Ralph - Stick or Twist..?

Bit of wedge to spend in the summer would help improvement.

 

Ralph is playing the long game and slowly building a top half team. But these days very few fans have the patience to follow that long game. Fortunately, the board can.

 

Well it’s not, because one of them is a full year, and one of them isn’t even six months.

 

Agree with every word, except I think Ralph is better than Koeman.

 

The commercial deals with Hummel and the shirt sponsor will undoubtedly help.

 

Espírito Santo would be gone with you in charge too then. Bit daft when you look at it like that?

And no, across 2020 we were the fifth best.

 

Agreed.

As much as it pains me to say, but look how long it took Klopp and Liverpool to get a team worthy of competing? We are very much on a similar trajectory in my opinion (not that we'll be competing for league titles, mind!!

Yes, it's frustrating in the short term (and my god has it been **** lately!), but I can see a bigger picture too.

Just gotta hold the nerve and keep backing Ralph.

 

This is probably going to be an unpopular statement, but...at some point, we may need to move JWP on in order to be the team Ralph wants us to be. It's not that he's the primary problem by any stretch, and playing as we have for the past four months we have desperately needed his set pieces, but when your team captain and midfield distributor tends to play with caution as a priority, so too does the rest of the team.

That's a hugely risky proposition though, because we could well end up with no more forward momentum and no set piece wizardry...

 

Sort of agree, but then you look again him playing for England in a more advanced position and he looks like the player we might need. Which, in this instance, is with Ralph.

 

It's a bit tough to say, simply because he hasn't really seen much action with England against good competition. It could well be that JWP is acutely aware that there isn't much of a screen behind him, but in that instance you'd expect it to be better when he plays alongside Romeu (and thus serves as the more attack-minded CM), but it doesn't seem to really alter matters.

There is an argument to be made that, at times when our players aren't up to pressing at full strength, we'd be best-served with a midfield three in order to attack the ball closer to the center circle rather than pressing defenders, allowing JWP to play a more advanced role...but we'd need to actually have three central midfielders fit to do that, which apparently is not a thing.

 

Until we get Romeu back, and then James could be moved further forward.

 

In theory, and yet they have played a lot of games together this season and for some reason JWP was the one sitting back and Romeu the one driving forward. Bizzare.

 

Sorry, I meant Diallo and Romeu at CM, with JWP as a 10.

 

Ah yes! It would be nice if they stopped tag teaming and we could see the dynamics of a midfield 3. Though such is our lack of depth it would leave us with no senior CM on the bench. I'd like Ralph to mix it up a bit more now. Why not try Diallo, Jankewitz and JWP as a 3? I'd like to see Tella get a run of games too. Maybe we should wait until we get another win, but hey, maybe it would help us get that win because the current status quo of formation, players and style isn't working.

 

Yeah, I'd like to see that.

 

Yeah I called for that on the thread/poll you created several weeks ago.

 

Come on mate!

I know there's fully signed up to the cult of Ralph posters on here but on any measure how is Ralph better than Ron?

Ralph has had us flirting with relegation each season he's been in charge. He's managed to get equal the record for the worst ever Premier league defeat twice!! A record which had stood and hadn't been equaled since 1995. Ralph has managed that home and away. He's overseen the worst run of results in our history. We couldn't beat a team who were down to 9 ****ing men! Our game is one dimensional and predictable, and dare I say it, ****ing boring. Sideways pass, sideways pass, backwards, giving the opposition ample opportunity to get back and defend, counter attack against us and score. He can't organise a defence and sure as **** can't coach them. I no longer feel confident about going into a game under his leadership. Every record he has set with Saints has been negative.

(He did however win us the top in October for 23 hrs trophy.)

Compare with Ron
Winning games scoring 5, 6, 8 goals in the process. Placing high enough in the league that we were playing European football. Walking into St Mary's and no matter what the opposition thinking we could beat them. Playing some genuinely exciting dynamic football.

Ralph is worse than Puel, marginally better than Pellegrino. He's basically Hughes with a personality

Crying when we beat Liverpool was genius. It has fans desperately clawing at ways to defend him because they believe he cares. Football is a results business, and all the excuses in the world doesn’t change the fact that he's not getting them. Any other team would have sacked him, everyone here seems to think that's because the club/Players believe in him. We can't afford to sack and replace him

 

Ron was able to put together a great team only because we had just sold Lallana, Lovren, Shaw & co. for big bucks. The only comparable sale since then was Virgil, and that money was squandered long before Ralph got here, with Ralph still lumbered with all that dead wood, mostly out on loan now. Give Ralph the equivalent of Koeman’s resources and then you can legitimately compare their abilities.

 

Koeman is a bang average manager which he has proven at every club he has been at except for Saints where he did well.

I think a big part of the reason he did so well was because of the hangover from the black box days with Paul Mitchell meaning we recruited very well with the large amount of money we had at the time.

No denying that he has done better that Hassenhuttl has done in his time here but I think it is really hard to compare managerial ability when you take in all the factors

 

Think we're all broadly in agreement here. I like the 4-2-4 with us pressing from the front, but it only works if our players can actually sustain it; we're still pressing, but nowhere near with the consistency, and our transitions when taking possession have slowed. As the season progresses, a 4-3-3 (or 4-2-3-1 or whatever you want to call it) where we put the clamps on high in midfield might work better, though it would definitely ask a lot of JWP as the man to facilitate.