CB Fry

Win a cup every day of the week. I have no interest in Saints being in the champion's league. Which is handy because we probably won't ever be. A cup final is a day out, a trophy, a lifetime's memory, something in the record no one can ever take away, something that creates lifetime club legends, for those of us that don't view great players as "nothing but employees" of course. I bet Everton fans would have loved to have won a cup instead of their aborted knocked-out-in-qualifying champion's league campaign.

Hmm, so ex-Southampton players have some kind of emotional contract with the clubs where they have their greatest success then? You're saying being a southampton legend is say, somehow, more than just a job? Well, um, not if you are Matt Le Tissier, it seems. So I this "being a Southampton legend" is just a job sometimes and some kind of emotional blackmail at other times. Decided by you as and when. Beattie should sign for Pompey in a heartbeat if they want him. With the fan base we've got, we don't deserve any more bloody legends. Maybe Pompey might show some gratitude to him in the future instead of writing them off as employees paid to do a job like you do.

Our goal difference, after ten games, is plus thirteen. Jesus we're good.

Not really how TV works though is it. There is a reason why Coronation Street is on at half past seven and not quarter to midnight. When ITV had their brainwave to put Premier League highlights on Saturday evening (7ish it was, with Andy Townsend's tactics truck) no bugger watched it. Or they did, but in precisely the same numbers that watched Match of the Day at 10:30. I watch the FL show on iplayer or if its on, on the red button on Sunday morning. It doesn't warrant going on any earlier Saturday night, but a regular BBC repeat mid morning (or mid afternoon) on a Sunday would be a good idea.

This made me LOL. Anyway, I remember the days when Rupert Lowe tied up confidentiality clauses and everyone got jolly upset and outraged. Turns out they are now officially a brilliant thing to do.

More evidence of the anti-Saints bias on the BBC then. Great interview, BTW.

I confidently predict that in a few years from now, David Chell will be held in much higher esteem than anyone previously involved with the club.

The five year plan includes getting promoted this season. We will not finish anywhere near 17th, you know it. Stop trolling you tedious idiot. I will return to ignoring you.

Sorry chaps, you're going to have to start swallowing this: "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...champions.html

You'd better take up your query with the chairman. "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...champions.html

Do shut up you troll. "That was quite emotional and got under my skin. I hope we are celebrating like that again next May. "And I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions" Nicola Cortese, September 2011. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/3833092/Nicola-Cortese-I-want-Southampton-to-be-champions.html

You're looking forward to a time when the all time Southampton Football Club legend is a chief executive? You absolute spanner.

I've had my "visit" and am now fully supportive of everything this current regime does.... You never know, after tonights shenanigans in Munich, you could be closer to realising your ultimate dream - Carlos Tevez in the red and white. Get him in on loan. Finally the megastar to deliver untold success, as you always said........

Two good posts and a good thread. The weekend was somewhat bizarre that it took about five minutes of some people saying "Cortese has got this one wrong" before others had leapt into "right fine so you all want to get rid of Cortese then?!?" defense and "these ex-players are nothing more than ex-employees" attack. It was some kind of surreal meltdown. Happy to admit I got carried away too, but was attacking a) the people belittling MLT b) the people refusing to accept Cortese could ever do anything wrong, and c) the people weaving stupid theories blaming the newspaper for forcing him to say stuff. That's what wound me up more than anything Cortese actually said. And sometimes I do try and write the most furious polemic I can. It gets the forum going, no question. Cortese is doing a brilliant job all in all, the league doesn't lie, and neither does the transfer balance sheet. But Alpine's good opening post does pose the question about the past and the future. Well, lots of great contributions on here already about what our past means. I have one more line about the future. If you don't learn from mistakes now it can affect the future. Cortese, as we move up the divisions is going to have to be slightly more circumspect then it seems he is now. Yes, of course he will still need to be focused and hard nosed but scoring own goals by getting carried away with his own legend will be dangerous in the wider gaze of the Premier League. If he needs a role model, I'd say his manager is a bloody good place to start. Or, failing that, pretty much any cheif exec from Prem clubs you cannot name. Most of them are pretty low profile.

That'll be you and the Chairman then - he expects us to be Champions this season. At least two of you aren't surprised.....! Point at Cardiff would be fine, and twenty points from nine games would be phenomenal (and well within the 2 points per game typical requirement for top two). What a team!

It came from unneccessary pointed quotes he gave to a national newspaper while he and the rest of us have been basking in the unknown pleasure of being top of the league. Matthew Le Tissier in his recent newspaper interviews had been full of praise for the manager, the team, and Lambert and Lallana in particular. It's a crying shame Cortese couldn't take the opportunity to move on as well. Get on with running the club Nicola, and leave your petty feuds behind. That answer your question?

I got upset about people on this forum defaming the name of our greatest ever player. You're ****ing your little pants about a Sky journalist having a pop at our chief executive. Our chief executive. My hero was a brilliant player, an inspiration to me and my brothers and without doubt the reason I love Saints. Yours is some bloke in a suit.

Ummm, you said it about five minutes ago. Here: What a good game. PS - just to clarify, the LAW does not state 'journalism must be fair accurate and contemporaneous'. There are libel, slander and defamation laws of course.

What facts did Stelling get wrong then? I've only watched it once but it sounded like an off the cuff harmless opinion piece to me. What precisely did he say that was either a) untrue b) anything even slightly equivalent to accusing someone of being a child molester? Or are you really getting carried away getting stupidly upset about absolutely nothing at all?

If you think it is against the law for journalists to be unfair and inaccurate then you really are dumb.

Maybe, never thought of that! My point is, if one had a complete blank sheet of paper and one was creating a charitable foundation wholly connected to the club, I am not convinced that for 99% of normal fans, the names of Iwan Thomas and Chris Tremlett would be first on the list for the ambassodorial roles. Local sportsmen from other fields, yep fine. Get on board. Even local celebrities and notables, yep, get Chris Packham and the drummer from coldplay on board. It's good to go beyond just ex-players. But wouldn't you think it would be something approaching normal to have one notable ex-player, or ex-manager on there? And no, not neccessarily them, but someone? It looks like an aching gap to me. For whatever reason. And before the cult of Cortese squinnying bedwetters go ballistic, I don't really care either way. It's just a very odd gap that I doubt Rupert Lowe, for example, would have got away with.

Not really interested in the original post - looks like hearsay assumptions and a bit of a fuss about nothing. But had a quick click on the Saints Foundation website. I am in no doubt they do some very fine work, but who are the three listed ambassadors for this Saints charity? Nicola Cortese. Saints legend Iwan Thomas. Other Saints legend Chris Tremlett. And nobody else at all. One thing I have thouroughly enjoyed over the last couple of days is the gymnastic leaps of logic that some forum posters have put themselves through to cast Cortese and everything he has ever done as utterly faultless and brilliant and everybody else as having evil agendas and go knows what else. Your next job is to defend those as the best and most fitting and only ambassadors for the Saints (Southampton Football Club) Foundation. I am sure you are all about to tell me it is some absolute masterstroke. Take it away.

There was some plan at one point to expand one of the stands (can't remember which one) and have the road going under it. That might have been from the seventies or early eighties though.

Sorry, don't buy it. No journalist forced Cortese to use the phrase "people wanted freebies here, freebies there". That was a pointed phrase used by the protagonist, not some forced misquote. Cortese could have quite easily not bothered mentioning freebies at all - we are, after all, top of the freaking league. The reporter from the sun really doesn't care about freebie tickets. It was clearly a point Cortese was determined to get across. Isn't it funny that absolutely everybody involved (The Sun, MLT, Stelling) has a shadowy agenda except the naive innocent Nicola Cortese. There certainly would not be the depth and passion in the support. Well said that man.

Fair enough. Jolly interesting how you launched into your original "there's no demi-gods, there's no superheros, grow up" routine on the back of me saying something utterly anodyne about Matthew Le Tissier - basically that I think his contribution is worth more to the city than someone's mum working at Tesco for 30 years. A harmless, pretty undeniable statement but greeted with furious sneering by you. Let's not forget who started accusing people of thinking people are demi-gods. Weirdo. This forum is resembling the church of Scientology at the moment. Populated by dead-eyed robo-thinkers coldly defending their deity and desperate to stamp out and sneer at people promoting the enemy by saying controversial things like "MLT means more than someone who works at Tesco" or "actually MLT did not come near to destroying the club". The fact that anodyne phrases like this are interpreted as a de facto attack on Cortese speaks volumes about the strength of the cult. Listen you chaps in the cult, get your head out of Cortese's arse and get used to the fact that most normal Saints fans would like the space to say Matthew Le Tissier was and is a force for fantastic good for this football club. Stop trying to stamp it out with your sneering.