The9

Square peg for a round hole IMHO, I hope I'm wrong - but he's going to be used to players who want to prove themselves, not established pros. Should be good for Ox-Cham and probably Mills, but he won't be used to having some of the egos some of our players seem to have unveiled in the past few months. If his motivation and coaching gets them performing though, great. Top 2 is still minimum expectation for a manager with our stable, established squad and the talent they're supposed to have - let's hope he can deliver. Still not wasting my time going to MK though...

Probably because they don't clash. I've been waiting for two months for a side to wear red against us at St Mary's, but both Bournemouth and Swindon conjured up new third black kits to prevent an non-existent clash (and then had to change their socks anyway). Out kit is predominantly white/white/black, not sure why that would clash with all red. Oh, and we'll see how "jinxed" the kit is when the players start actually bothering, instead of playing slow build up predictable guff which allows the opposition to get 11 men behind the ball.

I'd love to know who "all the PES worshippers" are. I bloody loved the game, inhabited evo-web, made patches, created transfer option files, full Prem kit saves with badges and correct numbers and styles and even made the Saints IFC team with accurate skill ratings and appearances. I bought every Japanese imported Winning Eleven game and every PES game from ISS PE on PSX through to PES2009 on Xbox360... ...and I haven't even SEEN last year's PES, let alone played it. I think the waking up needs to be done by the FIFAese who still think PES has a fanbase. It's dead in the water until it comes up with something unequivocally better than EA can produce "on the pitch" and backs it up with some actually useful online and editing features, including online careers, tournament editors and a fully flexible season editor. Until then people might hire PES occasionally to check, they might even buy both - but FIFA is the leader and will stay so until it stagnates again.

Woo-hoo, so if we can just replicate what happened with that once-in-a-lifetime appalling start and comfortable winning of Div 3, except we're leaving our manager appointment until about a month later, and most likely without actually improving the calibre of the appointment, then we're laughing.

Being a non-resident, I took tickets wherever I could get. Mostly Milton from 91-93, with a few away end excursions just to get in when the Archers was still 3 standing pens and a lot of fencing. Then when the Bike Shed was built I usually went in there, My last Dell match was probably 2000/1 v Leicester, a 0-0 midweek game. I saw quite a few from the lower east bench seats around 1992, but that last match was the only time I went in the West stand.

Um, now I'm no fan of Cortese, and I don't think the "he saved us" defence makes him immune from criticism ad infinitum, but some people REALLY have short memories. Due to the Pinnacle delay we were REALLY short of time from the Administrator's announcements when Liebherr came in at Cortese's suggestion, and if Fry had stuck his guns and timeframe we'd have been done and dusted with the creditors arguing over the split of the proceeds of an auction of Saints-branded ceiling tiles and corner flags. As I said, it doesn't stop me thinking some of his decisions have been short-sighted and pointlessly confrontational.

Well, we assume that. Even so, what's left needs to be worth having, and a lot of people suddenly aren't getting anything near the organisational competence they had hoped for without having to swallow a bunch of unpalatable decisions which aren't necessarily to the club's benefit in the longer term. I'm realistic, Play-Offs or better should be a reasonable expectation this season, but booting out a manager for unclear reasons and faffing about as we lose all direction in his absence whilst floundering in Division 3 isn't quite the vision we were sold.

Dunno why the guy wants to debate who's first, the primary object - or a school head teacher. What's "principals" got to do with it ? Adkins is Scvnthorpe manager until he isn't, and there's no reason for them to think he's going to leave... according to the Saints OS, anyway. . Wharton could have put him on gardening leave, but is obviously still hopeful he won't get the Saints job and will be able to carry on as normal, and his compensation is going to have plenty to do with that. I happen to think Adkins has shown himself to be very principled in not just resigning to ensure Scvnthorpe get the appropriate compensation and continuing with his everyday duties at his current club. But if he isn't staying, he is asking for trouble appearing in public in front of the Scunny fans, who might appreciate the last 4 years but probably don't appreciate the last 4 days. Also FWIW, we knew there would be no manager by Saturday the second Wilkins was in the headline of Saturday's preview on the OS.

I thought we'd almost certainly finish in the top two, failing that would WIN the Play-Offs. I now think we'll possibly make the top 2 and could make the Play-Offs, or the season could end up in utter shambles if it carries on as it has or gets worse.

Blimey, that QPR game must have given her a warped view of the role of a goalkeeper... That's the only game at St Mary's I've been to where I missed kick off by more than 5 minutes (just left leaving home too late), I missed us going 1-0 up through Jermaine Wright - no, REALLY - and singing "we are going up", then Kelvin's at the peak of his un-powers made a massive comedy error of judgement in trying to let the ball run out of play and we conceded Ray Jones' (RIP) goal, before the winner which I've completely forgotten. Probably one of the few matches from the last 5 years I can actually remember anything from.

I'll be interested to see/hear if Adkins makes any comment, or ends up leaving Scvnthorpe anyway. Jimmy_D's timeline makes sense - but the club statement is implying that this brinkmanship is standard in our practices, and that we had a number of other choices lined up in a similar advanced situation.

I'm assuming you don't feel they were due compensation then ? If the deal was actually done then compensation would have been dealt with already and the chairman wouldn't have been able to stop it, and if it wasn't done, he wasn't losing a manager. Nothing he said at that point would have stopped it other than asking for a stupid amount in compensation, which Adkins could have taken care of by resigning anyway. The overall point is that the Saints OS has utterly whitewashed any of this even having happened and people are actually buying it !

He said "last he'd heard Saints had withdrawn".

I agree with your first sentence, though of course logical argument says the OS statement will be proven to be true or false within a few hours.

Other than the Scun Chairman saying "they don't think compo is due" and the comment about ultimatums, everything else ties in. Given that its his and Adkins' word against Cortese's at that point, there's little point discussing it. What I'm saying is that the OS statement is disingenuous as it completely ignores the advanced stage the Adkins discussions were at - so either he was the "leader" and we're backtracking and denying that's the case, or everyone under consideration is at the same stage, so they're all in compensation discussions or considering the offer, in which case there will be no further need for any delay in appointing the new manager. If of course nothing happens regarding a new manager imminently, it's because we'd offered it to Adkins and Cortese threw a wobbler over compensation, which would be exactly in line with what S****horpe said.

No, but the statement is completely at odds with what a chairman with no axe to grind previously has said.

Oh come on, no-one was jumping the gun - with the noises coming out of Scunny, Adkins was ours save for agreeing compensation. Now there's no guarantee there aren't other people in the same boat as implied on the OS, but it's a pretty sharty way to conduct business, to line up all the candidates at the last stage - where they're asked to resign, for instance, and then write off all but one of them. Of course if the "still looking" story is true, and we would have had to have been at that late stage for ALL applicants, then we'll be appointing someone TODAY won't we ? If not, the OS statement is utter crap. But I think we know that it's utter crap already, TBH.

Yeah, cos of course Scvnthorpe's chairman had a huge problem with Saints before this week and he's making stuff up to make us look bad... Hearsay my ar5e.

I hope they leave it as it is, reporting the truth not our embarrassing fingers-in-ears-not-listening denial of everything.

LOL. No you're not... you're veering rapidly away from "Cortese is ace" to "Uh-oh".

Good-oh, now we'll only get self-obsessed ar5eholes as managers.

Rule 1

I'm expecting Cortese's reaction to be to refuse to acknowledge the existence of Scvnthorpe, and ban all physios from the ground.

Yes, damn my enthusiasm for the bloke with billions of quid and his club-saving respected businessman sidekick, I was stupid enough to think things might have been different.

Welcome to the team, slowcoach.