CB Fry

Why don't you ask Arsene Wenger, Phil Brown, Billy Davies, Nigel Pearson, David Moyes, Martin Jol, Jose Mourinho, Owen Coyle, Aidy Boothroyd, Paul Lambert, Danny Wilson, Paul Tisdale, Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson, Ian Holloway, Sean O'Driscoll or countless others, including Dave Jones, Glenn Hoddle, Gordon Strachan and Alan Pardew for us. They've all delivered instant success - are you going to sneer at them too? All the successful managers currently in England have delivered success within their first full season. All of them. Every single one of them. Except, yawn freaking yawn, Alex Ferguson, but the arse aching bores still won't let go. You've got around 18 months/one full season to deliver success, or you simply will not be a success. That's modern football. Get over it.

Hilarious. In August 2009, "the future" was May 2010. This season. Harding is clearly talking about this season. How many players sign for a club in August and then start talking about targets for two years time without explicitly saying "in two years time" or "next season"? Harding is clearly talking about this season. Anyway, where is this avalanche of quotes from Pardew talking about how we are not aiming for the play-offs this season? Anyone?

Funny how you were the first to grizzle about how "little funds/resources" Burley had to compete* blah blah blah. You try and have it both ways all the time - if having no money is such a disadvantage to your hero Whiskey George then having lots of money is an advantage, right?

Thank god that Alan Pardew and Nicola Cortese don't agree with you one bit. They are going for the play offs and they are going for promotion this season. I know it doesn't fit your little wet dream of "let's be rubbish for two seasons then be good because that's what Ted Bates did" but its 2010 and modern football is about instant success. And Pardew and Cortese want instant success. And Pardew and Cortese are delivering instant success too, blowing your "it takes five years to build success" nonsense clean away. It's fantastic we have men of passionate determination running the football club rather that the pi ss weak quitters that populate this forum.

Didn't sound like we deserved a win anyway, the freekick was our only chance on goal in the second half, wasn't it?

Yes, and I repeat the point I made in the previous post. 95% of the fan base for the entirity of Lowe's reign were screaming for us to live completely beyond our means by spending lots of money we didn't have. So in that context picking over the bones of the freaking mortgage on SMS is pretty futile, especially now.

Who says Ward and his agent "messed us around" then, and who says 18 months was his idea? The poor bugger we signed today only got 6 months*, so was he messing us about even more? And you're kidding yourself if you think Fonte is dropping down a division for anything other than the fat contract we've given him. Good luck to him, but he is here because we've broken the bank and his previous employers were skint. You can't use the line "well, that's football" on one hand and then complain about agents and players messing about and moving only for money. Christ, if anything deserves a "well, that's football" it's money grabbing agents and players.

You seem to be missing how interest rates work. Even if you take the £5m off and call it a £27m mortgage, 8% every year on that is £2m, over ten years £20m odd just in interest, add the capital back in and a total amount repayable of over £40m. We may have been paying only the interest off in later years or simply just struggling to pay off the £5odd million we needed to find each year. You could call it "complete financial mismanagement" but for the fact that during that whole time 95% of the fan base were screaming for us to buy £10m players and pay them £40k a week for five years. But who cares now anyway?

No idea what that has got to do with anything. Just because ML's money (not NC) saved the club it doesn't mean that every single action the management team take subsequently is automatically correct. From the information we do have, and for whatever the reason, this has been badly handled. Not the end of the world and Ward is hardly Paulo Maldini but the process was not particularly well executed all in all. I think Saints fans should be able to express that harmless opinion without being shouted down.

What he said. If we are spending one and a half million on a centre back you'd hope we have a plan for a decent striker who can fire us somewhere near the playoffs.

...............

Never heard of negative equity then? Twas all the rage in the early nineties.

Sorry I missed the information about Ward actually being the person who phoned Sky and told them himself he'd signed for Saints - where did you hear that?

To be fair, all loans are secured against money one is not absolutely guaranteed of recieving. But I get your general point.

Journos are looking for crap to print about football clubs currently more important than Crystal Palace and Southampton. Not many are going to hit the big time with "League One Club might buy a player from skint CCC club world exclusive". I'm happy to believe there has been some interest, but also comfortable with the fact he might not sign, although he would be a good signing and my preference over Stock mainly because he is right sided.

If Cortese really has binned this transfer to make a point to Sky then someone needs to tell Nicola that Sky does not give a flying frig about the Chief Exec of League One Southampton. But I really can't see that being the reason.

Norwich is a pretty decent city to visit IMO. Blaming Norwich fans for Gunn is the same me blaming you for Steve Wigley.

Best part of the transaction IMO. You don't have to look far to find the word "lazy" next to this guy's name, so this should be a decent boot up the backside for him. Remember how good Saga was for us when he was playing for a permanent move? This is probably Ostemobor's last really big chance so he'll need to take it. Win-win.

If it was scuppered because of leaks we can say goodbye to ever signing anyone ever again, especially if we make it to the Prem when there will be lots of leaks/agents/journalists from all over the world to contend with. Signing a player who can't get in the first team of a struggling and poverty striken CCC side is hardly the white heat of the global media spotlight, is it. Anyway, we signed Fonte and there were plenty of rumours about that one, so It can't be that. Can it?

We signed Perry from Luton when they were in L1 and we were CCC, didn't we?

ML only bought into Saints. He hasn't bought into the whole British Football Industry or the British Sports Media, so no-one is going to "allow" NC to control every piece of news concerning Southampton Football Club. People are allowed to judge NC on the decisions he makes and the actions he takes. Just because we were saved six months ago and we are all very happy does not make every subsequent decision automatically correct and unquestionable. We have zero facts on this one, but there are certainly noises that NC is "difficult" and this obsession with stopping the press/TV/etc is only going to end in tears.

Is it the civic centre clock tower looking like man bits? Or is that just me?

Those points about "why aren't Chelsea beating everyone" weren't good points they were lame. Then he said something about Leeds beating Man United, and the journo rightly said "what's that got to do with Derby losing to S****horpe 4-1 at home". Answer - nothing. And his list of the Derby coaches and their glittering playing acheivements - if that had anything to do with coaching ability Bobby Charlton would've been England manager and Alex Ferguson would be unemployed. Savage was just randomly chucking sentences around to avoid offering any explanation to Derby's sizable fanbase about why they are currently p*ss poor. He was complaining that the radio reported people booing. Well they did. What does he want Radio Derby to do? "Super Derby left the field to a standing ovation after they bravely lost their third home game on the spin...." Savage was showing utter disrespect to the fans who pay money and pay his wages. Passionate delivery is one thing, but don't let it disguise the fact that Savage is thick as sh it.

Eh? We only need to finish sixth to get into the play-offs. If we hit championship form, we'll do it. If we don't we won't. We don't need or expect anyone to do us a favour and even if we did why on earth do we need seven of the buggers to do us a favour? Seven? At least seven in your words? The rest of the division won't be able to stop us if we hit anywhere near 2 points per game. We wouldn't need to worry about a mythical seven. You couldn't name these seven could you? I could do with a laugh...

Looks pretty much there by all accounts. Burnley refusing to pay compensation to Doncaster Rovers for their manager so have gone for the spectacularly cheap and staggering option, Laws. And this is supposed to be a Premier League club. Pathetic, but then there are too many non entity clubs in the League at the moment. Laws may prove us all wrong, but I can't see it.