New managerial menagerie takes over

At various stages during his first spell in charge at Saints Rupert Lowe appointed Stuart Gray, Steve Wigley and Clive Woodward (not as manager, but still). Each time there were rumours that the masterplan was to adopt a more continental-style structure without a traditional manager- just specialist coaches.

Obviously his time away from Saints hasn’t persuaded him to deviate from the masterplan and it didn’t even take a couple of weeks for Lowe to go even further. Today Saints replaced Nigel Pearson and appointed two dutch coaches, Jan Poortvliet and Mark Wotte, alongside Stewart Henderson and Dave Hockaday as the new coaching team. Poortvliet will take the role of Head Coach but Saints are saying that the four will work together interchangeably.

Saints fans will undoubtely be split (aren’t we always!) over the departure of Pearson and will be mostly sceptical about the new coaching setup unless/until results vindicate the decision. The most worrying part of today’s announcement was the multiple references to money or lack thereof. Indeed Saints are actively boasting about taking the cheap option and it looks like we’ll have a very young side next season with academy players training with (if not making up) the first team.

The silver lining of seeing kids given a fair chance in the team and the outside chance that Poortvliet will be a poor man’s Wenger will probably persuade the fans to back the side at the start of next season. But if we don’t start the season well then there will be so much fan unrest that more boardroom turmoil would be inevitable.

Category: Managerial

Tags: Jan Poortvliet, Manager, Managerial, Nigel Pearson, Rupert Lowe, Saints

Subscribe   The Offside RSS Feeds

Print

Share