Claude Puel - A Brief Overview
Tuesday, 23rd May 2017 15:47 by Tim Saint

Message board regular Tim Saint gives us his overview of Claude Puel's season at St Mary's, is he as bad as some would make out ?

Europa League -
We seemed to only take 2, perhaps 3 games seriously and in the rest we adopted the soon to be renowned boring, don't concede approach, using far too many changes and negative tactics. Yes we had a bit of fight in Milan and should have won, but as usual we couldn't score. The Prague away performance was particularly awful, but the players clearly didn't think so judging by their reactions to the boos. 1 more point would have seen us qualify in a group that we should have won quite easily. 4/10

FA Cup -
Changes galore again, so we needed a last minute winner in the replay to beat Norwich. Against Arsenal in the next round, Claude fell on his own sword with the most weakened team of the season and the performance and result was nothing short of embarrassing. 1/10

League Cup -
It was great that we got all the way to the final and had a top day out at Wembley. We were unlucky not to win and on another day with a different linesman, we could have - but didn't !!

We started the cup run with a much changed side v Palace and came out 2-0 winners with Hesketh scoring - whatever happened to him BTW ?

Against Sunderland in a hugely changed team, it took some magic from Boufal to light up a damp squib. We seemed to take it a bit more seriously v Arsenal and got a great win despite a few changes. This was followed by the tactical masterpieces against Liverpool, both home and away - which were not pretty to watch, but certainly effective. 8/10

League -
A few good games at home and away, but in general too many tedious boring games, with us set up not to concede and hit them on the break, rather than attack and score.

Perhaps the standards were set early on in the season, with those draws v Watford and Sunderland. We never really put a team to the sword, especially at home and a lowly return of 17 goals from 19 home games (2nd worst in league) tells the story at St Marys - especially when 9 of those were scored in the 3 home games v Palace, Burnley and Leicester.

The wins at West Ham, Bournemouth and Sunderland were the stand outs away from home this season, but losses at Palace and Everton, coupled with the no shots performance at Anfield put things back into perspective, not to mention the home defeats to Spurs, WBA, West Ham and Man City.

Puel utilised far too many changes in personnel throughout the season, blaming this on fixture pile ups, however those fixtures were often ones that were not taken seriously. We never seemed to know our best team and changed to experiment, to rest and for the sake of it - right up to the last few games of the season. There was no consistency through the whole season. Yes we had some injuries to key players, but every team has injuries, so we should have addressed them, or just got on with it and not used it as an excuse. We failed to recruit in key positions over the summer and let players go without replacing them, leaving us to panic buy / loan in January in an attempt to compensate.

Puel often used too many defensive midfielders in his line ups, which seemed bizarre when we needed to win games in Europe and the League. He also appeared to have favorites who played most weeks and if other players showed any form (Redmond, JRod) they would be benched the following week. He should also allocate the penalty taker before the match, to avoid argument and further misses !!

We somehow stumbled to 8th, mainly because nobody else, like us, really cared once 38/40 points was reached. We pushed on under previous managers but this season, the players have been on the beach for weeks.

The reality is we finished above Bournemouth on goal difference. West Ham had an awful season, yet we were 1 point above them. Leicester had a relegation scrap and finished 2 points below us - and even Swansea who have been in the bottom 3 all season and had 3 managers were only 5 points behind us.

Everton who were without Bolassie for most of the season, were an embarrassing 15 points above us !!

I feel that if we had not tinkered with the team so much and set ourselves up to actually win games, then we could have progressed in the Europa and challenged for 7th place, as well as enjoying our day out at Wembley.

Puel unfortunately did not give us the 'opportunity' or 'possibility' to do this and therefore gets a generous 4/10 for our league performance.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters

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redandwhitedee added 15:58 - May 23 Koeman set us up to win games and lost 6-1 at home.. setting a side out tactically is never an easy job. Puel got the tactics right more often than not.. he was let down all season very badly by poor finishing.
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Number_58 added 15:59 - May 23 In answer to the Jake Hesketh question, he's had a bad injury and had an operation. Won't be back in training until August. I know cos his mum told me.
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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 17:31 - May 23

I agree with the report although I would've given the league cup a 9 out of 10. You can't really criticise how we got to the final because its all about getting there. Puel couldn't have done a lot more in that final, we were great and deserved to win it.
Overall, Puel should go. We were lucky to finish 8th, normally 46 points would see you finish 13th or 14th. We've been spoilt in recent years with excellent managers and Puel isn't as good as Poch or Koeman. I can't see him taking the club forward and I'm not sure high profile players would want to come and play for him. I'm not convinced that most of our current players like playing for him.
If we can get Unai Emery then that would be brilliant, 2nd choice would be Marco Silva, both are up there with the best young managers in Europe, who would be interested in pushing us into the top 6 again.

aceofthebase added 18:03 - May 23 Silva a bit like array. Would take us down. WHope the he'll is Emery? Why would any other manager be better than Puel. They would still have a team that just cannot score.
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aceofthebase added 18:05 - May 23 Like Harry
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SaintGeorge added 09:00 - May 24 Nothing forgives boring football
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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 09:16 - May 24

'Silva would take us down'. What are you on about? Hull only had 16 players when he took over and they'd just sold thier two best players. He had nothing to work with, they probably had the worst squad in the league. Yet he got them competitive and won a fair few games. Ultimately they didn't have enough quality to stay up but put Silva in charge of a team good squad of players like Saints and he'll get results. His sides are good to watch, play entertaining attacking football, and when he speaks about the game he doesn't send you to sleep! He did amazingly well in previous jobs, performed miracles in his first job in Portgual and did incredibly well at Olympiacos.
'Who the hell is Emery?' He won the Europa League 3 years on the trot with Seville. That pretty much says it all.

SaintBrock added 14:36 - May 24 So far one of the three in your pic, Nick has left the club so one down two to go. Take your pick but maybe the bloke on the left first followed by the bloke in the middle. Either way!
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qnehl1 added 11:05 - May 25

some of your rankings are strange

Europa league - Fair
League cup - 8 ?!? if 10 is winning it, what is 9? losing in in the final?
FA cup- 4th round exit surly deserves more than a 1. 1 would be losing in the first leg of the first round against Norwich .
League- yes we have been boring, but an 8th finish is an 8th place finish. Can you make an actual case for us being better than any of the top 7? surly performing as expected deserves more than a 4?

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TimSaint added 23:47 - May 29

gnehl1
Apologies for not replying earlier, but have been on my end of season football tour to Germany.
In reply to your questions, I hope the following suffices, but bear in mind that this is just my own personal opinion and not that of TUI.

League Cup - If we had won it then yes, I probably would have given a 10, but the following are my reasons for down marking (by a single point from your 9) My experiences of boredom at the Sunderland game, together with a not very exciting Palace victory were brought about by not only the fact that they were early rounds, but the fact that far too many changes were made. It was as if we didn't take the competition seriously until the Arsenal game. Additionally, as a team, we played very well in the final, but unfortunately the defensive and midfield mistakes for the Man Utd goals were equally as costly as a wrong offside decision.
FA Cup - We threw away the lead twice away to Norwich - including an injury time equaliser. This shouldn't have happened regardless of the 8 changes made from the previous game. The replay was a very tedious affair and not being able to score until injury time, was again our problem.
The Arsenal game was a disgrace in terms of team selection and performance, then to say it was a 'good lesson' afterwards takes the biscuit. I therefore stand by the 1/10 mark.
League - of course 8th is 8th, but as I said in my article, we rather limped into 8th, as like us, everyone else was on the beach. We just didn't kick on and put in performances at the end of the season, such as when United were there for the taking. In fact, we didn't win against any of the top 6 this season. Changes of personnel happened all season, so my point was that had we had some consistency with the team, then we could have improved results and challenged the top 7, as 15 points behind Everton was quite embarrassing. I mentioned our league position in respect to other teams, but to put things into further perspective for you, look at some of these stats from this season....
Lowest points ever (by 3) for finishing 8th in Prem League
5 Successive home games without a win or a goal - and counting !!
2nd Lowest home scorers in Prem
Worst shots to goals conversion rate in the Prem
Scored more goals in our 02-03 relegation season

Scoring was clearly our problem all season, but that was down to the way we set up and then losing VvD meant we were far more defensive minded. We could have used Caceres (even at Wembley) but we persisted with Jack and Yoshi. Strange when Caceres was available and that the rest of the team was tinkered with so much.
I missed just one home game this season, attended 6 league aways, 2 Europa aways and did the Arsenal League Cup away and obviously Wembley - so I can only base my observations on what I have seen and those additional stats I have just quoted for you.
I would be interested to see you scores and justifications of them. After all, football is all about difference of opinion and it is good to talk Saints.