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Let's Hope That Our New Man Is More Mo Po Than Mo Pe !

Saints fans will be hoping that Mauricio Pellegrino is nearer to his similarly named fellow countryman than his immediate predecessor at St Mary's.

There are many comparisons to be drawn between Mauricio Pellegrino's arrival at St Mary's and his fellow Argentinian Mauricio Pochettino when he turned up at Saints in January 2013.

It is not only their country that they share in common, nor their ages with our new man being only five months older than the now Spurs boss, but also the manner in which they arrived at St Mary's.

Both came from managing clubs in Spain and were unemployed when approached by Saints with a record that does not exactly fill you with optimism. Indeed both were replacing managers who on paper at least seemed to be have better records.

But as Pochettino showed, sometimes a manager is a good fit for a club and that proved to be the case when he arrived although sadly he very quickly showed that he had little appetite or love for Southampton it's football club or the fans, steadfastly refusing to speak English in public.

So hopefully the comparisons will stop at statistics and Mauricio Pellegrino will show that he is overall a more dedicated manger to our cause, the first advantage is he apparently speaks fluid English from his time at Liverpool where i'm sure he would have learn't some of the Scouse vernacular, this will come in handy because he will be needing to use such local Merseyside phrases as "Do one La !" in the coming weeks.

Pochettino was dubbed by myself on this website Mo Po a nickname that caught on, Mo Pe does not have quite the same ring and it reads a little depressingly inferring he will mope about.

Perhaps Mo Pel would be better and it sounds much more positive than either Pochettino's monicker or anything else I can come up with.

What Saints fans do want from Mo Pel though is for him to play a far more attractive game than his predecessor, he has the squad to be able to do so and given that at times it appeared that we got to 8th and a Wembley Cup final in spite of Puel and not because of him, I think our squad is capable of yet another good season with the addition of one or two more central defenders.

The main thing though is that Mo Pel keeps the good work built on over the past few years and he deserves the chance to show he has what it takes and that the fans give him time to get things right.

It should be remembered that after taking over from Adkins Mo Po did not exactly excel in the final half of that season, indeed he gained exactly the same number of points as his predecessor did in the same number of games meaning that at the end of 2012/13 season the fans were not convinced about his abilities given his track record.

However we did not get on his back and gave him time and patience, something that Claude Puel did not have the luxury of.

I am not defending Puel, in the end he had to go, but there were people on his back before August was even out and that did not help his task.

We need to look back and give Mauricio Pellegrino time to show that he is the man to take us forward, we need to give him patience and more importantly we need to give him support.

There are those who are ready to knock the club at every opportunity, some seemed to be just waiting to say I told you so !

We have to take the strategy that we are for one good reason, that is we have no choice, we cannot compete with the top six on level terms, they have much more money, we have to compete the way we are doing, the only other alternative is to be another Stoke or West Brom, solid workmanlike sides with few players any other club wants, so they don't endure the summers we do, but it has been a good ride over the last three years, there is no reason why it should not be over the next three, hopefully Mauricio Pellegrino will still be here to enjoy them, if he is then he will have done his job.

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