CB Fry

This was in the Sun, although the dead-eyed Cult-of-Cortese bedwetters have decided that innocent naive little Nicola was hoodwinked into saying this stuff by the evil meeedia: "Yes, Lawrie McMenemy and Matt Le Tissier have criticised me but they should know no one is more important than the club. "I simply couldn't accept all these people trying to get freebies here, freebies there. "Listen, if I pay for my season ticket then I expect everyone to pay for their ticket too. "And I'm not interested in being popular, I'm focused on making this club successful." I'm sure if the nasty-wasty evil journalists have misquoted him, then Nicola will come down on them like a ton of bricks. I'll assume he has read the article now, so I am sure a clarification of what he really said is imminent.

How about this, comparing Matt Le Tiss to a bus driver or a spot welder: There are also a lot of people here whose starting point for this debate is "Matthew Le Tissier is demanding loads of free tickets all the time" and are using that to fuel their doe-eyed adoration of our current chairmen starting petty squabbles in national newspapers. Let's remember this has started from Cortese being a twot in the national press.

Nicola Cortese has got so much time for petty squabbles it is untrue. Why on earth he decided to use his first interview with the Sun for a long time (who previously he was having a petty squabble with) to rake over his petty squabble with Matt Le Tiss is something only Cortese can answer. And if you think sacking Alan Pardew was some finest hour for us well sorry, you're wrong. He was a successful manager for us, he assembled the vast majority of the team playing today. Something personal happened between the two of them. It was a **** up at the time, not least because it dumped us into 22nd as the team went into tailspin. Of course the Adkins appointment was brilliant and he has been fantastic for us. The fact that Adkins was a great appointment does not make the decision to sack Pardew a good one. Happy to stand by whatever I said at the time, especially I was right when a huge number of Cult-of-Cortese dinlows were peddling drivel like "it's all evil media speculation, everything is fine". Back to today and we now know Cortese "expects to be champions this season" so lets see what happens if Adkins doesn't deliver anything close to that - say we finish seventh, which for me would have been a great result this season, but a million miles away from what we now know the boss expects. Adkins had a very good schtick in interviews of downplaying everything and keeping everyone's feet on the ground and being measured and cautious. Unfortunately his chairman has royally fu cked that up now by telling the world he expects to be champions this season. Good luck with that pressure Nigel.

What a shower of snivelling ****s infecting our fanbase these days. Matt Le Tissier was a "paid employee paid for doing a job". What a bunch of utter, absolute ****s you are. I'll go back and watch my Unbelievable Video, or the youtubes of his wonderful goals and what those goals meant to me. You bunch of *****s go back to ****ing over press releases from our current chief executive. The spirit of new Southampton fans - godlike worship of a chief executive. A chief executive that moron fans have decided to shove their heads up the backside of. A chief executive. That is your hero? A chief executive. Dismissing Matt Le Tissier as a paid employee whose relationship with the club ended the day his contract for his paid employment finished. Jesus. Meanwhile the chief executive seems to have become Mr Southampton. Do point me in the direction of an interview of Nicola Cortese that will stir my blood like Le Tissier's double against Newcastle. Or his cheeky free kick v Wimbledon. Or his dinky dribble against Liverpool. Do show me, because I think I'm missing something. Soutampton Football Club is about more than one man of course. But Matt Le Tissier is worth ten thousand Nicola Corteses. Ten thousand. Cortese is a termite in the history of this club. Le Tiss is a collosus. But you keep ****ing over his interviews boys. And let's wait for the day which may well come when Lallana asks for a move to a bigger club. Or even Lambert. Or Fonte. or anyone. And let's hear the squinnying and grizzling from the same snivelling ****s who have written off Matthew Le Tissier. You same shameful shower will be squealing loyalty like the *****es you are. I guarantee you were all whining like women about A O-C crying where's the loyalty? Loyalty works both ways. God knows why any Saints player would want to be loyal to you *****s. If Matt Le Tissier is "just an employee paid to do a job" then what chance do they have. Get out Adam Lallana while you can, these fans are a bunch of utter ****s.

I can remember freaking uproar on this forum when I think the Lowe regime (it could actually have been the Wilde regime) were refusing Alan Ball's wife and children and grandchildren free tickets. Absolute uproar. It's a different world now.

We do not have, and never will have the resources to back up an ambition to be a champion's league club regularly filling out a 50,000 stadium. This thread is bizarre. Cortese getting praised for his "straight talking". Saying he expects us to win the league this season, and that we may pay £200k wages when we have a 50,000 seater stadium is not "straight talking". It's ambitious, it's stretching, it's what some fans want to hear, it sounds jolly exciting but it is not "straight talking". As others have said, other chairman of ours saying anything similar would get crucified. Anyone from any other club in Britain would get short shrift on this forum too. If Gus Poyet came out and said the exact same words as Nicola here, there would not be enough mops in the world to clean up the response from the bedwetters on this forum. You people would be going freaking ballistic. When the Blackburn idiots said similar last season we all laughed. When Sam Allardyce says he could manage Real Madrid everyone laughs. I also remember I said I expected us to get promoted last season, and I said Cortese would expect us to get promoted last season. In September 2010 this is, when Adkins got apppointed. Plenty of bedwetters on here then slated me for being impatient, immature. Some people (Pilchards is one I can remember) were trotting out the bo ll ocks about Adkins needing two seasons to "settle in" and get promoted in the third. Settling in, bedding down, stop being so arrogant, he needs time, stop putting pressure on. All that sh it e. All that "we're so even handed, you expect too much" rubbish I had to read in response to my posts. Well, we've heard it now. Cortese expects us to be champions this season. So you can all belt up about the Championship being harder this season. And don't bore us with "we need to establish ourselves and push on next year". And if we hit a rough patch, you can forget wheeling out "well, look how far we've come, we were 22nd in the third tier a year ago, we don't have a divine right to beat Coventry City". Cortese expects us to be champions this season. Swallow it up. Remember when you bunch of girls start having a pop at those forum posters who expect us to win every game, that that worldview is far closer to our Chairman's than your view of "haven't we done jolly well to draw three in row". The form we have shown so far is merely what the chairman expects, not some added bonus. We're winners now. Get used to the mindset.

No chance whatsoever. Cortese and the Leibherr estate will find a point to sell the club on. Optimal time to do that would be after one full season in the Premier League where he can "sell" the idea that we can get into the Champion's League to the next mug. There is no way Cortese would sanction the kind of spending required to get us to fourth in the table, and even if he did, those kind of players are just simply not going to come to us anyway. Those that did would be here for the money which means they be a bunch of c%*%s. Cortese's campaign for the Champion's League will take the form of "I truly belive that Mr [Thai/Russian/Indian Businessman] is the man to take this great club into the Champion's League" before scarpering off into the sunset. Being in the Champion's League is such a pointless and tedious ambition anyway - who really cares. I would be absolutely delighted if we were never, ever, ever, in the Champion's League ever. No interest whatsoever. It's just not what we're about.

The only thing a 7,000 seater stadium says to me is they eventually would plan to put a feeder club into the lower divisions. That kind of ground could grace League 2 no bother, and in fairness League one as well. I know it's not technically allowed now (or is it?) but it could be one day. Next time Bury, or Oldham, or Stockport, or someone smaller like Altringham get into a financial mess, who would rule out a convenient "merger" with Citeh? Even if it's "we'll lend you a stadium. And maybe a couple of players". Handled correctly, it might just work. Or just going the whole hog and sticking a feeder team into the Northern Counties whatever league and go from there. Saints can't keep up with that, and frankly I have no interest in us even trying. Why anyone wants to see Saints in the Champion's League I'll never know. Scrapping for glorious mid table mediocrity in the Premier League and a few cup semis and finals. Lovely. Stick your Champion's League up your bum.

Just watched Saintsplayer myself. We don't score many bad goals these days do we? Highlights never effectively show the work of clearly instrumental "team" players like Jack Cork, which is a shame. But Lallana is just looking unbelievable. Can't imagine there are many better players in the second tier this season. The big worry for me in the coming months, especially during the winter, is that more and more teams and individuals will take the Stephen Carr route, and start dishing out a few "reducers" on our Adam. If I was a opposing manager, that's what I'd be saying - kick him.

Never, ever fails. I can remember being on the forum on just after the launch dinner when people started uploading the early pics of it. A couple of posts of vague approval before someone piped up "hang on, isn't that sh it?". A little bit of defensive "it must be the light/angle of the camera/how dare you" stuff from some before the floodgates opened and the torrent of top quality gags began. The word LOL gets used a lot but that thread had me almost crying with absolute genuine laughter. I'm laughing now just thinking about it. But the serious point is about fans on the board. That bloke was chosen and given £££ commission to make that monstrosity despite being a woodcarver specialising in animals with zero experience of large scale public art commissions or creating sculptures from bronze or creating sculptures of human beings. His one and only qualification "he was a passionate Saints fan". To the badly haircutted idiots on that Statue Board that was the only qualification they looked for, being a passionate Saints fan trumping any sensible qualification for the job. And as they all patted each other on the back in the social club where they made that decision, keeping it in the Saints fans family, because Saints fans know best, they brilliantly pi ssed away £110k odd of genuine Saints fans money, and then another £100k of Leon Crouch's money when he had to stump up for the proper one months later. Which turned out to be a hell of a lot better despite not being created by a passionate Saints fan. Funny that. Keep the fans off the board, forever. Flask drinking, well meaning idiots.

All too soon. Lallana hasn't really achieved anything yet. His major contribution has been assisting us to promotion from the third tier of English football which is really nothing special in the grand scheme of things. Taking us to the Premier League will position the boy as a bit of a Saints legend, but he would still have to play a season for us in the Prem, and play well, to be assured of true Saints legend status. If we're talking about "Legends" then that does not include players that are simply currently very good. Being "the best player since Le Tissier" is not enough to be a true Legend. Saints are a top level team, and our legends need to reflect that.

The one about drawing a blue line under it or something. That was brilliant when it was ringing round the Northam.

Another clueless post. The evil meeeeja making it all up again. A story like this is no benefit to the frigging newspaper or "media station". Do you really think the Sun are going to sell thousands more copies on the back of a sentence on Ricky frigging Lambert. Even though it's one sentence in that paper I tell you now they will have got it from somewhere. From a conversation with an agent, or someone connected with the club (either club), from an off the record chat with Pardew at a reserve game, something, somewhere. It's not just made up. I know people don't like to hear it, but it will have come from somewhere. That somewhere may well be a poor source, or someone with an objective, but it would have come from somewhere. And, it's utterly naive to think "the only people who benefit" are the evil newspapers. Stories like this a seeded to the newspapers by agents as part of the long game of contract negotiations, used by football club as second hand PR to the fans, used by managers to pressure their chairman to release funds, probably used by chairmen to get managers to agree to signing a players they want but the manager doesn't (Ronaldiho to Blackburn), used by players themselves to engineer moves away. Plenty of parties benefit from the press machine. I'd stop calling yourself Professor if you really think little tit-bits like this is just evil newspapers serving their own ends. There's a hell of a lot more going on that you know.

Maybe, but there is far more to be gained from working together than not at all. The pi ss weak attendance at that Liebherr tournament thing could have been significantly higher with a bit of promotion and support in the Echo. Not game changing but the Echo can serve a purpose in helping to shift tickets (for the smaller games, granted, but they all count), corporate packages and merchandise. It also provides objective comment as opposed to spoonfed sanitised tosh that dribbles out of the official site and the divs on here seem to lap up. Absolutely. Pant wettingly hilarious to see them all troop out bleating about any tiny slight on the club as evidence of this mythical "agenda". Oh, and the BBC are in on it too, with the whiners on here every sodding Sunday grizzling about the "anti-Saints agenda" on, err, The Football League show. Infamy, infamy. This is what happens when a generation grow up brainwashed by PR drivel from corporate websites and football management simulation games. Bedwetting preciousness if anyone ever dares suggest their club could ever do anything wrong. Braindead robo-fans parroting "this.is.not.an.official.announcement." Save us all from such lack of perspective, and please preserve the fourth estate. God help us if there's a war.

Which I for one never, ever read. I have no interest in getting news about my football club filtered, whitewashed and satinised into a load of corporate press release guff. Getting Saints news from the official website is lame as fu ck.

For someone accusing people of overstating, you're overstating Leeds points deduction which was -15. Leeds are still the only club to achieve a play off place with a deduction, and Saints came bloody close. A hell of a lot of fans on here like to bleat on about how important pre season is and Dennis Wise was well establised at Leeds before that season. Pardew had just walked in the door and had to build an entirely new team from scratch. The vast majority of that team he built is currently second place in the Championship. And hindsight is a wonderful thing - there were plenty on here in that first season fully expecting us to be scratching about fighting relegation to the fourth tier. And to your other rather lame point, I also think it is vital for a modern day chairman to keep a good relationship with his football manager. You have no idea whatsoever, no idea at all, of what made up the relationship between Cortese and Pardew, so don't bother preaching about it.

Absolutely. The only people that don't like him are ungrateful dinlow Reading fans who have decided that because he is a multimillionaire he must spend every last penny on footballers fees and wages. I remember plenty of grumbling Reading fans moaning about when he decides to buy a sculpture, or invest in an arts project or whatever. It's his freaking money and he aint obliged to spend everything on the bottomless pit of a football club and a bunch of fairweather fans who'll end up hating him regardless. Without him, they would never have got into the Premier League in the first place, and they certainly wouldn't have their nice stadium.

We finished the previous season winning something like ten of the last twelve and winning the cup as well. And Pardew's last game in charge was a 4-0 hammering. The fact that form collapsed on his departure is, if anything, an indication of the players clear affinity and support for Pardew. How you can spin it as proof they had a problem with him is frankly bonkers. The general "new manager effect" rule would be players fed up with old manager start winning as soon as manager departs. That clearly didn't happen with Wilkins. I really don't understand this desperation from some to belittle and write off Alan Pardew's season with us - he clearly did a fantastic job overall, and left Adkins a superb legacy.

We're not talking about a 25 year old james beattie either.

Yawn. Big signings don't guarantee success. No s h it Sherlock. Here's one for you - not having big signings doesn't guarantee success either. Nor does just having youth team product. Nor does having the same manager for five years. Nothing is a guarantee of success. I love it how the only one forum bores home in on is the "big signings" one, and then peddle it like a great invention, like they've just discovered milk. Secondly, as we know bids were made for Jay-Rod and Billy Sharp at least, we know Adkins and Cortese wanted a big name signing if they could. If I were you, I'd let them get on with it, instead of sniping from the sidelines about what a waste of time it all is. Finally. So you claim, nine out of ten signings fail. So, why is it that, on the day our next signing is announced, if anyone on this forum even dares to suggest they might just be no good, why will they get attacked by the happy clappers on here like a paedo in Paulsgrove?

I've been on this forum and its predecessors since the Strachan era and this pining for the good old days when posters said "jolly good point, Claude, well bowled" to each other was going on then and it's still going on now. Pining for a forum that has never, ever existed. When were these super polite courteous debates going on? When Sturrock took over? When Sir Clive arrived? When we got relegated and spent £90k on Fuller? When Wilde stepped in? When Wilde lost interest? When Lowe came back? When we went into freaking administration? When Pardew got the boot? Do point me in the direction of a thread where any of that was debated respectfully and amicably. As for your second point, I couldn't agree less. The positive posters are far more likely to be inaccurate than the negative ones. The positive posters have spent most of my time on these forums talking the club down and then talking them up to equally ridiculous inaccurate levels. It was positive posters who pompously told everyone that Saints fans were "arrogant" to expect to beat Yeovil and Saints should not consider themselves a bigger club than Yeovil. It was positive posters who used to say scraping a draw against some nothing team like Walsall or whoever was a fantastic result. These days it's positive posters peddling the lie that we're off to the Champions League to fill our 45,000 seater stadium entirely because people said you couldn't climb Everest and something about Chelsea not having many fans in the eighties. Positive posters haven't got a fu ck ing clue.

As someone who follows basic arithmetic quite closely, I can tell you that Macheda's transfer fee was absolute zero, which is my understanding of "big money transfers" does not constitute a big money transfer. And, as usual, you completely misunderstand the point being made which was someone said for every one big money success, there are ten that fail. What Turkish has patently not said is there are no big money flops. In fact the man hasn't said anything other than the original theory (ten failures for every success) is utter guff. Posting up links to newspaper lists going on about Chris frigging Kiwomya doesn't change a thing.

I remember the day Scott Minto signed for Chelsea. All over the papers it was. Can't quite remember if it was £15 or the full £20m they paid for him. And who'd have thought Mr McGarvey would have failed after his big money signing for whichever club it was he signed from for big money. Remind me again, or are you just listing any player that was once on the books at any football club.

Just remind me which of you preaching this "we won't break the bank, being sensible, evil agents, held to ransom, sustainable club" stuff were the same ones saying we will be playing Champion's League football in a 45,000 seater stadium in the next few years? Those two things are completely mutually exclusive so do remind me which route you are proposing the club should follow. And before anyone starts having a pop, I think managing the club sustainably is absolutely the right thing to do. But I also think that a result of that is we will never, ever be a Champions League club, which is absolutely fine by me.

It's perfectly possible to wait and see, and make the observation that he looks sh it e on paper. He does. 7 starts for Celtic in a calendar year and 7 starts for Copenhagen in a loan spell suggests shi t e on paper in my book. But of course I will wait and see. We all will. Jesus, spare us from the happy-clappers.