CB Fry

I for one think that his vision of a first team made up primarily of players brought through the SFC youth ranks can't possibly fail.

You're wasting your time with our football management game friend. Never has a contributor to this forum had less perspective or general nous. It's pretty staggering the stuff he comes out with. The key point is that Blackpool can offer Premier League football to Austin tomorrow, next week and next month. If he comes in and does well and Blackpool still get relegated (unlikely as you say) he'll likely get a move to an alternative lowly Prem club for the following season. If he doesn't do well and they get relegated, he has still played in the Premier League in 2011. This idea that "Saints might be in the Premier League in two or three years time" has any value whatsoever to a football player with offers from Prem and NPC clubs today is delusional nonsense. Typical from that poster, to be fair.

Well, you're comparing some "ordinary working Saints fan" with the greatest player this club has ever produced. If anyone started the ridiculous comparisons, it was you. Your premise was that everyone should, like, be treated the same and stuff. It didn't take long for me to prove that you don't think everyone should be treated the same after all. Guess what, there's loads of tickets left for your salt of the earth megafans. Loads. Turns out these super fans don't have their noses pressed against the box office window while Matt Le Tissier egged on by his laughing non-football fan mates demands 600 tickets from a weeping receptionist. If they want a ticket they can go and buy one. In other news, Matthew Le Tissier no longer a real fan of Southampton football club. Heaven forbid a club legend should get his finger out and work very hard to try and save the club he gave nearly two decades of service too. I'd say Ted Bates would have approved of that. Shame you see it as only fit to sneer at. So that's the mentality of the ordinary working megafans far more deserving of tickets than Matthew Le Tissier.....Stick your 17 years and 162 goals up your arse and stop bullying our precious chairman. "Stop digging at our chairman" he says. "Stop digging at our chairman". Our chairman. That's who you support now. I remember football was about players and dreams. Now apparently it's all about supporting the, er, chairman. Thanks for clearing that up. Get all pompous about Ted Bates against Matty if you like, but Matthew Le Tissier is worth 10,000 Nicola Corteses in the history of the club I support.

Amen, some sense at last. Great post. Funny, there's a hell of a lot of people on this thread that seem to think there is an army of "honest working men" that have dedicated their lives to supporting Saints who are being frozen out by nine of Matt Le Tissier's mates. These died in the wool megafans seem to be spoilt for choice at every other home game - Matt's nine friends aren't stopping them buying a ticket for all those games. If this was a Rupert Lowe decision I guarantee no-one (except a couple of swivel eyed Luvvies) on here would droning on about "Le Tissier got paid while he was here, he doesn't deserve anything else from the club". There is a frightening and spooky cult growing up around Cortese. It's a hell of a lot more myopic and messanic than anything the "Lowe luvvies" came out with. It's creepy, very creepy when fans decided to stand shoulder to shoulder with the managing director over and above our greatest ever player. Let's all meet up in the year 2021. I'll be still there with Le Tissier and he'll still be a legend. Let's see how your new hero gets on and let's see who gets a statue first.

There was no personal attack in that post. Read it again, it's only two sentences long. There are plenty of footballers now earning more in a year than Le Tissier earned in his career. Ted Bates was paid for his services to Saints and got lots of adulation in his time too. Isn't that reward enough, just like your civil servant? The "ordinary working man" faces plenty of challenges in getting into "Premier League" level (which this game is, in price and stature) football matches without a handful of friends of a Saints legend being held responsible. There will be plenty of non-"ordinary working men" at that Man United game. And guess what, some of them might not be close friends of Matthew Le Tissier.

Some people have been wetting themselves, creaming themselves, wristslitting and excelling themselves with histronics based on zero facts and speculation on the same subject for the last seven years: Keep on creaming, sunshine. Keep on creaming.

So, to recap, Matt Le Tissier is basically the equivalent of a trumped up civil servant who doesn't really deserve any kind of honour or respect because he got paid for doing his job and that's the end of it. Come on, let's see if we can tear down the Ted Bates statue in the morning. I mean, for christ sake, he got paid his wages by us.

I wonder what you'd think if we had another fundraiser for say, Danny Wallace or Ron Davies. If we treated everyone the same why should we raise money for anyone, or maybe the money should be spread around every single player we've ever had. What if Andrei Kanchelskis got ill. He played for Saints so should be treated the same as Danny Wallace. Right? Some players are more equal than others. Matt Le Tissier shouldn't be treated equally as some Joe Schmoe Saints fan from Bitterne. Matt Le Tissier will be in my heart and many other saints fans hearts a hell of a lot longer than the ratfaced foreigner who just happens to be the MD of the holding company that owns my football club.

Let's assume those 9 fans are Nicola Cortese's extended family and mates from his banking days. I applaud your delusion that every single person in that stadium for that game will be a died-in-the-wool Saints fan (or a Man U fan). Except of course, anyone that happens to know Matthew Le Tissier, as they are obviously all c*nts who have never even been to a football match in their lives before. Rupert Lowe used to get slaughtered on here when the likes of Alan Ball's son's wife was refused tickets. "Alan Ball's family should have free tickets for life" was greeted with almost total agreement. If Lowe was in charge now I very much doubt you'd be writing what you have here. This "cult of Cortese" is starting to be a little bit creepy. PS - Matt Le Tissier's contribution to SFC is worth at least ten times more than any thing Rodrigues ever did.

I think we've got one. Might have access to a bit more money than our old friend but some of his working methods are similarly deranged. And it isn't a criticism. A football club could do a lot worse than a Rupert Lowe with lots of money, which is what we have. Lastly, Saints buying their way into the Champions League will still not match the contribution made by MLT. Getting into the CL will be a team effort. Matty was one man. They'll be a statue of him out outside our ground long before there's ever one of some beady eyed Swiss/Italian/whateverthef***heis. LOL at the line "the person who deals with ex-players wasn't available". This wasn't Gerry Forrest ringing up, you'd assume people on the end of a phone line at SFC should know who MLT is.

Arsenal tracksuits have been delivered to Alex's house this evening.

I think he was hoping the six goals we scored at Oldham were spread around at least seven players, just to show we have goals coming from all areas.

Has any club ever bought a young player and then immediately loaned that player back to their original club? This kind of thing is always in press speculation about lower league youngsters and Prem suitors but has it ever happened? I can't think of any.

There is nothing in that article that says he is not for sale. Just that it is apparently all speculation, and that no-one has a price on their head. If we keep him until June we've done well.

At the end of the day if he was only good enough to be at Stockport for twenty years he wouldn't have been good enough to manage Man United would he. Your point is pointlessly facile and utterly lame. Without Ferguson, Manchester United wouldn't have achieved what they have. Just have a quick look at every other club in English football, many of which had equal or more resources as Manchester United at various points in the last 20 odd years or during all of the last 20 years. A big club with lots of resources isn't enough for success. It requires a skilled manager to turn resources into success on the pitch. And those managers tend to have worked up the ranks and justify their appointment. Ferguson has and Ferguson did. Droning on about Stockport is childish nonsense because he has proved to be better than that. He is better than Stockport. He is better than Stockport. He is better than Stockport. Understand? You can keep making out that Ferguson got the Man U job through luck but you're simply wrong.

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Sorry, this is just gibberish. Stockport aren't going to win the Premier League with anyone as manager. Good managers prove themselves at a lower level and then, if good enough, get appointed to bigger and bigger clubs until if they are really good enough they get appointed to clubs that could theoretically win the Premier League or the Champion's League. That is what Ferguson has done. He has already managed his "stockport" and has proved he can succeed at that level. His success then took him to a bigger club. Why can't you understand that? Lots of clubs have extra resources, but none of them have had the consistent success that Ferguson has had with his club. You seem to be convinced that "lots of resources" = success regardless of manager. Tell that to Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton and whoever. Everton were winning league titles when Ferguson pitched up at Man U. Both those clubs in the mid to late 80s had essentially identical resources. Only one of those two clubs went on to dominate English football for a generation. This idea that Ferguson had a gigantic club with huge resources thrown into his lap and simply lucked out is just utter, utter nonsense.

I think Roy Hodgson has categorically proved that it is not "easy" to find success at big clubs. The Stockport manager doesn't have and never will have the kind of pressure that managers of big clubs have to endure, and never have to take decisions with multi-million pound consquences, and discussed and dissected by TV and radio programs with millions of viewers, or in newspapers with millions of readers. The Stockport manager doesn't have every decision, utterance, argument, feud, selection, sale, purchase, spat, falling out, and misquote ripped to shreds by millions of fans, "experts" and journalists every single day of his life. Oh, and then just the small matter of picking a winning team, keeping 25 egos happy, fending off countless agents with agendas who are briefing and counter briefing the press, rising above the grinding axes from local ex-pros happy to pick holes in every thing you do, remembering to wave to the frigging away fans at the end of a defeat to stop being slaughtered on a fans forum. And so on, and so on and so on. Yeah. Easy. Real easy. Just imagine the reaction not only in Britain but around the football world if Liverpool had called a press conference to unveil their new manager and in walked......Eddie Howe. Of course, in your world he'd probably win the treble next season as he's so much better than any manager at any current Champions League club and managing big clubs is such a piece of p * ss. I'd love to see your reaction if Adkins was sacked tomorrow and was replaced by the manager of the Tyro League U-13 champions from last season. After all, that bloke hasn't had the resources Adkins has so Adkins has it much easier than that bloke so that bloke is bound to do better.

He'd win whatever league Bournemouth or Torquay were in at the time. That's your answer, and then he'd move on to a bigger club more suited to his ability. Like, say, Manchester United. And if managing huge, northern English clubs with huge resources, fanbase and history is so jolly easy, why is it that no one has managed to take Liverpool to the title in the last twenty years?

This is a moronic thing to say. He didn't become manager of Manchester United by winning a raffle. He got it by winning the league several times and a European trophy at Aberdeen. Aberdeen. And he got that job by being successful at smaller scottish clubs like St Mirren. He was proven to be a better class of manager than one only good enough to manage "stockport and suchlike". That's why he's won the frigging league eleven times.

Because he is established in a Premier League team and has Champions League experience. Gareth Bale wouldn't now be worth £30-40m if he was still at Saints. And A O-C is no way going to stay at Saints long enough to turn into someone with the experiences Bale has already had. We're at least 18 months from a Premier League game. At least. If A O-C continues his current career trajectory he wouldn't last even a single NPC season with us. We have, if current form is maintained, one more transfer window we can survive with him as a Saints player. I know you live in your little computer game world but if it is true that the big four/five are seriously looking at him, then he will very soon say he wants to go. I happen to think he will stay until the end of the season, but I doubt he will much longer than that. If he plays a role in getting us promoted then he will, in his head, have paid his dues to Southampton and be ready for the next challenge. Jon Jo Shelvy was bumming about in L1 last season and was turning out at Old Trafford today. Alex would be perfectly entitled to think - "that could be me next year. It could be me next month". Don't kid yourself that Cortese is some football goliath that every club in Britain can't take players from.

I can't be bothered to look it up but I would wager there was no statistically significant difference in average attendence during our Prem season when we finished 8th and got to the cup final and our Prem season when we finished bottom and were relegated. We had massive crowds in the final weeks in the Championship and still went down. Your response to the rationally explain everything that doesn't fit your hypothesis ("cup games are historically lower...."etc) suggest there is no causal link, it's just a coincidence this season. And even in your original post you have a 0-0 draw listed in our biggest and smallest gates. The Rochdale-type matches you could just as easily say are harder for the players to get motivated for as it is against "lowly" opposition. Players don't get up for that game and for a similar reason fans don't get up and get a ticket for that game.

This is patently not true. Kaka was never, ever going to sign for Man City. All your example proves is that Sol Campbell will sign for anyone.

I think we're playing the Newcastle United role here. Newcastle used to get bids accepted for everyone and anyone - they had a bid accepted from Everton for Rooney. Didn't mean he was ever, ever, ever going to sign for Newcastle United. We've got the dough to get bids accepted, but if it is true that Prem or soon-to-be Prem clubs are in for him, he'd be mad to come here, and he won't. If we're going to sign a striker, I can't see it being a "top class" one, as we already have two in Barnard and Lambert and L1 clubs don't have or need more than that. I can see us picking up a hungry up and comer to replace the fading Connolly, but I worry that signing an Austin would be a bit of an Asprilla moment bringing in one too many "superstars".