CB Fry

Yeah, sorry. Leeds fans were all united with the way Ken Bates put the club into admin and then bought it back himself. It was one big happy family at Elland Road when they went down. It was indentical to the feelings in Southampton around the Leibherr takeover. Just the same. But hey, they had a pre season and everything.

Where was all this thinking when Lowe got battered season after season for "not investing in the team" then? The only people who say "money doesn't mean anything" are fans of clubs with shi teloads of money. If we were skint you and everyone else would be grizzle-arsing about how can we possibly compete we haven't got any money we need to invest in the team blah blah freaking blah.

What a load of rubbish. When was the last time Chelsea, Man United, Liverpool or Arsenal finished in the bottom three? Because everyone's equal and everyone can beat anyone so the league must be in a completely different order every season. Funny how you were saying completely the opposite when you used to whine and moan about the "lack of resources" that the likes of Burley and Poortvilet had. Oh.

It also makes a difference to have the whole city united behind the club, management and team and it makes a difference to have millions to spend on players and wages and with the best backroom team in the league. It also makes a difference to be 10 points down rather than 15. Leeds had none of those things, but of course they had it easier than us If we had Ken Bates in charge instead of ML and Cortese I'm sure you'd find something to grizzle about.

Plenty of people screaming like women to the tune of "when did he say it...PROVE HE SAID IT...he never said it...when did he say it" whenever anyone talks about Cortese aiming for the play offs. Like, well, you do. Offended by the very idea of aiming for the play offs. Calling people who think we should be aiming for the play offs "negative moaners". There's a lot of it about NickG.

The fact that you think The Times has an established veracity over and above the Echo shows you know absolutely jack sh it about newspapers. Cortese said it. Get over it.

Not really, it is what Cortese said. Get over it. There were people on here claiming that the Echo fabricated what happened at the car showroom after the Pompey game to "sell papers" and everything. People living in a world where everything the Echo says is, like, made up and stuff really are a bit dim.

What gets me is the negative people who get offended when anyone says "we're aiming for the play-offs". ML has spent all this money and people don't think the team we support should be any better than mid table in L1. How negative can you get?

Yawn. We were aiming for the play offs at the start of the season, plenty of quotes and interviews at the time which people like you are desperate to pretend didn't happen. We're aiming for the playoffs and I am bemused how that is so offensive to so many Saints fans. Why is it such a bad thing that it has to be denied by shrieking old women like you?

Whoopee. We should be the ones to watch for storming in the play offs this season, just like Leeds did with a 15 point penalty and nothing like the funds we spent. Nothing like it.

Oh, here we go, the "deniers" are back. There has been comments about aiming for the play offs all season, and Cortese said in on the radio not so long ago. We are aiming for the play offs. We are aiming for the play offs. Stop pretending we're not. We. are. aiming. for. the. play. offs. Cortese said owner Markus Liebherr had made a significant investment - with nearly £2m thought to have been spent on players in January alone - and the reason for that was so Saints would make the playoffs. Cortese added that recent league results have "not been satisfactory against that objective".

You're ****ing in the dark with comments like that. Some folks on this forum, regardless of what you say, and the evidence available still make out that we are the hardest done by club in British football and we don't stand a chance against the likes of Swindon because they had a pre season and we didn't. I doubt Swindon fans (or Millwall fans, or Huddersfield fans)would agree that they have more going for them than SFC at the moment. But the deluded on here will always make out the others have it so much easier than us. We barely deserve the money ML has given us, because financually we've blown every club out of the water and still the loons on here talk about "I'm happy just to stay up, it's unrealistic to expect anything more". What was the point, Marcus, what was the point? Should have just played the kids and a few L2 freebies like Swindon. Then people might have something to "woe is us" about.

Now that's a word.

I see bundling unconnected games together is the new "we didn't have any pre season". We're the richest club in the division and we are aiming for the play offs this season (oh yes we are and oh dear, the p i sswipes can't pretend we're not anymore, as Cortese and Pardew have said it. We are. We are.) With that in mind, not beating Wycombe away is not good enough. Every club is going to get dodgy results but we've already had a boat load this season and now was the time for our five wins in a row. But not to be. And the Norwich result was great but was also the first time we'd beaten a top six team all season, so lets not dine out on that too much. It didn't give us a "don't bother with the next game" card. It wasn't worth eight points. But I am sure Wycombe had a knockout pre-season we could have only dreamed of.

At the end of the day, Leeds are top of the table. Put the Leibherr story to one side (and once that has been covered once, it's done) and we are bumming around in mid table. Clue: your "favoured" clubs tend to be the ones challenging for promotion. There isn't a great deal of "newsworthy" stuff happening, especially as it has taken us until now to even beat a top six team. If I was running the programme I'd have us on as much as we've been on. And Steve Claridge is always very good about Saints. And that Lizzie bird is a Saints fan.

I think you're being a bit precious. At the end of the day we're still in league one, and the BBC has an hour or so to cover three divisions of football which it does pretty well. I'm sure you don't want to watch half an hour of in depth coverage of Bristol Rovers v Gillingham at ten past midnight (or even Leicester v Swansea from the league above). Just like people in Bristol don't want half an hour of Saints. The fundemental problem with programmes covering football at this level is no one is interested in anything other than their own team, meaning everyone gets upset and makes out their club is somehow down the pecking order. Saints get plenty of coverage, we got tons when we went into admin, there is no media conspiracy against us. How do I know? Because every football fan of every club in Britain thinks there is a media conspiracy againts them. From Man United to Exeter City.

This would be the same Gareth Southgate who had three complete seasons (yes, the "give them time give them time Lawrie Mac etc etc" longevity never fails theory) with Boro where they got worse and worse and worse and then were relegated. Despite what the "give them time" brigade like to think Southgate didn't look like turning into Alex Ferguson any time soon.

Any news on Riquelme?

Dan sounds like Alan Davies.

Norwich won those three games with no manager or a brand new manager, ie with much less pre season (the most precious commodity in world football*) than we had.

The interesting thing is no one is stopping Pompey selling ten players today. For example, they could sell David James to Blackburn by lunchtime. The transfer window is about incoming player registrations, so the problem is James obviously couldn't play for BRFC until August. But they could sell him and lots of other players and attempt to get at least provisional agreements for fees to tell the taxman. This FA/FIFA nonsense is just a smokescreen to give the Paulsgrove divs some other external force to blame because it's all the fault of The Premier League/The Meeeeja/The FA/FIFA/everyone else except Peter Storrie who gets the freedom of the city. I hope they don't go into admin (if that is still possible) yet anyway. They are relegated regardless - eight points off is not going to turn around. They need to go into admin and meltdown next season. It's L1 or worse this lot deserve and the sooner that happens the better.

Where have I ever said Saints v Pompey is "friendly banter" then? I'm not denying it is a fierce derby full of hatred. It's just there are plenty of other very fierce and very heated derbies up and down the country with plenty of history behind them. Ours is just one of them. Thinking otherwise is small-town myopia. There is a whole world beyond Basingstoke you know.

You seem so sure that your little derby is so much more important you must know lots more about all the other derbies, otherwise what are you comparing it to? Oh, I see. You're not. It's because you're from Romsey which is obviously the centre of the universe. Well done. Go on then, I give up. People from Blackburn and Burnley fu cking love each other.

As everyone else has said, patent garbage from start to finish. As if anyone would start a collective with the acronym "SCUM" even in the thirties or whenever this story is supposed to have happened. And of course, Southampton is the commercial port and Pompey the naval port. And the military don't go on strike, and if anyone is going to go and break strikes it would be the military much like the army step in when the Firemen flounce off these days. So if this story ever happened at all, it could only be the other way round.