This is a transcript of the 20 minute interview between Les Reed and @bigadamsport. The audio can be found here. As always, I have taken the liberty of eliminating words that were verbal ticks, false steps, or just plain unnecessary. I have omitted words when they do not add clarity or meaning such as, for example, @bigadamsport’s early reference to “early season” which he immediately corrected to “early summer”. On the other hand, I left in Les Reed’s early “Um, yeah” because it actually added some meaning and I did not feel right replacing it with “you are correct, sir.”
For
those of you who are interested, my secretary transcribed the first draft and I
then listen to it over and over again as necessary to fix things since she is
not an expert on football or English accents.
(And, no, I am not claiming to be an expert on those subjects either—just
more of one than she is.)
And we are off:
BA: This summer
compared to last summer: from the outside you can say, oh it feels the same. Early summer players going out. Perhaps, later summer players coming in. Does it feel the same or is that too
general? From the inside does it feel
different to last summer?
LR: Um, yeah. It is not as traumatic as it was last summer
because it wasn’t just transfer window.
It was coach, the first team staff, and the rumour mill about off the field
and the rest of it. So we haven’t had to
contend with any of that this time. The
other difference is we actually got three players in before anyone went out so
that was slightly different. It doesn’t
make a lot of difference to me because whether deals are happening or not, I am
still doing the work and my team and the recruitment team are still having to be
very, very busy making sure we’ve got all our ducks in a row and that we have
covered all the bases and so on. So from
that point of view, it is much the same.
BA: Is the business model that? Does a club the size of Southampton have to
have a business model like what we see happening? In other words, instead of the fans worrying
about players going out, is that just part of reality under the way you plan
things and the club’s board are? As in
you need to make money on players. You
need to find new players.
LR: No, I think it’s changed a little bit from selling
players as part of the business model. The reality of what you have to face is that,
in essence, we’ve been labeled a feeder club. I think we are more of a showcase club and I
think we do things well in terms of talent identification, recruitment,
developing our own young players, and we are pretty good at spotting talent at
other clubs that maybe nobody else has seen or nobody else wants to take a chance
on. I remember criticism when we bought Jay Rodriguez and yet now we’ve got a
player who is back in form—banged in two goals the other day—looking great and
potentially will pick up his England career again. So, I think we’ve had a good record at doing
that but then of course what we do is bring them out here at St. Marys and we
showcase them and everybody else who’s, perhaps, not so good at doing that has
a look over the fence and what they have is the resources and the
finances. I think it’s fair to say that
when they go, they go to big clubs and they go to big clubs for a lot of
money. Whilst that’s not our business
plan, what we do work on is the basis that if they go, that money will be
reinvested in the way that we do it, in picking up talent again and moving
forwards. The reality of it is, we are not in a position to compete with those
Champion's League clubs on salaries and it’s both the revenues that we can
generate and it’s also, to a certain extent, Financial Fair Play because we
came up with the League One salary into the Championship, Championship salary into
here. The percentages that you can
increase that by within short term cost control are not very big compared to
what the big clubs can do.
BA: Nicola always said that Financial Fair Play hurt clubs
that were ambitious that weren’t the 50 or 60 thousand pound a week clubs.
LR: Correct
BA: That’s probably
the case, but does it stop you breaking into the top six? Obviously, you still want to remain
ambitious.
LR: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think it does and I think too many
clubs in and around us in the Premier League are happy to accept that situation
and we’re not. It’s not what we’re all
about but we know we have to do it step by step. But providing we prepare ourselves to be
ready to take the opportunity when it comes—that’s the best we can be. We were close this year. We had a very, very good first half of the
season. In the top four or five most of
the season and we have to make sure that next season that we improve on that so
that if a team does fall away from the normal Champions League group and there
is a door to go through that we are the best prepared of the other teams to do
it. I think we believe that that could
happen. I am not so sure the others
really do. That’s our advantage.
BA: Is that
ultimately the most frustrating thing about the Alderweireld saga is that
having discovered him when others hadn’t necessarily spotted his class and then
to see him disappear at the last minute.
Fans would be like, if we are ambitious why didn’t we keep him? That is the obvious thing to ask you.
LR: At the end of the
day, we are ambitious and we did everything we could possibly do to keep him. I probably worked on Toby for the whole year. He had a great year here. He loved it here. He settled into the area and we had
discussions about a long term contract and the rest of it and all the
indications were that this is where his heart was and this is where he wanted
to play. The confusion came in with the
option with Atletico and the fact that we exercised our option. We believed that they had missed the
opportunity, the window to buy us back out of it. All talk of a legal case was really around
the fact that we believed the player wanted to be here and, therefore, pursuing
a legal route in order to exercise the option was all based that the end result
would be Toby Alderweireld would sign for us.
BA: There is no point
in following the legal avenue, if he ultimately wants to go to Spurs.
LR: Absolutely!
Yeah. He, um
BA: Do you have any
regrets about thinking we should have signed him in January? I wish we had pushed on …
LR. We couldn’t sign
him in January. It wasn’t part of the agreement. That was the problem. The terms of the
agreement were that we had to wait until now to make to make our intentions
clear and at which point they had a window to basically give us our deposit
back. The fact of the matter was, on
Tuesday morning, I was booked on a flight to Madrid. We’d parked the legal argument. We’d
gone down the line of ok we need to make a proper market value bid. We did that.
I was booked on a plane to go to Madrid on Tuesday and got a call on
Monday night around eleven o’clock to say that Toby had decided that he wanted
to go to Spurs. So two things
there: whilst we believed our bid was
better than Spurs and I was on my way to negotiate the deal the player was
Atletico Madrid’s player not ours and, therefore, he had the choice. I was concerned that it was financial because
we felt we had a contract in place that was acceptable. I was prepared to
renegotiate that but the reason I was given was that Toby had decided that the
Tottenham was the place where he felt he could develop his career. Once that happens, there is nothing that you
can do. There is no point. Atletico were prepared to negotiate a proper
transfer. The legal argument now just doesn’t
sit.
BA: We know that if
players want to go, they generally go.
In the world, that is often the way.
You have to make the best of what it is.
Morgan Schneiderlin obviously is the next link to that because it’s no
secret that having staying last summer he’d like to move on to possibly a
Champions League club, Manchester United, whoever. How is that progressing? Is it progressing? Is it going to work?
LR: You know what, I’d
like someone to give me the answer to that question. It’s well documented that we had a bid that we
turned down, some 15, 16 days ago. It
hasn’t really progressed since then.
We’ve had contact, but it’s not the normal kind of let’s sit down and
negotiate. It’s been a little bit of “yeah,
we are interested, you know, and we’ve made a bid.”
BA: It must not be
big enough.
LR: So no, no. So, therefore, where it’s left is anybody
that is interested in any of our players have got to match the asking price. In terms of Morgan there is not a lot we can
do. To be fair to Morgan, he’s been very
professional. He’s training
properly. He’s with the squad. We’ve not had any tantrums or anything like
that and we sit and wait. I don’t know
how long it would go on. I think what is
most important about it is that there is some conclusion as quickly as possible
and then we know whether we move on or whether Morgan gets his head around the
fact that he is going to be playing here next season.
BA: Seems unlikely
that he will be joining United for their USA tour on Sunday,
LR: Unless something
happens rapidly—and I don’t see that happening—that’s likely.
BA: It’s good that
you say about his positive response to you, because I was thinking what on the
earth happens if nobody comes back in?
Nobody hits the value and the bloke is left knowing he wants to go but
perhaps understanding that you have a valuation for him. That is not going to be fun for you or him.
LR: No. To be fair to Morgan, he, as I said just now,
is a good professional and, I think, if the reality was that no one was really
pushing hard to get him—after all if you really want a player and you are a top
four club then you go and get him. I am
pretty sure he would get his head down.
He has two years left on his contract and there is very little anyone
can do unless a club really wants to come in and make the attempt. I don’t see Morgan wanting to go through any
other club than a Champions League club and, therefore, it’s up to them to
decide that he is their number one choice and they are going to come up with
the right money.
BA: You have to spend
last summer and this summer a lot of time dealing with or seeing fans and
everyone dealing with things coming out of the Northwest, whether it be
Liverpool or Manchester United, well before deals were done and briefings and
everything else. But this one is quite
clear isn’t it? This player is worth
this much, if you want him, you pay the money.
LR: Yeah. Absolutely.
BA: Are you confident
that this summer, like last summer, will turn out for the best, whatever
happens?
LR: Yeah. Yeah.
BA: I say it because
of the panic at the start of last summer, but actually you were all proved
right in the end.
LR: Yeah. I am very confident. All the right things are in place. They were last summer. The way we go about things is very
diligent. You know we get our heads
down. We work hard through the
summer. Well, we work hard all year
round. We have structures in place which
will mean that if we get a disappointment, we can deal with it. We can then move on. We can solve it. We saw that last year and we’ll do it again.
BA: The ultimate
question is, I guess, when you look at the season ahead can you fight on all
four fronts and not suffer the Euro Elite curse that clubs suffer? You would love to maintain your position in
the Premier League in the top eight.
LR: Yeah. I think we
need to talk all that down. I don’t
believe it. I think it’s a fantastic
inbuilt excuse for not having a good season.
Aston Villa did not have a good season last year and they weren’t in the
Europa League. Anyone can have a bad
season and I think it’s quite a convenience to have something to blame it
on. If you look at Chelsea, they will
play off quite a small squad. They fight
on all fronts and they are the champions. There is a lot to be said for that. I think this is something that has crept in
over the last few years. I think that
having a big squad, as people call it, can bring in as many problems as it can
bring in answers. Over history, most
successful teams tend to get the same team out week after week. The other thing is, I think what we are good
at, is manage it. There is an issue. Find ways around it. We have a fantastic medical sports science department. There is a fantastic synergy between them and
the coaching staff. Football league
clubs play 60 games a season and manage it.
So I think we’ll have like the right recovery strategies in place and,
hopefully, we will progress in the competition.
And, actually, players don’t get tired when they’re successful. I see no reason why we shouldn’t buck the
trend and actually prove it can be done.
BA: The balance of
academy products coming through the pathway and signing players will be
important this season because you want to get the squad that can handle it but
then balance it with your budget and everything else. Do you see many of the academy boys that we
haven’t yet pushing especially with the Europa front?
LR: I think there are
more boys on the preseason camp now with Ronald then there has ever been before
from the under-21 squad. Our fans know
we had a good under-21 squad last year.
They are beginning to kick on.
Then you got players like Turnbull and Stephens who were fighting for promotion
with Swindon last year—fantastic experience—played at Wembley. Why shouldn’t they be staking a claim during preseason
to get in that squad? Harrison Reed and
Matt Targett stepped up last year. Why shouldn’t they stay in that squad? So when the two preseason camps are over and
we’ve had a look at how those young players perform, I believe with the purchases
that we are making and the purchases we intend to make, supplement that with young
players who I am getting lots of inquires about from Championship clubs, top Championship
clubs, clubs who feel that they can get promotion next year. So I see no reason
why they shouldn’t step into our larger squad to supplement the cups and the
Europa campaign.
BA: As a layman with
no football background apart from watching it for many years, when people say
to me what do the Saints need, I have been saying a central back, a center
midfielder, if Morgan goes for sure, a general, and, perhaps, a fox in the box [type?]
another striker they don’t generally have.
How confident are you that you can give fans a couple of signings that
they can lick their lips with?
LR: I think you’ve
got to be very, very careful. You have
to buy the right players in the right positions who can do what you want them
to do. They don’t have to be big
names. We’ve suffered from signing big
names in the past who didn’t deliver who’ve been very, very costly for this
club and that the cost therein has effected the budget we’ve got and, therefore,
we have to get that right and make sure we don’t make similar mistakes. If that fox in the box happens to be Jay
Rodriguez who we didn’t have last year, happens to be Ryan Seeger, unfortunately
he’s injured at the moment, or if it’s someone we purchase then we’ll be
happy. It’s actually delivering on the pitch
rather than delivering the big name that’s going to wet everybody’s lips
BA: Bu you and Ronald
are on the complete same song sheet?
LR: Oh, absolutely!
Yeah, yeah. Nothing happens at this club
without Ronald and myself, with the collaboration of other staff, identifying
what we need and then once Ronald’s bought into it, then my job is to go and
get it done.
BA: And that’s you
talking about value and not you making an excuse for not spending big
money. You are saying it won’t
necessarily need to be.
LR: No, no ….
BA: One of those areas you think needs it?
LR: We’ve got a good
budget to complete the signings that we would like to complete and we’re not
going to spend money we haven’t got. I
think for our fans, who will remember six years ago, they may read in the
papers and the media certain clubs spending significant sums of money and high
wages. They are spending money they
haven’t got and they’re banking on them being in the right place at the right
time when that money comes through. We
know that is not the road to making sure that….
Listen we want to stay in the Premier League like everybody else, but we
want to stay where we are in the Premier League and above. We are not going to throw loads of money at
just surviving in the Premier League. We
are going to stick to our plan. Keep our
focus. Be patient. Get there step by step. The big thing about a long term future at the
top end of the Premier League is getting the business off the field right as
well as the football business and that’s what we’re trying to pursue.
BA: Just finally, one
of those players that just came to my head who perhaps didn’t deliver the big
money a few years ago was Gaston Ramirez.
He was back with the squad. Is he
a player that has a future in the club or is he one of those that because he was
out on loan all season we should just presume….
RL: No. I think what we have to remember with Gaston
is that he came here as a very young player, inexperienced, but with a big
tag. He come straight from the
Olympics. He hadn’t done any preseason
training and he hadn’t had a break. The
following summer, he was playing for Uruguay in the World Cup qualifiers. Didn’t get a break. He’s been here for the last two seasons—hasn’t
done preseason. The reports I am getting
back now from the camp—because he came back refreshed, had a holiday, didn’t
play for Uruguay over the summer. He’s
had a season in the Premier League so he’s matured. Whilst it wasn’t a great season successfully
at Hull, he played games in the Premier League—not as many as we would have
liked—but he’s now had a rest. He’s now
fully fit. He’s come back and he’s
training well and reports are that he’s doing well. He can earn himself a place and if that
happened we know he’s got the talent and we wouldn’t want to go out and buy
someone with that talent at an enormous cost when it’s latent and it may be there. If he can do that with Jay Rodriguez coming
back it’s like making two new signings anyway.
How much would you have to pay for that kind of quality? So, yeah, we’re pretty confident that if
Gaston earns his place and he’s got a lot to prove to Ronald but Ronald has
said that everyone has got the opportunity, everyone’s got the chance. Nobody would be more delighted then, I think,
our fans and the rest of the squad if Gaston really kicked on this summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment