CB Fry

Debating like an adult seems to mean you screaming about everyone else "only knowing half the story" and you "sitting on the fence" while churning out the most one-sided view of the whole affair on the whole thread. Judge, jury, executioner. And I live outside the area and I've got the internet and everything but there nothing available the compares to the coverage provided by the Echo. Not even on Freeview If you seriously think this is the biggest "betrayal of trust" SFC are going to come up against in the next, say, three seasons then one can see why the closest you get to real football is through the artificial world of computer games. Ever heard of Kenwynne Jones? Or Mr Redknapp? Or Glenn Hoddle? Or Rune Hague (sp)? Or Willie McKay? Or Ben Thatcher? Or Pascal Chimbonda? Or Kia Joorabchian? A falling out about a press release really is a tiny fart in a mouse's thimble. Well done you for sitting on the fence, though

There are plenty of people in the area where the Echo is one of (if not the) the primary sources of information on Saints. You may be some geek computer researcher with an iphone but there are plenty of people who quite like to pick up the Echo for an interview with the team manager, the captain, the star striker or the latest signing. And guess what, a f*c k load of them have season tickets. It's not about the club "getting along fine" without the Echo. It's about having respect for the fans and giving them a line of communication to their football club. For thousands and thousands and thousands that is primarily the Echo. If the club want to say to those fans "we're owned by a billionaire now, screw you" then that's their lookout. Being that something like this has not happened in around 120 odd years and in that time we have been through relegations; and Branfoot; and Askham and Lowe; and administration; and Ali Dia; and Speedie and Hurlock having a fight; and BWP being arrested; and failure to move from the Dell about six times; and Wigley; and Lawrie walking out; and the Ted Bates Statue; and a hundred other major issues it kind of suggests that whatever has happened does not justify the banning of the local newspaper. If this is what happens over a good news but largely humdrum story over development of the training ground, lets hope we never sign someone like Pascal Chimbonda, or Lee Bowyer or have our manager headbutt a player, or see one of our best players go on strike to get a move, or encounter a dodgy agent etc. This is professional football and things are going to get more pressured and more difficult and in the spotlight much more from here on in, so this does not bode well.

I think subsequent versions of these threads should take out the cup games altogether, as the point is surely league form and our unstoppable progress towards the play off final . Form doesn't matter in cup games because once you've lost a game (or gone out on penalties ) you're out of the competition. And for the love of god it would stop the tedius debates about the Torquay game. Especially as the proper answer to the question was answered a lifetime ago. The match was drawn, and the cup tie was decided on penalties. We won the cup tie.

Behave. It was elsewhere already and you are seriously not comparing the redevelopment of Staplewood with LM signing Keegan are you? You'll notice the almost zero interest the actual redevelopment has had on here or anywhere. It's hardly earth shattering stuff is it? As for my namesake, no idea to be honest, I'm not an expert. Pretty sure he was a Liberal politician though. If it's a case of educated posh Englishman in the 30s facinated with Hitler, then he's not alone. One King of Britain at the time was too.

We're ready for it. We've done the relatively hard thing of winning "winnable" games which the Brighton game showed is not easy. These games should see us maintain focus and avoid complacency. We will drop some points but not many, and in a way we can "afford" to because our points per game in recent weeks is superb.

Murty man of the match so far, then?

Well the Echo would sell a hell of a lot more papers if we get to the play-off final, or the JPT Final or both, and they'd sell more papers if we were in the Prem. Successful football club = feelgood factor in city = good for newspaper circulation. And I am getting a bit annoyed with a constant refrain on this thread, that the Club have somehow upset the club by slagging them off, or looking for bad news stories. The Staplewood story was a good news story, presented positively, with no other agenda. Saints moving onwards and upwards. It was Cortese who has got arsey about it.

Correct. I really don't get why people show so much distain for the Echo. Some div further up the thread said something dopey like "when was the last time the Echo ever said anything good about Saints". Reading the Echo reporting on Saints this season has been a joy, and the positivity is flooding off the page much like it is with the rest of us. And the news about Staplewood is, err, good news. It wasn't reported like it was some disaster. But people don't read the Echo, they just decide they have a view on it and moan regardless.

When Lowe fell out with newspapers left right and centre, the "anti-Lowe" all slated him for wasting his time etc etc, so what you're saying has no logic whatsoever.

No. It's in the press release and this new show is on Mondays.

Diddums. Whereas some chump on here with a bit of "inside info" is lauded as a hero. If people didn't want inside information on their football club, there would be no need for sites like this for a start. Do you really want all your Saints news spoon fed to you via official, generic, anodyne diktats from the official site? This is a worrying and unnessesary development and should be reversed immediately.

Plymouth aren't punching above their weight, they are a second tier team. Pulis and Holloway did a better job at Argyle than Luggy did. And I like Luggy, it was a shame it didn't work out at Saints but I think his tenure would have ended in failure even if he was given longer. There is no question he is an excelllent lower tier manager - his record at PAFC first time, Sheff Weds and Swindon prove this. But like TDD says, he just does not cut it higher up.

Quite. At the end of the day Capello is one of the world's great football managers with his own hand picked team around him. If he needs Le Tiss he'll call him, but I doubt he does.

In Spring 2002 Sven would have been England manager for what, a year and a bit, fifteen months. So why would he be "shocked" say "is that really so" to some bloke telling him England aren't very good at penalty shootouts? He'd know. Every single interviewer and press conference from the minute he was appointed would have mentioned penalties, especially as "spring 2002" would have been the lead in to his first major tournament. You were hardly offering sparkling insight. Christ.

I think If a team ceases to exist then all the other teams have their points and goals gained against them removed, meaning the adjusted league table reflects a world where said club never existed in the first place. So everyone would have fewer number of matches, so it would even itself out anyway. And it wasn't a pro rata penalty, it was a flat ten point deduction. So it's a "no" from me I think we should ban the phrase pro rata from this forum forthwith. It is getting slightly annoying now....

In a poll of ten options, where two of the ten have secured nigh-on 80% of the votes, I can't seen any desperate need for more options. Just a thought.

Hope not. We're creating new heroes now, we don't need any old (and expensive) ones. Beattie was a mini-legend for what he achieved with us, but we move on.

LOL at you continuing to peddle the "it's my jolly clever concept other people just don't understand" line. Most of us have a perfectly good grasp on how we are doing in reality without pretending we've only had 5 points deducted, or 0.21 per game or whatever nonsense you are trying to manufacture. You are overcomplicating a perfectly simple league table with a formula that doesn't need to exist and aids no-one's understanding. Without the minus ten, we'd be sixth. We'd be the sixth best team in the league. On recent form, we're doing even better. We need title winning form here on in to have a chance of making the play-offs. No-one needs to pretend we've only had 5 points deducted at Christmas to understand this. You're over-thinking a problem that simply isn't there. PS - how many leagues do you know where all the teams simply "continue with the same average form they've shown so far". Have you ever even followed a football season before?

Yeah, agreed - need to keep his feet on the ground though. Let's not start alerting those mediocre Prem teams any more than they already are!!

We could always do a poll first on "who is your second favourite player of the season so far" and then exclude the winner from the subsequent real "player of the season so far" poll, much like we saw in that really odd Saints Best ever 11 A team/B team poll thing during the summer.

I voted first, check me out, and I voted for Lambert. We needed goals and boy is he delivering.

If you do want serious advice, do what the man says above. Saying your presentation out loud for real is by far the best practice. Actually hearing yourself talk through it is far better than sitting in front of powerpoint thinking about it. That said, Jawillwill's comment made me LOL a lot.

Someone will be on this thread in a minute saying "pro-rata" we've only actually drawn most of those games and we actually still owe the league some points or something.

To be fair, if our second ten games were as bad as our first ten games then Pardew should have been sacked. Think how fantastic our run has been and we've only been out of the bottom four for a week. Fantastic football and performances and it gets us out of the bottom four only in December. That's how difficult it has been. If our first twenty games were a continuation of the first ten we'd be royally screwed and Pardew's role would have been untenable immediately. Sad but true. That's all people were saying back then, and they were right to. It's a bloody internet forum. That's all. PS - LOL at the people who spent the autumn making out we'd only ever scrape fifth from bottom this season. I said Play offs were the aim in August, got slated for being unrealistic by those delivering pompous "reality checks" like they knew best. Well, we'll see what "reality" looks like come May, won't we?

Don't you think the gross "distortion" would be to pretend that on the first game of the season we had only minus 0.21 of a point deducted, when we had ten points deducted. We had ten points deducted at the start of the season. Ten points deducted. The league did not say "we are deducting 0.21 points for every game you play". They deducted ten points at the start of the seaosn. For the games we've played, we've accumulated 32 points. So, in your dopey words "to get a true idea of how we are performing relative to the other teams in the same league, the only valid measure" is the fact we've accummulated 32 points. End of. Because, at the start of the season we had ten points deducted. Not at the end of the season, as you claim. At the start of the season. We had ten points deducted then. At the start of the season. Ten points. Deducted. Start. Season. Of. And, how are you measuring every other teams' points tally? Can you tell me how many points Leeds have currently, or Hartlepoool, or Exeter? Or is it only Southampton that have to have their current points divided into the games they haven't played yet? Finally, again, in your words, I appreciate that this concept may be a little difficult for you to understand, but if the league table means nothing until the last game has been completedthen I strongly recommend you don't look at any league tables until Mid-May, because the ones you are looking at are making your little brain hurt. Bless. Utter madness. But hilarious.