CB Fry

Reading stick with Coppell because he took them up in the first place and kept them there and is by far the best qualified person to keep them up. Not quite sure how that is any way comparable to SFC. The point is Reading when they went down had too much quantity and not enough quality in the squad, just like in the first post. My point is almost all relegations are sprung from the same reasons - managers/chopping and changing/lack of quality players etc etc. Saying our relegation this time is the same as our relegation last time is pretty weak point. Charltons relegation from the Prem was the same as ours, and their relegation from the CCC is the same again. Forest, or Norwich, or Watford, or Blackpool should they go down will be the carbon copy again. Pompey, Boro, Blackburn, Newcastle this season will be a carbon copy. You seem to be under the illusion that every other relegation is down to brilliantly run clubs being a bit unlucky but Southampton relegations are completely unique?

To be fair, this is probably a "carbon copy" of nearly every team that has been relegated from all four divisions in the last twenty years.

Agree with all of this, but it is also fair to stay we could have spunked gazillions on players and still gone down. Middlesborough are doing all the things that are supposed to bring non stop glory - new stadium, dream chairman, double figure million transfers, not letting their biggest names go to Spurs, faith in the manager, stability in the boardroom and on the training pitch.....and.......and..... almost certainly relegated. Who knew? Dowie was given £25m to spend at Charlton, but that over investment brought unbelievable pressure and implosion. Portsmouth are finding "building on a cup run" (apparently the easiest thing in the world to do according to half the fans on here) is not quite that easy and are likely to finish lower than our season after our cup run (that we failed to build on). You are right in where we went wrong, but there isn't a magic formula that would have kept us up forever, and those that think not having SMS would have guaranteed Premier League football forever are frankly retarded.

Would Rupert have been flooded with demands for a soulless stadium in a retail park nowhere from the city the club is supposed to represent that takes stupid amounts of time to get to and out of? Oh, and the true Saints fans want assurances you'll build a revenue generating hotel on the side of it to? That's what all "football people" would want, if only evil old Rupert had asked. "Stand up if you want a hotel" Oh to have a stadium like that notorious hotbed of blood guts and glory football passion, that well known cauldron of hell for visiting teams....The Madjeski, sponsored by Waitrose. At the end of the day its the gentrification of football, the all seater stadia and the "family" focus that has changed the atmosphere at clubs up and down the country. "Fans being asked what type of stadium they wanted to move to" wouldn't have changed a thing.

Is it? What's the answer then.

No he doesn't. Michael Owen has scored 40 goals for his country in a ratio of about a goal every other game. Moran in contrast bummed about for the majority of his career and faded very very quickly. Its not all about talent - its about application. And anyway, stop going on about "not being knocked over". Composure in front of goal is a different attribute to being strong. Lineker and Owen and co scored loads and loads and loads of goals not by being "a brick shi t house" or "not being knocked over" but by getting into space, timing runs and being composed in front of goal. Of all the attribues Composure is probably the most important one. Torres has it and it has jack sh it to do with being a "brick shi t house". BWP needs composure, he doesn't need to put on six stone like you seem to think he does.

Yeah, BWP will never have composure in front of goal because he's not built like those notorious brick sh it-houses Michael Owen, Gary Lineker, Steve Moran, Marians Pahars and Kevin Phillips.

The snidey comments on the Echo forum really are pathetic. I'm sure we'll see similar on here before too long. But before anyone gets all excited, read the article. MW is not comparing BWP to Torres, all he is saying is "great strikers do this, that's what my striker needs to do" MW in a press conference he has to do each weekend made a few encouraging comments about a striker who probably is low on, but could thrive on, confidence. Why that deserves a slaughtering from the usual suspects I don't know. This is not "PR" or "taking the fans for mugs" and all the rest of the garbage that gets churned out whenever anyone from the club says anything. Just a couple of quotes that might just give one of our strikers a bit of confidence before an important game. Before you slate Wotte for doing such an appalling thing (how could he) just ask yourself precisely what you want the manager to say in a pre match press call he is contractually obliged to do?

Possibly the most hilarious line ever posted on this forum. You do realise starting lots of threads on the same subject over and over and over and over and over again on a tinternet message board doesn't actually achieve anything. No one has got their heads in the sand. We've just heard it a billion times before, from the same poster, every single day.

You can accuse our esteemed chairman of plenty of things, but being afraid to take risks is not one of them. You do realise Mr Lowe placed the very existance of the club in the hands of a unqualified, out of his depth dutch dipstick, don't you? How much bloody risk do you want?

"Far more money for loans etc" oh we're so hard done by. Last time I looked we had a keeper in goal we paid a million pounds for, while Forest have a keeper in goal we turfed out because he wasn't good enough. Oh, and we have a £1.75m left winger, two £750k strikers, a £1m centre back, a rising-to-£1m midfielder and so on. Forest got Earnshaw in, and a couple of loans down to Pleaty's contacts more than cash, but not a great deal else. If they stay up it won't be because they've blown everyone else out of the water financially.

No one ever said he was the second coming. However, in three full seasons at this level (and in the last five years, not a decade ago) he has a achieved the play offs three times, the play off final twice, and promotion once. That's a bloody good record, recently, in this division, and with clubs as skint as us (the Derby little bit of spending happened in January when they were top of the league, and Davies spent, err, the same as Burley that season). So apologies if it offends you that someone with that record is thought by some fans to be a pretty good bet for us. How awfully silly Who would you recommend that is so much better?

I can't see it being the right thing, unless the run-in is a spectacular nobel failure, rather than just a typical failure - say we win five or six games and still go down, then maybe it would be worth keeping him. But relegation would kill the Dutch thing stone dead and a clean sweep (yes, again) would be in order.

What the hell is anyone supposed to say? You do realise football managers all get interviewed on the thursday/friday before a match whether they like it or not, don't you? It's not managers deciding they want to speak to the world because they have something illuminating to say. Seriously, it's just rent-a-quote.

I think if Wotte keeps us up Lowe should give him a full size fully functional classic victorian steam train. Plated with gold. And full of hookers and beer. And with a specially made dutch cafe style cannabis carriage. And a couple of hundred miles of track suspended in the sea going from port solent to Rotterdam. And the keys to the city. Apologies if I am confrontational but I do get ****ed off when people lamely pull the "you're a Lowe luvvie" card when anyone says anything they don't happen to agree with (not referring to you, but it explained my slightly ****y tone).

Great post and absolutely correct. It just seems strange how people contort themselves into any ridiculous position just so they can have a dig at the current chairman regardless of whether their argument holds any weight whatsoever. So, all the people now saying how much easier Wotte's job is than Pearsons was. Where are your posts from six weeks ago where you are avidly campaigning for Wotte to be given the job because he knew the players/had the experience/wouldn't be coming in cold/would have it easier/etc/etc. So come on then, chaps. Dig out your posts calling for Wotte to be appointed. I tell you what I thought at the time - no thank you Wotte, no thank you Lowe, lets have someone new. You lot obviously thought something completely opposite at the time, didn't you? After all, internal appointments are always much better than horrible old outsiders coming in and ruining everything. Right? Because surely you're not just making your opinions up as you go along, are you?

Yawn, nice try at the lamest routine in the book. I'm no defender of Lowe and I am not attacking Pearson either and I ripped Lowe to shreds on here when Pearson went and Jan came in. "You're a Lowe luvvie because I don't agree with you" is just pathetic on your part. Grow up. At the end of the day "internal appointments" are riven with problems and just don't work in almost every single case. So sorry, you're wrong. And where am I making out Pearson is "****"? Come on, show me? I just think some of the ludicrous overhype of him is a bit silly and shows the usual lack of perspective on this forum. Most people on here sneer like hell at, say, Micky Adams whose acheivements knock anything Pearson has done into a ****ed hat. Pearson is on the cusp of achieving what Nigel Adkins or Phil Parkinson have achieved in recent years. People need to calm down a bit. I wanted Pearson to stay and was disgusted when he was elbowed by Lowe. Disgusted. If the forum archives go back to last May, look up what I said at the time. He was great for us last season, and was the one man that would have united the fanbase under Lowe, and Lowe blew it. Doesn't mean I have to buy into the cult of Pearson that has sprung up, it doesn't change the fact that Wotte has a far, far harder job than Pearson had on, and doesn't change the fact that if Wotte keeps us up it will surpass Pearson's achievement by a long, long, way. So try thinking a bit more instead of chucking lame "you love Lowe" rubbish about.

Well, I think I also mentioned the increased resources Pearson had, the ability to bring in players like Wright in, the fact that Saints weren't in the bottom three (or solidly rooted to the bottom three) when he took over, and the fact that if Pearson had won three in a row as soon as Wotte has, we'd have been talking about the play off challenge Leon promised us when Burley left, not still be four points adrift as we are now. Lots of reasons why the conditions for Pearson were more favourable than the conditions for Wotte. If Wotte keeps us up it will be a hell of a greater achievement than Pearson's. I like Nigel, I live in the E Midlands and know a few Leicester fans who love him like we did. But Wotte's acheivement this season will be greater than Nige's last, if he does it. Lets hope he does.

LOL. Don't think anyone has said anything of the sort. But some managers with six months experience ten years ago in the bottom division, zero managerial jobs inbetween and then five months experience nine years later in the CCC was being described as "the best young manager in British football" (he's the same age as David Moyes and started his career at the same time) and "a future England manager" etc etc etc It isn't and never will be Wotte who is the victim of ludricrous over hype on this forum.

No, I wouldn't and my reason for that is the fact that the vast, vast majority of "internal" appointments at football clubs (Adams, Chris Hutchings, Wigley, Gray, Les Reed etc etc) has shown that when a change of management is required more success is likely with a new man, a fresh pair of eyes, no preconceptions and a chance to start afresh. Wotte did not have that luxury and Pearson did. All this "insider knowledge" you seem to value is massively outweighed by the disadvantages of the internal appointment - the players know your weak spots, it's not really "new", you're seen as a "second choice" or "cheap option" by the fans and players, you are unavoidably linked/compared to the last incumbent etc etc. Being a "new man" is a great liberator and in lots of walks of life you never have as much power in a new role as you do in your first flush, your first six months when energy levels and enthusiasm are at a premium. I don't buy into your premise at all and I repeat I very much doubt you would use the same argument to defend the appointment of Wigley.

So on that logic you would still fully back the appointment of Steve Wigley way back when then - after all, all the players all knew him, involved with all the players beforehand etc etc. The best appointment is the internal promotion of the second in command then, right? Because that "advantageous position" could never fail, could it? That's got to be much better than a new man strolling in with a fresh pair of eyes, no preconceptions and a chance for a clean slate and a kick up the arse for the entire squad hasn't it? Right?

And on the flip side Pearson had a real "new manager" effect that Wotte couldn't possibly have had, Pearson had a far better squad to draw on and brought in some loan players on serious serious wedge (hello Richard Wright). And we weren't rooted in the relegation zone when Pearson walked in, despite what the revisionists make out. If Pearson had won three games in a row as early as Wotte did, then we'd have been challenging for the playoffs come the end of the season. So I think the conditions they arrive in even themselves out, with Pearson having the easier job all told.

Yeah, because Leicester just love Derby don't they? Are you saying you would want a ref from Portsmouth to ref all our remaining games? Or that a ref from Lancashire would favour a Yorkshire side? What about a ref from Bristol favouring Cardiff - after all they're really close ain't they? At the end of the day didn't the ref bottle a stone wall Derby penalty at the end of the game which would have taken some guts to give at SMS last night? (I wasn't there, I live in the East Midlands where everyone from Leicester wants Derby to win every game, but it sounded like a pen to me )

If that is "the point" it's a pretty dopey one. We're not going to win every single game and neither is anyone else, including Wolves and Reading etc. I'm with Marco - it isn't in our own hands because we desperately need others to lose. It's amazing that with what we've gone through recently - three wins in a row and still firmly in the bottom threee - that people still make predictions where we win and everyone else just stands still. It's not in our hands, we need others to lose, and quickly.

If I won the whole lot I would pledge £10m to Saints to be spent on only and specifically players on condition that I get to parade round the pitch with a scarf over my head and giving it a load of large. Matt Le Tissier is appointed Life President I get to put my foot through that picture of a train live on South Today.