CB Fry

Yes, I do. The three of them are experts at the basics. Picking players, getting them organised, motivating them and getting them to work for their own development and for the rest of the team. Being aware of what motivates each individual player and acting on it, making the whole team aware that no-one is bigger than the club, the team or the project. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents, to nullify them but not be dictated to by them. Picking an assistant or two to help where help is needed. Managing the fans expectations. The basics, and they are the best in the business. It winds me right up when people say "even Mourinho couldn't do any better at Saints". What utter rot. Of course he bloody could. Jose would get these same players to at least mid table stood on his head. If Boothroyd can promote a shambolic Watford that finished 20th in the previous season in one season in his first job, I think we can assume Jose Mourinho could cope with managing in this league, the one below or any league anywhere.

I don't agree with this in our case - our team is full of a lot of impressionable youngsters so I think a kick up the arse and/or a bit of fresh inspiration from a Boothroyd, Cotterill, Holloway (yes, I am that desperate) or similar could have had a real effect. Plus the old heads might be motivated by a bit of "normality" rather than Project Ajax 2010. Wotte might be the man to deliver the step change, maybe we'll find out tomorrow. Personally I doubt it and I have us down to finish second bottom with a fair wind behind us.

Can you imagine the uproar if we'd have made Perry or Paul Wotton the club captain - that would have decided in everyone's minds that Davis going was a "done deal". This forum is like the Salem witch trials sometimes. Kelvin going it completely possible, I'm not saying it won't happen. I'd be surprised if its Sunderland purely from Kelvin's previous experience, that's all. What would be the point?

Do remind me why Hetha Berlin, who obviously loved and cherished the little mite with all their hearts, didn't take up an option to make the loan permanent - after all he's a super hard working wonder player with the greatest attitude in the world, whose problems are all the fault of Southampton FC, right? And if all he cared about was being wanted and loved and cherished, why didn't he go to Ipswich when he could have done in the summer? (Clue...Kerrching) Where is this queue for Rudi Skacel's services?

Where has it gathered legs? Kelvin going to a cushy number at a southern club going places - QPR - I can see, but why go to Sunderland to be a reserve keeper at a club where he was lampooned and despised during the worst period of his entire career? And if he had a sniff of that move (and he would by now) he wouldn't have agreed to be club captain. He's not a complete idiot. And have to live around bloody Sunderland? And be relegated with Sunderland, again? Can't see it. People can say "money" but Kaka could have gone to Man City for "money". He didn't go because the move would be pointless. Kelvin going to Sunderland would be pointless. Really can't see it.

I'm not sure I ever said fans would be active in terms of running the club in a picking-the-team way, that seems to be something you decided I thought. All along my argument has been that to set up a fan run club along the lines of the OP would require the anorak mafia of the usual suspects of fan mobilisation, and the subsequent ego-age would strangle the thing at birth anyway. Like who, in this country, in the top two divisions. Seriously, you've said you piece about it, I couldn't give a flying fu ck what's been happening in Germany for the last sixty years. It is not going to happen. You might as well go on about Ice Cream being made free on the NHS. Blinding theory but never going to happen. Like who. Please do not reply with the list of two bit lower league and non league nonentities. I'm sick of people wetting their pants over AFC Wimbledon and FC United. Small fry cottage industry. I know you do. Stop arguing with me then. I did say that about four posts ago. No, my premise and I will repeat it again, is that to get this thing off the ground would require it being started, and the people starting it would be the anorak mafia of superfans who have so far proved to be unable to organise the sandwiches at a whist drive. The key point is that lot would never get the sod off the ground in a million years. I'd give it a month before half of them walked out over a debate about the acronym for the group. And, actually, with the egotists involved in such an operation, I stand by my assertion that their egos would need sating with glory and recognition on a weekly basis. Lord spare us from being owned and run by ver fans.

Sorry, I resent being called ignorant. Your starting point for debate is a fully formed working active democratic fans co-operative working wonderfully and you attack me for belittling it. Well, sorry, but my starting point is Southampton, England, January 2009. No fans collective, no fans co-operative, no fans mutual society. So who is going to start it? What's it called? Who's the chairman? Who's going on Solent to announce it? What's the structure? How much is the membership? Who's the treasurer? What's the view on the manager now, the team now? Do the bond holders get a season ticket discount, I'd want to know before I sign up. When is the first meeting? Who's going? Who's allowed to go, do I have to register on a website first? Who's running the website? Do I have to pay another fiver to join that one? What did he just say on Sky Sports News? And he's representing us? What a t w at. I'm going to start my own group up. Who's with me? Don't tell me I'm cheapening things by my approach which is grounded in as much reality as yours. And you know as well as I do the chaps who would be calling to order the first meeting of the Save our Saints Co-operative Mutual Fans Society would be the usual suspects. It isn't going to land on SMS like some mothership. Someone needs to create it. Like someone needed to create one statue and co cked it up like no-one's business. The concept of a fully formed successful statue was pretty easy to revel in as well. So I think the ignorance is in avoiding the facts of creation in preference to glorying in the wonder of if it did happen. And you talk about "absense of rational argument" on my side, which would be fine were the rest of English football signed up to your way. But they aren't, and that's a fact, Jack. So the rest of the league are all irrational by not being in Spanish collectives and being just as bloody skint anyway. Oh, for such rationality! And you've admitted yourself it isn't going to happen, so now this just seems like a debate about a religious belief. Either that or you're going to hit me with the facile "they all laughed at Christopher Columbus" routine. And that is futile..........

Relegation was out of our hands on the last day of last season. What that means is we could have gone out and "done our job" and still gone down. What that also means is we hadn't been "doing our job" in the weeks leading up to that weekend. That is just a fact, there's no need to get silly about it. My perspective is twenty twenty and was my original point - when Crouch came in he was talking about success as the play-offs which did not come to pass, as relegation was out of our hands on the last day, which, apart from actually being relegated is about as far from the play offs as you can get.

This is a nice entertaining debate, thanks for getting involved. We are converging - you mention utopia, and we're more or less in the realms of the"brilliant theory" argument about communism. And you also say it in all likelihood isn't going to happen. So defending the concept is pretty futile isn't it? I'm sorry I've touched a nerve on fans groups but I have seen enough live and played out through the old fanzines and the forums to know that these kind of concepts will be strangled at birth by the same people that gave a six-figure commision for a city centre life size bronze cast of a hallowed public figure to a man that carves wooden eagles because he supported the same football team as they did (and this is not a myth). So you carry on reading about German fans collectives in When Saturday Comes and I'll carry on sticking in a few snippy jibes at the great and the good of the fandom aristocracy and we'll meet in the middle and agree that it isn't going to happen here anyway. I know that doesn't solve anything about how to run SFC, but I look forward to seeing a collective fans' endeavour that will succeed kicking off nicely on Saturday, which might lead us somewhere better. Here's hoping.

The league is the league. Leicester definitely deserved to go down. My point is only that the great escape was not that great - we needed results to go our way to stay up. "It's still in our hands" is always the most precious commodity in the relegation battle, and losing that is second only to being mathmatically down, and we lost it. The point is Crouch came in talking play offs and we ended up with relegation out of our hands on the last afternoon. That is as close as it gets.

Okay. The figures in this link are pretty eye watering and probably over-egged but do go some way to illustrating my point that Spanish football is run on fairyland money so any real comparison with that kind of set up in the UK or specifically with Saints is pretty fanciful. http://www.goal.com/en/news/722/la-liga/2009/01/07/1048072/new-report-reveals-massive-debts-in-la-liga The presidential elections in those clubs seem to me like a bloody circus of over inflated promises followed by disarray and fall out. The bottomless pits and reputations of the big two mean of course they get success but it always seems on a knife edge most of the time. And Germany - everyone knows the old chestnut that you can buy a season ticket for Bayern for what you pay for a bag of chips in Woolston, but again, that aint going to happen here, co-operative fans collective or none. So, great, you can read up about fans collectives all over the world, but you have to start one here. In Southampton, in 2009. You're not starting one just after Atlee swept in to power. When the leading lights and ex members of the Saints trust can't seem to agree on the font for the letter head the chances of anyone getting a mutual society off the ground in Southampton in 2009 is pie in the sky. You can carry on looking at "the trees" of how they do it across the pond, but all I can see is "the wood" of reality of why it can't and won't happen here. So you can accuse me of myth making, but let's say this in response. I will whole heartedly sign up to a fans collective running Southampton FC once you can show me five more clubs from the top two divisions in England running one first.

Might be worth starting a list of players at one time the media (and some of the fanbase) had decided were much, much better than that washed up Beckham primadonna who should never play for England again.... Aaron Lennon, anyone? Shaun Wright Phillips? Kieron Dyer? David Bentley? Must be a few others I'm missing... Beckham is an absolute legend who will only be truly admired in a decade's time when England are lumbered with the arrogant baby bentley tw ats coming through the ranks now.

Can I take that as a compliment, then Um? Funnily enough I think you have hoisted yourself on your own theory a little here. Your 75% rump of fans could, easily, dominate every EGM and every decision. Your 75% could have fans on the board, fans on the touchline, fans in the kitchen, fans under the stairs, fans everywhere. Your 75% could have kept Pearson or appointed any number of eligible managers. But they don't. It's not active ownership, is it? What the original poster is suggesting is the old chestnut of the Barcelona style super-fan-ownership and by default fans running. You get enough umbridge against the anonymous suits "taking our money and not listening" when fans are "only" stumping up their £600 season tickets. If they are ploughing in another grand, two grand to own the thing that level of shoulder chippage and inflated "we're the lifeblood" importance is only going to swell. Sorry, a fan-led mass buy out could only lead to fan leadership. I find it almost impossible to envisage x thousand saints fans all stumping up a grand each to get their club back only to hand the whole lot over to some rent-a-Hone-or-Hoos. And even if they did the disillusionment would kick in within a fortnight. Plus the very fact that some fans would have to lead and run the mass buy up already would create enough egoage to puff up a fleet of balloons to cross the atlantic and those self appointed saviours are hardly likely to decide to stop there and give up their created empire. Sorry Um, got to disagree - fan ownership would lead to fan running and the dogs breakfast* that would ensue. *current dogs breakfast at club does not make this alternative a success by default.

I'd forgotten this quote but it is worth remembering when considering Crouch's level of delusion. He said this at the appointment of Dodd and Gorman that the playoffs were in reach. Meaning he can't really crow about how successful he and Pearson were when all we did was stay up because some other teams failed. If all three of Leicester, Cov and us had won on the last day we were down. I don't doubt we would be doing better under Nige now were he hear, but top six is I think pretty ga-ga.

Five hundred will really be there, with the Echo probably rounding up to a thousand and some people on this forum rounding it up to ten thousand. 500 would be a pretty decent turn out and is a realistic target for the organisers to aim for. Any more is going to be going some.

Would be a total disaster. Exhibit one - the Saints Trust has never really got off the ground and now seems an irrelevence. Exhibit two - the clowns that were responsible for the Ted Bates Statue calamity, the only thing in our history that really did make us a national laughing stock. (I don't remember the Steve Wigley appointment appearing on Have I Got News For You) Run entirely by fans/football people/"us"/etc, for fans. And it was one project, not a multi lateral business. They only had to put one statue up. And those "Saints people" totally co c ked it up. Totally co c ked it up. Why - the utter obsession that if you are "passionate Saints fan" that out ranks any other qualification. That's why we ended up with a wildlife woodcarver who had never in his life done a life size human sculpture or a large scale public space commision and never worked in bronze being handed the biggest human sculpture comission in the city of Southampton since the war. To be made out of bronze. What was his qualification? He was a "passionate Saints fan" and owned a chisel. Brilliant. When can you start? We do not need these people anywhere near the running of the football club. We don't need good old Mick from the Northam social club appointed executive in charge of media relations because he used to run a paper shop and he's had a season ticket for forty years. Fan ownership? No, no, no, no, no.

There isn't £6m being touted about though. There's Crouch saying "I'll put £2m if you two do" which is just a convenient way of saying "I'm not going to put £2m in but I can make a fan-friendly point that makes me look good". He might as well say that to me, because I'm just as likely to put £2m in as Lowe and Wilde, and Crouch damn well knows that. (not about me, Wilde and Lowe). There's plenty of people witholding their twenty quids and not turning up at present, and they have my blessing to do as they please. But one can hardly blame anyone else for not putting in two million pounds.

And its fair to say we don't really know what gates would be were we, say, five places up the table bimbling about not doing anything of note (like Plymouth, say). We may not have got the kind of gate we got for the Forest game if it were more meaningless than it was (and we might not have run the ticket offer for the same reason). If the last game of last season was a meaningless play-out would we have packed them in? Unlikely. Glory and peril increase gates. Middling mediocrity is pretty dull sometimes and I think we'd still find plenty to moan about on this forum. I'm not saying the "Lowe effect" doesn't exist, it clearly does, and being awful and winning one home game is not going to help, but its a bit dangerous to make too many wild predictions about how fantastic it would all be under Crouch with regard to gates and glory. I think we need a bigger change than another deckchair shift.

We have no such choice. Crouch is making grandiose statements (if he did say as described) with the comfort of not needing to do anything. There was no sign of new investment or a spectacular up turn in fortunes during his admittedly brief tenure at the top*. Also, when the time came to make a big decision our "multi millionaire Saints fan" bottled it and appointed Dodd and Gorman to appease the gigantic ego of everyone's favourite FA Cup winning manager who really didn't want a big name coming in and running the team and everything. He got Pearson right, but that was risky and touch and go at the time too (and again, was a McMenemy ego appointment). Let's try not to believe Crouch's own hype too much. These kind of outburst confirms my view that none of them is better than any of them. *don't bother with the "where is the investment Lowe is bringing" stuff, really. Lowe's failures do not make Crouch a success by default. He is full of it too.

Well I am pretty sure of this. This theory that we couldn't quite afford Wotte as manager so we paid him as assistant and then promoted him that you are trying to peddle is nonsense. If Jan wasn't Jan and was, say, Steve Cotteril, or a visibly English "compromise candidate" then your conspiracy might have some legs, but what you are suggesting is conspiracy purely for the sake of conspiracy. If at the start of the season, we couldn't afford Wotte and Jan with Wotte as manager, but Lowe really really wanted Wotte as manager, then why didn't he just employ Wotte as manager with an even cheaper assistant? It's not like the fanbase would have risen up and said "but where is Jan Poortvliet? you can't have Wotte without Poortvliet". They were all complete unknowns. Basically your conspiracy theory doesn't add up at all. It's a "scheme" with absolutely no point to it whatsoever. And don't try and twist things to suggest I think things you want me to think. We're not talking about Pearson here, and I was saying in June that we could afford Pearson, and we could and we still can now. From your post it looks like you at one point swallowed the Pearson lie, I neve did.

You mean like you, then? If we go down we won't be able to move for smug posts from you blaming "the rest of us" for the departure of George Burley and "the rest of us" reaping what we've sowed. (you've never been too fussed by the fact he was offered an easier, cushier, higher prestige job stuff. We drove him out, didn't we, SOG?) Mark my words. You'll enjoy the "being proved right" thing more than anyone, despite being possibly the wrong-est contributor this forum has ever seen.

Amen.

I really don't get what you are so upset about. Jan isn't/wasn't experienced in this division regardless of age, so having Wotte to help had to be a good thing. He was the metaphorical 37 year old running around. He didn't have a bloody clue. And Jan, as a more tracksuit manager, was the logical choice for Head Coach, and Wotte, with his recent history as academy director was the ideal choice for academy director*. Both appointments were retarded, so I don't know why you are getting quite so upset about the intracacies of it. And, you started the thread about Jan being "set up to fail" which is just conspiracy ********. *again, pedants, in the context of stupidly appointing them in the first place.

Cue some pillock saying "I'd rather be relegated than that awful man Davies and his horrible football philosophy of getting to the play offs in every single full season he has managed in this division".

Don't be silly - Wotte and Jan are both nobodies, its not like Wotte is/was head and shoulders above Jan. Wotte's recent history is as an academy director, so appointing him a an academy director is pretty sensible isn't it*? Just stop going on about three years ago. Three years ago Phil Brown was washed up as a football manager. We appointed Jan, now we've got Wotte. Both unqualified, both nobodies, neither would get anywhere near a job at any other club in the English league system. Stop making out Wotte to be some managerial giant. *sensible in the context that the entire Dutch project is lunacy. Well, sorry, you started it. "Jan was set up for a fall from the start". Re-read your first post on the thread. How could he be, as you've cast Wotte as the most over qualified assistant manager in history? Surely that's pretty helpful and hardly setting someone up for a fall. Basically, what I am saying is the things you are grumbling about don't add up. If Wotte was so fantastic, then surely Jan was at a fantastic advantage in terms of help?