CB Fry

I've just made the same point in the current "let's laugh at Pompey" thread in Lounge. The potential of Pompey goes out the window the minute they are relegated. They then have as much potential as Bristol City or Plymouth, or Blackpool or Barnsley. And much less than Sheff Weds, Sheff Utd, Forest, Leicester, West Brom or Derby who at least have a genuine football supporter base in their cities. And at least Plymouth and Bristol have a potential to grow a fanbase - it has been conclusively proven that winning the FA Cup (winning the thing!!) doesn't even get you a full house in their 20,000 seater toilet. Pompey's potential has been tested and proven to be nothing more than a low-to-mid ranking CCC club.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/23/portsmouth-sulaiman-al-fahim-transfer-window He's "modelling the club on Arsenal" eh? Sounds a bit like "let's give the young players a chance". Which sounds a bit like "let's give lots of cheap players a chance". Which sounds a bit like the "strategy" of a club we're all quite familiar with from last season. At least they've already got a manager with a background in developing young players in an academy setting....and a proven failure at first team front line management level. They've got the English Jan Poortvilet, bless em. Absolutely solid gold LOLtastic.

How bitter are you? Can't beleive we let him go, what a bunch of losers, oh and he's rubbish anyway. He was never ever going to stay at Saints once Arsenal, Man U and Chelsea came calling in that January. It's not about "losing mentality" just simple reality. Two more seasons at Saints he says. I'll have what you're smoking.

Any news on this Ho? Any news on him? We miss your updates on the stratospheric rise of the Europe's most passionately supported football club.

Since when did Burley have six months? He had six months just to assess the bloody squad from the January when he took over from the Saggmeister. And then a full season and a jacuzzi of cash. A few names of managers who have delivered promotion from the CCC in their first full season, or as nickh would have it, the greatest test for all humankind: Billy Davies Adrian Boothroyd Tony Mowbray Roy Keane Owen Coyle Alex McLeish Mick McCarthy Phil Brown There's been at least one example from the three promoted teams every year for the last five seasons. At least one. Not sure that qualifies as "very few". I'm sure you'll be telling me next that Watford, Burnley, Derby and Hull all "had it easy". This is very true but is also known as the "speculate to accumulate" demand that Saints fans through the ages had been screaming for. Well, we did it that season, and Burley blew it. The rights and wrongs of it are neither here nor there in this particular debate, but I am sick of people making out Burley had it tough. He clearly, clearly didn't. Millions and millions and millions and millions. At the end of the day, taking a punt on a season aint so bad, and of course it was sensible to step back after it became apparent that Burley was never going to promote regardless of how many millions the club threw at him. Cutting back was of course sensible.

The season after he needed to deliver promotion (or at least a genuine promotional challenge), you mean. Selling players happens to all clubs post-parachute payments and was always going to happen to us. That's why he wasn't there to "build" for some maybe-promotion in years to come. He had one season, he blew it. The fact that we had to sell players is more evidence of why Burley blew it, not some lame-ass excuse for why Burley had it tough and was a roaring success after all. Southampton FC had to sell because Burley failed.

Won't be long before a few divs start a "if we all put in £500 we could own the club and be just like Barcelona" every other day like we had to endure on this forum for two years. We need Pompey to pick some points up because Hart needs to stay in role until Christmas at least. We can't have him being sacked early doors and replaced by someone who might keep them up with 30 odd games to do it. Like Diego Maradona. Or Alan Curbishley.

Burley bought, or made (Baird) that team. It was his team probably more than any other manager of Saints since Ian Branfoot (even Strachan was still working with a Dave Jones spine*) . They didn't land on his lap. Burley's team.

Rubbish. Wilde, Hone and co all talked of promotion, and of "promotion budgets".

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!