Speaker
But when you see it in a club like Manchester United, it gets so much coverage, so much more.
00:06:34
Speaker
Everyone's got eyes on it.
00:06:36
Speaker
And it's no other way to see them, like cronyism in the fact that they have a right to fire their employee if they want to, I guess.
00:06:45
Speaker
But it's baffling that you can become 15th, lose in a cup final, but have words publicly about, not even technically, I don't know if it's technically his boss or what, and then just get fired next day.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:59
Speaker
And, you know, people are talking about, oh, what if we brought this manager in?
00:07:02
Speaker
And what if we brought this manager in?
00:07:03
Speaker
And what if we brought this manager in?
00:07:05
Speaker
And maybe people, you know, I say not maybe people are right.
00:07:09
Speaker
People have noticed it a long time ago.
00:07:11
Speaker
If Sports Republic are the problem, if they are the ones that are going to consistently persist, they play a specific way because they've got people in their back room that think that's the idea.
00:07:19
Speaker
Like, it's baffling.
00:07:21
Speaker
But there is a counter-argument to this as well.
00:07:23
Speaker
So the counter-argument being, Greg, that we did allow a manager to come in and change everything, right?
00:07:28
Speaker
This is when Russell Martin came in and we allowed him to completely overhaul the squad.
00:07:32
Speaker
And it was a problem.
00:07:33
Speaker
You saw it also become a huge problem for Rangers, right?
00:07:36
Speaker
Massive problem for Rangers because everyone was like, this is terrible.
00:07:39
Speaker
We're not doing this.
00:07:40
Speaker
And they didn't.
00:07:41
Speaker
And he got fired.
00:07:42
Speaker
But obviously with us, it went a bit better.
00:07:44
Speaker
They did do what he said, but then obviously Jason Wilcox left.
00:07:47
Speaker
There was no director of football and he was left as the manager and the coach and everything in between.
00:07:52
Speaker
And thus the recruitment we had for the Premier League was shocking to say the least, right?
00:07:58
Speaker
Our January transfer window last year, what was it?
00:08:01
Speaker
Like, what's the name of the guy?
00:08:03
Speaker
Gromback.
00:08:04
Speaker
There you go.
00:08:05
Speaker
That was it.
00:08:06
Speaker
And like, you know, we're supposed to be, we're supposed to be closing on a goalkeeper now, which is all part of this squad planning is an art BS, which it did look like an art when everything started to click together.
00:08:18
Speaker
And now it's fallen apart again, but it can't.
00:08:20
Speaker
Now it looks like abstractism.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's the fact that he's been made permanent and all of a sudden things have changed.
00:08:29
Speaker
And I just can't believe that what you were saying, which is, oh, maybe he's under more pressure now and he's worried.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I'm like, but, you know, he wanted to get the job.
00:08:36
Speaker
So why would you be... So much of it.
00:08:40
Speaker
If you take a step back, right, and whether the intraday decisions and the players or the system on the pitch, whether that is...
00:08:50
Speaker
directly impacted and directly driven by someone else behind the scenes or not.
00:08:57
Speaker
What you have to acknowledge is that with this structure and with this setup, which is the modern football way, it's not exclusively a problem to us.
00:09:09
Speaker
To get it right, you require collaboration and cohesion, which is not always guaranteed either, right?
00:09:16
Speaker
Because long gone are the days where Alex Ferguson can, as a manager, just be everything about the club, right?
00:09:26
Speaker
We talked about unsustainability.
00:09:28
Speaker
You want to talk about the modern world and how someone like Alex Ferguson would cope without being in charge of every detail.
00:09:37
Speaker
It's just...
00:09:39
Speaker
it's a different world and a different game now.
00:09:42
Speaker
But that cohesion is, is clearly a problem in so many facets.
00:09:47
Speaker
It's like, but like you, you try and think about that to a bigger level as well.
00:09:52
Speaker
And like, if we can't even in our own club, get this level of cohesion working where the, like the transfers are what the manager wants.
00:10:02
Speaker
I mean, how can you say that any of our transfers at any point in the last three seasons, um,
00:10:09
Speaker
apart from under Russell Martin, have been what the manager wants because we've not stuck with any manager long enough to work that out, right?
00:10:18
Speaker
Like, none of the players that Tonda has inherited are Tonda's players, so who knows if we're, you know, playing Tonda's system but we haven't got the players for it or if it's the players defaulting to their old way.
00:10:32
Speaker
It's just...
00:10:34
Speaker
It's the same thing that happened with Will Steele when he came in, right?
00:10:37
Speaker
And he was supposed to be playing a specifically different style of football and everyone noticed that he didn't.
00:10:42
Speaker
And the whole point we were excited for bringing him in was that he was going to play to win games and that it didn't quite take off because of the personnel.
00:10:49
Speaker
Despite the fact they'd had a whole transfer window to get the specific personnel in,
00:10:54
Speaker
unless they had the specific personnel being brought in to play a specific system.
00:10:58
Speaker
And this is where there's such a disconnect, where if you have a director of football who is doing all of these things, but somebody that's actually like running the games on the pitch, and then sort of saying it's up to you to get the best out of these players, but also you need to do it in this specific way.
00:11:13
Speaker
Because we've got players that can do this specific thing.
00:11:15
Speaker
We don't need a new striker.
00:11:17
Speaker
I'm happy with what we've got.
00:11:18
Speaker
But also, I can't play my system unless we've got a target man.
00:11:21
Speaker
Well, we've got one target man who's been injured more often than not.
00:11:25
Speaker
And three players who can't do that type of striker.
00:11:29
Speaker
So, like, it's just... It's baffling.
00:11:33
Speaker
And that's the thing, right?
00:11:34
Speaker
At the club level, if we can't get that right with the right hand talking to the left and what do we need and what do we do...
00:11:41
Speaker
How can we possibly ever, ever in the long run, hope to benefit and achieve that from a multi-club perspective, which is supposedly Sports Republic's whole selling point?
00:11:54
Speaker
And also on top of that, what you're seeing with Manchester United, Chelsea, all these other clubs as well.
00:12:01
Speaker
So obviously money, a big attractive proposition.
00:12:04
Speaker
But people are talking about... It's the same with Saints, right?
00:12:07
Speaker
So this comes back to the argument that's just, I don't think we're as good as people think we are.
00:12:11
Speaker
And we ended up appointing a new assistant manager yesterday, or assistant coach.
00:12:15
Speaker
And this was after we went, we don't even have an assistant coach.
00:12:18
Speaker
And then got to the recording and went, oh, it turns out we did a point one today.
00:12:20
Speaker
Randomly, they announced it like two hours before the game.
00:12:23
Speaker
So it was completely lost.
00:12:24
Speaker
And then people realized like his credentials are like Bristol Rovers and Colchiseum United.
00:12:29
Speaker
So just went, yeah, proper top tier championship.
00:12:31
Speaker
And that is mugging somebody off before I've done enough research on them.
00:12:34
Speaker
So I don't want to...
00:12:35
Speaker
But do you see what I mean?
00:12:36
Speaker
Like, where people's expectations of the types of staff we should be getting in are, and the realities are very, very different.
00:12:43
Speaker
And this is going to be the same for those clubs as well, because, like, people are talking about, oh, they need a manager of pedigree.
00:12:47
Speaker
You're getting names like Zinazine Zidane linked, right?
00:12:51
Speaker
Why would he come here?
00:12:53
Speaker
No, not with us, to be clear.
00:12:57
Speaker
But my point is, is that, like, with all of this that's going on, all of this lack of control, all of this, like...
00:13:03
Speaker
Who wants to deal with that?
00:13:04
Speaker
And the answer is they end up getting people in, like Ameren, right?
00:13:08
Speaker
Like Mareska from Leicester.
00:13:10
Speaker
They end up getting sort of the people that aren't of the quote-unquote pedigree.
00:13:13
Speaker
And you wonder why, like, Sam Allardyce and Steve Bruce, and when we were talking about bringing Allardyce in, they wouldn't want to bring Allardyce in.
00:13:19
Speaker
Allardyce wouldn't want to do everything the board's telling him to, like every week, week in, week out.
00:13:24
Speaker
And that becomes, that's why I think you've got a lot of these old school guys leave the game.
00:13:28
Speaker
And these other guys are now used to the fact that they're going to be passed around like, I don't know, like playing cards, right?
00:13:35
Speaker
This is how we talked about before, but people talk about getting a good manager of championship pedigree.
00:13:39
Speaker
It doesn't matter what manager we bring in because by the sounds of it, it feels like it's going to be
00:13:44
Speaker
forced a style and forced a specific way.
00:13:47
Speaker
But also people are like, well, if we change the ownership, this will help.
00:13:50
Speaker
Just the avatar, mate.
00:13:51
Speaker
They're just the avatar of the owners playing real-life football managers.
00:13:55
Speaker
So if we just come to the owners, if you have a look at the rest of the ways that football clubs are run now and who the owners are, I don't think it would change with different owners.
00:14:02
Speaker
Maybe the different owner would play a different formation or have a different lineup or a different...
00:14:07
Speaker
desire to do things.
00:14:08
Speaker
But like the arrogance of some of these people, you can see bleeding through all levels of football, right?
00:14:14
Speaker
You're seeing it now with sort of Wolves who are coming out with harsh statements about how they don't want it to be this way and don't know what they're doing.
00:14:21
Speaker
You're getting it with, you know, you see it with Manchester United.
00:14:24
Speaker
You've seen it in the Scottish League with both the biggest clubs.
00:14:26
Speaker
You've seen it with us.
00:14:27
Speaker
Sheffield Wednesday is an extreme example of a guy who's in charge that stuck his name in the stadium and basically just sat there and refused to do anything while running this club.
00:14:36
Speaker
But you start to, it's made me think even more back on our episode where we went, what is a football manager?
00:14:42
Speaker
And like, the thing is, I don't think there are football managers anymore.
00:14:44
Speaker
There are just coaches.
00:14:46
Speaker
There are guys who are there, as you pointed out, the perfect word for it, Greg, was avatar.
00:14:50
Speaker
Because it doesn't matter who's in that position.
00:14:52
Speaker
It doesn't change anything.
00:14:53
Speaker
That's why the new manager bounce, by the looks of it, barely lasts, if that.
00:14:57
Speaker
Because, is it just because they're into it or what?
00:15:00
Speaker
Like, there's obviously like a lot of counterpoints to what I'm saying.
00:15:03
Speaker
I'm not saying that we're,
00:15:05
Speaker
entirely the experts on this, but like the observation of it over the last couple of years is like when you go back to, to like when Koeman was here and Pochettino and like even to an extent like Hasselhoof, right?
00:15:15
Speaker
When they started having like the Southampton playbook or whatever, the Southampton way.
00:15:19
Speaker
And what does that mean
Ownership Impact on Performance
00:15:20
Speaker
now?
00:15:20
Speaker
And now it's like, we don't get, they don't say about that, but it feels like there is some sort of weird DNA, uh,
00:15:27
Speaker
in a specific way that we play that for some reason requires us to have three defenders no matter, no matter what.
00:15:35
Speaker
And yeah, it's just the whole, the whole thing just feels, feels just a bit off.
00:15:39
Speaker
Everything feels a bit off.
00:15:40
Speaker
And we were excited to have Tonda in.
00:15:41
Speaker
We were excited with the way he played and everything, the instant he became, you know, we thought, oh, there's no way they would suddenly let him, they'll change the way he's playing, you know, considering this is what got him the job.
00:15:52
Speaker
And now we're in a position where,
00:15:54
Speaker
4-0 to Middlesbrough on the fourth year of ownership by Sports Republic.
00:15:58
Speaker
But my big fear is everyone thinks that it's the ownership.
00:16:01
Speaker
And, you know, I know that some people have been critical of Abbey House for not coming out because he's like, oh, he's mates with Dragan because he like went to a golf course with him one time.
00:16:09
Speaker
I don't think that's the case at all.
00:16:10
Speaker
I think that he probably just recognises the thing that other people do, which is, okay, Sports Republic are, as we've pointed out many times before, terrible at the foot-building aspect, good at the business aspect and have invested in the club.
00:16:22
Speaker
What is there to say that we won't have a new company that comes in?
00:16:27
Speaker
Look at Rangers, right?
00:16:28
Speaker
You get bought out by some giant American conglomerate that come in and they just start doing Nepo stuff where they're putting their kids in charge of scouting.
00:16:37
Speaker
And it just doesn't work because you end up having, well, we're going to bring in a really world-class manager.
00:16:42
Speaker
And some of these clubs have brought in great managers, but...
00:16:45
Speaker
You can't attract it, mate.
00:16:48
Speaker
There's the dream that you just want a decent owner, but the realistic point of view is for every dream owner like Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds who have come in and got back-to-back-to-back promotions with Wrexham and got them to where they are now, there's three other examples like Mike Ashley, like Chan Ziri, like...
00:17:12
Speaker
Radcliffe at Manchester United, right?
00:17:16
Speaker
Sacking the manager and their current system is the tip of the iceberg of their troubles at Man United, right?
00:17:23
Speaker
Let's not forget, it's not that long ago they sacked the tea lady who had worked there for 83 years or something.
00:17:29
Speaker
Sacked their club historians, so if they want to go back to look at ex-players and stuff, they better hope there's an archive on the internet somewhere because you can't ask anybody.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:39
Speaker
That is a cultural shift towards a significantly bigger business model.
00:17:44
Speaker
But it does mean that the football managers are dead, right?
00:17:49
Speaker
There's not a thing that you don't have.
00:17:51
Speaker
I can't really think of a club where the manager has that level of power unless they've got, I guess, the backing, right?
00:17:57
Speaker
Guardiola has a lot of backing.
00:18:00
Speaker
And he's very, very careful of what he says in the media, but, you know, they will basically do what he asks.
00:18:05
Speaker
I think Arteta at the moment, because they're finally on their way to win the league.
00:18:10
Speaker
Maybe Klopp, maybe not, because we don't really know the real reasons that he left.
00:18:14
Speaker
He said it was because he was tired, but it could have been other conversations that went behind.
00:18:17
Speaker
And we know that the Liverpool stuff is always, they always claim poverty, but yet spent a different point for a different podcast.
00:18:26
Speaker
But, like, I think...
00:18:28
Speaker
what I was trying to get to the point of is like, okay, so Tonda out.
00:18:31
Speaker
Cool.
00:18:32
Speaker
We sacked Tonda.
00:18:33
Speaker
Who wants to come to our club?
00:18:34
Speaker
And then if like, if Man U were going to struggle to get a new manager in and Chelsea, because like Chelsea are just going to apparently hit up their multi-club model and literally switch one of their already owned managers to another club, right?
00:18:45
Speaker
Who will do as they say, who has already been working within the hierarchy, which means they don't need to know there's no, you know,
00:18:52
Speaker
what's the word, like wild card, right?
00:18:54
Speaker
So Manchester United, like the idea of bringing someone like Zidane Zidane, like there are some of these managers have worked in what I would consider to be more complex systems, right?
00:19:02
Speaker
Real Madrid, Barcelona, everything that goes on with La Liga is always confusing with club presidents and stuff like that.
00:19:09
Speaker
But yeah, it's just, it's wild to me that,
00:19:15
Speaker
the current state of like football is like, I've watched three sackings in two days, two of which were like manager of
Frequent Managerial Changes and Long-Term Strategy
00:19:22
Speaker
the month.
00:19:22
Speaker
It's like, man, you were sick.
00:19:23
Speaker
They're actually in a significantly better place than they've been previously.
00:19:27
Speaker
We've sacked off our manager who was brought in to be young and exciting in this and the other, and it changed for a little bit.
00:19:32
Speaker
And then as soon as it was permanent, it stopped changing.
00:19:35
Speaker
And I don't know if, you know, do, are there people out there that own football clubs that are that arrogant?
00:19:42
Speaker
They think they know better than the people that understand football.
00:19:45
Speaker
And yes, I guess the, the answer to that question is that there are a lot of people who own big businesses.
00:19:52
Speaker
Here are 12 examples.
00:19:54
Speaker
I don't know what you want from me, mate.
00:19:56
Speaker
I know that that felt like you were opening me up for a long winded retort, but really that's all I've got.
00:20:05
Speaker
Like,
00:20:07
Speaker
But that's fine.
00:20:08
Speaker
But it's like the problem you have with anyone that owns a huge business is because you're good at one thing, you automatically assume that you're good at other things, right?
00:20:17
Speaker
I am really good at playing the video game Fallout 4.
00:20:19
Speaker
But I know that doesn't translate to chess.
00:20:22
Speaker
I'm not very good at that.
00:20:24
Speaker
I'm not very good at a lot of other stuff, right?
00:20:27
Speaker
I can sometimes do good at playing football manager.
00:20:30
Speaker
Doesn't mean that any of my takes are ever good.
00:20:33
Speaker
It's just, you need to like be aware.
00:20:35
Speaker
And it does feel like you've, because they bought a football club and they own the football club, they know more than the footballing people they put in charge.
00:20:42
Speaker
Or you have a situation where you put footballing people in charge who maybe are a little bit more yes men than you'd like.
00:20:49
Speaker
Or in our case, we've got Spores where we sung his praises, we looked through his credentials, it looked really, really exciting.
00:20:55
Speaker
And so far, he's managed to tap up championship players that everybody knew were good.
00:21:00
Speaker
And the rest of his entire scouting pool just seems to be the Bundesliga, right?
00:21:04
Speaker
So, like, okay, cool.
00:21:08
Speaker
He definitely knows more than me.
00:21:10
Speaker
Has he made really good decisions so far this season?
00:21:15
Speaker
No?
00:21:16
Speaker
It depends what part of the season you ask that question, whereas at the end of the day, whether, ironically, it's going to be an art that's decided by hindsight, right?
00:21:28
Speaker
Because at the end of the season, where we're at and where we sit is really the only judgment we can make because...
00:21:36
Speaker
Because it's so hard to separate yourself from it whilst you're in the moment.
00:21:40
Speaker
But like, who's to say we don't go on and win the next seven games out of the blue.
00:21:46
Speaker
And then like, I mean, football's short-sighted and fickle, isn't it?
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, we are.
00:21:52
Speaker
We wouldn't have been having this conversation three, four weeks ago because we weren't in that cycle.
00:21:56
Speaker
We were in a cycle of positivity and joy.
00:21:58
Speaker
And it had been so long since we felt those emotions that we didn't want to let go.
00:22:03
Speaker
I certainly didn't.
00:22:04
Speaker
I was happy to live in the clouds and delusion that, oh my God, we might actually get promoted.
00:22:08
Speaker
Tomler might get us up to second.
00:22:09
Speaker
That would be insane.
00:22:10
Speaker
Didn't think we'd displace Coventry, but they seem to be having a wobble for the first time.
00:22:15
Speaker
It's only taken them, you know, five, six months.
00:22:16
Speaker
But...
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's just how much of it is in control of any of the head coaches.
00:22:22
Speaker
And it's like all these conversations around replacing the manager and everybody's saying, like, fair play.
00:22:27
Speaker
There are those people that have been saying it's Sports Republic from day one.
00:22:30
Speaker
But I also just don't know if shifting and getting rid of the ownership that invests
00:22:36
Speaker
is there always going to be a good thing?
00:22:38
Speaker
Unless they actually know how to play football.
00:22:41
Speaker
Another example is... That's the thing, right?
00:22:42
Speaker
We don't know, really.
00:22:44
Speaker
We don't know what goes on and where this is coming from.
00:22:47
Speaker
We don't know if it is the ownership specifically or just like... The name that frequently comes up is Ankerson.
00:22:54
Speaker
And, you know, when it all went... Pete Tong.
00:22:58
Speaker
There you go.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:01
Speaker
When it all went up and hit the fan, he was the one that supposedly got moved on to Gustepe in an effort to get him less involved in Southampton.
00:23:12
Speaker
But he's still on the board and still involved in some capacity.
00:23:20
Speaker
That's the name that comes up frequently when you hear about this, getting involved and...
00:23:27
Speaker
doing deals and sorting certain things out.
00:23:30
Speaker
And, you know, whether it's him or whether it's one of the other board or someone else higher up, you just, you just don't know, mate.
00:23:37
Speaker
Like it might not directly be the ownership, but someone somewhere is, uh, just making it a not very good time for us at the moment.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, and again, it's not just us.
00:23:47
Speaker
There's multiple clubs where this is happening across the board, right?
00:23:50
Speaker
Like West Ham, another one that I frequently see.
00:23:53
Speaker
Ever since we had all of those interactions with, what is it, like West Ham Central, whatever his name is.
00:23:59
Speaker
The guy that basically kept arguing with everybody on Twitter about Fernandes, which, by the way, worked out real well for them.
00:24:05
Speaker
Mati Fernandes and Carl Walker-Peters both involved in that 3-0 loss to Wolves the other day.
00:24:10
Speaker
That's no disrespect.
00:24:11
Speaker
I'd have taken them both back probably quite quickly.
00:24:13
Speaker
But...
00:24:16
Speaker
That is an example because I can see their frustration growing into the season of lack of sign-ins and it's actually the ownership and it doesn't matter which manager they put in charge and it's not exclusive to us.
00:24:26
Speaker
But it's becoming more and more obvious as every single managerial time changes.
00:24:31
Speaker
And my current prediction as we're heading into the new year, mate, is that I can see us finishing mid-table.
00:24:38
Speaker
We sack off Tonda at the end of the season and we replace him with another generic manager.
00:24:42
Speaker
Maybe they pick a manager with championship experience.
00:24:45
Speaker
And maybe that's that.
00:24:46
Speaker
Maybe they even sell up.
00:24:49
Speaker
I don't... I think they've invested too much into it, personally, than I would see for them to just randomly sell up because... Yeah, I just don't see it on the cards.
00:24:58
Speaker
Like I said yesterday, I just don't see it happening.
00:25:01
Speaker
And like I say, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or not, I don't think it matters what I think about that because I just don't think it's going to happen.
00:25:10
Speaker
So...
00:25:11
Speaker
He's what he is.
00:25:13
Speaker
These interesting times are the things that all of a sudden pique everybody's interest again.
00:25:18
Speaker
As I said, it was a very fragile piece, right?
00:25:22
Speaker
A very sort of, we were all kind of happy because everything was going all right for the first time in forever.
00:25:27
Speaker
And it took, well, not the smallest of cracks, a 4-0 loss is quite a big crack in my opinion.
00:25:33
Speaker
It took that crack for suddenly all of that to burst back out.
00:25:37
Speaker
And that includes from us, right?
00:25:38
Speaker
Like, you know. 100%.
00:25:40
Speaker
Do you know what, mate?
00:25:41
Speaker
I blame Pep.
00:25:45
Speaker
Maybe he's a manager.
00:25:48
Speaker
Maybe.
00:25:48
Speaker
Who knows?
00:25:49
Speaker
Who knows?
00:25:50
Speaker
All right, look, that is all that we have got time for today.
00:25:53
Speaker
So thank you, everyone, for listening, as always.
00:25:57
Speaker
Thank you, Zach, for joining me.
00:25:59
Speaker
We will be back to talk more football at some point.
00:26:04
Speaker
But until then, let us know on socials, in the comments, your thoughts.
00:26:09
Speaker
Is it purely on the manager?
00:26:10
Speaker
Where else does the blame lie?
00:26:12
Speaker
Is it just Sports Republic as a whole?
00:26:15
Speaker
Do we know?
00:26:15
Speaker
Let us know.
00:26:16
Speaker
What are your thoughts?
00:26:17
Speaker
We love hearing from you.
Listener Engagement and Blame Discussion
00:26:18
Speaker
We're on all the socials.
00:26:18
Speaker
We are Daily Saints Pod everywhere on TikTok, YouTube, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook, everywhere.
00:26:25
Speaker
Hit us up.
00:26:25
Speaker
Let us know.
00:26:27
Speaker
Like I say, we'll be back to talk more football.
00:26:29
Speaker
But until then, everyone, have a wonderful day.
00:26:31
Speaker
We'll see you later.
00:26:36
Speaker
This is the Daily Saints Pod with Zach and Greg.