CB Fry

Not under George Burley, no. Multi million pounds of transfer funds and "£20m" of talent already at the club I would expect another manager to deliver, at very least a solid challenge to the top four, with a top two finish being on the cards all season. Solid, solid, solid play offs, top two contention. Not bimbling around ninth with fingers crossed lets scrape sixth on the last day. Not for the millions and millions and millions he spent.

So they played to the standard that made them worth £20m in the preceding season, correct? You can't have it both ways - either we were crippled by the loss of £20m worth of talent or we didn't have the talent in the first place.

They have one thing going for them - current Premier League status. No fanbase. No stadium. No corporate facilities. No training ground or infrastructure. Relegation then makes Pompey about as an attractive investment as Blackpool or Plymouth or Peterborough. And at least Blackpool or Plymouth could still claim - well if we establish ourselves in the Prem we'd massively increase gates. Pompey can't say that because they have proved, conclusively, that they can't grow any bigger than the mid table CCC drudge club they were for decades. Even after winning the bloody FA Cup no one comes. Without question their natural level has been established and any investor with half a brain can see that.

Sorry, this is garbage. End of the Burley half-season saw Lowe gone and the biggest feel-good factor at the club in a decade. Like it or not the Wilde regime came in on a crest of a wave and spent a fortune. It was a positive not a negative atmosphere to work in that season. You're just rewriting history. There was some bickering that season but not that much. That was the season after. It's all history but with the bountiful resources of time* and money available there were managers we could have had that could have promoted us easily. Burley had six months of zero pressure and then £8m and a full pre season to "rebuild". How long do you want? *anyone that had grizzled about lack of pre season this time has to concede that Burley had all the time in the world, and then some. Too many like to moan about what they haven't got and conveniently ignore what they have got.

Yeah, because this forum really is the Harry Redknapp appreciation society We all knew Arry didn't want to be here, which is why the vast, vast majority of fans were excited and energised by the appointment of Burley. Me included, I thought then, and I think now it was the best appointment we could have made at the time. A brilliant appointment. Except it turns out he wanted to be here as much as Redknapp did and he failed to deliver given the most beneficial circumstances any manager could ever dream of. All on a plate for him and he blew it.

Wilde and co talked about "promotion". PROMOTION. It was Burley who watered it down to "play offs" and it was Burley that s-c-r-aped into the Play-offs on the last day thanks to other teams. And at the end of that season everyone said how we were going to build on this etc etc etc. We did worse the following season. Much worse. Which was obvious to anyone with a brain before a ball was kicked. Including Burley who could see a cushy season of excuses on the horizon where nothing could ever be his fault again because he could bleat about losing "talent". But didn't he have the talent the previous season? And failed anyway? That made promotion in the previous season absolutely essential (ie a concerted effort to get promoted, not a box-ticking "i got to the playoffs" exersise, a "will this do?" routine which is what Georgie served up). That's why he failed. He did fail.

Burley's job was not to get into the "promotion hunt" and it was not a "relative success". He had a promotion budget not a "fingers crossed, lets progress a little bit" budget. Lots of fans are wailing on about Pardew's lack of pre season this time out, but Burley had the longest pre season of any manager in history - it started in the January he took over as noone asked him to do any except prepare in those six months. Plus it was clear we had one shot to get promoted. It was the last of our parachute years and the following season meant sales. That's why it wasn't about "let's progress, let's build" it was go up that season or nothing. Any fool could see that the following season would see sales and belt-tightening - the "we can build on this" was always a pipedream. I said it at the time and I was right. And its funny when players are sold there is much wailing about how weakened we are, but when we spend millions and millions and millions and millions on players the same people say "well money doesn't guarantee success". It's classic cake and eat it hypocracy. If we were weakened post-sales then when were we actually strong? And it is so called "positive" fans who define themselves by saying how weak and rubbish we are and we shouldn't dare to achieve anything and fingers crossed we'll finish fourth from bottom. "Positive" fans. My arse. Burley was a failure and his excuses with Scotland mirror his Saints excuses - "we're building". No one asked him to build. He was asked to deliver against a target and he failed to do so. And sorry about wanting Saints to be successful. How awfully terrible of me. Anyway, I really couldn't give two flips about Burley. He is history.

Away goals don't count double in domestic knockout football and nor should they. Don't be so silly. Dress it up how you like but burley failed in the job he was employed to do.

On a Championship winning budget blowing the rest of the division out of the water. Which he then couldn't build on the following season. On the terms of his employment he failed miserably. What Jan Poortvilet did subsequently doesn't make Burley a success. Stop going on about Burley. It's a bit weird.

Please get over your obsession with Burley. It's pathetic and very sad.

Who's obsessed with Burley? Still itching for an argument about how fantastic he was for us? Christ.

Not sure I'd go that far, but making the play offs was an easy par for them to reach, then it's just a straight knockout which they probably would have lost to France or Portugal or Russia. I actually think that International Tournament Qualifying for the other home nations is the single most difficult challenge in football. Norn Iron have absolutely worked their b* llocks off and will probably end up with nothing in third place. Ditto Scotland last time out. Ditto Wales under Hughes a while back. And Norn Iron under Sanchez last time for that matter. It's heartbreakingly hard. Thank god I'm English.

What are you on about - it sounds a bit like the Sturrock situation you're describing, but you never were one for detail you swivel eyed lunatic. Gray was just rubbish for us.

I wonder how many of the multi-million pound members of our squad you would sacrifice for your precious "pre-season" before you then starting complaining about how weak the squad is. Would you rather have Walsall's squad and a full wonderful pre-season? And How much pre season did Paul Lambert have at Norwich? And, last question, how many bloody weeks into the season are we going to be using "lack of pre-season" as an excuse? Can we agree to stop bloody going on about it by the end of February?

Neither Norwich or Charlton have got anywhere near the play offs since relegation from the Prem, we did. Neither club have had a season as "successful" as that post-Wilde Burley season. Not sure how getting to the play-offs is a "disaster". Norwich and Charlton would have taken that "disaster". Neither club have had two revolutionary and exciting takeovers and we have had two (Wilde turning to ****e is neither here nor there). We've had two adrenaline rushes of new hope, Norwich appointed Peter Grant and Glenn Roeder. Charlton just went down, and down. So please don't cherry pick facts and say "well we've had it much rougher than them". We haven't*.

I knew I should have put a smiley on that post. Funnily enough there's a feature on Five Live at the moment about how poorly the Chelsea Academy is performing with a grand total of zero regular first teamers produced so far after £10m-odd worth of investment! Imagine if that was the record of the Saints Academy under our old and forgotten friend! PS - On DoFs - I think the could work here, you don't need them at every club, but could definitely help if used in the right way. Bally/Lawrie worked for a year - we started the thing in England!

Chelsea do have Frank Arnesen though who scours the world for talent to develop for the first team, taking the pressure of the manager, especially when it comes to paperwork and managing all the difficulties that can arise in those delicate situations with young players. I believe that is working incredibly well at the moment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/northampton_town/8243498.stm I was hoping Coppell would take us up to the nice round five ex-lower league managers on the staff at St Mary's. But as that isn't happening, there must be room at SMS for the man who broke (and holds) our transfer record outlay, surely? Any memories along the lines of "I remember where I was the day we appointed Mick Wadsworth" please add them below.

I get annoyed with tosh like this. Norwich got relegated from the Prem the same season as us, have got through an armful of managers and false dawns and also went down with us to L1 last season. And their new manager had less of a pre season than Pardew and managed to win a couple. And Charlton have had a faster and harder fall than we've had as they came down to the CCC a season after us. We're not that special, we're not super hard done by. We haven't got "a virus" any more than any other club. We're currently rubbish on the pitch and in the league. That's all.

So Pardew is going to be manager for the next twenty years is he? Is he balls. Not sure if you noticed by every other club on earth does a good job of changing managers every eighteen months as well, it wasn't some exclusive thing only Saints did. Pardew will leave/resign/get sacked/retire/move upstairs or something at some point in the next five years, probably sometime in the next two. It's a fair point that we do have plenty of able caretakers at the club, and one more if Coppell pitches up.

How much "time and money" do you think the Mirror "invest" into stories about League One Southampton Football Club? (Clue: none) This story will be based on a couple of phone calls from one, maximum two, sources. Hacks in the Mirror aren't piecing together extravagent stories about Southampton Football Club over weeks and months you know. The story might be true, it might not be true, but it hasn't cost anyone "time and money"

You cheeky scamp! Funnily enough I was thinking of dusting that old one down for this season this morning, but no-one ever gets what I'm on about, which is most of the fun of course. My "we need to win eight in a row" thing was just about how far behind the trendline to promotion we are and viewing the challenge by ignoring the other teams in the league who actually are irrelevent until the final weeks. But no-one ever gets it, probably because barely any of us in our lifetime has seen Saints win promotion from any league* and win the volume of games required. We win two and draw four and we think we're on the greatest run of our lives. Anyway, the answer to your question is 42.

It's worth also pointing out that Parkinson was Pardew's assistant so had the "Wotte factor" of knowing the players, club, fans etc. Meaning he had an even longer head start. All is far from lost and I still think come the end of the season we will be challenging for the play offs (apparently, this is a "negative" viewpoint). I said it at the start of the season, and I stand by it now in the face of a load of supposedly "super positive" fans saying how delighted they will be if we achieve the super human effort of fourth from bottom in a league with Exeter, Yeovil, Gillingham and Oldham.

If you have me on ignore, then how do you know I am running the club down? You'll never find a single post from me running the club down. You see success as finishing fourth from bottom. I see it as challenging for the play offs this season. Alan Pardew agrees with me, not you. If anyone is running the club down, it's you.

Yawn. I don't want Pardew sacked. My point is in agreement with Pardew - he wants promotion this season, he said it and I think that is absolutley what we should be aiming for. The only people I am having a go at are the fans making out we should be only be hopeful for, and eternally grateful for, scraping last day survival. That would be utterly unacceptable, for me, for Pardew and for any sensible fans. People working themselves up to make this some kind of stupendous acheivement when we are the biggest spending team in the league is utterly ridiculous. Err - that was my point in the first place. It is the Le God Third Coming and others on here who would be Man United fans saying "wouldn't it be brilliant if we finished fourth from bottom, that's all we can reasonably expect". Can you see any Man U fans saying that? Because that is officially the "positive" viewpoint on this forum. It's bloody laughable. I'm sick to death reading people pretending to be "the positive fans" by saying all we should hope for is fourth from bottom and no one is allowed to complain if that is all we achieve this season. Well Alan Pardew doesn't agree with that sentiment, so I am not sure why it is given such credence on this forum and used as a stick to beat so-called "negative" posters who want precisely what Alan Pardew wants. A hell of a lot better than where we are now.