CB Fry

So bumming around around 10th in the third tier you see as some kind of triumph but you are nitpicking our record in the biggest league in the world? So you think we should have been challenging for the top four with Ken Monkou, Hassan Kachloul, Robbie Slater and Chris Marsden in our team? So success only exists in the lower leagues

That would be why they gave him transfer funds and a pre season to prepare for the following season then Gunn was given one game.

Honestly, you don't need to press the cliche button so soon. I don't want Pardew to leave, never ever said he should. But I am fed up with people who won't accept that this season is currently below par. Being within 10 points of the play offs - ie play off form all season - is par for a club with the resources we have. We're not quite there but we might just scrape it by the end of the season. At the end of the day if you can't suggest we should do better when we have spent what we have spent then when can you? It wasn't so long ago you couldn't move on this forum for bellyaching about a previous chairman who wouldn't invest in the team "if we'd only bought Malbranque etc etc". It's hilarious that when we were skint the accepted wisdom was that "investing in the team" was the way to succeed and previous chairmen were slaughted for "not investing in the team". But now we are investing in the team and all anyone can say is "it doesn't mean anything, you can't get success from spending money". And instead of aknowlegding what we have got, it's just whining about what we didn't get "we didn't get a pre season". I bet Swindon would have sold their pre season for a £1m striker. It's rank ingratitude. Blessed with everything we could want, but still whining about one thing we didn't get. As far as investing in the team is concerned, Nicola and Marcus shouldn't have bothered then. I wish we were as skint as Millwall and Swindon. Because christ you'd have some grizzling on this forum then.

"You need to give all of the teams an equal chance, which we did not have in this case," stated Grant. Yes, that's right Avram. You were cheating by spending money you don't have on players you can't afford. Other teams in this year's relegation scrap were and are not cheating. The teams you finished above last season weren't cheating. You were. The teams you knocked out of the FA Cup and finsished above the season before weren't cheating. You were. The nine point deduction is a fair punishment for cheating and restores the equal chance for all teams.

None of that is the point though. The point is there are far too many fans droning on about how unlucky we are, and look what we've been through and all that guff. We are the luckiest team in the division - we've been given everything we could dream about. If you blow every single team out of the water financially it is not unreasonable to expect that to be reflected on the pitch. It's the same in any business on earth. You spend some money and plan to get a return on that investment. There's too many Saints fans who seem to think we should spend millions and millions and millions of pounds but not expect the manager to achieve anything with that investment. Just a shrug of the shoulders and "money doesn't mean anything". Finish fifteenth. Yeah, fine. Money doesn't mean anything. Well, one day we might have none again, and we'll see what the "money doesn't mean anything" brigade have to say then. In fact I know what they'll say. They'll say: poor us, we don't stand a chance, we haven't got any money. Funny, aint it.

Most teams in L1 actually don't buy any players. Lots of frees, lots of loans. And no one in L1 has bought a player for £1m for about five years since Bristol City I think did it in the mid 2000s. Obviously I'm not saying any of those players are bad buys but they cost money. And it's the favoured arse-achingly boring cliche of the lot that money doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Well I think it's made a difference to us and I am grateful for it. I don't make out it is an irrelevence. Well in a funny way I wish we'd were still skint because you'd be bleating a different tune then.

Eh? Being within 10 points of the play offs would be "par" for the resources our club have. We're therefore below par. And Cortese and Pardew were aiming for the play offs at the start of the season, so it's them that are deluded. And you're deluded for thinking we are somehow more unfortunate a football club than, say, Swindon, Millwall, Colchester (Colchester!), Wallsall, MK Dons and Huddersfield. You can bleat on about how we didn't have a pre-season (diddums) but al of those clubs and many more would kill to have what we have. And finally, not sure what the "with all we've been through....." line is anything other than defeatest guff. If we were still skint and slowly rebuilding post admin then fair enough. But we're not - we are in excellerated growth. We are blowing other teams out of the water with single players that cost more than Swindon's entire team. But don't let that stop you going on about how helpless pathetic and hopeless it is for Britains unluckiest football club.

You are wrong. Ferguson has never been anywhere near getting United relegated. The point is the biggest spending teams are funnily enough all at the top of the league. City have had two managers this season (oh no, NO PRE SEASON!!!!! for Mancini) and are still on course for fourth, which was the target on day one. If you ignore the minus ten we still aren't even in the play off zone which really was the standard for this season.

And "relative to the division" we are Chelsea/Man U/Man City in terms of spending. So "winning more than Dave Merrington did" is not really the benchmark we should be aiming for, is it.

How could Pardew "not have any idea what he was getting into". I thought he was a professional football manager with top flight experience being appointed to take over a club in the third tier of English football, with more money than any club at that level for over a decade. How could he "not have any idea"? Aren't we paying him to have "an idea" or two? I'm getting heartily sick of people making out that Saints are the hardest done by club in British football. Getting a club spending millions with the second biggest fanbase in the division promoted from League One is NOT some unrealistic footballing miracle. Cortese must wish he'd never spent a penny on players because he has invested millions and millions and millions on playing talent only for ungrateful berks to pontificate about how "money doesn't make any difference". I wish he'd spent zero. Nothing. Just stuck last years kids out. Because buying Lambert and Barnard and Hammond and Harding and Puncheon and Fonte makes no difference apparently. Cortese should have spent nothing. Because money doesn't solve anything, does it? Then you gits would have something to bloody moan about then.

What a ridiculous post. Surely the fact that DM outlined how well Swindon were playing outlined the fact that we weren't doing that much wrong, it was more a case of being outplayed. I don't pay for Saintsplayer to listen to div ra-ra-ra-Super-Saints-can-do-nothing-wrong commentary. I want to hear what is actually happening in the match. I am sure there will be a suitable service for you on Mong FM.

Leicester built that squad on one season in L1, with Pearson one of a long line of managers in a very short space of time with a bloated squad to unpick and reshape.

That's funny because it's not me that won't stop going on about the same thing over and over and over again for six tedious years refusing to listen to any reason from anyone. The avalanche of responses to you on this thread alone is proof of that. But you'll be back with the same old shi te next week. Look around, it aint just me telling you to belt up about it.

Well, I think this is a very dangerous assumption and the kind of assumption that Skates were making about Sacha only a year or so ago. I wouldn't think Liebherr would give us a stadium effectively for free, in fact if he did I'd think he was a bit strange and far better to spend it on the team, or not at all. I don't want us to be that much in one person's debt when there is no need. It's a bit like asking your best mate for a £500 loan when you don't really need it. He'd probably give it to you, but you'd be in his debt for no particular reason. There is absolutely no compelling financial, sporting or logistical reason to build a new stadium. Not now and, honestly, not even in the next decade. Even thinking about it would create work and expense we frankly don't need.

Hull aren't good enough for the Premier League full stop. They are only there because Brown took them up and frankly he's suffered for that overachievement ever since. If he's spent the last couple of seasons finishing eighth/seventh/ninth in the CCC he'd still be in a job.

Still think we're in a relegation fight this season? I got your usual smart arse reply a couple of weeks back when I dared to say we had no chance of getting relegated this season. Well? I may not be always right but I am right 100% more often than you are.

One reason is we are currently debt free with a stadium which is more than adequate for the next five years minimum*. Building a new stadium would cost us somewhere in the region of £80m-100m. Which would mean a mortgage and a drain on resources for seasons to come. You seem to forget that the primary financial (as opposed to administrative**) reason we went to the wall last year was failure to keep up repayments on our stadium mortgage. My personal opinion it would be, to use your words, "absolutely crazy" to commit huge funds and energy on a stadium we frankly do not need. I usually agree with TDD but afraid not on this one - we need at least one season with a Season Ticket waiting list before we should even think about it, and then we should just be extending SMS.

It's not truth though, is it. Just your very tedious opinion.

No it isn't. And Tisdale played, what, less than ten games for us. It was a Boxing day game and we'd have got that attendance that day regardless of opponent.

Plenty of people on this forum that yearn, neigh ache, for our football club to play in a souless out of town location surrounded by branches of Frankie and Benny's and JJB Sports. They view a patch of land in the middle of nowhere in an industrial estate on the way to Eastleigh as our true "spiritual home" and curse the day we didn't get a stadium there. Because it could have had a cinema attached to it as well and everything. Which is, like, what football is really about. That, and car parking of course.

...because when the marketing dept of Johnstone's Paints decided to sponsor a cup competition contested between L1 and 2 clubs they were expecting Wembley sell outs every year. In fact, this year's will probably be the highest Final attendance they've had in the competition since they starting sponsoring it. It will be broadcast nationwide, but I doubt it will be "watched" by many people outside (geographically or mentally) of Hampshire and Cumbria.

Especially you.

Thatcher changed Britain completely in her time. No question. Atlee did similar in his time - he built the welfare state which is sneered at these days but was reward for a nation shattered by war and was a phenomenal achievement. He did the kind of things that Obama is doing in the US with healthcare now. It's not a perfect comparison but the same spirit. Anyone who knows anything about British political history would put Clement Atlee up there as one of the great Prime Ministers in the twentieth century alongside Lloyd George, Churchill and Thatcher.

Quite right. You can't move for dinlows making out all Nicola wanted was to "just survive" this season.

They'll come crashing down from £35k odd that WHU are paying to around £10-12k. ie more money than Richard Lambert has ever been paid in his career.