CB Fry

I confidently predict that in a few years from now, David Chell will be held in much higher esteem than anyone previously involved with the club.

The five year plan includes getting promoted this season. We will not finish anywhere near 17th, you know it. Stop trolling you tedious idiot. I will return to ignoring you.

Sorry chaps, you're going to have to start swallowing this: "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...champions.html

You'd better take up your query with the chairman. "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...champions.html

Do shut up you troll. "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/3833092/Nicola-Cortese-I-want-Southampton-to-be-champions.html

You're looking forward to a time when the all time Southampton Football Club legend is a chief executive? You absolute spanner.

I've had my "visit" and am now fully supportive of everything this current regime does.... You never know, after tonights shenanigans in Munich, you could be closer to realising your ultimate dream - Carlos Tevez in the red and white. Get him in on loan. Finally the megastar to deliver untold success, as you always said........

Two good posts and a good thread. The weekend was somewhat bizarre that it took about five minutes of some people saying "Cortese has got this one wrong" before others had leapt into "right fine so you all want to get rid of Cortese then?!?" defense and "these ex-players are nothing more than ex-employees" attack. It was some kind of surreal meltdown. Happy to admit I got carried away too, but was attacking a) the people belittling MLT b) the people refusing to accept Cortese could ever do anything wrong, and c) the people weaving stupid theories blaming the newspaper for forcing him to say stuff. That's what wound me up more than anything Cortese actually said. And sometimes I do try and write the most furious polemic I can. It gets the forum going, no question. Cortese is doing a brilliant job all in all, the league doesn't lie, and neither does the transfer balance sheet. But Alpine's good opening post does pose the question about the past and the future. Well, lots of great contributions on here already about what our past means. I have one more line about the future. If you don't learn from mistakes now it can affect the future. Cortese, as we move up the divisions is going to have to be slightly more circumspect then it seems he is now. Yes, of course he will still need to be focused and hard nosed but scoring own goals by getting carried away with his own legend will be dangerous in the wider gaze of the Premier League. If he needs a role model, I'd say his manager is a bloody good place to start. Or, failing that, pretty much any cheif exec from Prem clubs you cannot name. Most of them are pretty low profile.

That'll be you and the Chairman then - he expects us to be Champions this season. At least two of you aren't surprised.....! Point at Cardiff would be fine, and twenty points from nine games would be phenomenal (and well within the 2 points per game typical requirement for top two). What a team!

It came from unneccessary pointed quotes he gave to a national newspaper while he and the rest of us have been basking in the unknown pleasure of being top of the league. Matthew Le Tissier in his recent newspaper interviews had been full of praise for the manager, the team, and Lambert and Lallana in particular. It's a crying shame Cortese couldn't take the opportunity to move on as well. Get on with running the club Nicola, and leave your petty feuds behind. That answer your question?

I got upset about people on this forum defaming the name of our greatest ever player. You're ****ing your little pants about a Sky journalist having a pop at our chief executive. Our chief executive. My hero was a brilliant player, an inspiration to me and my brothers and without doubt the reason I love Saints. Yours is some bloke in a suit.

Ummm, you said it about five minutes ago. Here: What a good game. PS - just to clarify, the LAW does not state 'journalism must be fair accurate and contemporaneous'. There are libel, slander and defamation laws of course.

What facts did Stelling get wrong then? I've only watched it once but it sounded like an off the cuff harmless opinion piece to me. What precisely did he say that was either a) untrue b) anything even slightly equivalent to accusing someone of being a child molester? Or are you really getting carried away getting stupidly upset about absolutely nothing at all?

If you think it is against the law for journalists to be unfair and inaccurate then you really are dumb.

Maybe, never thought of that! My point is, if one had a complete blank sheet of paper and one was creating a charitable foundation wholly connected to the club, I am not convinced that for 99% of normal fans, the names of Iwan Thomas and Chris Tremlett would be first on the list for the ambassodorial roles. Local sportsmen from other fields, yep fine. Get on board. Even local celebrities and notables, yep, get Chris Packham and the drummer from coldplay on board. It's good to go beyond just ex-players. But wouldn't you think it would be something approaching normal to have one notable ex-player, or ex-manager on there? And no, not neccessarily them, but someone? It looks like an aching gap to me. For whatever reason. And before the cult of Cortese squinnying bedwetters go ballistic, I don't really care either way. It's just a very odd gap that I doubt Rupert Lowe, for example, would have got away with.

Not really interested in the original post - looks like hearsay assumptions and a bit of a fuss about nothing. But had a quick click on the Saints Foundation website. I am in no doubt they do some very fine work, but who are the three listed ambassadors for this Saints charity? Nicola Cortese. Saints legend Iwan Thomas. Other Saints legend Chris Tremlett. And nobody else at all. One thing I have thouroughly enjoyed over the last couple of days is the gymnastic leaps of logic that some forum posters have put themselves through to cast Cortese and everything he has ever done as utterly faultless and brilliant and everybody else as having evil agendas and go knows what else. Your next job is to defend those as the best and most fitting and only ambassadors for the Saints (Southampton Football Club) Foundation. I am sure you are all about to tell me it is some absolute masterstroke. Take it away.

There was some plan at one point to expand one of the stands (can't remember which one) and have the road going under it. That might have been from the seventies or early eighties though.

Sorry, don't buy it. No journalist forced Cortese to use the phrase "people wanted freebies here, freebies there". That was a pointed phrase used by the protagonist, not some forced misquote. Cortese could have quite easily not bothered mentioning freebies at all - we are, after all, top of the freaking league. The reporter from the sun really doesn't care about freebie tickets. It was clearly a point Cortese was determined to get across. Isn't it funny that absolutely everybody involved (The Sun, MLT, Stelling) has a shadowy agenda except the naive innocent Nicola Cortese. There certainly would not be the depth and passion in the support. Well said that man.

Fair enough. Jolly interesting how you launched into your original "there's no demi-gods, there's no superheros, grow up" routine on the back of me saying something utterly anodyne about Matthew Le Tissier - basically that I think his contribution is worth more to the city than someone's mum working at Tesco for 30 years. A harmless, pretty undeniable statement but greeted with furious sneering by you. Let's not forget who started accusing people of thinking people are demi-gods. Weirdo. This forum is resembling the church of Scientology at the moment. Populated by dead-eyed robo-thinkers coldly defending their deity and desperate to stamp out and sneer at people promoting the enemy by saying controversial things like "MLT means more than someone who works at Tesco" or "actually MLT did not come near to destroying the club". The fact that anodyne phrases like this are interpreted as a de facto attack on Cortese speaks volumes about the strength of the cult. Listen you chaps in the cult, get your head out of Cortese's arse and get used to the fact that most normal Saints fans would like the space to say Matthew Le Tissier was and is a force for fantastic good for this football club. Stop trying to stamp it out with your sneering.

So, just to confirm you're allowed to accuse people of treating Matthew Le Tissier like an untouchable demi-god but get all uppity and offended if people accuse you of the same just over a different person. And then start having a pop at people over their "mental age". What a charmer you are.

Glad you've been reading thesame cult-of-Cortese demi-god worship as me then. You're right, it's fuc king loopy.

That's funny because quite a lot of people on this forum were saying the deal was dodgy and were getting hell's abuse from happy-clapper scarfers squinnying that negative thoughts on this forum would scupper the deal. The Pinnacle bid would never have happened, MLT had seen the light on that towards the end anyway, so there is no point throwing forward some made-up scenario where they were successful in their bid and then "disastrous". Either way, we would have never, ever have been "destroyed" by Matthew Le Tissier. Cretins on this forum are a disgrace at present. Earlier on someone was saying MLT's contribution was worth no more than "my mum who worked at Tesco for 30 years" and now this garbage. This is Matthew Le Tissier you people are belittling, smearing and sneering at. Shame on all of you.

Cortese could have done an interview only about positive things. He didn't need to mention freebies or "these people" or anything like that. There are plenty of positive things to say without talking about freebies. If he didn't mention freebies he's had all day to issue a clarification. And this was not a "response to a half baked story" it was a set-piece interview. And if we are talking "ALL the facts" please don't peddle the supposition that the club would not exist without Cortese/Leibherr. It would. It was never, ever going to go out of business. We may not be top of the Championship today, but there was absolutely zero chance Southampton would have folded. Zero chance.

For one Cortese didn't need to mention freebies at all. Most interviews with football chairmen in national newspapers don't tend to cover "who are you giving tickets to these days then". It would not have been on the reporters list of questions. And if we are to swallow your gigantic dose of disingenuousness, who are "these people" then? Kevin Williamson of Sholing? Gavin Snorkdale of Eastleigh? Barry Shi tpeas of West End?

Wrong. In recent interviews with the Echo MLT has been very positive about Saints, Nigel, Lallana and Lambert. No quotes about Cortese, no mention of him, no nothing, no points scoring. Those articles got very little airing on here because it didn't fit the "evil Echo have an anti-Saints agenda" horsesh it peddled on here. We could have taken from that that MLT had indeed STFU about it. It was Cortese that has continued it and decided to petty point score again. Let's remember this has started from Cortese being a twot in the national press. The point stands.