| Southampton 11:23 - Jun 15 with 1265 views | BigKindo |
Have made a fortune in developing young players and selling them on, in particular to Liverpool. Last season they finished 8th in the Premiership, were finalists in the League Cup and had a crack at Europe. So how do they reward their Manager of one season, Claude Puel - by giving him the push. Funny old game football. |  | | |  |
| Southampton on 13:18 - Jun 15 with 1154 views | CanavanOfLove |
Whilst it is correct that they finished 8th and reached a League Cup final, it's far more complicated than Southampton just have ideas above their station.
They finished 8th on 46 points. Watford who avoided relegation by one place in 17th finished on 40 points. So Southampton were only two wins better off over a 38 game season than the team that finished 4th bottom! They were only 2 points off being 12th, which would have been seemed as a big step backwards.
They finished 15 points behind Everton in 7th place, one above them. They were only 12 points better off than Hull City who went down. So points wise they were closer to relegation than 7th.
The league position flatters them. They could easily have finished anywhere between 8th and 17th and in reality, anything outside the top 10 would be seen as going backwards when you consider how established they have become in the Top 8.
In addition the football was apparently terrible. Lots of Saints fans unhappy they have gone from free flowing passing football to very negative football. I think I read that they failed to score in their last 5 home games.
Credit to the board for making the change now. I thought it was abysmal how they sacked Adkins after what he did, yet Pochettino took them to a different level. This looks the right call, especially if they can lure Tuchel to the club.
The difficulty they will now face is how they feasibly improve. The top 6 you would imagine are all out of their reach and Everton are about to spend £150m on what appear to be very decent players (Keane, Pickford, Classen and a few others) and I think Koeman is a terrific manager and in Steve Walsh they have one hell of a scouting system.
So really that makes the same 8th place they achieved this year the likely realistic target next year, which seems crazy but they lost 16 games this year and any other season with that points tally would have been 12-14th.
I think it's the right call when you dig deeper. If only Marcus Evans listened to fans unwilling to watch negative dross! [Post edited 15 Jun 2017 13:47]
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