There are some who are a little underwhelmed by the appointment of Claude Puel, but that is more to do with a natural tendency to prefer a familiar name rather than the unknown.

I swear that there are some people who would be happier with Harry Redknapp being appointed as Saints boss rather than Claude Puel purely because instinct tells them that Redknapp has managed in the Premier League.

To want the familiar is natural, no one likes the unknown, however the fact is that Saints have appointed Puel not because of his name, but because of his track record in doing the job that is required of him at St Mary's.

In football there is too much of team's appointing the same old faces time and time again, you only have to look at the names that figured strongly in the betting after Koeman left, most of them where the names that time and time again crop up whenever a vacancy occurs for a manager, for most of them the only real qualification they had to manage Saints was that they were by trade football managers.

But Saints have looked far beyond merely making an appointment based on the headlines on a potential candidates CV, they are not looking at whether a candidate has a high profile like Harry Redknapp or Roy Hodgson, they are looking to see how he has managed and the situations he has succeeded in and indeed those where he has failed.

Managing Southampton Football Club is different than any other position in England, no other team has our set up, foundations or strategy, most club's are merely appointing a manager, seeing him sell off the previous managers signings at a loss, giving him millions to spend to revamp the squad and then when he fails repeating the process again.

And fail it does, the only real question when a new manager is appointed is how long it takes before the club becomes disillusioned with the job he is doing and moves him on and has to start from square one again, this is the same whether you are Chelsea, Manchester City or you are Everton Aston Villa or Sunderland.

But at Saints we are different, the manager is the icing on the top of the cake, of course he is an important part of the cake, but he is not the ingredient that holds it all together, other clubs see their cake collapse into crumps and they have to completely re bike when their manager leaves, not Saints we still have the strong foundations, we merely have to re ice the top.

So Saints fans should be delighted that we have appointed Claude Puel, he fits the bill so he has the best chance of continuing our success of all the candidates.

We are adopting a new approach in England, but continental clubs are ahead of us in this respect and Puel is used to working in the way we require, it is not about personalities or trying to convince your supporters that by appointing a manager who has managed a big club that you are ambitious, it is about showing your ambition by strong logical decisions, not just by big names.

Of course this does not guarantee success, nothing does ! but it does give us a better chance of doing so.

So Saints fans should look at all the reasoning behind the appointment of Puel, rather then just whether they had heard of him, after all we had never heard of Mauricio Pochettino as a manager, two years ago we had heard of Koeman as a player but few could tell you anything about his career as a manager, from that point of view he was unknown.

The future is bright for Saints, we will suffer setbacks, we will not always be able to better our League position year on year, we cannot take the big boys on at their own game, but we will be able to take on them on, on our own terms and that is more than we have been able to do in the last three decades.

Photo: Action Images

SanMarco added 13:15 - Jul 2 Apprehension and anxiety are the natural habitats for Saints fans during the summer. This appointment doesn't provide that jolt of excitement that makes us feel better but so what - no reason why he shouldn't be a success. My fear is that more players will go - and talking of fear didn't Shakespeare say "I'll show you fear in a handful of sust" or was it "My old man's a sustman"??

3

BUCK added 13:57 - Jul 2 Do you mean dust. Otherwise what does sust mean
0

schatfield added 14:02 - Jul 2 now the dust has settled, anyone else notice Koeman sneaking back in to pinch our standby goalie Stekelenburg!
1

larry12 added 14:22 - Jul 2 Wales without Ramsey for the semi is like Saints without Mane. Wales haven't got anyone to step into his shoes and neither have Saints at the moment. I would like us to "march on" with someone better than Redmond to fill Mane's Size 10's
4

1970 added 14:42 - Jul 2 Koemans first signing, the mighty 'mirage' Stekelenberg onwards and upwards Ronald I think you will do very well signing players like that, I really hope Puel does well for us I said a while back were get some-one with European experience so hopefully we can do well in the Europa, as for Redknapp ....... Easy Nick the guy is a parasite hence why he has never worked since he confessed his lack of intelligence. ,I hope we can now start to replace Mane and Wanyama, may be now the 'sust' has settled Ronald will come back for classie coyr

1

IWOZTHERE added 14:55 - Jul 2 My concern is not whether Puel is good,bad or ugly, there's naff all we can do about it except support him. My concern is about the effect and delay likely on 'incomings' after a managerial change at this time.A manager can only expect to make sound judgements on players (current or targets) by watching them in competitive games. It follows that either activity is delayed till the last minute or he relies disproportionally on Les and the black box.

0

IWOZTHERE added 14:58 - Jul 2 I'm with 1970. Clasie is the example.
0

IWOZTHERE added 14:58 - Jul 2 I'm with 1970. Clasie is the example.
0

helpineedsomebody added 15:33 - Jul 2 during the 6 week pre season training the directors/ staff/ players will have an opinion on the new management team. also the new manager will see how southampton football club is run. lets hope one side is not all mouth & no trousers
1

the_saint added 16:03 - Jul 2 I'm sure if puel comes on this board we can assess the squad for him and tell him who's good bad and ugly, and where we need to strengthen. Job done
0

SanMarco added 18:04 - Jul 2 Have just seen that Stones will cost Chelsea 50m. If he goes and Koeman offers the whole 50 for VVD then surely we 'cash in' ala Mane. Ditto on a huge offer for Forster, Pelle etc. What in the well-established Saints psyche is the actual break on "cashing in"? I only ask because anyone that thinks that VVD and FF are definitely Saints players come end of August window must have an answer to that question. At the moment I don't. Mane was "cashed in" on as a good bit of "business" so why not the others? Even 40m for VVD would be a bigger "cashing in" than Mane was. I am not being sarcastic - what is the sticking point?? Because one thing is certain: Koeman will come calling and he will be waving lots of dosh in his piggy little paw...

2

Big_T added 20:28 - Jul 2 If anyone pays more than £5m for Stones they've been mugged! He may become an average Premiere Defender by the time he's thirty but I doubt it. Look at Smalling and Jones loads of potential, five years later still waiting for them to improve from what they were as eighteen year olds. And yes I think Virgil and Frazier will be here next season.
0

halftimeorange added 20:37 - Jul 2 Too much negativity again. We need to wait and see what the team is at the start of the season before we can form any reasonable opinion. Who knew of Pelle or Tadic before we signed them. Neither can be classed as an abject failure. Clasie is being written off too quickly. He could be a totally different proposition with a decent pre-season behind him. He certainly showed more aggression in the second half of last term. I've always thought that Nathan Redmond would become a better player if he moved from Norwich to a stronger club yet he's being written off as a lightweight. For every problem there is a solution and Saints have a good record in putting square pegs in square holes. Have faith.

0

TeamCortese added 08:18 - Jul 3 Guys despite the negativity I'm going to back the board. The main reason is because of Jose Fonte. Fonte recently did an interview where he openly endorsed how the club is run. I trust him because he's our captain and has seen what's going behind the scenes for years. If he is openly positive about Saints then I'll take his word. People like him and Steven Davis are our most loyal players and epitomise the work ethic and success needed at Southampton FC. I've been on commenting on this forum for at least 2-3 years and I have never seen anyone really criticise Fonte let alone Davis. I would recommend the board making them ambassadors once they retire. Hopefully I'm not being naive but it's hard to know the club's rationale without them saying. I suspect we'll never know because of the competitiveness of the EPL coupled with the sensitivity of the transfer market. Regardless we march on #COYR

0

BUCK added 11:07 - Jul 3 There is no way on gods earth saints will sell virgil or forster at any costs this season. Les reed is building a team around those 2. If for any insane reason we sold them,then we could forget about Europe.virgil is without a doubt one of the best centre backs in the country if not the world. His stock has doubled if not tripled. Les reed would not have offered him a 6 year contract only to sell him months later. No chance, he will be with us for a good few years.

0

Blogs 31 bloggers

Southampton Polls