CB Fry

Not great listening. However, I imagine Stockport had a full and uninterrupted pre-season meaning we don't stand a chance.

Alan Pardew. I'm delighted that TDD and myself are shoulder to shoulder with the manager of our football club. You lot of defeatist p i sswipes can carry on making out that this team is no better than mid table, but our manager wants more than you. And he's right, and you lot are wrong.

The arrival of ML was a miracle. But what has happened on the pitch is not. It's good, fine, okay, but not a miracle by any means. There are plenty of teams with nowhere near the resources we have who are sitting pretty in the League one play off zone. We're going in the right direction but there has been no miracles, except maybe spending £1.5m on a CCC centre back and all the other transfer deals that the likes of Swindon, Colchester and Millwall could only dream of.

The Echo has a lot of content on Saints that isn't on their website and isn't anywhere else. Not denying the dinosaur bit though. The local press is a dying beast everywhere. Anyone that reads my posts here know I will always support the press against lazy sniping on these forums but today's Echo article is unhelpful and petty. The two parties should be looking for a resolution as both parties need each other as both are key parts of the community. The Echo aren't helping anyone now with this dopey new stance.

And neither is anyone on this forum. Stop being a big old fanny and desperately trying to make this a "you want the manager sacked" debate so you can wheel out your arse-achingly boring "what about Lawrie Mac" horseshi t. TDD and me and others state we should be winning more, you and your lot wet your pants and pretend we want the manager sacked. And the manager comes out and says.....we should be winning more. We should be winning more. I'm shoulder to shoulder with Pardew. You're mincing about telling Pardew he shouldn't get ideas above his station like beating Brentford. If I was Pardew hearing you say that I'd tell you where to get off. Shoulder to shoulder with Pardew. We should be winning more. How about you supporting the manager too?

Is he dressed as Sammy Saint?

It is staggering that some decide Leeds on minus fifteen in the middle of their gigantic Ken Bates s h it-storm had more things in their favour than we did. On minus ten (five points less). And owned by a gazillionaire.

Quite. Grumbling about current form is allowed and doesn't need to be sledghammered with the usual "how dare you demand the head of the manager what-about-Lawrie-Mac-and-Ferguson-and-blah-blah-kids-these-days-blah-blah". We don't want to sack the manager. Get over it.

But Pre-season is the most precious commodity in the whole of football. Or basically, find something Saints didn't have and flog it to death. Anything to make out how hard done by we are more than any other club. If only Pardew had had the pre season that Boothroyd and Paul Lambert had. Or the millions and millions to spend that Swindon and Millwall have. Or the gigantic fanbase that MK Dons have. Next season we'll have our pre-season, but there will be something else for the whiners to latch on to. Whatever happens to us and whatever we get to some Southampton FC are always the most hard-done-by club in British Football and we don't ever stand a chance of acheiving anything because we battle impossible odds and everyone else has it easy.

Trust me, you wouldn't. I'm sure there would be some other excuse. Like how much easier Leeds United had it when they were minus fifteen as others are saying.

And started the season 15 points down, not ten. But yeah, they had it really, really easy compared to us. Easy.

Signing the best two available strikers in the division and a £1.5m centre back from the league above suggests an expectation in my book. It's hilarious thinking back to our Prem days and the non stop belly-aching about if only we'd "invested in the team" and signed this player or that player. Because when spending big is a reality no-one wants us to push on at all, and we're all happy to scrape clear of relegation with a multi-multi million pound squad. Because it seems we need a multi million pound squad just to compete with Brentford and didn't we do well?. But Swindon don't need a multi million squad. And neither do Colchester. Or Millwall. And they're all in the play-offs. Funny how money guarantees success only when it isn't spent in the world of "if only". As soon as it is spent some fans think we just plod along as we did before. It's odd.

The rebuilding season bit for a start. The aim this season was and is the play offs.

You've ruined SOG's evening. He was about to launch into it.

Who is insinuating that then? Cortese and Pardew are trying to get into the play offs this season. I know people on here try and pretend they aren't, but they are. But to achieve it we really need to win lots of games, and games like Brentford away is the type of game we need to win. Can't anyone say "this is putting us off-track" without dopey old women ranting about "mongs insinuating Pardew is doing a sh*t job". Get over it. We can moan about falling behind without demanding the manager be sacked. Get off your high horse. Go on, tell us how long Alex Ferguson was given. Go on. Give us that lecture. We've never heard it before.

Quite. If we were skint SOG would be lecturing left right and centre about how impossible it is for us and how we could never dream of competing with teams with more resources. But then he is always looking to have it both ways.

Didn't stop you squinneying like a bit ch when Georgie boy had fewer resources in his second season, though. Funny in your world not having resources is a massive handicap and oh how can we ever compete but having loads of money makes no difference on the pitch at all.

If you're someone who has decided that the aim of the season is to avoid relegation then it's not the end of the world. But if you think we are buying centre backs for £1.5m in League One to get into the play offs this season, this is a very disappointing result and leaves us with a hell of a lot to do to achieve that aim. To get into the top six we need championship winning form, and that isn't drawing away at Brentford, regardless of their recent form. If we wanted to win the league that's what we'd need to do. And effectively, form-wise we need to win the league to get into the play offs now.

....much like every arrival and every departure at every football club on earth. Never stopped you sticking your oar in though. If you object so vigourously to someone saying 'it would be good if our chief exec didn't leave' maybe football web forums aren't for you.

These two could realistically be sung on the day. Pretty much all the other songs on here just won't be. Loads are funny and it is a great thread but never going to happen. Just sing "you're going out of business" over and over and over again. And "you're going down". And "we've got more fans than you". And "we're going to Wembley" if we're winning or not, because we will be. [assuming we do the business a couple of days before of course]. I think in football chants it is possible to have too much material and good lord do we have too much material on that lot down the road.

No we don't. We're not going to get relegated, or anywhere near.

Hello Chris Coleman. Hi there Neil Warnock. Evening Mark Stimson. Sean O'Driscoll, fancy seeing you here. How come you're all on a poxy fans webforum at this time of night?

But we're talking about eighth. And Birmingham and Fulham are more than likely going to finish eighth. Meaning that clubs like us can still finish eighth. Fulham finished seventh last season. Blackburn finished seventh the season before. Bolton finished seventh and Reading eighth the season before that, in their first season up. Eighth is a perfectly achievable target for a very good, well organised, professionally managed "average" team, if you see what I mean. And it is just as difficult/realistic as it was in 2003. Your Fulhams, Readings and Blackburns have/had players like Konchesky, Zamora, Danny Murphy, Dave Kitson, David Dunn, Zoltan Gera, Stephen Warnock, Kevin Doyle. Not world beaters, just steady pros - the equivalents of our Beattie, Marsden, Neimi and Bridge. If the top four have got stronger then the bottom eight have definitely got weaker.

Yeah, it changed it and made the teams in the bottom half of the table a lot worse than they used to be. Finishing Eighth in a division with Burnley, Wolves, Pompey, Bolton, Blackburn, Stoke City, Birmingham, Hull City, West Ham, Wigan and Sunderland is certainly no more difficult than we had seven years ago. The Man U treble winning team is light years ahead of the current squad, the Bobby Robson's best Newcastle team would finish ahead of the 2010 Liverpool, Spurs and Man City. If finishing eighth these days is some monumental footballing achievement, how come Birmingham and Fulham are in pole position to acheive it with teams no better than Strachan's?

Really? Can't see anything in the teams that will finish from eighth to twentieth in this years Prem as being any better than any other set of teams from any Prem season in the last ten years at least. And even Man U/Arsenal/Liverpool aren't as good as they have been in recent years. Certainly don't agree that the teams in 2003 were "a lot" weaker. I'd say a good comparison with the 2003 Saints team is this season's Birmingham City. Will probably finish 8/9/10, but there is nothing in that team that is "a lot" better than we were under WGS. Effective, but utterly ordinary.