Spygate: Southampton owner Dragan Solak will not sack head coach Tonda Eckert Unbelievable. It must absolutely suck to be a Southampton fan at this point. Seems that nobody with any sort of power or authority is going to do anything responsible or honourable to sort this situation out.
This just adds to it. He says so many words, says sorry so many times, but you just never really believe he actually means it. Just an actor delivering lines to save his job. He's known what he did the whole time. He's known it was against the rules. They've pressured a young lad to do something they knew was wrong, even after he expressed concern. Storming out of interviews, media officers demanding "respect", when they knew what they'd been doing. And to try and claim "none of what happened had any effect on sporting performance" - why do it then? Literally, why do it if it had no impact?
I feel like the owner is waiting for FA to charge Tonda before firing him so they don't have to make a payout. Be funny if they get deducted more points though and end up joining Leicester in League One.
If you read the article I linked above, the owner is utterly delusional. He believes it will be double jeopardy to punish individuals at the club after the play off situation. I don't think he understands (or is playing dumb) that the club is facing issues from two different governing bodies. The league has punished them within the remit of the league. The FA can still go after individuals.
Every single statement from the club shows an absolute lack of integrity. The only thing they've ever seemed genuinely concerned with is the money.
If it makes you feel any better, the same can be said for us east coasters for the most part. All three US games I’ll either have to miss out on 4 hours of sleep or only get to leave work an hour early. I will forever be baffled by them sticking the US solely in West Coast venues.
I'm actually putting all the games on my work calendar now and I can safely say this is the dumbest scheduling I've ever seen. It's somehow not even optimized for the host countries, let alone the world. I don't remember Brazil feeling this disjointed and it was only what, 2 hours ahead of us?
It's almost like each time zone gets one game a day, too? Most days, first game isn't until 3pm EST. But numerous days, there's a midnight kickoff for EST viewers. Why aren't we going 12-3-6-9 instead of 3-6-9-12? Some days also go 1-4-7-10, which also feels like a decent compromise until I'm pissed off the US is West Coast only again, haha.
Just noticed the World Cup thread on this site. Not posted in since May 16th. Are we really that menacing in here?
Prefacing this by saying, a 48 team tournament with an extra round of knockouts was very not necessary... but the slate of third group stage games that suddenly matter because those extra slots will be on the line is actually quite tasty.
Would agree with this, but it depends who they get to replace him and if they make a couple of signings to freshen things up. I think he squeezed everything out of that squad, so without another talented manager and some fresh impetus on the player side, I think they might be on for a scary year.
Agree, especially with the bolded part. When you're getting players like Harrison Reed looking like world-beaters at times, you know the coaching is good. Of course, it'll be dependent on who comes in. Although, given it's a World Cup year, the task becomes more difficult. There's definitely some exciting players like Bobb and King who could flourish if they are nurtured.
I always think on paper Fulham looks like a proper barclays team, with Bobb, ESR, Wilson, Iwobi etc. but they're never as fun as you'd hope they'd be.