CB Fry

Well not really. There are plenty of other managers who achieved beyond their wage bill - lawrie is hardly unique in that. And anyway didn't he get a big budget at sunderland and he failed. There's a lot of whining about unfair comparison but you and others are intentionally avoiding talking about the totality of his career which contained failure and huge swathes of time out of work or in non jobs. The fact that lawrie didn't get a big big club is a reason why he is NOT an all time great, not an excuse for why he is.

No it isn't. Lawrie frankly is good but not that good. Nineteen Canteen is a wind up merchant and you shouldn't raise to the bait but to say comparisons to fine, fine football men like Hodsgon and Jimmy Armfield as an "insult" to Lawrie is an "insult" to those men whose acheivements stand up against Lawrie any day of the week, if not better. Ron Atkinson's record at four clubs (not just one) blows Lawrie clean out of the water. Too many rose-tinted specs, I fear.

Kenny Dalglish won the league with two different clubs. That is better than anything Lawrie acheived. Ron Atkinson acheived significant success at West Brom, Villa, Sheff Weds and Man United. That is better than anything Lawrie acheived who had success at one club only and failed everywhere else. Ron Greenwood errr built the team with "the greatest English players ever" and got appointed Englan manager, not England assistant manager. That is better than anything Lawrie acheived. Mourinho not as good as Lawrie McMenemy. What "massive spend" did he have when Porto won the Champion's League then? Jimmy Armfield got to the final of the European Cup with Leeds.That is better than anything Lawrie acheived. Moyes is probably as close to a McMenemy level of achievement - ie solid league placings - but the style is different of course. Lawrie did well for us but no way in the top twenty of all time in England. Quick mention for two Villa managers - Ron Saunders who won the European Cup and Graham Taylor who achieved Lawrie-like success with Saints-like Watford but built on it at a big club with Villa and then appointed England manager, with Lawrie as assistant of course. And then made a comeback with Watford again. The big difference is the greatest managers have success at one club, but repeat it elsewhere. Lawrie was brilliant for us is a one club wonder in the great scheme of things.

Sorry, but I think Naive flatters Jan. I think he was simply an idiot, and that's mainly because in his interview a few weeks back he claimed to not realise how high the standard of football the second tier in England was before he took the job. Frankly that was inexcusible - he was taking a job at a decent sized club in the fifth biggest league in Europe. If someone offered me a job in the, say, Egyptian first division, I know nothing about it now, but I'd bloody find out before I got on the plane*. Lowe was pigheaded and foolish and Jan's appointment was a disgrace, but Jan was no innocent victim. He is a grown man with two decades football experience behind him. His abject failure with us cannot just be attributed to others.

He was sacked from Wycombe. But this is an incredibly good shout. Taylor is pretty good at getting promoted from L2 so would be a good appointment for them.

Do you honestly believe Exeter or Yeovil have anything like the resources we have to hand? Your "law of averages" - win a third, draw a third, lose a third - is ridiculous in that we have the most expensively assembled squad, and easily the most expensive back room staff in the entire division. We should be pushing for something like 1.6 to 2 points per game for the rest of the season - ie play-off form to get us upper mid table. And its not about disrespecting other clubs - we are just bigger than them. And I'd bet my house that when the boot was on the other foot - when we were the skint team in the CCC or in the Prem - you were bleating about "how-can-we-possibly-compete-we're-skint" etc etc. Well you can't have it both ways - if it's a disadvantage to be poor, it's an advantage to be rich. And we are rich in many ways. And we need to do better than win a third, draw a third.

Two eh? A whole two? Two whole people? When are they going to march on SMS I wonder? Those two were easily outnumbered by the "we nearly didn't have a club to support/Lawrie Mac/blah/blah/etc/etc" dull brigade. And one of those two said he never wanted him which is a consistent and reasonable view to hold - he had effectively just relegated Charlton who he was supposed to be taking into the Prem. I think people like that are allowed to have doubts. So that's one person then. Everyone else is saying - if we are doing as appalling as this (three weeks ago) by Christmas then yep, we do seriously need to look at it. A perfectly reasonable viewpoint. A viewpoint confirmed by our recent upsurge - we are now fixing the issues and we will charge up the table. Meaning the "impatient" people are right and the "stick with the manager" dullards are wrong. Pardew will deliver instant results. This season. Just like people like me said. Not the "oh he needs two and a half seasons before any of us can ever judge him after all look at Ted Bates and Lawrie got us relegated and etc etc etc blah blah etc blah...." Pardew doesn't want two seasons of Ted Bates failure before he gets going. Pardew is a winner and will deliver instantly and Pards I'd wager would agree with that sentiment on this thread more than he will the pensioners who think any manager needs to be rubbish for two years before achieving anything. Go up to Alan Pardew and tell him you wouldn't mind if he relegates us this season after all Lawrie did and Ted Bates etc etc. Tell me what he says back to you. Because he aint planning for no relegation. He wants results today. Pardew is as impatient as the fans you attack on here. Don't forget it.

Fair dos. But its also fair to say if we do lose 5-0 at Oldham the people expressing displeasure will be out numbered by the arse-aching bore-monkeys who seem to think even the smallest grumble about the worst defeat needs to be greeted with the old "Lawrie got relegated in his first season blah blah blah" routine. People like SOG are determined to imagine into existance some Pardew out lobby that simply is not there. If we lose 5-0 at Oldham absolutely everyone has the right to question whether Pardew is up to the job, much like if we win 5-0 we can all talk about storming the playoffs and "how would we do in the CCC next season". But we do not need to hear the "stick with the manager" bore-a-thon over and over again. We get it, shut up already. (not you Marco )

Two questions. Who are these four or five people in your opinion? And who at this moment in time have "turned on" Pardew?

As someone who was made redundant from the local newspaper game three years ago this comes as absolutely no surprise. Local papers have been dying its arse for the last decade, and the credit crunch has only made a dire situation even worse. The sports papers of any local daily doesn't really make much money - a little bit of cover price revenue and to prop up the circulation numbers of the sister paper, there is no stand alone advertising. Throw in the additional shifts for journos, printers, van drivers, the processing of returns, the tiny selling window (basically two hours Sat night, little bit Sunday am) the fact that one press breakdown Sat night can kill sales by more than half. It's an easy cut. It sounds like the Saints Pink is a Sunday-only product now already, which has already killed its one and only point of difference. At their best they are one of the better examples of a local daily delivering a service to its readers and its community as opposed to a shell of a "supplement" designed to shift some advertising space. But they are a pain and don't deliver much back. It wouldn't surprise me if The Southern Daily Echo, in the next five years, becomes either twice/thrice-weekly, or a free paper doled out to people on the Number 17 bus in the afternoon.

Twelve wins and eleven draws in 34 games is 47 points, 1.3 points per game, the kind of form that would get us about 17th/18th - lower mid table form. For the backroom staff and the team we'd expensively assembled, that would be pretty disgraceful form - we shouldn't be aiming to be "average" from now on. Not sure we should be benchmarking ourselves against what Exeter and Yeovil are looking to achieve.

There's not enough of these in the world :rolleyes: to respond to garbage posts like the one above. Whose "morale" is being "sapped" by a few hairy bottomed blokes on an interenet forum? Give me strength. :rolleyes: If we all post "come on saints, we loves yous" will we defitely win 5-0 on Saturday? :rolleyes: This, is the true spirit of this thread, beautifully summed up here: There never was an AP out campaign, not on this thread, not on this forum, not ever. One or two fans maybe (one or two fans didn't rate him on day one, and they're allowed to) but vastly vastly outnumbered by the twittering old women like SOG and Windmill Arm droning on about Alex Ferguson-Ted Bates-Lawrie-etc-etc-etc-etc and making out they are lone voices shouting against some baying mob. Total delusional guff. There never was a "Pardew out" campaign.

Call me an old slag, but I'm back with you again. To be fair to me I did say we should be aiming for the play offs (ie Championship winning form) all summer and up until we lost to Rovers when it just looked mathmatically impossible and, I admit it, I wobbled. I now think we are going to go on one of those 22 out of 24 points type runs. It is clicking very, very nicely. But I was talking about play offs all summer while the supposed "realists" were bleating on about scraping survival. We're going to do it. I'm going to Oldham for first away game of the season and cannot wait.

The usual utter tripe from one of the most one-eyed contributors to this site. There was and is no Pardew out campaign, just self important ar se-wipes boring us all with the "McMenemy got us relegated, Alex Ferguson three years blah blah blah etc etc etc" routine the minute anyone says anything outside of "aren't Saints brilliant". No one on this thread (indeed this board) wanted Pardew out, except maybe Glasgow Saint. Certainly not the original poster. The bores like you with your bo ll ock achingly obvious "we need to stick with the manager" routine outnumbered the people who want Pardew out by about 75 to one. No one needed a patronising king tedious like you telling us to "stick with the manager" eight,nine, ten games into a bloody season. Everyone was sticking with him and didn't need your bloody permission. Shut. up. No one wants Pardew out, and no one did two weeks ago. And you are not going to come on here with your self satisfied smug routine making out you were some lone voice in the wilderness. No one wanted Pardew out.

I have son. There was and there is no Pardew out campaign. You read what you want to read.

No it wasn't - this is just a fantasy in your head. There never was (or is) some great Pardew out campaign. Please stop pretending otherwise.

Sorry, no sense. Two points per game from now and we'll finish bare minimum eighth, more than likely sixth. Your "ace" thing only really counts in the last few weeks of the season, or in the title race in Scotland.

I believe Rupert Murdoch's nickname is "Trotsky".

There is no technical solution, when Sussexsaint says "area" he means "the place you can listen to the game on radio solent on your actual wireless". Everyone online, including people in the solent radio listening area, have to pay Saints Player to hear the commentary. It's nothing to do with IP addresses - Saints games aren't free on the radio for the rest of the world or anywhere you could "pretend to be" with an IP address. The only technical solution would be to trick a Saints Player account into thinking you've paid when you haven't, but can anyone really be bothered to do that? There is a slight exception when some away teams don't have a "Player" account, and you can hear the commentary on the local BBC station online hassle-free- Swindon is one such club, but there aren't many.

Hang on - we've got the most expensively assembled squad in the division, so by that logic we don't need Pardew as "anyone" could do well with our squad???!!!

I think you've been watching too much Terry and June. People don't knock on their bosses door and "negotiate their own" pay rise in 2009. Not in any company of any reasonable size anyway. In the company I work for (it's a multinational) my pay has gone up but it is all performance linked and if you're good you move up pay grades and move up pay "zones" (ie get promoted). I've been lucky enough, and worked hard enough, to benefit from both those things this year and previously. But across the board 2-2.5% rises no questions asked year in year out is just fairy land in my company and those like it the private sector. That really has been the point of my ranting - the misconception that the private sector get loads of pay rises, get loads of over time. We don't. I think teachers have "reaped the rewards" just as much as any average private sector workers, as the figures further up the thread has shown. You've made your choice, and you're happy with it and you get a no questions asked pay rise year in year out. I've made mine, I work just as hard as you and get performance related pay. I'm happy, you're happy. Lets hope we're both happy come ten-ish.

Regardless of the inflation rate 2-2.5% pay rise, year in, year out is bloody good. People in the private sector simply do not get the guaranteed pay rises the public sector get.

This I agree with Too many flipping management consultants also.

Wasn't the link I posted very specifically about schools though?

Well the original thread was about this "you can't go to the pub" thing and the debate has broadened since then. It's quite common on internet forums, you know. Profligacy in the civil service is part of the same problem, which is a disengagement from the real world, what everyone else gets paid and the kind of budgeting that goes on in the private sector that is alien to the public sector.