CB Fry

"Absolutely clueless" and "totally outplayed" so says Five Live at half time. Even though it was that bloody awful woman Jackie Oatley, I think she has a point from what I could hear of the first half on SaintsTV.

It was a suicidal decision when it was made and I said so at the time. The chances of the experiment paying off were very slim and it is safe to say it is failing now. Dutch inexperienced coach with decent blend of yth/exp squad may have worked. Team of kids drilled and organised to death by an experienced English league specialist may have worked. Team of kids + Dutch inexperienced coach? No chance. It's a failure.

Well, it does add up. Three years ago was three years ago. Jan got the job, now Wotte has got the job. What doesn't add up is people making out Lowe gave Jan the job with every intention of sacking him a few months down the line so he could give Wotte the job, "the man he wanted all along". It's an incredibly attractive conspiracy theory until you realise it is utter, utter pointless nonsense.

So why would Wotte take the job as assistant to someone not as good as him on less money than his market value? This is just conspiracy nonsense using the oldest conspiracy theory trick in the book - wait for stuff to happen then fit the conspiracy around it going backwards. Jan got the job to coach the first team, Wotte came in to oversee and assist, Jan was failing and had to go before someone from the Northam knocked him out, now Wotte has the job. It's not a conspiracy. It's one rubbish manager being replaced, for the sake of continuity with another rubbish manager. Oh well.

If he keeps us up from here, I think we will have had a pretty successful second half of the season. I can't see how he could be sacked were he to keep us up - it's all about taking your chances and if he takes that chance he deserves a real go. People saying he should be sacked even if he does keep us up really need to have a bit of a think as I am sure they were spitting blood, as I was, over Pearson's removal. All that said, I don't think he will keep us up and I expect us to enter mid March with Steve Cotterill or Ian Holloway or a similar knee jerk English experienced head in charge. (Steve Cotterill would be fine by me).

Err - there is barely any difference in "tone" content or anything from those sets of quotes. How the fu c k is MLT blandly saying "get behind the team" evidence that he has been "got at" by the evil Lowe machine. Both sets of quotes are just rent-a-quote punditry and both represent what MLT thinks. Because frankly, what he thinks is what most normal people think. We don't want Wotte, but we're stuck with him now. Ditto Lowe. Nevertheless, not being relegated would be quite nice. What do you think MLT is going to say? "let's all burn down the stadium on Saturday" "I wish I could rip Lowe's throat out and sh it down his throat, and then make his wife eat my excrement from her dead husband's neck with a spoon made from Wotte's collarbone" Some of you people are just fu c king deluded.

We will walk these games.

I find it amazing that all the giant European football clubs that the greatest Swedish players play for (you know, the players that England would normally be up against in an international game) have all agreed to release their Swedish superstars to play an utterly meaningless friendly in a football backwater in a different time zone and not during an international fixtures weekend. Oh. They didn't. When this yank actually does score a single goal against Sweden (real Sweden) let us know then.

Although I generally get what you're saying I think it worth mentioning that Jan's resignation was announced at 8:30ish on Friday night which is pretty close on the deadline for lots of Saturday papers which go to print earlier than the weekday editions. And it was FA Cup weekend so plenty of preview filler everywhere, and if they had space for late news, they had the Forest game to cover. It was, if you wanted to keep Saints out of the papers, an excellently timed release of information. A great way to "bury bad news". Almost like they planned it.... It would have got more coverage had it been announced 11am on Wednesday, say. But, in line with your general point, not much more.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=esyACShW2fI&feature=related

What? Pheonix is saying Crouch would not have sanctioned the appointment of another Dutch dunce and probably have appointed an English manager with more than absolutely zero experience of English professional league football. And he's right. Any other football chief exec would do the same in our predicament. What does the fact that Lowe appointed some English managers historically (well done him) have to do with anything?

He was for that game. The only problem with this story is it could be an agent planted story to get the wheels moving on the clubs that might bid for Kelvin. A lot of the utter rubbish in the papers is not stuff "made up by lazy journalists" its stuff fed to them by agents on behalf of players, or agents on behalf of clubs or agents on behalf of agents to drive prices up/down, stimulate interest, force the hands of buying/selling clubs etc. ....which is then parroted out by lazy journalists. For all we know this could be a story fed by an agent connected to SFC to force the price up of Kelvin to the clubs that are considering a bid - ie QPR or whoever. I'm worried whatever happens our standout player of the season by a mile is going to be sold. Skint clubs can't shift the players they want to shift, so they have to sell the ones the other clubs want. If Kelvin goes, there will be blood.....

Does he, though? The entire time he could have been a valuable and sellable asset for us, and the entire time he could have walked into any mid ranked Prem team (or, say, Celtic), he was seriously injured. I don't really see this idea of Svennson being super loyal. He didn't have much choice in the matter. If Peter Crouch had the same career ending injuries in, say, the last weeks of our relegation season that Killer had the chances are he might have been "super loyal" too. Anyway, this appointment is ridiculous and Killer is being used as a "human shield" for this retarded administration.

How long will it be before someone invokes the old Alex Ferguson chestnut and says we need to give Wotte three full seasons before anyone is allowed to make any judgement whatsoever:rolleyes: Wotte a load ********. Wotte out, today.

FC Utrecht are not a tiny club, it's CCC level certainly, does anyone know how he did there?

We haven't got a new manager, we've got the same old shi te.

Sorry, I don't think this is true. Dyer got his new four year deal well into the Dutch revolution and it's highly unlikely that we would have offered a new contract we couldn't afford to a player who we could have let go for nothing in the summer anyway. Our financial situation is poor but it has not got significantly worse that we can't afford to pay a contract signed only six months ago. We must have signed at least six players since then anyway, and a couple this window. Although finances are dictating the vast majority of the decisions, I think the fact that Dyer isn't at the club at present is not one of those decisions.

Jesus. So what? You pay a manager to make decisions, and the one we were paying at that point was the most successful manager for us in a generation. If you can name a manager with a completely unblemished ins/outs record then fire away, but I know Ferguson, Wenger and the rest have made plenty of howlers in their time too. When Brian Howard is playing for England you can start moaning about him being let go. Even Prutton turned out for the U21s.

But this is just laughable. People moan about Lowe's "strategy after the cup final" being to pack the squad full of average journeymen instead of superstars but at the same time people moan about the likes of Scott McDonald and (wait for it) Gary Monk being let go. Christ. And for all you know it was the very act of being released that have made these players into the world beaters you seem to think they are today. McDonald as any number of sources will say had an attitude problem at Saints and probably needed to be booted down a couple of levels to wake him up. If you seriously think Gary Monk, Scott McDonald and Brian Howard would have added significantly to our mid table team post cup final, and been the difference between going down and staying up the following season, then fine. Moan away. But the fact that none of those players ever have or ever will play in the top division tells me all I need to know. Not. ever. good. enough. Whether they'd be good enough now is utterly irrelevent. That's like telling the academy director or Jan now to not release any players of conference standard or better just in case we go down there in three years time.

I've seen some pathetic drama queen over-reactions on Saints forums over the years (some of them eminating from me) but this is utterly ludicrous. Newspaper columnist points out that club at the bottom of the second tier aren't packing em in like they did when they were top half of the Premier league. And the pope sh i ts in the woods. It's a cheap line, rattled off at a moments thought by a filler columnist. It has a grain of truth about the transient nature of football fandom and "loyalty". Mick Dennis will have forgotten he wrote it by now. 1965onwards, get over it, you dopey twonk.

Well maybe if you looked at the points per game ratio for his first full season and notice it is actually one of our best seasons in the Premier League you'll see why he is viewed pretty even handedly by our fans. Never going to be loved, but he delivered one cracking season, one great escape and signed and or developed many of the players that would play such an important role in our subsequent success. Hello Marian Pahars, Hello Wayne Bridge, Hello James Beattie, Hello Dean Richards, Hello Chris Marsden, Hello Paul Jones. To compare Jones to Branfoot is disgraceful. Your beloved Burley was closed to Branfoot than Jones ever was as Jones didn't get the bottom less pit of money that your drunk chum got to p i ss away for nothing. And who from Burley's signings has made a lasting contribution anything like the legacy that Jones left?

Yes, I accept that, "a big name for the sake of a big name" is not neccessarily the best for the club, as the experience with Burley, the biggest available name at the time, has shown. But the suggestion of Tisdale seemed to come from the angle that "we couldn't possibly afford anyone else" which is nonsense. We can afford any manager you care to name. Boothroyd, Cotterill, anyone. We could have afforded Billy Davies, we could have afforded any of them. We've pi s sed enough money up the wall on the fourteen new signings, plus three new coaches this season to prove that we have money to spend. So yep, Tisdale is worth consideration as "the best candidate" if that is what people think, but I am sick of this misconception that we are so awfully poor we can't afford to pay such managerial giants as Adrian Boothroyd and Steve Cotterill. Of course we bloody can.

Errr - TDD has been vehemently anti-Sturrock from day one. It's one of the few things I disagree with him about. I liked Luggy a lot, and have followed his (pretty successful) career since he left us. Not sure where you're going with this TDD baiting, Stanley. TDD doesn't change horses like you do on a daily basis - you'll praise the Echo to the skies if it prints something you like and then call it Rupert's propaganda machine the very next day if it prints something you don't. You change your opinions like you change your pants. And they both stink.

Like who? We could afford Boothroyd, Dowie, Cotterill and pretty much anyone else on this list. Please, stop swallowing this lie that all we could afford was some second rate no mark from the Dutch leagues. It's simply not true and the fact that we've signed about twelve to fourteen players this season proves it. We can afford a bigger name than Tisdale, although it is right we keep an eye on his progress. And those suggesting Chris Marsden - that is just retarded. How about Chris Marsden goes out and makes some attempt to carve out a managerial or coaching career for himself before he gets parachuted in to the Saints managers job? Why not get some qualifications and some experience before he starts leeching off Saints and the fact he was a good player for a couple of seasons.

We can afford every single manager mentioned here. All of them would work under Lowe - Dowie would, Boothroyd would, Holloway would, Cotteril would, they all would. The exceptions are Keane and Shearer because I doubt either want to be managers that badly to risk losing face with us. All the rest would rip your arm off if offered the Saints job. There's plenty of other tw a t chairmen around, and beggar managers who want to manage a proper club with great facilities and real kudos (which is what we are) can't be choosers. Or do you really think Steve Cotterill, Ian Holloway, Alan Pardew and Adrian Boothroyd are waiting for "something better" to come along...like what exactly? Chelsea? Stop doing our club down please.