It’s all gone nuts at St. Mary’s
The Pubcast’s resident Gooner, Dan Ferdinand, has been spoiled by supporting a club that unites behind its manager. The same couldn’t be said for Southampton Football Club, who dispensed with Alan Pardew’s services last week. Here’s Dan’s personal take on the situation…
Three games into the new season and Southampton have sacked manager Alan Pardew…after he led his side to a 4-0 win!
There are many reasons why this decision is football gone crazy.
What does it say about the management of the club if they have only realised three games into the season that Pardew was the wrong man for the job?
Surely someone on the board has to also be removed.
Personally, I thought Pardew was doing a good job and I can’t see how you can judge a season based on three games of football.
In the Football League the season campaign is 46 games and all teams will have ups and downs. Just look at the Sunderland side that Roy Keane took from a relegation fight to the Championship title and the Millwall team that were top of the Championship table at Christmas but were relegated at the end.
Sometimes I wonder what the people that run football clubs are thinking.
Now if someone puts in their hard earned money to buy a football club and they don’t believe that the football staff are right for the job, remove them. That’s fair enough.
Why not start your ownership with a clean slate, I can understand that, even if I think that manager is good at his job.
But why give a manager all of pre-season then remove him after three games? It smacks of poor management and I feel sorry for the Southampton fans who have loved the club all their lives.
So, where does this leave Southampton?
Well, they have the strongest squad in the league and money to bring in reinforcements in January, but if I was a manager on the market I’m not sure that I’d want this job.
If history has taught us anything, it has proved that clubs that change their manager repeatedly are rarely successful for sustained periods.
I’m not saying you should keep a bad manager but if you have a good one and you believe in him and stick by him, you never know what’s around the next corner. In Pardew, I think Southampton had a good manager.
I still think Hull City were wrong to sack Phil Brown, just as Derby were too quick to dispense with George Burley.
What should I care, I support a club that supports it’s manager. We’ve had success and I believe that we have been successful over the last five seasons without a trophy.
What do you think of the manager merry-go-round?
Are you sick of short-sighted chairmen changing their minds faster than they change their pants?
Get in touch and tell us what you think on e-mail at banter@footballpubcast.co.uk or on twitter.com/footballpubcast.