CB Fry

Hey, if JP had us solid top six all season would the fans have been so harsh on him? If JP had won ten games in a row would the fans have been so harsh on him? If JP had taken us to Wembley and we'd won the Carling cup on sunday eight nil against Brazil would the fans have been so harsh on him? You do talk consistent rubbish but berating fans for not supporting a manager because he was hypothetically winning games is possibly the most retarded thing you've yet said. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

I'm surprised the original poster hasn't suggested the stadium all sing "Take me out to the ball game" before every match.

Who cares. A bit of press release PR and spin from Tranmere. I know some people on here think Rupert Lowe is the only man on earth to do such a thing, but maybe other clubs are at it too. I doubt any mega-yachts will be seen outside Birkenhead any time soon. This time last year everyone on here was wetting themselves about Derby's billion dollar American takeover. That went well, didn't it?

How many layers of assumption are you going to put into your assessment of some one else's post? He would be a brilliant signing, and he isn't going to sign for us. The end.

What, apart from these?

Hmm. Not sure about all of this. As others have said, two years is not a particularly significant milestone. And I am not sure Alan Ball deserves an "annual end of season tribute". As a player he was good but he hardly gave us his best years and he is not exactly Saints through and through (about half a dozen clubs could lay some claim to him). As a manager he was very good but only did a season and a half and scarpered off in search of extra cash the minute an offer came up. (Before anyone blames Askham, remember - no-one held a gun to his head to go to Man City. No one. "I wish I'd never left" was easier to say once he'd failed at Man City and some years had passed). Yes, he died to soon, and yes great bloke, good manager for us etc etc. But I am not sure we need to mark his death again so soon.

Will what happen in our league? CCC clubs up and down the country have been cutting prices, running special events (kids for a quid) etc etc for the last three, four years. This is just a bit of PR spin from the Premier League press office the BBC have parrotted out verbatim. Or do you really think the CCC clubs are more expensive than the bargain basement premier league?

God bless you. As the man who launched the first sweepstake on this forum's predecessor, and introduced HCDAJFU, I feel I have made a lasting contribution to the entertainment of the digital fan in the post millennium era. Even I, though, doubt that my contribution warrants a statue, but if that is what my public want, who am I to stop it? Let me know when Ian Brennan is ready to start the preliminary sketches.

How many football chairmen can you name, then? I'll let you have, yawn, Steve Gibson.

"Emergency Loan" is just a fig leaf to get round the EU's/UEFA's/Whoever's rule-it-is rules. S****horpe aren't actually in an emergency situation - all loans in the CC Leagues this time of year are "emergencies". That said, I agree with you - S****horpe probably are paying the wages in this case.

I think one of Ponty's points is that this opening up of information and, more significantly, outlets to release, expose, speculate, lie, pontificate and get overexcited about said information is making some people think they are actually part of the French Revolution or something even more important - read the language used, the positions taken, the self puffery, the ridiculous overstatement. (Hello R Chorley). Although, that said, being one of the very people utterly absorbed with, and revelling in, your own (self)importance in the narrative of the travails of the football club we all support, it's no surprise you missed the point and compared protests against the management of a second tier provincial Football Club in a UK collapsing under a credit crunch with the French Revolution . That is what the innnernet has created.

Errr - yes they did. They've had two full seasons in the third tier and not particularly well placed for promotion this time out either, so a third season in the third tier is more likely than not. They're really living the dream I can't imagine in three years time if we were staring a third season in the third tier in the face I doubt you'd be so delighted about it.

Why not joke about it? It's not really a rich seam of material, but it isn't "sickening". Yes it is. It's a football club possibly going out of business. It's hardly the holocaust. Perspective, please.

Not least because he's not that young - he's 45 and has been in football management for over ten years. He's the same age as David Moyes who took his first job at Preston around the same time Nige started at Carlisle. So can people stop with the "hottest prospect" stuff. I like him well enough, but he aint no hot young thing.

You seem to be determined to pick silly holes in what everyone says. It's a shame because what everyone else says (28 games and second from bottom means we are, by any measure, rubbish) is right and what you're saying just isn't. We beat Reading. A freak result. Gee. Professional footballers playing in the second tier have "some talent", you say? Wow. Not enough talent to be any better than second from bottom under the "brave" management you seem to be supporting.

Colin Calderwood was not a popular manager at Forest, even when he took them up. I live up here and know that. The general feeling is Forest should have been promoted sooner and with less anguish than Calderwood delivered. They are nothing like Doncaster. Davies will do just fine with Forest. I would contest Doncaster's "bravery" for reasons already outlined. They've found a formula that has delivered their greatest ever success and stuck with it. Not that brave. Doncaster's success (again, built on the investment of a rich fan: a "principle" of theirs you seem to be avoiding) is not down to their style of football per se. They've just stuck to a manager and a formula. Bolton did that with Allardyce. But the style of football was completely different. Sticking with Jan and "his principles" was not, is not, working. We are in the worst season in living memory. Doncaster are in their best season in living memory. Saying Doncaster have been "braver" than us by, err, sticking with their most successful manager of all time, just doesn't stand up. It just is not that brave. It would have been much braver to sack him because that carries ten times more risk than sticking with him. I'm not sure why you keep bringing the fans up - they don't appoint the manager or impose the style. If this whole thread is just you looking for an angle to "blame the fans", you say it isn't but I'm not sure, then you really are wasting your time.

I'm not going off on a tangent, I've brought it back to your first post on a thread you started which you are now trying to avoid. You're praising Doncaster Rovers for "sticking to their principles". Well, I'm saying it's a hell of a lot easier to stick to your principles if you are in the middle of the greatest period in your clubs history, recently won your first ever trophy and are in the highest division anyone can remember. Oh what a wrench that must have been to stick with things. Remind me how many sack the board/manager marches have there been in Donny this season? Not quite the same as sticking with Portaloo's failed tenure having won one game at home all season (which rather than face into you are weaving fan-based excuses for). There's principles and there's going through the worst season in living memory and the worst season at home of all time. So you starting a thread berating the club for not "sticking to their principles" at this time is just pig headed nonsense. If our current plight isn't an argument for change god knows what is. There you go - answering your points from your first post on this thread you started. No tangents. You're just wrong.

Err - what's this got to do with Doncaster Rovers "sticking to their priciples" then? This is just scattergun reasoning where you're just firing off any old thing. I think you need to look at what you've posted on this thread and back it up - ie the Reading result being evidence that we are in reality some team of world beaters - rather than just opening up random unrelated new fronts of debate whenever challenged.

Correct. And Doncaster might have footballing principles, but they also have a decent amount of wedge behind them. And they stick with O'Driscoll because he delivered promotion to the second tier for the first time in fifty years - ie the highest they've been in living memory, and he won them the JP Trophy, their first trophy in their entire history. I think that buys you a some grace from the sack. That's not quite the same as sticking with Jan forever because he, well, err, won at Reading. :rolleyes: As someone else said - Reading was a freak result - one win at home is a slightly better guide to the realities of our situation.

Oh do shut up.

Only five from safety? That is a huge number of points to be behind. We'll need to win three in a row to make any real headway and we're just not going to do it. Plymouth are still seven points ahead of us.

I know the thread has moved on to the usual boardroom politics stuff, but just excersising my right of reply. If you actually read my post I explain my position re Moyes and I don't say he'd be "crap". I am a massive Moyes fan and hope he gets the job at Old Trafford when it comes up. I think he would have been brilliant for Saints. My point is there is no point whining about him not being Saints manager all those years ago because the three seasons following were excellent seasons for us - two solid mid table finishes and the eighth place finish. We did just fine without him. Moyes being brilliant for us would have delivered much the same as Gray/WGS/Luggy - solid mid table, a cup run, one stand out season. I think that is precisely what he would have delivered. And if he delivered that he would have been appointed manager of Villa, or Everton or Man City or Celtic within those three years. And if he did better quicker he would have left, quicker. Why? a) Moyes is fearsomely ambitious. b) He has nearly walked from Everton for lack of transfer funds and the club not matching "his ambitions". c) He would have fallen out with Lowe because of lack of transfer funds and because of his own ambitions. d) Gordon Strachan did leave us when he felt the club could not match his ambitions, and Lowe couldn't keep him. IE - three years down the line we would not really be any better off than the course of action we did take. The other option of Moyes being rubbish at Saints (not impossible) would mean he would have been sacked so again, no better. Not appointing David Moyes did not lead to our relegation because the three years following that decision were good seasons. I think that's a bloody good premise based on facts and the subsequent behaviour of the people in question - Lowe, and Moyes. I repeat - throwing forward from there is lame guesswork, especially as you disagreeing with me suggests that you think Lowe would have thrown transfer money at Moyes to keep him in year four and five? That's Luvvie talk where I come from...

But this is a nonsense - in the three seasons following Moyes non appointment we finished solid mid table twice, and eighth and a cup final in the middle season, and we had a foray into Europe. If we had appointed Moyes then either a) he would have done much worse and been sacked (three seasons of, say, Dave Jones standard relegation scraps would have seen him out). b) he would have done the same or slightly better and would have left to go to Everton, or Villa or Celtic or Man City or Scotland. He would not have stayed with us like he has with Everton - Everton are the biggest club that can employ him, we wouldn't have been. And he's nearly walked from Everton because of lack of transfer cash....what on earth do you think he would have done under Lowe?!!! So your premise that we would have done better under Moyes is garbage. Within three years from the Moyes appointment the likelihood we would have ended up no better than where we were at the end of Sturrock's close season. You can't throw forward any further with any credibility. Everything beyond that is just really lame guesswork.

Um, I think the point was we didn't need more "time" to hunt for that replacement - it wasn't like the Scotland thing was completely out of the blue - the whole thing took a good fortnight so they already had time to draw up shortlists. The point was and is the Dodd/Gorman appointment was a non decision, a bottle out which was completely uncalled for. Billy Davies was sitting by the phone, and Alan Smith seemed to be on every available media outlet begging for his boy Chris Coleman to be given the job. And isn't it funny that they their search sped up somewhat one day after national humilation on BBC1? So much for taking time. The point is, our posh friend doesn't have a monopoly on appalling/gutless/cheapo managerial decisions.

Crouch and Lawrie had an opportunity to appoint a decent British manager when Burley left, but Lawrie took the opportunity to act the big man and play out his little "I've still got it" fantasy.