CB Fry

Been valued at everything between £500k to £50m on this forum.

I bet he had heard of him long, long before you had and I bet he has seen him far, far more times than you have. And I bet he had had more conversations with people in Italy and Uruguay about him than you've had warmed-up dinners. What's your razor sharp judgement based on?

People allowed to generalise about journalists though? And the initial question was based on a "he's never played the game" generalisation. But hey, who's counting?

No idea - Why does he have to have played professionally? Most footballers are dumb fu cks.

I would venture he does. Being that 90% of this forum had never heard of Gaston before Sky linked him with us, sneering at a specialist journalist who knew about him from his first club is rather pathetic.

They're all dull - the Coventry one is pretty much the same as the Reading and WHU ones, and they had "interesting seasons". If anything the whole thing says the BBC Match reports are pretty dull reading. And they are, too.

Hmmm. I like a word cloud, the can be illuminating, but that's a bit dull. Be good to see one with the Saints club and player names taken out. What you want to get to are the words that might define our season, not just the fairly obvious fact that Nigel Adkins gets a name check in each match report.

He's a South American football expert. He's been observing and commenting about SA football for many years. Rest assured he certainly couldn't give a flying frig about what the dribblers on this forum think.

Great logic. The OP seemed to be inferring that Yoshi is "everything that Fonte isn't" on the back of a performance against the mighty UAE. Jose would, I wager, also look good against the UAE given half a chance. Therefore the entire debate is pointless. Performances against the UAE are meaningless. Performances against Premier League attacks is what matters.

You don't need to know anything about Asian football to know the UAE aren't as good as Manchesters United and City. Sheesh.

I lived in Cheltenham for eight years and it was Gloucester, even when the Robins were well established in the league. And then Swindon which is top of the rankings on this survey and sounds about right. Hereford? Never known anyone in Cheltenham that would class HUFC as their main rival. So this Hereford thing must have happened quite recently if true. You sure you live in Cheltenham, Dune? You never used to. Is it part of the new persona?

In fairness, Steve Bull didn't even prove himself at top flight level, let alone anywhere else. Beattie was a proven Premier League striker.

Quite annoying that Bompey have sneaked in as our third rivals. Would have been great if there was no acknowledgement of them at all.

Jus'doing ma job, sir. Carry on.

Perfectly possible if he keeps scoring. There's not that many options for Roy.

This I agree with - if we moved to the sash permanently, or even quarters, I can see it. Fine. But what we have done is neither distinctive nor reflective of our history. It's an utterly anonymous, thoughtless, tossed off piece of crap. We're now aping Swindon and Barnsley. And Forest. And Liverpool. And so on. Oh well, we're stuck with it. I'm over it Let's see what we come up with next season.

Well we're not getting confused with Southampton anyway. But yes, how brilliant be the only club in world football to play in plain red.

These two above are interesting discussion points and can be debated. This one isn't. Nice try though.....

Phil's done some punditry for Five Live already. Pretty good.

No one is saying MLT is the club. Not me. Not anyone. But plenty on here respond to any criticism of NC as "an attack on the club" or "destablising the club" or other such overreaction. Nicola Cortese is not the club.

Actually I didn't intend that many layers of mockery, although I may stick with it now. Italian bloke, swiss bloke. All the same to me. Just someone who will be here for a while and then gone.

Matt Le Tissier has been mocked, written off, and faced knock backs his entire career. But it won't stop me having a go: He screwed up running a nightclub. Couldn't keep it in his trousers a while back. Blew his chance of true greatness by not moving on to a bigger club. Did a stupid spread betting thing, and even more stupidly put it in his book. His support of the Pinnacle bid was a complete balls up. As a player he eat badly, didn't really look after himself as a player which no doubt robbed him of a few % points of performance. He has a big nose and appalling hair and wore a shi te suit on National TV on Sunday. Let's see how distrupted MLT will be after that from me.....not at all. It's the Cortese-boys obsessed that a few jibes at the CEO is somehow shaking the club to its foundations. Cortese is not the club and Cortese should be able to take a few digs. And the Cult-of-Cortese on here need to be able to take it too and accept that people ripping into the CEO is not some attack on their football club. Nicola Cortese is not Southampton Football Club.

Is Matt really "constantly mocking the club" on Sky? "Constantly mocking the club?" I would question a) "constantly" - how often has this really happened? I am sure that the team on Soccer Saturday have several other major Premier League matches to preview most weeks and have got better things to do than talk about Saints. and I would question b) mocking "the club". Nicola Cortese is not "the club". He is not Southampton Football Club. He is a Swiss bloke who happens to be the present CEO. And if people want to mock him, mock away. As you say, he's no Saint, and he ripe to be mocked. He needs to be able to take it, that's life in the public eye I'm afraid.

Lordswood - are you saying Cortese, not Adkins, told Sharp he was going. And Adkins told Sharp he wanted him to stay? Just want to check we're reading this right?

No I don't want MLT running the club and during the time Pinnacle was happening I talked on here a lot on why I didn't want MLT amywhere near running the club beyond a figurehead do-nothing Hon. President type. He couldn't run a nightclub. MLT is a good pundit too, though, and great to have him on the nation's biggest football broadcaster. Cortese is a businessman running the club. He's doing a good job in the main. But he has deminstrated contrary petty behaviour (none of which has contributed to our success on-pitch - banning the Echo does not help us get promoted). One day that behaviour may harm us. MLT however is a Saints legend and nothing this Swiss bloke can do will stop that. He might try and push the Echo away but he cannot extinguish a true legend. Let's see how many "Cortese-Unbelievable" DVDs the club shop can sell. Unfortunately from the loons on here, quite a few.