Saints Managers Substitutions

And anything Branfoot did

Can any body explain why Branfoot was employed?

There is a very good article in St Mary’s Musing today by Tom Williams which covers not only “the Southampton Way” but also Pellegrino. No knee jerkery, which makes a pleasant change, and very well written. Sorry but for some reason I couldnt add the link.

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This one @sadoldgit ?

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Thats it! Thanks BT!

A very well written article. Informative and thought provoking.

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Word. I think overall I prefer to get my saints analysis from reactionary retards, but that was a Nice Counterpoint.

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That will be me or Bazza and I have shown a small amount of get the 2nd MP out of here it must be him.

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Branfoot was a disgrace of a manager. He was anti football in the worst possible way, he made Pullis and BFS look like purist revolutionaries.

At the end of the day you have to trust that the manager and his assistants know more about the game than the fan Base. It doesn’t always appear so but with Pellegrino his instinctive views on the game seem to be based on caution. I think a lot of his substitutions later in games reflect that. It just goes against what we’ve been sold as the southampton way for the last five or so years.

I hope he turns it around but have massive doubts as to his ability to do so, combined with the resentment set in now against him. It seems he shouldn’t really have been appointed in the first place. That said we do play some good stuff at times until the final 3rd. If we can resolve that in this window we’ll be a decent team.

I know the thread is about substitutions but the mention of Branhoof seriously affected me.

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That article lost me near the top when it says that JWP’s first instinct is to pass forward.

Good article that.

Maybe he meant forward as in “he way he was facing”

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Good article, if not a little long!

For me, I have said this on here before - I tended to agree with Koeman with regard his subsitutions and his in-game management.

I cannot say the same about Puel or Pellegrino. I feel like I am watching a different game to them at times.

What I liked about Koeman, and what made sense to me as a spectator, was that if we were winning by a narrow margin and the opposition were starting to get a foothold, often having made a tactical change themselves, Koeman would often make a positive attacking change. This often involved bring Shane Long on (when he wasn’t quite so terrible). What this served to do was give the opposition something to think about from a defensive point of view. It meant that they ran a serious risk of conceding a goal on the counter attack if their defence pushed up with a high line. This in turn bought us more space and allowed us to get higher up the pitch and play the remainder of the game in a more advanced part of the field. Reducing the amount of pressure on the back four.

To give an example of this, look at how many headed goals we have conceded this season in crucial games. Brighton, Burnley, Huddersfield, Arsenal etc etc etc. These goals would be avoided were it not for the fact that we were sat so deep. If our back four held a line twenty yards out then speculative crosses in to the box probably wouldnt even be attempted let alone lead to goals.

With Pellegrino, he seems to very rarely (if at all) acknowledge that the second goal is crucial and more emphasis should be placed on ensuring that we go and get it when in front, rather than allowing the opposition back in to the game. Instead we tend to sit back, lose all belief that we can in fact score another goal and ultimately concede at the other end. Just the one if we are lucky so we can take a point. How many games have we witnessed this so far? Off the top of my head - Brighton, Huddersfield, Arsenal, Palace - to name a few quite quickly.

There seems to be no taking the game by the scruff of the neck. Never adding another attacking player in to the mix to really go for it and kill off the game. I think fans would accept being beaten by a counter attacking move, but the fact that we tend to welcome the pressure on to us and concede from a position of limited strength, then that is why these late goals against us feel inevitable. We no longer have Fonte and VVD at the back who were dominant in the air and a well organised pairing, so we cannot soak up as much pressure as we perhaps used to be able to.

So realistically if we are shite at the back, we need to place more emphasis on attack so that we have to do as little defending as possible. That makes the fact that we are even worse going forwards, all the more frustrating.

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Branfool was a disaster agreed

Worried about MoPe agreed.

But

Branfool had a motive and a logic. We forget the context too easily. We built our style on tika taka puka puka hence the annoying formation.

Back in Branfool days the game changer tactically was?

The Crazy Gang of Wimbledon their system was anti football but worked. He tried to introduce that.

Unfortunately we also had MLT in his prime hence the hate.

I hated it. It wasn’ us. But it had logic

When people moan about Puel and Pellegrino, I can only assume that they were still a sperm in the Branfoot days. Now that was an awful time to be a Saints fan. I remember Shearer going and Dixon and Speedie coming in. Christ, can you imagine the size of the meltdown on Fiverweb now if something like that were to happen?

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An excellent article.

Its not just about a race to the bottom though.

Oh and before you assume i was a sperm in the Branfoot days. I wish

Terry Hurlock was our creative midfielder!

That time he dropped Le Tiss so he could play Paul Moody alongside Dowie. Painful memories…

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You may not have even been from the male side and were just a cell waiting to be impregnated

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Terry Hurlock! Dear God. One of the worst players ever to pull on a Saints shirt. How he became a professional footballer I will never know. When we had cloggers, at least they used to clog. I dont recall him even doing much of that.

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