Yesterday we put out a poll asking whether Saints supporters would be willing to welcome back Ronald Koeman, the landslide result was somewhat surprising.
Yesterday poll asked Saints fans to consider whether they would be happy to welcome back Ronald Koeman to St Mary's given his acrimonious departure to Everton, given the current predicament the fact that there should be some support for him to return was expected, what was not was the landslide majority in favour.
Of course this is only a small proportion of our total support who voted, however it is a good cross section and from the moment the poll first opened up until now the ratio in each category has remained consistent suggesting that it would be a fairly accurate snapshot of the entire fanbase.
At time of posting this follow up article to the poll, 61 % of Saints fans have said they would welcome Koeman back unreservedly, add to that 27% who said Yes we need him and that is a very big majority who feel that he needs to be brought back to the club now.
But there are also 4% who voted maybe, that makes 92% who would not be adverse to his return.
The other 8% was split fairly evenly between those who felt it was never a good idea to go back in football whether it was Koeman or not and those who just can never forgive him for the way he left the club.
The landslide majority was completely unexpected and perhaps shows the depth of feeling amongst Saints supporters that Mauricio Pellegrino is not the man for the job, contrast that with similar polls for Claude Puel last season, at this stage of the season Puel still had a majority who were backing him, if only for the fact that he had taken us to a League Cup Final.
However it was not just about that and even going into the final week of the season the fan base was fairly evenly split over whether Puel deserved another season, ultimately though the board felt swayed by such a large section of the support having no faith in the manager, whilst not a majority, at least not a significant one, it was big enough and season ticket sales poor enough to persuade them that the Frenchman had to go.
Perhaps the board feel that having been swayed by fan opinion back in the summer they cant be seen to do so again and they can't be happy with the results at present whatever the mitigating circumstances.
It is thus fair enough to assume that they are not unaware of the depth of feeling against Mauricio Pellegrino, the worry amongst the fans is that Pellegrino has now won only 1 Premier League game in the last 14, that is well over a third of the total season and this is surely unacceptable to any club especially given that in those games we have only taken 9 points out of a possible 42 and that is well short of even the point a game benchmark for survival in this division.
In other words it is ,64 points per game, over 38 games that is 24 points the exact total Sunderland went down on last season in a season that was considered one of the worst in Premier League history.
Our reasonable start has kept us out of the bottom 3 although that could change come Saturday, but surely enough is enough and the time for the manager to go has now been reached.
last season I tried to be the voice of reason over Claude Puel and I have tried to be the same this season with Pellegrino, but I am afraid that there is little I can defend him over, too many games have been lost, too many points thrown away due to poor selections and a complete lack of tactical awareness with regard to substitutions.
The fact that even if we had held the lead in our last two games instead of tamely surrendering it would have seen us in 10th place tells us that we are not a bad team, that we can get out of trouble with a little luck, but something has to change and I am afraid that is the manager.
The supporters seem to be united over this one, young or old and whether they are of the sort that demands the head of a manager after a couple of bad results or they are like myself and try to see a bigger picture, all are of the same feeling and that is:
"This manager has had plenty of opportunity to show he is the man for the job, he has not taken that opportunity and it has now gone past the point where he can recover his position, he needs to go now whilst there is still time to turn the season round !
To view the poll results so far, or to vote if you haven't already done so click on the link below.
https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/members/!/polls/1939/would-yo