Not going toget into the Cortese debate since it just rakes up aload of urban myth vs fan insider gossip vs facts? and no one who has ever posred on a football forum has any real claim to knowing the truth… the whole ‘he is good at spending other peoples money’’ as an insult shows how ridiculous it gets… because that was his job, to spend otehr peoples money to deliver success. The unfortunate situation for us was that sadly Marcus departed and I suspect as well intentioned as she may have been to start with, Kat’s heart was not in it like her fathers, so was always going to look for an out at some stage.
…anyway, the ‘pull’ of our little dictator, was simple. He expected success. An obsessive , perhaps similar to Dave Brailsford, or Ron Dennis, incrementaly tiny things from matresses to ergonic door handles on player lockers… and they expects the highsest standrads to an obsessive level…no surprze to me that he fell out with many local trades… just getting a plumber who can fix a brand new bath waste is prooving trouble enough for me… not paying if it does not meet exacting standards is common in your driven type.
Think not of the individual, but of the way he was determined to drive success. The belief he had in the players and staff was so important to our success. I do thikn that had he stayed with the right financial backing (not stupid money, but a more flexible appraoch) we would still have Poch and seen a much lower player attrition rate.
But it matters not because its history, Progress since has been a bit rubbish, but no worse than expected really given the risks associated with the business model chosen since Cortese left. The gains to 8,7, 6 th etc are only really seen as progress if they become sustainable, but a ssoon a syou start letting 1 or 2 leave, teh rest see it as asign of limited expectation andambition, so impossible to stop the exodus. If there is no youth talent to replace it, or acouple of crap signings weend up where we are.
Its why Cortese also puts such an emphasis in staplewood and youth set up - invested heavily as it was intrinsic to the model working,
So I dont thiknk we have made any real progress, as we dont have the stable foundation.
You know I’m going to disagree with at least a bit of your post though. Wouldn’t be right not to.
I think there’s a strong case to be made for him saving money, especially if we end up dropping through the trap door this season. I’m going to put a Lallana hypothetical forward. What if, when he signed his new contract, he meant what he said about finishing his career here? I know that time and transfer activity has made him a liar, but did he mean it when he said it?
I reckon he’s a number of players that tied their mast to Cortese’s vision. And fair enough, money is money and all that. He may well have ended up going anyway. He may not have.
Cortese might have had the personal pull to keep some of these players, given the ability to get somewhere near the wages that the other teams were paying, and no fan would have begrudged seeing a performing player get a pay rise that kept him in a Saints shirt.
That was the year of the big exodus. Five valued first team players, one manager currently setting Spurs alight and one chairman that we’ve done a piss poor job of replacing.
People may see what I’ve said as having something in it, it may not be particuarly articulate but I couldn’t give a shite, the Southampton Way was amatuer night, how could we keep buying or getting these academy players into the team and then continually selling them?
It was bound to fail, the winners are Libeherr, the Chinese who’ll asset strip if we go down and the hangers on, the losers are obviously the fans, Liebherr will go down as the biggest traitor known to this club if we go down and sell out, the Chinese are merely scavengers.
I wanted to mention this earlier. This viewpoint, that we’re only so good, guv’nor, and we only want to be that good, is a common one on Saints forums. It’s half SaintsWeb’s content, FFS. It’s not one that I ever liked, and these days, I dunno why it has any credence in this day and age.
Because Leicester, basically. This was a team I went to see Saints play in the Championship a few years ago, a team that was on the verge of being relegated one season and becoming Premier League champs the next.
And it’s not just them, nor is it just England. Atletico are a huge team, but the breaking of the Real Madrid and Barcelona title duopoly was a huge achievement nonetheless. Then there’s Montpellier and going back a bit further, Wolfsburg and Kaiserslauten in Germany. Surprises happen all over the place.
How can we call Cortese’s Champion League aspirations “bullshit” when a team with a rat for a vanguard topped the Premier League?
Leicester didn’t have any CL ambitions as far as I recall, it just all happened for them. The big clubs had a mare and they had players who could crucify you on the break. I seem to remember thinking they weren’t much better than us. It was one of those once in a lifetime things that will never happen again in most of our lifetimes. Tell me which mid table club has said it wants CL football and has got it. Where are Leicester now, or last season? Back to normal. I am sure we all want to be better, but so do all the other teams like us, and we can’t all be.
Memories thats what football is all about and winning things, we’ve so few we still have 1976 players do every week somewhere and “Macca” givng his knowledge 40 years on in the Echo, its desperate.
Which is it? Memories or winning things? I’ve got plenty of good saints memories, especially over the past few years… so well done saints! Also we won the JPT, so another pat on the back.
Yes the JPT, a great day it truly was, such has been our fucking underachievement we still look back to that great day the World of football and Carlisle said they’ve awoken, I have a framed picture of that great day in my shed, how sad is that, its actually tragically sad we have that as a memory…
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Is it a great memory or not? You’ve called it both “a great day” and said that it’s “tragically sad” that it’s one of our memories. A minute ago you said football was all about great memories.
Its a great memory but it reflects our small time attitude, the mutants went bankrupt and won the Cup, celebrating and remembering that merely confirms we’re small time, why didn’t Chelsea win it that year?
I have a lot a mates who are Palace supporters and we have a lot more to be happy about over the years than they do. There are plenty of clubs our size who would swap our history for theirs. There are (still) a lot more teams worse off than us. It’s only desperate if you have unrealistic expectations.
The JPT was a great game. I enjoyed it because one of my top Liverpool muckers is from Whitehaven and is a Carlisle fan. They won it soon after, bless.
Besides, it gives us a chant we can use against the bigger clubs when they start giving it the large about their multiple achievements.
It was but that comfort blanket of “achievement” when it really should be seen as failure sums the club and its fans up, a day out in London for countryfolk etc etc, I want more than that and any ambitious person wanting the best for their club would.
