CB Fry

Since when have I said Cortese hasn't set us back by sacking Pardew? I said at the time, and I still think, it was a pretty dopey move and set us back a long way. Pardew delivered the instant success I said he would and you sneered at as impossible because it wasn't how Lawrie Mac and Alex Ferguson did it. The point is Cortese doesn't think we've been set back, and Cortese expects promotion, without fail, this season. People talking about rebuilding this season, let's see how we go, no pressure etc etc are deluding themselves. Cortese expects promotion, without fail, this season. That's what Adkins has been hired to do. Not slowly-slowly, gently-gently, don't worry about achieving anything for three years bo llo cks. It's 2010. The days of Lawrie Mac are gone, gone, gone.

I wouldn't call Nicola Cortese a fool if I were you. Pardew was sacked, and Adkins appointed, to deliver promotion without fail this season. Not another pi s s-about season of rebuilding and "we need a full pre-season" and "time to gel" and all that boll ocks. Adkins has to get this team promoted, without fail, this season. I despair of these bedwetters on the forum with their delusion that every manager needs three years before anyone can expect them to achieve anything. Adkins has to get promoted, this season, without fail. Cortese hasn't "put things back a season", he expects Adkins to get us promoted, this season, without fail. Adkins has to get promoted, this season, without fail.

Not really. I enjoy thinking of creative ways of giving you stick in the same way that you like think anyone people are amused by your hilarious "thing" about Hoddle. You've been proved wrong on every single count but I am not wasting time on your load of old plop-plops.

Fancy that, someone getting something wrong about the future of Portsmouth football club on this thread. Wouldn't catch you doing that would we? After all, you knows peoples in the know and stuff. Spare us the pompousity you plank.

Oh shut up you dopey old slag.

Funny how that "know how" amounted to utter, humiliating and pathetic failure at Spurs, followed up by utter, humiliating and pathetic failure one division down at Wolves. No clue, and no "know how" when it came to people management.

And it is also not all about employing nutritionists and playing style either. Man management comes into it and 99% of professionals say that Hoddle had absolutely no aptitude in this area whatsoever. The general argument I am making is against the few on this thread making out that Hoddle was some seismic revolution at the club and everyone subsequent manager was lucky that the Hoddle revolution came first. Well, ball-c o cks. Hoddle was just as lucky to take on a team packed with solid pros signed and developed by Dave Jones. Players that then flourished even more under Gordon Strachan. I'd say the Jones legacy was far more important to Strachan than the five minutes that Hoddle was here. Also, it's funny that we're being asked on this thread to reassess Strachan's time at St Mary's in the light of his current failure at Middlesboro, when the hero of the thread, G Hoddle, was an utterly pathetic failure at Spurs and Wolves. What does that count for?

I certainly don't slate him as a manager for us - he did great and clearly made players like Deano far better. But I do slate him as a person because he is, undoubtedly, a ****************.

Calm down. I disagree with your premise that Hoddle somehow laid the foundations for some glorious future - he was here barely a year, and signed not one player of longevity - the great players of our Strachan glory days that were here under Hoddle were Dave Jones signings. For one - If Hoddle had stayed, Beattie would have been flogged to Crystal Palace. Maybe we'd have built the team around Mark Draper football genius. Stuart Gray signed more significant players for us than Hoddle did. Hello Anders. Hoddle did very well for us, but when he left it was perfectly possible that it was a single good season in the same way that Dave Jone's first and Alan Ball's full seasons were. In fact, of course, he didn't actually complete a season for us. He did well. He is gone. Strachan was better.

I had heard that Pardew had been sacked - it's the lead story on the front page of this very forum. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/ Glad things have all be sorted now. I look forward to seeing news of his replacement on the Saintsweb news page any day now. Any have any suggestions on who it could be?

I don't particularly like Hoddle and did not want him back but he did very well for us when here. But in terms of whose team was more "boring" between him and WGS, I'd say Hoddle.

I know you're just trolling, but anyway: Strachan won the title three times in a row, only the third Celtic manager ever to acheive that - MO'N didn't do it. And he did better in Europe than M O'N, getting through the CL group stages is all a Scottish team can ever do these days and he did it. Twice. He did brilliantly at Celtic and brilliantly at Saints. He did pretty well at Cov until the constant player sales defeated him and he ran out of steam. He's a good manager with a good record.

Most managers waffle to be fair - there is only so many ways you can say no that much in different ways. That said, Adkins does have his fair share of verbal tics. "Simple as that" and "win a game of football" are already mentioned, but he also does that "at this football club" line a lot, which always seems to bug me. Dave Jones and Tony Pulis do it as well, Jones especially. "at this football club" repeated about five times in every interview, just in case any of were under the impression that Dave Jones was managing a greengrocers.

MLT's best days were behind him before the summer of 1997, there isn't any season post Lowe's arrival that was a "MLT saved us from relegation" season. He scored the goals at Dellhurst, but it was by no means a vintage MLT season. A certain Latvian sealed the deal on the last day of the season, and scored another crucial goal in the Blackburn 3-3. Staying in the Prem for the seasons at the Dell post-MLT's prime was certainly an achievement that Lowe can take some credit for, not least in the appointment of Jones, Hoddle and Strachan.

For the self appointed forum smart arse, sometimes you're not that smart. There are plenty of things he could have said, or indeed not said, that would have the supported the "not about football" angle. Think about how Sturrock framed his departure. Pardew framed his departure as management losing faith in his ability to deliver. He could have framed it in countless other ways, and he could have said even less than he did on the matter. I know it's jolly exciting to ping about text messages about ****ging players wives and far be it from me to take that joy away from you. Lots of your posts on here are quite funny, I like them but this time you've been a teensy bit lame.

Pardew's words here don't quite play into the hands of the Cortese lapdogs on here desperate to make out that his sacking "wasn't about football". Oh well. All history now though.

No, but the ruse was still a ruse when Lowe tried it on, and it was a hamfisted attempt to swerve the rules. And the holding company thing was itself a ruse those seven years ago to get around another rule, which is was that football clubs themselves couldn't be PLCs (or something, can't quite remember the precise rule). Spurs started it, and we (and others) followed in creating shadow PLCs wholly owning clubs. SLH was SFC. SLH had no other reason to exist than SFC and SLH went into admin because of debts related to the football club. Not quite the same as West Ham's situation. Liverpool I'm not so sure about.

I'm wondering when someone running this forum is going to settle on a new lead news story on the Saints Web home page. Apparently Alan Pardew being sacked was the last notable thing to have happened at SFC. Be sure to catch the latest breaking news FIRST right here: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/

We would not have been liquidated. Every single takeover of every single club in our kind of situation is greeted with those "24 hours from going out of business" boll ock s quotes. They all say it. If the ML bid was not there, the "deadline" would have been extended and extended and we would have found a buyer, of some description, eventually. You'll notice lots of clubs have been doing that lark for some time, on smaller fan bases than us. How many times have stockport been 24 hours from going out of business? How many winding up orders for piddling amounts have today's opponents been served? There is a club down the road from us currently in administration who could be in admin for the entire season, completely within the rules. So with out ML we may not have got a billionaire, but this idea that we wouldn't have had a football team playing matches last season is just fallacy. We definitely would have. Don't bury your head in the sand.

Actually, 600 isn't a small sample really. Most national opinion polls would be happy with a snapshot of about 1,000. Granted the 600 are self-selecting, but this is hardly a forum of homogeneous opinion and agreement so it's as broad as you could expect. So it's a relatively robust result, all told.

These are both good posts. The petty, childish and pathetic actions against the Echo speak volumes about the man. His "diddums" attitude in the face of any analysis or anyone daring to question his actions show he isn't made of the right stuff to run a professional football club. He lashes out at the slightest criticism with nonsense like banning every photographer and banning nearly everyone from press conferences. Well, this is league one football. If we ever do get into the premier league the scrutiny is far greater. He can't hack it in the muppet league we are currently in. He definitely won't cope in the top division. You need the skin of a rhino to run a football club. Cortese is made of so much crepe paper I worry he might blow away. Oh, and he sacked a manager after a 4-0 win. We haven't scored since.

I'm by far the best riter on the forum so I am happy to take on the responsibility.

What exactly have we done "on the cheap"? We're the biggest spenders in the flippin' league and Adkins got Scunny up, twice, on a fraction of our budget.

The good news is that Leeds did lose ten last season, and Norwich lost nine.

We've put our season back months. We're now unlikely to be challenging the top four before christmas. If the top two teams in the division carry on picking up points at a rate of two per game - they usually do - then we'd need to win nine games in a row to reach parity with them at game 15 (we'd hit 30pts, top couple of teams would hit 30 points). That would be late November ish. We're obviously not going to win nine games in a row so even in a real but optimistic world, we are 15-18 games or so from really being up there - ie February. So we now have a real mountain to climb just to take the pressure off. Good luck Nigel.