ClaphamFox

Me too, weirdly. Now that we’re practically relegated I get the feeling Ruud will finally start rolling the dice with team selections and we’ll see an improvement.

His longstanding theory that humans can fly if they just try hard enough is proving to be complete nonsense. He needs to let it go.

Only just seen this - full credit to you for squeezing J. Mascis into the transfer talk section, though Feel the Pain seems even more apt for our current predicament...

The impression he gave was that he wants to stay but hasn't been told either way by the club and is frustrated at their radio silence. It sounded like he's now expecting to be given the boot and is waiting for confirmation, but nobody has even spoken to him about it. It backs up what the Dutch journalist was saying the other day - that Rudkin doesn't even know what will happen until Top picks up the phone and tells him. They all just wait around for Top's signal...

Care to explain how he has ‘improved’ Southampton? Because my Southampton-supporting friends certainly don’t see it like that…

Wasn't Cooper appointed because he made a good ppt presentation? Likewise RVN is supposed to have 'impressed' them with his chat.

Some of the stuff I'm reading on here this morning defies belief. So the guy can speak well - so what?! It doesn't mean anything. In recent times we've slagged Top and Rudkin to death for choosing managers on flimsy criteria - yet now people want Martin because he came across well in an interview with Lineker? As you say, RVN came across really well in that interview with Neville - and look how that turned out. Let's also remember that Martin's preferred style of play is a more extreme version of that favoured by Enzo (which so many of our fans hated). Martin is like Enzo's dopey, daydreaming, idealistic younger brother. It has often been (correctly) pointed out that our defence actually wasn't all that great when we won the Championship - yet Southampton conceded 22 goals more than us. They let in 63 goals in 46 games despite having one of the best squads in the division. We're on the verge of being relegated with a horrific defensive record yet people want to replace our manager with somebody who has already proven that he cannot organise a defence to save his life! Ok, so he claims he's 'learned' from his experience at Southampton, but do people really want to take a punt on him because of that? If so, I hope they're never involved in interviewing candidates in their respective workplaces. Seriously, anybody who has changed their mind about Martin because of that interview has no business criticising the club's managerial recruitment decisions ever again - they've proven they'd be just a soft-headed as Top and Rudkin.

Oh for the love of God people!!

It’s a shame that intelligence, preparation and planning didn’t extend to him being able to organise Southampton’s completely porous defence during the entire time he was with them.

It's only unthinkable if you assume Top is fully engaged and highly motivated to sort the mess out. I'm starting to wonder whether this is actually the case.

Judging from his reported press conference comments, it sounds like he's gone back to saying he's committed to staying next season. He says he wants talks with the club soon to sort it out, which suggests that nobody has told him he's leaving. This would back up what the Dutch journalist was saying on the radio a few days ago...

Monga is 15, Evans is 17.

The corridors os Seagrave are right now echoing with the sound of Ruud loudly singing ‘Walking on Sunshine’ to himself as he prepares to face the media…

Lovely assist from Tielemans.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that beneath his mad exterior, Trump is a rational actor and that there is a plan. He isn’t and there isn’t.

There certainly is such a thing as being too complex. But the appropriate response to that is not to go to the opposite extreme and adopt a rigid, one-dimensional approach that you can’t adapt because your manager can only play one way. Our best chance of getting promoted back to the PL and actually staying there this time is to find a manager who is adaptable and flexible. Dyche is not that. He can organise a defence, but that’s about it. The football Everton played under him was execrable. He also has a tendency to favour ageing workhorses over young talent - as others have pointed out, he’d fill our squad with ‘honest’ but very limited players that we’d struggle to shift when he inevitably got sacked. Given the overwhelming recent evidence that successful newly-promoted teams tend to have tactically smart, adaptive managers, it’s incredible that anybody is genuinely advocating for Dyche.

Plenty of coaches favour a strong press and quick transitions, if that's what you mean, and many of them will be significantly more tactically sophisticated than Dyche, whose brand of football has become obsolete.

Both Dyche and Martin would be horrible appointments.

This is like Sophie's Choice in reverse.

No.

Well that's dented my confidence in us getting three points from this

He's finally switched from sounding like he believes he's staying to the kind of euphemistic answers managers give when they know they're leaving. Surely just a matter of time now...

That is simply not true. Plenty of us liked it.

I suppose what it all comes down to is whether you expect them to completely ignore the lessons of the past few years and carry on making the same mistakes that have led to this horrible mess, or accept that their previous approach has failed and try something different. I understand why many people believe the former, but I’m trying to convince myself it’s the latter - with mixed success.