CB Fry

It's definitely not work permit, because work permit paperwork is the last thing you'd do. No club would agree fee and terms with a player and then announce nothing while waiting for the work permit. You are deluding yourselves. Not saying he won't ever sign but i don't think for a minute that it is all done and dusted except the work permit.

Hardly. Personallly I had no interest in the game, in fact I still don't know the final result. Interested to read how De Ridder did on that thread but haven't even opened the WBA match thread. Don't care. I doubt I am alone.

Agree with this. Adkins walked into an excellent squad high on confidence and belief, well assembled and drilled by Pardew. Adkins had to pull us over the line but he had an excellent hand dealt to him, far better than any previous Saints manager in recent history. Maybe Sturrock was as fortunate in his inheritence. As it stands I put Pardew in front on Adkins because the rebuilding and the relative success was greater. Adkins needs to deliver in the Championship, far closer to our natural level, to exceed Pardew in the saints pecking order. There are plenty of managers successful in the third tier that never really break beyond that - Phil Parkinson, anyone? - so to talk about Adkins like he is god's gift is all a little bit premature in my opinion.

Nigel will never be as bad as Ian Brantford.

I read everything you've written. It's wall to wall bol locks. Barcelona can keep their players, we can't. And yes, we get to the premier. Fine. Doesn't mean we'll end up on some non stop spiral upwards. This idea that we'll just finish tenth, then eighth then fifth then third. It's laughable bull cr ap. It doesn't work like that for clubs our size. Finishing tenth ten years running would be a breathtaking achievement for a club our size. Do you seriously think stoke are aiming for fourth next season? Or wba? Or even villa or everton. At least two thirds of the premier league aren't 'pushing for the top' as you claim. Plan A is stay up for club after club after club. Grow up you impatient child.

Eve of what game? A couple of 45 minute kickabouts. Give me strength.

we rarely agree but you're right here. If millwall can be solid top ten it's ridiculous to suggest we couldn't do at least as well. We'll be more than fine next season.

Nice try, but it wasn't me who said if we weren't aiming for the champion's league 'we might as well give up then'. That's a childish, greedy, pathetic attitude. And Comparing us to barcelona is utterly laughable and i will mock that view forever.

Awwww, bless. Hark at the superest dooperest fans. If you think that not being bothered about being in the Champion's League means "we might as well give up then" you're supporting the wrong club sunshine. Go and support Chelsea if you're that desperate for Champion's League football. My realistic aspiration of solid mid table Prem is stretching, ambitous, but actually achievable and would give me a decade of joy if we achieved that for ten years straight. I definitely wouldn't be whinging, *****ing and moaning about "getting to the next level" like you couple of divs. And the comment about comparing us to Barcelona is so embarrassingly pathetic I won't even bother addressing it. Suffice to say I sincerely hope you weren't born in 1977 as your username might suggest as that makes you the same age as me and screw me sideways you're an embarrassment to my generation. I sincerely hope you're 14 because your logic suggests it. Barcelona have claim to be the biggest club in the world. Southampton, funnily enough, don't and never will. And our Aussie friend, same goes. We're never going to be in the champion's league, my point was it isn't completley impossible for us to finish fourth one season - Everton did it once and never really looked like doing it ever again - but it is so unlikely it is untrue, and we definitely should not be aiming or targeting to get there. We're never going to be in the Champion's League. Put your willy away, it's not the nasty man with his limited ambitions stopping that happening. It just isn't ever going to happen, ever.

Don't flatter yourself - there is nothing "imaginative" about saying lets aim for the champions league. That kind of thinking a seven year old could come up with. And there is a hell of a lot wrong with "having a plan to be amongst the best". You talk about "big clubs" going "bankrupt" but don't think for a second that "planning to be amongst the best" could bankrupt us. As Um Pahars rightly says, there is a possibility that in one isolated season we might might might finish fourth, as Everton/Newcastle/Spurs did. But that is absolutely as high as we could ever get. And frankly, I couldn't give a stuff if we never kicked a ball in the champions league.

Everton, Spurs, Aston Villa and Newcastle are finding it pretty much impossible to be like Villareal for instance. We have absolutely no chance of being like Villareal for instance. Seriously you people give it up. We've been promoted to the second tier and we might end up back in the Premier League in the next two or three years. Might. If we end up like Blackburn for instance, or Sunderland for instance, or Stoke for instance or Fulham for instance we'd be doing bloody well and as as well as we will ever, ever, ever do. That is aiming high. That is high ambition, that is the stretch this club could possibly acheive. Can you f uckw its give it up, we're not ever going to be in the champions league.

Patrick Dexter Colleter Blackstock

Errr, except the Sunday Sun is a North East regional title with no connection to Murdoch, the daily Sun or the NOTW. So quite a lot of change really.

I don't seem to remember many people defending Burley while he was here, the season where we dribbled into sixth despite spending a kings ransom on an entire squad hand picked by him, there were plenty of dissenters. And rightly so, his reign was at best a dispicable waste of resourses. Arrived when we were 12, scuttled off to the Jocks after 2 years and several gazillion pis sed up the wall with us in 13th. Absolute waste of space.

We're not going to sign David Beckham so do save yourself the bother of getting all huffed up at people that wouldn't even want him here. We are not going to sign David Beckham. Save your energy

Sorry, I meant significant proportion of the players we sign will arrive mid or end of August. I don't think we will sign a significant number of players. But I do think we will sign a handful of significant players - ie 3 really good ones rather than eight squad fillers. Can't believe I can't even edit frigging posts without paying £5.

Agree with pretty much all of this except the AOC bit. His departure this window is an inevitability as far as I am concerned. It hasn't happened yet for the same reasons you outline above as to why we haven't signed anyone either. Everyone is playing the waiting game to get a better deal. We'll sign a few decent players to improve the squad. The chances are though that a significant number may not actually arrive until the middle or end of August.

Experts from where exactly? American experts going home to their American wives and kids keeping their mouths firmly shut about the single most audacious and pointless genocide in american history. And perpetrated on their own people. Not one of these experts has even considered speaking out on this mass murder they committed in the decade following. Experts with their mouths firmly shut indeed....utterly ****ing delusional.

Quite right. There is absolutely no justification for the public sector to be utterly immune from the realities of the age we are living in. It is grossly unfair for public sector workers to cream off disproportionate pensions to those working in the private sector. No idea why hardworking plumbers, bus drivers, checkout staff, administrators, call centre staff and the like should be crippled by taxes to keep the public sector in disproportionate pensions and cushy retirement ages. Loving the hilarious that the sub-Wolfie Smith rantings of Scargill-wannabes like TheCholulaKid, who has the nerve to chuck the term "reactionary" at anyone he doesn't agree with. His attitudes come straight out of the stone age. This isn't the glory days of sweetheart Arthur from 1984. This aint the miners strike and the public sympathy is nowhere to be seen. The government will crush this uprising into the dust. Teachers, you want a bit more for your retirement? Start saving up. That's what the rest of us evil private sector people are doing. By the way, just to confirm, I had no more to do with the banking crisis that the apparent saints of the health records department, so lord knows why I should pay to plump up their pensions while I'm trying to save for my own.

It's unlikely Nigel Adkins would get three attempts at it, unless his second attempt is a Huddersfield clear third place/play off heartbreak type season. Nicola Cortese, as far as I can tell, is not "allowing" for 3 seasons in the second tier. And why should he, all I can see is someone very impatient to be in the top flight. And let's avoid any bo ll ocks about spending a couple of seasons "getting ready" to be promoted. Tell that to Cardiff. Or Forest. Or Coventry. who would trade in their billions of seasons "getting ready" for a sniff of what Blackpool and Norwich have done out of nowhere.

This is incorrect. If Millwall can be in and around the play offs in their first season back up with minimal investment, and Leeds can finish seventh then it is not "very unlikely" for us to get promoted. It's much more like a possibility. It's perfectly possible for us to finish top six, but just outside that would be the most likely outcome. I think this is closer: What I don't want to hear next season if we are bumming around in 20th position that "staying up would be a massive achievement, haven't we done well, first season back blah blah blah". If Nigel Adkins wanted to bum around the bottom end of the championship he would have stayed at S****horpe. He's here to take us into the top six and he's starting next season. 14th or below would be a huge disappointment to him and Cortese, I have no doubt. With that in mind can the happy clappy bedwetters on this forum avoid pretending that 18th-would-be-an-amazing-achievement-all-we-can-hope-for-and-you-kids-today-are-so-impatient-and-unrealistic-blah-blah Pretty sure the expectation is solid, solid, solid top half. Not from me, but from the manager and the chairman.

I'd say it was because we don't have a core fanbase bigger than, say, sheffield united whose average was better than ours in our relegation season. Those thousands of boycotters returning have not taken our averages back up to even wilde levels. Boycotters flood back, championship-only fans stay home. That must be why we can't even beat norwich for crowds in the third tier.

Probably not, but so what? The strike means it fu cking up the working days and weeks of everybody elses time to cover for childcare. This is actually how wealth is created and taxes are paid. And the striking teachers aren't striking on an education based issue either, just for the right to cream off a bit of extra bunce the rest of the country's work force won't have a chance of getting. So what's your moral high ground point here? Typical public sector attitude.

Ah yes. The Lowe boycott. Of course. Average attendance in Lowe's final season first time round - 23,614. Average attendance in the Wilde season, Lowe gone and boycott over, and we finished sixth and got in the play offs - 23,556. I'm sure you'll come back and say well he still had shares and all those fans had a crystal ball knowing he's come back again and were still boycotting just in case. We'll see how many billion fans pack the stadium for the Doncaster and Barnsley games next season with those 10,000 boycotters back in the game.

Same as you lamely mocking the entire british press for 'unfounded rumours and speculation' about pardew's future at saints. We were both pathetically, pathetically wrong. But i care about blackpool as much as i care about peterboro expanding their ground. Not at all.