CB Fry

Just to confirm, he has not been linked to Fulham. Some Pompey div posting on a forum as a wind-up is not Nigel Adkins being linked to Fulham. Zero chance of Fulham being even slightly interested.

Eh? I was talking about the top six of the championship. Have a word with yourself. Don't try and pretend I'm one of those that expects us to be challenging for the Champion's League any time soon. Cortese/Adkins (and Pardew) has got us to a level just below our par (our par is the range between bottom half prem and top half championship). If we're challenging for promotion next season, as Millwall, Leeds and Norwich were this season, then we're really in business. Getting promoted from the third tier is only just the start, as Nicola Cortese would no doubt agree.

Amen. I think a few too many are getting carried away with promotion from the third tier of English Football. While undoubtedly a good thing, hardly the achievement of the millenium. This breathtaking feat has been achieved by such leading lights as Colchester, S****horpe, Millwall and Southend United in recent years. Everything is all good and the club is going in the right direction, and we have the right people in charge. Let's see how we're doing in the thick swamp of a Championship season come mid-November or February. If we're challenging the top six at that point, then I'll get excited. Other than that, well done on yet another blatant wind-up thread Turkish.

Nice try, but you hit the woodwork as usual. My post was aimed at those suggesting Osman was making the ultimate self sacrifice turning down lucrative gigs left right and centre to help out little old Saints. He wasn't. Wilde's Saints were dopey enough to give him regular paid work and he hovered up the opportunity and the easy money like we all did. Fine. I'm a Saints fan but if the opportunity came for me to sponge a few quid out them for doing half an hours **** easy work I'd fill my boots right up. I'd probably stand around in the pub lying about all the work I'd turned down to take the job on to make myself look better too. Just lets not here people droning out misty eyed bull-shi te about how Mike was putting himself out to help us. Saints chucked money at him, he lapped it up.

Very. It's perfectly possible. All three of the promoted teams from the Championship this season were managers in their first full season at their clubs. All three of the promoted teams from the Championship last season were manager in their first full season at their clubs. All three of the promoted teams from League One this season were managers in their first season at their clubs, with Adkins and Ferguson not even full-season appointments. One day people will realise that this idea that "stability" and sticking with a manager to let them bed in and all that guff is just patent rubbish. Swansea have got through four managers in five years, similar turnover to West Ham who were the latest example of the "oh isn't it terrible chop and changing no stability I remember Lawrie Mac got relegated in his first blah blah Sir Alex blah blah". People like to pretend that "there is no such thing as instant success" and that success only comes from letting managers "bed in" and have season after season of failure before they magic into Sir Alex in season five. It's utter, utter garbage. Managers can and do deliver success within a season. Over and over again, at clubs up and down the country. Instant success. By the form of recent seasons, a new man at Cardiff in season one is far more likely to take them up than poor old Dave Jones in season seven.

Err, i think the argument is not that he should have worked for free, just that we didn't need his 'work' at all, especially as he was apparently turning down all this lucrative work elsewhere to provide absolutely essential half time 'entertainment'. He milked saints for all he could get. How did the team get on this season without the help of mike flaming osman?

I think you're missing the point that this thread is a wind-up. There is no point 'trying' to do something that is an aimless pipedream. There is plenty to aspire to here on planet earth, like a top ten finish in the prem in the next five years, without people being mongs about it. We will never, ever, ever, be the next barcelona. Saying we need to 'try' to do that is a conversation straight off the special needs bus.

Boll ocks. The old system was ' broke'. Too many meaningless games for too many teams every season. The Play offs are brilliant. It's churlish and childish to call it 'money grabbing'. Torquay v stevenage? That's a right money spinner ain't it? The Play offs are brilliant for english football. Get over it.

Great days.

Say what you like about the Leibherr takeover, but it was flipping dreadful marketing campaign for their fridges. It's almost like that wasn't actually the original intention.

Sorry, you fell at the first hurdle. It's frankly not true to say "nothing has been proved either way". There is no "either way". Those who say there is no god have nothing, whatsoever, to prove. Nothing. The God/No God arguments are not of equal merit. Evidence of people dying for their religion, or of missionaries does not prove anything by the way, it just proves believers. The people that blew up the tubes and buses in London were believers too. Not actually prove of anything. As for the illogical parts of life, the scientists are working on it. The priesthood had their go for a couple of thousand years but world has moved on.

That is spectacular. At the end of the day knowing is knowing. You can't say people are ignorant because they don't believe in something that you yourself admit that it is likely that mankind might never know. That's not ignorance, that's just a ridiculous argument. I think there's a hell of a lot more ignorance on the side of the believers than elsewhere. Spectacular, wrong headed, narrow minded, bigoted, hateful, unforgiving ignorance. If you want ignorance, I suggest you look there.

Dave Jones. Some div came a bit later and bought Mark Draper and Tahar El Kalej, and tried to sell our best striker to Crystal Palace.

Quite right. Nigel Pearson was let go far too soon.

Sorry, disagree. Sacking Curbs was clearly an error but Zola was given pretty much two full seasons (longer than, say, Nigel Adkins has had to get us promoted, or Owen Coyle needed to turn around Bolton, or Holloway needed to promote Blackpool, or the same time as Arry needed to take Spurs into the Champion's League, less time than Poyet needed at Brighton to win the title, or the same time as Lambert needed at Norwich to nail two promotions, or Mark Hughes needed to take Fulham back into the top half). To suggest Zola was some victim of a Lowe style revolving door policy is stretching the truth a bit. The stability of keeping Zola on was only going to end up with Relegation anyway. It's not managerial unstability that did for the Hammers, it was just appointing the wrong manager twice in a row. Both of them had “time”. A straw poll of WHU fans at the end of Jan to choose between elbowing Avram, and wonderful "managerial stability" would have only gone one way. And I doubt any WHU fans today would put their hand up for "managerial stability" and keeping Avram versus making a change. No doubt some smart arse will wheel out the Lawrie got relegated in his first blah blah blah, but I don't care. It's not 1975 any more. Managerial stability, in itself, is not good. Having the right manager is good, as we currently do. No West Ham fan is going to put their hand up for managerial stability today. They'll be happier with a new manager. They just need the right man.

Which is why we're no more stable today than we were yesterday. When we've had a manager at the club for four years then we can crow on about about managerial stability. Until then the fact is our current manager has yet to complete a full season in charge, and our current chairman has sacked two managers in two seasons. The contract signed in January didn't make us more stable, the announcement of it yesterday morning doesn't make us more stable. Contrary to popular misconception, managerial stability in itself is not the aim. It is not, in itself, a good thing. Success on the pitch is the aim and that is always a good thing. West Ham stuck with their manager and gave him time to bed in, settle in and all that boll ocks. West Brom booted out their relatively successful manager quite brutally. Hands up all the Hammers fans craving managerial stability....

Finally the day has come. I Agree completely with a dalek post. Spot on. We are what we are, and that's that.

Lyon and Ajax survive by selling all their stars to england, spain, italy or even germany. And their managers tend to flee to bigger jobs too. And those clubs get regular european football on the back of being in weak leagues. Clubs like that prove how hard it is for small english clubs. Lyon in the PL would just be a mid table feeder club. Saints won't be anywhere near the champs league anytime soon. Which is absolutely fine by me. After all, i happen to live in the real world, not the world of the idle pipe dreams of our current chairman.

The usual patronising shi te from you then. No other clubs are going to be interested in Nigel Frigging Adkins, he's not a big name and hasn't actually achieved anything of note yet. If we're doing poo next year he'll be sacked without a minute's notice. Utterly meaningless contract extension. But by all means carry on pretending we're going to be just like Chelsea playing in the champion's league in front of 50,000 regulars.

We have no more stability today than we had yesterday. If Adkins coc ks it up next season and we bob about at the bottom end of the Championship he'll be out on his ear. Stability is measured backwards, not forwards. When Adkins has actually been here for five years you two can merrily toss yourselves off till the cows come home. Until then the facts are that Cortese has sacked two managers in two seasons and our current manager has not completed a full season. What a model club for stability.

At the end of the day Adkins is unproven in the league above. If we're anywhere lower than 16th come christmas he'll be sacked, regardless of the piece of paper he signed three months ago. Good luck to him but he's not the messiah to me yet.

I thought Morgan was an Arsenal player all along and he was with us on some complicated loan deal? That was gospel truth from some of the cast-iron ITK bull-shi te merchants on this forum not that long ago. Rumour built mainly on the fact that Morgan is French and, err, it sounded like something clever and a steward told me in the pub. Anyone who was peddling that guff care to explain how come Morgan doesn't yet look like pulling on a Gunners shirt?

Not really. Pearson got saints into the championship for the following season quicker than adkins did, he did it in about 15 games. Pearson wins. Oh. Your comparison is utterly pointless Nick.

Eh? Pearson got to fifth and a play off final in his first full season in the championship. Saints have indentical levels of resources that LCFC had then. And our Nigel has managed in the championship before. Adkins will need to do a lot better than top ten to be 'honours even' with Pearson.

If there's one thing this season has proved it's that pre-season really isn't that important. Last season we had people bleating on about "Pardew had no pre-season" until about February, we won the trophy and were in play off form. And the same thing happened this year with Pardew's poor pre-season and then Adkins of course having no pre-season (and no time to "bed-down", "settle in" and all the rest of that guff). We got promoted with a game to spare. We might have a good pre-season, we might have a rubbish one. You can bet your arse we'll buy more players in the last week of August than in the whole of July, because that's how the market works. Will any of it matter a damn in April next season after eight months of football? Not really. Anyone really remember how good our pre-season was in Strachan's last season when we were fourth at Christmas? Anyone remember the pre-season in 1975 before we won the cup? Or in 1983 before we finished second? So my only plea is to stop working pre-season into this miracle period that decides our fate before a ball has been even kicked. Go and beat some Norwegian team 8-1. Whoopee-frigging do. Lose 1-0 to Cheltenham Town. It's a disaster. Don't sign anyone at all until the week of our first game. I want to kill myself. Pre-season, Schme-season. Roll on August.