CB Fry

I think we need a significant period of reflection before the club makes any decision on this kind of long term tribute. Let's get on with the immediate memoriums first at the next game and some kind of fomal ceremony after that. For all we know his family may not want or think appropriate for a stand to be named after him or have a statue put up. My personal preference would be for something a little more community focused - a Leibherr foundation supporting our city's budding young sportsmen, or inner city/disabled/disadantaged kids. I think Markus stood for legacy and would be good to see him remembered like that. I'm not comfortable with him having the same standing as Ted Bates, purely because the time he spent with us is just not long enough. Ted Bates got the statue for many reasons, but one of them was simply sheer dedication and length of service which no one else is ever likely to replicate. But this is all far to contentious to debate sensibly today.

Dream on, you plank. It's not the NMA, it's the National Readership Survey, and alongside the ABC audit is as rigourous a measure of media consumption as you'll find. Certainly far more rigourous than TV and Radio audience research. ABC figures are a good guide to how newspapers are performing themselves, but advertisers and media buying agencies are more interested in readers, because ads are all about reaching people not newspaper buyers. Sorry, I do know about these things, not much but enough and clearly more than you. The 2.6 thing is pretty true, your sample of one is just as lame as me saying that the Guardian I buy twice a week is read by three people each time. I don't know what the factor is for each individual paper but it a lot bigger than 0.6 readers per copy. Papers get passed round families and workplaces every day. There's a copy of the Times in my office that is read by at least 15 people ever day. Rule of thumb is two-and-a-half. It's not fallacy, get over it. Any way, I haven't fallen for any bloody PR, it relates to my previous employment (Press Circulation) and my current employment (FMCG Brand Marketing). So I know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I don't want to bicker as our owner has just passed on so let's leave it there.

Stunned. This, and the sad death of young Stansfield, shows that neither youth nor wealth can help you when the day comes. Very very sad. Just a shame from a Saints point of view that he now won't see us finish the job and take the club back to the top division, the ascent he kickstarted barely a year ago.

LOL. Got to love this forum, populated with people who are thick as pigsh it. God bless you all. Readership figures are not "PR" they are managed by the national readership survey which is a joint venture between the papers, the media buyers and the advertisers themselves with equal representation of all three in the management of the figures. And here's a clue - two of those three parties have a vested interest in making sure the other party don't fudge the figures. Because it saves them money on advertising and makes their ad campaigns more effective. But you carry on living in your dopey conspiracy land where everything is "PR"...... And readership is not the same as circulation, because as demonstrated below, papers aren't bought and read by a single person... most papers are read, on average by something like 2.4 to 2.8 people. Papers like the Sun tend to be higher than the broadsheets as they get passed round a bit more. And you mention bulk and freebie copies but they are very rare these days, especially on the Sun which has never relied on them particularly. And anyway, it's not much more of a fudge than attendence figures counted even when season ticket holders stay at home. Bulk papers are still read, and adverts are seen, and there are very, very strict rules about how many bulks can be claimed in a period too. So readership of the sun is not "nowhere near 8m" Buctootim, it is very near 8m, 7.7m at last count, with more ABC1s than any other paper except the Mail. But everyfink is a PR conspiracy aint it. Thank got we've got the official site, the only place on earth reporting information with no agenda whatsover. Christ.

"The Saints way" espoused by Cortese seems to be drive value, drive profit, drive a return from every single available outlet, from booking fees, to scrapping installments, to parking charges for people using the coaches, from the pittance available from selling our photographs, from trying to kill off competing media outlets. So this "Saints way" that everyone will "sit up and take notice of" is to be more obsessed with the bottom line than Lowe was, and this "shake up" of "the old guard" is that the "old dogs with their old ways" (Who is that exactly? Chelsea? Man City? Scudamore? Sky? Arsenal? ESPN? Man United?) aren't profiteering enough?? So the clubs that will emulate "the Saints way" will be more greedy, and squeeze fans even more, and look to make profit on even more things that aren't nailed down. The "Saints way". Shaking up the "old guard", like, um Sky. With their "old ways" like er 3D HD matches sold at a premium, and taking SSN from freeview. Old Dogs, old ways. The "Saints way" breaking up the collective agreements like photo licencing so every club fights for itself, meaning the big clubs win and the little clubs lose. Even more than now. The old dogs with their old ways. The "Saints way". You can't park there. You can't come in. Didn't you realise you can charge for that too? The "Saints way" shaking up the old dogs. Makes you proud to be a Saints fan, don't it? Sheesh. People used to be called "Lowe luvvies" for coming out with that stuff.

This isn't an argument. It's just contradiction.

Premier League clubs don't do it. It's not about money, because our photos are worth jack sh it. Even if we beat Man U eight nil in the league cup and Ricky Lambert took a dump on Mike Phelan's head, the photos wouldn't be worth that much. It's not about money.

You've got to love the beauties on this forum. The sun, or any newspaper on earth for that matter, don't ever and won't ever make 'loads of money' from a couple of poxy photos of saints v anyone. This is not about money on either side. If anyone deserves the mocking ' diddums' routine you employ it's cortese, blubbing like an infant because he's not actually the centre of the universe.

I think the only person using this football club as a "plaything" is Cortese, with his pursuit of something so petulent and pointless. Using "Tokenistic ammunition" and being "self important" and someone who can "give it but can't take it" sums up Nicola pretty bloody well, actually. I don't think there are any "idiots on this board" who "think the papers give two monkeys about us" either.

I've read enough threads after live TV games from bellyachers whinging about anti-Saints bias on BBC, ITV, Sky and elsewhere to know that there are plenty that do care what others think. And the vast majority of people grizzling "sod the press" come from the angle of "boo hoo, we never get a mention anyway". My main problem is this action is an utterly utterly pointless waste of time and energy from a man I am losing respect for by the day. I thought we were trying to get promoted.

How much money is being made on photos from League one matches exactly? Do you really think this is some kind of goldmine the national press have been depriving poor liddle Cortese of? Whatever this is about it isn't about money. If we were that desperate for money we'd have a bloody shirt sponsor, we wouldn't be on the selling-photos-of-Dan-Harding-taking-a-throw-in gravy train .

The Plymouth Evening Herald is owned by DMGT (Daily Mail General Trust) while our beloved Echo is owned by American group Gannett (Newsquest in the UK). So no, not connected. Evening Herald offices are in the shape of a giant ship, you know. I've been there. True story.

Good post. It's a shame there are three threads about this now, but Cortese's arrogant stupidity on this utterly pointless matter is making the club a complete embarrassment when we could be basking in the glory of being favourites for the title and back on the up while that lot down the road rot. Oh well.

While at the same time deciding not to take up a shirt sponsor for the season, which might bring in a teensy bit more money than the zero pounds this dopey photo ban is going to rake in.

The papers will happily go all season without printing a single picture of a Saints player from St Mary's, especially if opposition clubs follow Plymouth's lead. Err, no we haven't. We've heard the announcement from your favourite news source, the super corporate official site, about the ban and the reasons behind it and we are beginning to see the response from the clubs and the media outlets. That's two sides to the story. Both sides to the story. We've all heard both. You've said this about five times on this thread, and apart from your favourite news source, the corporate OS (they have exclusive video interviews with the advertising sales manager - take that, BBC!) those images from the game are nowhere. And the media making up rubbish. Boo hoo. Real Madrid, Inter milan, Man United and Chelsea just about live with it, so I think a nondescript League One club could too. Listen, this is how the real world works, we're not in a computer game now.

Correct. It's not what people want to hear but he desperately needs to win on Saturday. A loss or a draw won't mean the sack but I think he would be staring down the barrel going into the third game and it's often a spiral down from there. Hopefully it will be all academic and we will do the business against MK Dons (we couldn't be playing a better opponent in that we always beat them). But Pardew has the sword over his head. Harsh but I think true. He, and we, need a blistering first ten games from here on in, not least because a Pardew sacking is more likely to lead to a Strachan-at-Boro rebuild (again) job rather than a Lambert-at-Norwich storm up the leagues. And I say rebuild not that we need rebuilding, just that I think if Cortese sacks Pardew he'll sack them all -Murdoch, Wilkins, Downes, the lot. And let's be clear before SOG starts bellyaching. I don't want him sacked at all. In my eyes he delivered the instant success I said he would (and SOG and many others said he wouldn't) last season. And I think he will get us promoted, underperforming in the first game is irrelevent and not uncommon for champions. But the pressure on him, now, next week and the week after is immense. This is not Steve Gibson we are dealing with here.

Doesn't "on the way up to the Championship" mean being in league one these days then? Anyway, the media won't actually give two shi t s about us when we make it to the Prem either, just like they don't give two sh its about Blackburn, or Wigan, or Wolves, or Sunderland. Anyway, this dopey old ban thing will be long forgotten by then. I doubt it will survive three or four more home games.

Total contradictory garbage. Have cake and eat it too. Get your facts right sunshine. All we ever hear is your pompous "money doesn't guarantee success" routine. We know you say it. Christ, do we know. Over and over and over again. But the important thing is no one ever says money guarantees success. No one ever says it. It's just you lecturing the rest of us. You decide that the rest of us think something and then lecture us in your patronising way that the rest of us are wrong. Without digging up too much old ground, your beloved Mr Burley was able to in your words above buy the type of players that give us a better chance. He threw money at it and failed. Again, in your words, back then they had to decide how much promotion is worth and weight it up against what he wants to spend on it. Clubs spend money on players, and then expect a return on that investment. Precisely what I have said for years and years and years and years, and any time I bring that subject up you come back with your "money doesn't guarantee success" routine. So, sorry, don't try and lecture me now sunshine. I've been saying what you are now cobbling together for eons. I've been saying it for eons. Welcome aboard, what took you so long. Nice to know I was right all along. Apology accepted.

Delusional Saints fan alert. We're in league one and "the media" couldn't give two sh its about us.

You've changed your fu ck ing tune. You can't have it both ways and christ can you bore for England with your pompous arse routine about how money doesn't make any difference blah blah blah. But now you're screaming for Cortese to splash the cash. What a hypocrite you are.

I do hope no one is complaining. This time last year we nearly had no club etc etc etc blah etc blah. Running out of pies is just Cortese running the club as a business. If we upset a few people on the way then good. Upsetting as many people as possible means the business is being run as efficiently as possible. I imagine the Echo bought all the pies out of spite so it is definitely their fault as well. And the official site says the catering is brilliant and that's the only source of club information anyone could ever need. Hopefully they'll post up a twenty five minute video interview with the head catering supervisor on Saintsplayer saying how fantastic everything is. I imagine I should be able to crack one off to it. Then I'll get back to my football management simulation games.

I can't see any images from the game on the BBC or Sky website. i doubt either company will entertain paying some piffling League One club for oh-so precious pictures of their home matches. Neither will the nationals. Cortese has dropped a b ollo ck here. An arrogant, pointless bo lloc k. No sensible business reason, and of zero benefit to performance on the pitch. Utterly, utterly pointless.

Yes, but they haven't got £13m for wages, have they. With their parachute payments for the first two seasons gone already, they are at the same level as the likes of Bristol City and co - the revenue they can generate from their miniscule gates is all they've got.

Losing the first game was good enough for reading a couple of years back and they stormed the CCC (as was). It's not a bad result in terms of a kick up the bottom. If you're going to lose, lose the first one.

Quite right, and no doubt there will be 50,000 megafans packed into your toilet for the Reading game next week to prove just how gigantic you are.