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.