CB Fry

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!

Chelsea do have Frank Arnesen though who scours the world for talent to develop for the first team, taking the pressure of the manager, especially when it comes to paperwork and managing all the difficulties that can arise in those delicate situations with young players. I believe that is working incredibly well at the moment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/northampton_town/8243498.stm I was hoping Coppell would take us up to the nice round five ex-lower league managers on the staff at St Mary's. But as that isn't happening, there must be room at SMS for the man who broke (and holds) our transfer record outlay, surely? Any memories along the lines of "I remember where I was the day we appointed Mick Wadsworth" please add them below.

I get annoyed with tosh like this. Norwich got relegated from the Prem the same season as us, have got through an armful of managers and false dawns and also went down with us to L1 last season. And their new manager had less of a pre season than Pardew and managed to win a couple. And Charlton have had a faster and harder fall than we've had as they came down to the CCC a season after us. We're not that special, we're not super hard done by. We haven't got "a virus" any more than any other club. We're currently rubbish on the pitch and in the league. That's all.

So Pardew is going to be manager for the next twenty years is he? Is he balls. Not sure if you noticed by every other club on earth does a good job of changing managers every eighteen months as well, it wasn't some exclusive thing only Saints did. Pardew will leave/resign/get sacked/retire/move upstairs or something at some point in the next five years, probably sometime in the next two. It's a fair point that we do have plenty of able caretakers at the club, and one more if Coppell pitches up.

How much "time and money" do you think the Mirror "invest" into stories about League One Southampton Football Club? (Clue: none) This story will be based on a couple of phone calls from one, maximum two, sources. Hacks in the Mirror aren't piecing together extravagent stories about Southampton Football Club over weeks and months you know. The story might be true, it might not be true, but it hasn't cost anyone "time and money"

You cheeky scamp! Funnily enough I was thinking of dusting that old one down for this season this morning, but no-one ever gets what I'm on about, which is most of the fun of course. My "we need to win eight in a row" thing was just about how far behind the trendline to promotion we are and viewing the challenge by ignoring the other teams in the league who actually are irrelevent until the final weeks. But no-one ever gets it, probably because barely any of us in our lifetime has seen Saints win promotion from any league* and win the volume of games required. We win two and draw four and we think we're on the greatest run of our lives. Anyway, the answer to your question is 42.

It's worth also pointing out that Parkinson was Pardew's assistant so had the "Wotte factor" of knowing the players, club, fans etc. Meaning he had an even longer head start. All is far from lost and I still think come the end of the season we will be challenging for the play offs (apparently, this is a "negative" viewpoint). I said it at the start of the season, and I stand by it now in the face of a load of supposedly "super positive" fans saying how delighted they will be if we achieve the super human effort of fourth from bottom in a league with Exeter, Yeovil, Gillingham and Oldham.

If you have me on ignore, then how do you know I am running the club down? You'll never find a single post from me running the club down. You see success as finishing fourth from bottom. I see it as challenging for the play offs this season. Alan Pardew agrees with me, not you. If anyone is running the club down, it's you.

Yawn. I don't want Pardew sacked. My point is in agreement with Pardew - he wants promotion this season, he said it and I think that is absolutley what we should be aiming for. The only people I am having a go at are the fans making out we should be only be hopeful for, and eternally grateful for, scraping last day survival. That would be utterly unacceptable, for me, for Pardew and for any sensible fans. People working themselves up to make this some kind of stupendous acheivement when we are the biggest spending team in the league is utterly ridiculous. Err - that was my point in the first place. It is the Le God Third Coming and others on here who would be Man United fans saying "wouldn't it be brilliant if we finished fourth from bottom, that's all we can reasonably expect". Can you see any Man U fans saying that? Because that is officially the "positive" viewpoint on this forum. It's bloody laughable. I'm sick to death reading people pretending to be "the positive fans" by saying all we should hope for is fourth from bottom and no one is allowed to complain if that is all we achieve this season. Well Alan Pardew doesn't agree with that sentiment, so I am not sure why it is given such credence on this forum and used as a stick to beat so-called "negative" posters who want precisely what Alan Pardew wants. A hell of a lot better than where we are now.

Yes, but that was when we were relatively poor side amongst gigantic clubs in the biggest league in global football. We're now the biggest spending team, with the best paid manager, one of the best stadiums and best crowds in a tiny division. We are Man United. We are Liverpool. This idea that "wouldnt it be just super, simply wonderful if we could scrape survival in this division" is just lunacy. Ohh how dare we expect anything else against the likes of Oldham and Swindon. And anyway, our current manager told us he was going for promotion this season, so why don't we judge him by those standards, as opposed to the standards of a manager from five years and two divisions ago?

Who is running down the manager, the owner or the chairman? Who, and on what threads (apparently "every thread", but I haven't read anything of the sort). I think the only trolling going on is from you, making things up and then getting upset about them. As for running the team down, well zero wins in six league one games, I think they deserve it. And as for running down other fans, being that the likes of you are just making stuff up and then moaning about it, why not? You're clearly bonkers.

Where's this then? I haven't seen one single post from anyone "demanding" (or even asking) for anyone to be sacked. NOT ONE ANYWHERE. Bet you can't find one either. What is on this forum are a million dullard posts like this one ranting on and on at people for not dancing congas of gratitude in the streets for a team that is rock bottom of the league and would be even if we didn't have a points deduction. No wins in six when Yeovil, Exeter, Bristol Rovers and Gillingham have managed to win games in this league. It isn't this incredibly difficult challenge that the management team need six months to work up to. John Barnes can win a game at this level for christ's sake. Stockport County can win games. Walsall, Oldham, Leyton Orient can win games. It's not the holy grail of football and how dare we demand such unreasonable impossible things. It's winning games in League One. People should be complaining. They'd be mad not to. Get over it.

We're doing as badly as John Barnes' Tranmere team, and everyone knew Barnes was going to be an abject failure before a ball was even kicked. And Tranmere haven't spent a million pounds on a midfielder, a million pounds on the best striker in the league last season, and have a million pound keeper and million pound defender already at the club, plus internationals, plus players rated at six figure sums that we can afford to turn down. Oh, and managed by the best paid manager in the division who has had his way with player ins and outs and his hand picked backroom staff and the biggest feel good factor at the club since the cup final. Zero wins in six in those circumstances cannot be patronising compared to Leonardo putting together a masterpiece and the plebs slagging it off. Zero wins in six. Get over yourself.

I personally preferred the suggestion of Waaaaaigo Papa Waaaaaaaaaaaaaigo sung to the tune of Day-O. The banana boat song, or the Trio chocolate bar song, if you're my age. Second line to be something fairly generic like "he play for Saints and he score some goals" Not sure that gets sung at many grounds, so it would be at least original. Failing that a few verses of "there's only one Johnny Hartson" should suffice.

In retrospect. £6m for Jones on the day we did the deal was a fantastic bit of business for Saints. It is immaterial whether he scores 500 goals for Sunderland including a hat-trick in the FA Cup Final for them and they tear down Bob Stokoe and put a twelve foot Kenwynne up in its place. On the day it was excellent business for us. Not least because the mardy t*at was on strike.

This Peter Storrie chap was the chief exec of PFC during all this time, was he not? His quotes make him out to be the valiant hero battling to save the club while skilfully swerving the fact that he signed all the cheques to get them in the plop in the first place. Anyway, Corp and co have been telling us that Pompey have less debt any other club on earth and are the most financially ship shape club in the Premier League, so presumably Storrie is just making this all up.