CB Fry

Yes, thank you. My point wasn't that Premier League teams don't make uninspiring appointments - Blackburn's promotion of Keen is Wigley-tastic of course. And Laws was unemployed when Burnley took him on of course. My point is that a Prem team approaching Adkins is incredibly unlikely, he hasn't achieved enough yet and he's not a famous ex-player and has no specific links to any big clubs like Coyle and Laws did. And even if a Prem team came knocking, it is a decent bet that Adkins would stick with us in the interim. It's widely known that Nige turned down some other jobs while at Scunny. In short - a Prem team is only going to be interested in Adkins if we are top two in the NPC. And if we are top two in the NPC then Nigel won't leave anyway.

We'll keep him. He won't be going anywhere for a while. If we go up, there is no club in the NPC that could tempt him away, the likes of a freshly relegated Wolves or Wigan really not that much of a step up if Cortese continues to invest. In the unlikely event that a Premier League club comes calling, maybe he'd go, but really not that likely. He's not done anything above tier three as yet and he isn't high profile enough, even for a Bolton or a Blackburn. He's ours for the forseeable.

What a load of utter drivel. No one is saying boycott the ground or doing any of the guff you're coming out with. Pat yourself on the back for being the very bestest super-dooper Saints megafan in the world and sod off onto a different thread.

SaintRichmond was absolutely wetting himself about SISU and apoplectic when it fell through. I remember trying to point out at the time that his naked enthusiasm for the venture capitalist SISU boys was somewhat at odds with his holier than thou "football is not a business" routine, but he was and is a classic anyone-but-Lowe idiot and was up SISU's collective arse like the proverbial rat up the proverbial drainpipe. Oh dear. But then he also said that Portsmouth would show Saints the right way to build on a cup final appearance by investing in the team.

Err, not really. If a magazine asked me to put together my all time Saints team there is no way Keegan or Paine would be in there. Cockerill might not be in my team either, but I could at least impart some memories about Cockerill - his Charlton like screamers against Spurs, being at the wrong end of Paul Davis, becoming Captain Craaap. Keegan and Paine - never saw them play, they mean nothing to me, just historical greats. Magazine articles like this need to relay the experience of being an actual fan, not just bore-a-thons about the usual suspects. O'Connell picking Cockerill in his team suggests far more genuine fan dom than just reeling off the obvious names.

Give me fu c king strength.

EverythingonTV (link above) is the best stream I have ever used. Couple of shaky moments and a couple of brief cut outs, but nothing like the jerky, blocky garbage I'm used to. Highly recommended.

To be fair, in most professionally run companies that is what an executive board is - the heads of all the departments and the chief exec. So that is directors as such and it is a board not a "board". Non-exec boards is a slightly different thing of course, and they can perform a positive guiding role, or a negative interfering role. There must be that layer somewhere at SFC for the Leibherr family or the people running ML's interests now to have their input. If the club is being run by an exec board chaired by Cortese as described then that sounds good to me.

We wouldn't be anywhere near. Top spot pretty much always goes to a team on two points per game. We've been nowhere near that, and apart from Brighton, no-one has. Last season Leeds, Norwich and Millwall were challenging for top spot. This season it's a one horse race with four clubs battling out for second, all of which have had slumps or periods of inconsistency.

When was this then? The only reference was to the fact that Howe had departed, but was the architect of where they are now. And I think a reference to "Eddie Howe's former team" right at the beginning. You can't accuse coverage of being crap if you can't even be bothered to listen. Mark Clement follows football league clubs all season and has done for years so I bet knows a hell of a lot more about lower division football than you do.

Well, sorry, but yes it does. There is a reason that Stoke has a statue of Stanley Matthews outside and not a statue of Dave Goodwin. There is a reason why Wembley decided on a statue of Bobby Moore rather than a statue of Tony Daley. There is a reason why Blackpool recently decided to name a stand after Jimmy Armfield and not Fred Pickering. Well, this is just the most extreme end of the discussion. The other end of it (and just as silly as yours) is to tear down the Ted Bates statue and treat every single player as being of completely equal worth. Hey, why don't we pay them all the same, from 17 year old 1st year pro to 30+ year old Goalkeeper who turned down a move to the Premier league to stay with us. Why doesn't Nigel Adkins play all players in the squad an equal number of times? Oscar Gobern is the equal of Richard Chaplow. Aaron Martin is the equal of Jose Fonte. Everyone is the same, everyone is equal, it's a team game after all. See, silly isn't it? It's about being appropriate in the moment, not sliding scales. If Francis Benali dies next week, it's worth marking properly. If he dies at the age of 84 when no bugger watching Saints can remember him then it is worth bundling into some All Saints Day type thing. I've said it a couple of times - Dean Richards is a player most fans now can remember watching play. That's why it was appropriate. This isn't some inside right from the 50's. Do you honestly believe if, say, Alex O-C died tomorrow the club should do absolutely nothing until the official mourning day in November. Seriously?

I think you're being overly generous. Not that many "details" to be "au fait" with really, and if he hasn't found the time to be au fait with a tragic story of a good player from our recent past then he's not a very good leader of a football club with a history and a part to play in the community. And he's not a very good leader of a football club with a history and a part to play in the community. Efficient, yes, and will oversee a promotion I'm sure, which is the primary purpose and his decisiveness here is admirable and I support him for it. But tiny little things like this could be handled so much better.

Utter bo l l o cks. I, for one, expect Matthew Le Tissier's death to be treated in a slightly different way to Craig Maskell's. For emotional incontinence there was an avalanche of it not so long ago when someone who was associated with the club for half the time than Dean Richards passed on and various lunatics on this forum and beyond started demanding a renaming of the flipping stadium and erecting statues outside. Lots of stuff about "two seasons" here which is fair enough but you are missing the most vital bit of "context" in that the vast, vast majority of Saints fans in that stadium would have seen Dean Richards actually play, and bloody well too. This is very rarely the case for dead footballers. Your "two seasons" rule didn't seem to apply for a recent Saints related death that was, to pardon the pun, utterly flogged to death. That person got nowhere near "two seasons". Any ideas why that wasn't just bundled into "all Saints day"? And finally, no one is asking for a statue of Dean Richards, but a minutes applause is hardly a difficult thing to do. Our club is being run efficiently at the moment, but that doesn't stop the bloke running it being an absolute pig headed, obstinate, contrary c n u t. And my god he is.

I get what you're saying completely. But it really is the tradition these days, and a minutes applause for a very good saints player servant that the vast majority of the crowd would have seen play (this isn't Albert Hebblethwaite, inside forward from 1952, we're talking about) would have been no bother and worthwhile. There is a regime of pig headed contrariness at the heart of the club and it is rather tiresome.

To be fair, he has had a successful career. I still think he is the only manager to get promoted from all three divisions with three different clubs. He was genuinely successful at Brighton, Fulham and Leicester. Seems to be one of those managers that have lost their mojo, but his appointment at Sheffield United was a homecoming, he is a lifetime Blades fan so had a bit of romance to it. It's a real pity he seems to have completely guffed it up.

Also on the plus side we're still the fourth biggest scorers in the division with the second best goal difference. But hey, we've got some chronic goalscoring deficency, haven't we?

You don't think that "we the people creating money" would make the money that is already in the economy everso slightly worthless? Didn't you do GCSE history and the story of Germany between the wars. "We the people" giving each other a crisp £10,000 note each isn't actually going to make anyone richer.

The hypocrite strikes back. Your favourite pompous patronising routine used to be "money doesn't mean anything, money doesn't deliver success". Your usual pompous arse routine about money being meaningless when your boyfriend the pi ss ant Burley was at the helm. How much "money" needs to be "there" for a "major push" in League one? League frigging one. We're already the biggest spenders and the most expensive squad in the division by a country mile and now you're demanding more money spent for a "major push". Like a "major push" isn't already f u cking happening, we've got Million pound players in the team and said no to multi million pound advances for at least one of our players recently. How much more money? How much more "major push"? This kind of spend-spend-spend nonsense was the kind of thing you used to rail against when you had your head up Lowe's backside. Your feeble attempts to find a stick to beat the current regime with is pathetic.

Really? Lambert and Barnard are two of the best strikers at this level. Lallana and Oxo can, do and will score. We signed Chaplow a goalscoring midfielder and Guly was banging them in until we actually signed him. If you think we need to sign more goalscorers then you need a little dose of reality. If Nigel Adkins complained to any other manager in this division about lack of goalscoring talent in the team he'd be laughed out of town. And we're the fourth top scorers in the division with only one team (the freakish Peterboro) having scored significantly (say, 3 goals) more than we have. We've got goals. It's spirit, commitment and will to win we're lacking.

This was our killer game in hand, and we blew it. Winning our two in hand only gets us parity with Bournemouth now. Sounded like we should have wrapped this game up long before they scored. This is a result from a team heading for play off hell - quite good but not close enough to the level of consistency required to be top two.

One of several iconic Saints players brought to the club by Dave Jones. That man has the best record of acquisitions of any Saints manager in my conscious Saints supporting memory (Nicholl onwards). Richards was just class and this was really sad news. In another era, ie these days, he'd be an England squad fixture. Wolves v Spurs at the weekend is a fortunate fixture for a nice send off, but I hope Saints do their bit. His Saints career was him at his absolute peak and that ought to be recognised.

No he hasn't failed yet. I didn't say he has, and personally I think we will go up. My point was against the pitifully tedious yawntastic "too early to judge" brigade. It is not too early to judge. Nigel Adkins was employed to get us promoted this season. Judgement has started because this season is kinda like NOW.

I think he was trying to say that Adkins getting a team promoted after taking over in Novemember was completely down to him and proves what a brilliant manager he is. However, Adkins not getting a team promoted after taking over in September would be nothing to do with him whatsoever and it is completely unreasonable to make a judgement on how good a manager he is in that timescale. Got to love this forum. The pi s s wipes on this forum have to accept that Nigel Adkins was employed in September to get us promoted this season. Not build a team for a promotion push in 2014. Not to "settle in". Not to "bed down". Not to not be judged until three years in the job. Nigel Adkins was employed to get Saints promoted this season. Nigel Adkins was employed to get Saints promoted this season. Spare us the "it's so unfair to judge so early" b ol l o cks. Nigel Adkins as employed to get Saints promoted this season. Get over it.

What there was TWENTY ONE days ago was the usual emotional fan guff about "this could be our last match" which happens at every club ever and actually comes to pass at no club ever, save for the odd non league club. Plymouth Argyle were never going to disappear, so whatever was said TWENTY ONE days ago is neither here nor there.

So just to confirm you are relying on the Echo to help out with this very worth cause - well done the Echo say I. But you're having a pop at a club for not helping out an ex player when only days ago you were on your high horse droning on about ex players being nothing more than ex-exployees of a company not deserving of hand outs etc etc. Glad to see the Echo, the local paper, providing an excellent service here. Well done the Echo. They're good, aren't they, local papers, eh? Well done the Echo. When is this worthy cause going on your beloved Official Club Website exactly, by the way? And who is the dirty pig?