CB Fry

At the end of the day if he was only good enough to be at Stockport for twenty years he wouldn't have been good enough to manage Man United would he. Your point is pointlessly facile and utterly lame. Without Ferguson, Manchester United wouldn't have achieved what they have. Just have a quick look at every other club in English football, many of which had equal or more resources as Manchester United at various points in the last 20 odd years or during all of the last 20 years. A big club with lots of resources isn't enough for success. It requires a skilled manager to turn resources into success on the pitch. And those managers tend to have worked up the ranks and justify their appointment. Ferguson has and Ferguson did. Droning on about Stockport is childish nonsense because he has proved to be better than that. He is better than Stockport. He is better than Stockport. He is better than Stockport. Understand? You can keep making out that Ferguson got the Man U job through luck but you're simply wrong.

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Sorry, this is just gibberish. Stockport aren't going to win the Premier League with anyone as manager. Good managers prove themselves at a lower level and then, if good enough, get appointed to bigger and bigger clubs until if they are really good enough they get appointed to clubs that could theoretically win the Premier League or the Champion's League. That is what Ferguson has done. He has already managed his "stockport" and has proved he can succeed at that level. His success then took him to a bigger club. Why can't you understand that? Lots of clubs have extra resources, but none of them have had the consistent success that Ferguson has had with his club. You seem to be convinced that "lots of resources" = success regardless of manager. Tell that to Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton and whoever. Everton were winning league titles when Ferguson pitched up at Man U. Both those clubs in the mid to late 80s had essentially identical resources. Only one of those two clubs went on to dominate English football for a generation. This idea that Ferguson had a gigantic club with huge resources thrown into his lap and simply lucked out is just utter, utter nonsense.

I think Roy Hodgson has categorically proved that it is not "easy" to find success at big clubs. The Stockport manager doesn't have and never will have the kind of pressure that managers of big clubs have to endure, and never have to take decisions with multi-million pound consquences, and discussed and dissected by TV and radio programs with millions of viewers, or in newspapers with millions of readers. The Stockport manager doesn't have every decision, utterance, argument, feud, selection, sale, purchase, spat, falling out, and misquote ripped to shreds by millions of fans, "experts" and journalists every single day of his life. Oh, and then just the small matter of picking a winning team, keeping 25 egos happy, fending off countless agents with agendas who are briefing and counter briefing the press, rising above the grinding axes from local ex-pros happy to pick holes in every thing you do, remembering to wave to the frigging away fans at the end of a defeat to stop being slaughtered on a fans forum. And so on, and so on and so on. Yeah. Easy. Real easy. Just imagine the reaction not only in Britain but around the football world if Liverpool had called a press conference to unveil their new manager and in walked......Eddie Howe. Of course, in your world he'd probably win the treble next season as he's so much better than any manager at any current Champions League club and managing big clubs is such a piece of p * ss. I'd love to see your reaction if Adkins was sacked tomorrow and was replaced by the manager of the Tyro League U-13 champions from last season. After all, that bloke hasn't had the resources Adkins has so Adkins has it much easier than that bloke so that bloke is bound to do better.

He'd win whatever league Bournemouth or Torquay were in at the time. That's your answer, and then he'd move on to a bigger club more suited to his ability. Like, say, Manchester United. And if managing huge, northern English clubs with huge resources, fanbase and history is so jolly easy, why is it that no one has managed to take Liverpool to the title in the last twenty years?

This is a moronic thing to say. He didn't become manager of Manchester United by winning a raffle. He got it by winning the league several times and a European trophy at Aberdeen. Aberdeen. And he got that job by being successful at smaller scottish clubs like St Mirren. He was proven to be a better class of manager than one only good enough to manage "stockport and suchlike". That's why he's won the frigging league eleven times.

Because he is established in a Premier League team and has Champions League experience. Gareth Bale wouldn't now be worth £30-40m if he was still at Saints. And A O-C is no way going to stay at Saints long enough to turn into someone with the experiences Bale has already had. We're at least 18 months from a Premier League game. At least. If A O-C continues his current career trajectory he wouldn't last even a single NPC season with us. We have, if current form is maintained, one more transfer window we can survive with him as a Saints player. I know you live in your little computer game world but if it is true that the big four/five are seriously looking at him, then he will very soon say he wants to go. I happen to think he will stay until the end of the season, but I doubt he will much longer than that. If he plays a role in getting us promoted then he will, in his head, have paid his dues to Southampton and be ready for the next challenge. Jon Jo Shelvy was bumming about in L1 last season and was turning out at Old Trafford today. Alex would be perfectly entitled to think - "that could be me next year. It could be me next month". Don't kid yourself that Cortese is some football goliath that every club in Britain can't take players from.

I can't be bothered to look it up but I would wager there was no statistically significant difference in average attendence during our Prem season when we finished 8th and got to the cup final and our Prem season when we finished bottom and were relegated. We had massive crowds in the final weeks in the Championship and still went down. Your response to the rationally explain everything that doesn't fit your hypothesis ("cup games are historically lower...."etc) suggest there is no causal link, it's just a coincidence this season. And even in your original post you have a 0-0 draw listed in our biggest and smallest gates. The Rochdale-type matches you could just as easily say are harder for the players to get motivated for as it is against "lowly" opposition. Players don't get up for that game and for a similar reason fans don't get up and get a ticket for that game.

This is patently not true. Kaka was never, ever going to sign for Man City. All your example proves is that Sol Campbell will sign for anyone.

I think we're playing the Newcastle United role here. Newcastle used to get bids accepted for everyone and anyone - they had a bid accepted from Everton for Rooney. Didn't mean he was ever, ever, ever going to sign for Newcastle United. We've got the dough to get bids accepted, but if it is true that Prem or soon-to-be Prem clubs are in for him, he'd be mad to come here, and he won't. If we're going to sign a striker, I can't see it being a "top class" one, as we already have two in Barnard and Lambert and L1 clubs don't have or need more than that. I can see us picking up a hungry up and comer to replace the fading Connolly, but I worry that signing an Austin would be a bit of an Asprilla moment bringing in one too many "superstars".

The socialists did it.

I agree with this. I personally think that Pardew would have us around 2-4th place by this point in the season and would have been confident he could have delivered automatic promotion. A poor start to the season is not alien to great managers like Moyes so I wasn't too concerned with our start and I am sure we would have hit form under Pardew. But he's gone, and Adkins can and will deliver automatic promotion this season, so I couldn't be happier.

It will be well after 9pm before anyone starts moaning about media bias against Saints - they'll cover the Championship first.

We've got a squad big enough and strong enough to have a go at Blackpool, could get us a nice little (ie big) tie in the fourth round. Being in the draw for the next round of the cup is always a good feeling. Keep winning, don't bugger about with the team too much, give players a different type of test. Carry on as normal Nigel and get us back in the papers and talked about. We can beat a Premier League team currently employing B. Ormerod and J. Euell.

We clearly weren't "as good as anyone" as we scraped and stumbled and flopped into sixth place with the most expensively assembled squad in the division, and then blew it at semi final stage anyway. Wilde didn't blow all the money, Burley had a top two budget and decided to talk the whole club down "maybe the playoffs would be a good achievement" guff. Watch Adkins and how he talks like a winner. A top two budget was Burley's gift and he blew it spectacularly. Burley blew all the money and then screwed us by not even trying to get automatic promotion. And spare us the "no time to build a squad" routine - Burley had the luxury of an entire half season to get settled in, make plans and get ready for that key full season. All the time needed, all the money any club would need to go up, a gigantic feelgood factor post-Lowe - Burley had the dream hand. An absolute gift of circumstances in his favour. And he blew it. He blew it out of his backside. Of course all the money was gone in the second season - we'd spent a jacuzzi full of cash on players to get promoted the season before. We'd speculated to accumulate but Georgie boy couldn't deliver and screwed us long term. Good riddance to a disgrace to the managers parking space. And his performance at Palace yet again proves how appalling he is. Gutless waste of space.

27 years in the top flight. That's what, sunshine.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the Jol/Santini/Ramos era when Saints divs stormed onto Spurs messageboards giving it a load of large to shrugging and bewildered Spurs fans. Certain Saints fans are not alien to the idea of working up desperate and one-sided rivalries.

To be fair there was a brief period where certain Saints fans went on and on about hating Tottenham even long after Hoddle had been sacked. Primarily message board nonsense of course, as I imagine this load of cobblers from Brighton is too.

Ain't that the truth! Two stonking home wins. Not bad for a team "in major need of an overhaul" and "desperate for Cortese to loosen the pursestrings" and other such guff we've had to trawl through recently. Oh, and we've got no goals in the team either.

This thread is looking even more mong tastic than it was previously. Well done Guly my son.

He'll turn out to be Millwall's Marek Saganowski in the end. Contract-hungry world beater, contract-in-the-bag waste of space.

Calm down dear. I didn't say you didn't apologise, and I certainly never say "I am a better Saints fan" than anyone, so you can stop frothing at the mouth now. I think it's you that needs to "get over it". I just said your rumour was a classic of the genre, and good lord it was. Happy new year.

This was the archetypal Saints forum rumour - the original poster chock-full of self righteous indignation "how dare you call me/my friend a liar/no wonder this forum is going to the dogs etc" completely oblivious to the simple facts of the story - if the chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers had come out and said he was planning on buying a second football club it would not be tucked away on the inside page 57 of some black country local paper with no other media outlet in Britain bothering to follow it up. Bonkers. This was another solid gold classic from Pilchards, hero worshipped as some font of insider knowledge but more often pitifully wrong than right. And full to the brim of the aforementioned self righteous indignation whenever challenged, of course. It's fair to say the golden age of rumours on here is over, but they'll always be some, and Jan transfer window is as good a time as any.

He never went from Everton to Spurs. A little jaunt in Barcelona in between. The only Line-acre rumours I remember were about him coming back from Japan to us.