Saints Fan In Peace

That was definitely part of it, but as you've probably noticed, when his job's not at stake he'll still force McCarthy to try and play out, even though as you say he is absolutely shit at it. In the play-offs, there was a noticeable tactical shift further up the pitch as well. Still possession-heavy, but the usual 100 sideways and backwards passes in the horseshoe of death fell by the wayside. It was suddenly much more direct, getting from back to front much quicker and getting runners in behind. He admitted afterwards "We had to win, it was a one-off game". That apparent pragmatism was very welcome, it worked, and we thought the penny had finally dropped for him, but then in the PL against much stronger opposition he went back to his old ways and sure enough we got smashed every week giving up soft goal after soft goal with the tippy tappy and the suicidal stuff in our own box. That was when he came out with his legendary quote about how he'd rather lose playing that way than win ugly, which was when he pretty much lost any remaining fans who'd stuck by him up to that point. Anyway. I genuinely hope that he's finally learning that winning ugly is better every day of the week than losing pretty. Good luck for tonight.

It's what he does when he's in genuine danger of getting the boot. Once he buys himself a bit of breathing space with a couple of pragmatic results, he'll revert back to his 'brand' even though it's way less effective. He did it for our play-off final as well, when there was £100m riding on it and he was possibly being shown the door if we lost. Mad isn't it. And does make you wonder how much he truly believes in 'the system' himself when the chips are down, and how much of it just vanity / ego and wanting to be regarded as a certain type of manager.

I see your 65% and raise you to 68% - this was another one from the same season:

It's worth noting that we actually managed to get dicked 9-0 AGAIN the following season (by an average Man Utd side), and McCarthy was in goal for that one.

What you need to understand is that 1. it is never, ever his fault; 2. it’s never, ever down to his tactics, it’s always a mentality/ bravery issue; and 3. he will never, ever change it. Everything clicking into place is always just around the corner. Plan B is to do Plan A better. He always knows best. You just need to trust the process. In the Russell Martin post-match interview lifecycle you’re currently at the ‘Everyone’s hurting, but if they just did what I tell them they’d be fine’ stage. Wait until you move onto the ‘I’m going to actively smirk and scoff at any suggestion that my approach might be the problem’ stage. It’s usually accompanied by a dig at the fans for not clapping along while you give up soft goal after soft goal. When you reach that point it’s a good sign, as that’s usually the beginning of the end.

You don’t even need to be a professional football manager to know how to set up to beat his teams. Any Rangers or Saints fan off the street could tell you. And the easiest thing about it is that he never, ever changes it. He never surprises the opposition with a shape change or switching anything up to reflect an opposition’s weakness and gain an advantage. So the opposition manager will just sit his players down at the start of the week, say ‘right lads, this is what they’ll do and this is how you counter it’, then they practice it all week, and then that’s exactly what happens on match day. Even when he’s losing again and again and again he doesn’t change it. He always thinks it will work next time. It’s absurd. Melchett Martin.

It's not a tactical issue, it's a mentality issue. Trust the process.

Talksport saying he could go if this ends like this

The '135 shots' thing conveniently draws attention away from where the real issue always lies with his teams, which is that they always leak a high number of goals. He simply does not know how to coach a team to defend effectively. Never has, never will. And if you're leaking goals every single game you play, then it means you're having to score at least 2 or 3 every game yourselves to have a chance, which makes winning very difficult. Which we found out, as did Rangers.

The déjà vu is genuinely remarkable. Every single beat, playing out exactly the same way as it has at his other clubs. The tactics, the performances, the stats, the results, the approach to fans and media, the turns of phrase, the stubbornness, the excuses, the refusal to take responsibility. But if you buy a Ford Fiesta you can’t then be surprised when your experience of owning one replicates everything you’ve read a million times in reviews of the Ford Fiesta. Your board hired Russell Martin. They’re getting Russell Martin. It’s on them.

That’s pretty much him in a nutshell. In a midfield two he’s totally ineffective - too lightweight, can’t tackle, no aerial ability, doesn’t track back enough, no pace. Get it into his feet as the most advanced of a midfield three and he can absolutely contribute. Very tidy on the ball, got a good eye for a pass and got goals in him arriving late into the box. He split the room a bit with us but a lot of people have a soft spot for him as he threaded the pass at Wembley for the goal that won the play-off final. Martin loves him as he looks after the ball, is comfortable playing one touch and keeps it moving. Just don’t expect him to add anything physically. What I’m not sure about is his current fitness record. I know he had a long time out with ACL problems but no idea if he’s fully over that. Yes he does suffer from a form of alopecia. It started about 5-6 years ago and it hit him quite hard at the time. As a young lad taking shit for it from football supporters it knocked his confidence. But fair play to him, he embraced it and is now an ambassador for alopecia UK. Overall, keep him fit and play him in the right areas, give him runners in behind to pick out and he’ll add something. He’s got the quality on the ball to do well up to decent Championship level if used correctly, he’s a good lad and the vast majority of Saints fans are wishing him well and want him to succeed with you.

Can't speak to all the detail of the broader passing stats, but re the nuts and bolts of goals scored and conceded (e.g. defensive errors/ shots conceded / goals conceded / chances created / goals scored / xG / GD): From the BBC report after his sacking at Southampton: 'Southampton had the most errors leading to goals (10) and the most mistakes leading to shots (26) [in the league]. Martin's side also faced a league high of 108 shots on target. Their tally of 11 goals was a league low.' From the BBC report after his sacking at Rangers: 'Even in victory there were serious red flags. Martin's side faced an eye-watering 73 shots across four matches while progressing past Pananthinaikos and Viktoria Plzen. The underlying numbers were not sustainable. In the Premiership, no team has had fewer clean sheets. They are on a negative goal difference. Their expected goals (xG) rating out of nine, ranks them eighth.' 'Even with that evidence, Martin often said his team's deficiencies were down to mentality issues, and not tactics.'

Regardless of thoughts on Martin, can I just point out that like everything else that comes out of Charlie Austin's mouth, this is bullshit. When he was with us was permanently a stone overweight, and if he did get picked, which was increasingly rare because of his doughnut intake, he hobbled about on his shredded knees for a bit and then got subbed. He could barely last an hour, never mind 3 x 90 minutes a week. And that div has never made an intelligent comment in his life so it's a bit rich of him to set up a YouTube channel called CHAZ KICKS OFF specifically so he can shout stuff he's made up, and then start telling other people to wind their necks in. There's a reason he's done over 200 videos and yet they're still getting less than 300 views each. And that reason is that he's an absolute, solid gold throbber. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. I'll go back to lurking now.

Russell's first club as a player... 👀

He'll be bringing in Angus '0-9' Gunn next...

I don't think he had any offers from abroad, to be honest. The only ones I remember were sniffing around for a bit were WBA, but they went for Morrison in the end.

Totally valid point to make, but at that time our Director of Football (Wilcox) had left for United a few months previously, and he wasn't replaced until the following season, so Martin had a much more hands-on role with recruitment that summer. They created a transfer committee made up of him, a couple of (unqualified) board members and the head of recruitment. To be totally fair to him, it wasn't the most stable environment, but it did mean he was heavily involved in deciding who came in. They brought in a lot of players - 16 - but most just weren't up to the necessary standard, and Martin later admitted (in the podcast interview with Lineker IIRC) that he had underestimated the pace and athleticism that was required in the PL. But they were 'his players', brought in by him to play his way.

Quite. Which is why McCarthy was a truly mystifying signing, especially as his no. 1. At Saints he had no trust in him at all — he didn't even have him on the bench, he dropped him to third choice for most of the season.

Bearing in mind that: At Southampton, in his Premier League season he had Premier League promotion levels of money available (circa £130m in the first season to promoted teams), was allowed to bring in 16 players that summer, and built a completely uncompetitive team which got humiliated every week until he was sacked and At Rangers, he was at a club with 5x-8x the spending power of every other club in the division except one, was allowed to bring in 14 players, and had them in 8th place out of 12 when he was sacked ...it does make me wonder what club he would need to be at, and what resources they would need to have available, for him to be able to get the players he feels he needs for his style of football to actually work.

It was. People point to him getting us promoted as the high point of his career but a) we came fourth with a squad that should have been in the automatics, because we leaked hundreds of goals, and b) the disaster that was Bazunu (who Russ loved) got injured and the keeper who replaced him in the play-offs was so utterly useless with his feet* that the players had no choice but to stop pissing around at the back, go against the manager’s instructions and go direct. (Which makes Martin’s decision to now sign him and put him straight in as first choice even more unfathomable. McCarthy is simply not capable of playing out and never will be.)

It looks great when it works, there's no doubt about that. The challenge at this level will come when the opposition don't come out and press so you can't pass round them, and instead just put 10 men behind the ball in their own third, let you have the ball and say 'go on then, break us down'. You may see a lot of that from the much smaller clubs you're going to play against who will be delighted to come away with a point against the biggest club in the division. It's a big part of what happened at Rangers. Too many draws where he couldn't break down teams who parked the bus like Motherwell, Dundee, Falkirk and St Mirren, albeit with a fanbase up there who literally demanded to win every single game, given their size and history. When it got too much into the realms of what they saw as side-to-side, backwards, horseshoe football against inferior opposition they just wouldn't tolerate it. But you won't be the first team who has to find ways to break down a packed defence, although the approach might test your patience on occasion and you may occasionally hear the words 'just get it forward'. If he's genuinely tweaked his system to crack that aspect of it, then you'll do very well.

As there seems to be a bit of a feelgood factor starting to develop I was going to keep quiet as I don't want to annoy anyone or piss on anyone's bonfire. But since you asked - being liked internally isn't the problem. By all accounts he was very popular with the players and staff at Saints too, they thought he was great - or they certainly seemed to at first. That's partly down to the fact that he is unusually touchy feely for a manager (gushes a lot about loving his players, everything being so beautiful and so on), but also that he properly loves being one of the boys (the extended interview he gave on Lineker's podcast just before he took the Rangers job gives a good insight into that) and he treats everyone like his best mate, and there were also a fair number of rumours that he didn't work them particularly hard (lots of days off training etc). He's a 'call me Russ' guy, and little things like having your fit glamour model girlfriend walk into the players lounge probably don't hurt either when you're trying to impress footballers. That's not the issue. The problems in the past have always come because he only has one way of playing and coaching, and when it fails, on the surface he pretends to take responsibility but in reality he is just blaming everyone else. That's when his stubbornness and the way he talks can rub people up the wrong way. In those situations he can come across as smug, dismissive and patronising, which can get very grating, especially when you can see with your eyes that it isn't working but he insists it is, or he keeps saying that success is always just around the corner and it would all be fine if people just did what he told them to do. Quoting possession stats as a benchmark of success (we once had 79% possession in a game against Sunderland which we lost 5-0) and coming out with stuff like 'I'd rather lose playing beautifully than win ugly' don't go down particularly well when you're getting humiliated every week either (like we were under him in the Prem). Basically, if you're winning games, you'll like him like you would any manager who is getting results. But if you're not, he's probably going to annoy people more than the average joe because of his tendency to gaslight and deflect rather than ever admit his 'philosophy' may be anything less than perfect. He is unquestionably a smooth talker, but that can start to sound like snake oil when it's not being backed up by results. So enjoy the honeymoon period, give him a chance, and everyone deserves a fair crack of the whip IMO. The proof of the pudding will come when the season starts and the pressure is on, and then you'll be able to judge for yourselves whether what he insists is happening actually bears any resemblance to what you see with your own eyes taking place on the pitch. Edit: Just saw that Chelmofox put it much more succinctly

How about Bazunu as well, to provide competition?

I hate to tell you this, but it was Macca who was in goal when we actually managed to lose 9-0 *again* the following season https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55806211 He is decent though, I promise. Way better than Gunn and Bazunu and has played for England. Solid signing on a free.