premier league

5 reasons for Saints fans to be optimistic ahead of the new season

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Originally published on Friday, August 15, 2014.

It’s been a summer of upheaval for Saints so far, but on the eve of the Premier League season, here are reasons for Southampton fans to be positive ahead of the new campaign.

1. Ronald Koeman

The Dutch legend comes in with bags of experience and is a proven winner. As a player, he won Euro 88 as well as two European Cups, nine league titles in Spain and the Netherlands, and four domestic cups. As a manager in the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, he has won silverware in the shape of three league titles, two domestic cups and three Community Shield equivalents.

2. Big name signings with top-level experience

Whilst a big reputation doesn’t guarantee success, it does underscore ambition by those who brought them to the club and players such as Fraser Forster, Saphir Taider and Ryan Bertrand have lots of experience at the highest levels of club football. Indeed Forster was referred to as “The Wall” by the Spanish press after his heroics for Celtic against Barcelona, Bertrand has a Champions League medal and Taider has come from one of the biggest clubs in the world following a World Cup.

3. Despite the sales, most of the big players are still here

Yes, we will never again see the names Lallana, Lambert, Lovren, Shaw and Chambers on the Saints teamsheet, but a lot of key players from the last few years remain on the squad list; Jay Rodriguez, Victor Wanyama, Jose Fonte, Gaston Ramirez, Jack Cork, Artur Boruc, Nathaniel Clyne, Morgan Schneiderlin, Steven Davis – they’re all still Saints players and many Premier League managers would be happy to have them in their side.

4. Experience and trust

Graziano Pellè and Dusan Tadic come from the Dutch leagues and one can only assume Koeman made a beeline for this pair due to his knowledge and experience of what they can do. Whilst the Premier League is undoubtedly a step up from the Eredivise, the manager obviously has faith in what they can do due to his first hand experience of their talents – especially in the case of Pelle who scored 55 goals for Koeman.

5. Long term planning

It’s easy to buy into the narrative that Saints have been in absolute turmoil this summer, but signings like Shane Long suggest otherwise. The club expressed interest in Long early last season meaning that his capture is not just a panic decision. He – and other targets – will have been identified and evaluated at length long before the credit card is whipped out. Nicola Cortese boasted about the club’s ability to plan and be unfazed by unexpected developments. Perhaps we have just seen that in action.

Football’s bosses must be questioned and not blindly followed

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RECENTLY, the distinguished journalist and Saints fan, Sir David Frost, passed away after leaving Southampton on a cruise ship.

His was a career notable for many things, but without doubt, the standout moment has to be his handling of Richard Nixon, in the former US President’s first major interviews in the years following the Watergate scandal.

On the obvious level it was a landmark moment for Frost’s dogged determination, which resulted in Nixon apologising for his actions to the American public.

On a wider basis, the Frost/Nixon interviews are credited with playing a vital role in ending the idea of reverence to our ‘betters’. The notion that politicians and those in power should be shown an unquestioning level of respect had been blown away.

However, those in power can still struggle with the idea of being questioned or challenged and football is no exception.

Currently, a couple of debates have raised their heads casting huge doubts over the decision making abilities of the people in charge of various facets of the world’s most popular sport.

Firstly, talk is growing over moving the 2022 World Cup, which is due to be held in Qatar.

In the desert. In summer. It doesn’t take a genius to spot there may be a few problems with the original plan.

Yet, that’s where it’s due to be – although the man who trumpeted the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, Sepp Blatter, has conceded that the idea may not be the greatest in the history of world football.

FIFA is a closed shop, and does not take kindly to scrutiny.

Indeed, the Sunday Times‘ temerity to present evidence of corruption within the governing body is often held up as one of the reasons England was overlooked for the 2018 World Cup.

Qatar was a bad idea from the word go. You know that, I know that and now the decision makers are admitting it.

The idea of being reverent to people who make such decisions in light of masses of evidence highlighting the fact is preposterous.

The same is currently happening in England, with regards to the national side and the Premier League. As I said last week, the England national side is no longer the top of the English game.

The Premier League, a marvel of marketing, is the pinnacle.

Yet the behemoth it has become is being questioned – is it really changing the game for the better?

Or is it just exacerbating the gulf between haves-and-have-nots in the Football League with overinflated parachute payments and stifling the production of indigenous talent with huge transfer fees for foreign stars? The new FA chairman, Greg Dyke, certainly thinks so.

However, it’s worth pointing out that Mr Dyke is one of the people who first floated the idea of a break-away top flight. He has since cited ‘unintended consequences’, but they are consequences that many ordinary folk brought up donkeys’ years ago.

The Premier League has now extended an olive branch as it tries to improve its image – the cynical may suggest it’s bad for marketability if the league is the fall guy for international failure.

Going to Qatar is not in the interests of the average football fan. Giving relegated teams ten times the cash their league rivals get is not in the interest of fair competition.

Just because someone is in a position of power, does not mean they know best or are acting in the best interests of all concerned. Ego and money are far stronger drivers than development and fairness.

No-one knows what the outcome will be when it comes to the Qatari World Cup or how the domestic game will adapt to improve talent from these islands – but changes won’t happen if football fans just accept the decisions of those in charge without at least asking questions.

Sir David Frost showed the power of asking few questions. The average football fan may not get a one-on-one with Sepp Blatter, but doesn’t mean they can’t have an impact in this day and age.

Does Mahwinney think he can turn back time?

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The statement today by the Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney paints the possibility of a fairer, more harmonious world for football fans across the nation.

In fact, it’s almost like going back to 1990, before a little thing called the Premier League was born. Money was shared between the four divisions of the Football League, players could move clubs at almost anytime in the season, and footballers weren’t completely out of touch with the fans in the terraces.

Mawhinney’s proposal for the Premier League to negotiate combined deals for both it and the Football League will never get off the ground, as it is the main reason the the 22-clubs broke away in the first place. Why would they suddenly turn around now and decide they want to give their vast wealth back to the clubs that were cut adrift by the schism of 1992?

Allowing players to move domestically at any time of the season seems like an okay idea, although personally I don’t mind the transfer window, it does limit the ability of clubs in the lower leagues to raise cash when they need to by selling players. The likelyhood of FIFA allowing their rule to be flouted though must surely be slim at best.

One of his proposals that I see no problem with is the suggestion that clubs who have fallen behind with tax payments to be banned from transfers. As far as HMRC are concerned, it probably isn’t going far enough, but from a purely footballing perspective it has to be a good move.

Of course, it would seem that Mawhinney is simply doing this at the behest of culture secretary Andy Burnham who has demanded that football clean up its act, and while Burnham’s timing also suggests this is being done for political rather than purely for the ‘good of the game’, at least it’s nice to know something is at least being talked about being done.