CB Fry

Nonsense. We could afford Adrian Boothroyd and he'd take the job in the blink of an eye no problem. We'd be the biggest club he's ever managed for a start. For one, he's chums with Woodward who Lowe I have no doubt would get Sir Clove on the blower to Aidy to big up the club. The "unrealistic" thing is people that seem to think we're some washed up nowhere club that no-one wants to manage. It's rubbish. We've got the stadium, the heritage and the "premier league set up". For a manager like Boothroyd we represent a genuine chance of managing in the Premier League. Who do you think Adrian Boothroyd is going to get offers from? And who is he going to turn down over us? Blackpool?

I have absolutely no doubt that Boothroyd and Dowie (and for that matter Steve Cotterill and Ian Holloway) would, if it were offered tomorrow morning, accept the Saints job without question. None of you please give me any old fanny about "they wouldn't work with Lowe" (they would, they a want a job in football) and "we can't afford them" (of course we can bloody afford them we signed a £1m player this season). None of them I would describe as my dream appointment but all of them would give us a glimmer of a slim chance of staying up. This wally gives us guaranteed, guaranteed relegation. We've got ten days before our next game - Portalowe out now and a new man in with as much time as possible to get this team organised. Of course, it won't happen.....

I think this is the problem. No-one cares about a bloody B team of the greatest players of all time. Asking people to decide who they think is not quite the greatest player of all time is ridiculous. An A-Team vote-off featuring Moran and Pahars but not Keegan and/or Davies will look very silly indeed. Coming soon on Channel 4 - Join Jimmy Carr for the run down of The Nation's Top 100 Second-Favourite Films. Can't quite see it myself....

This is all a bit odd. Why on earth are you running a vote for the B team first, including all the best players we've had who, should they win, then have the indignity of being lumped in the B team? Either do A team first, and sort out the best players, or as someone else suggested, do one poll, with the winner into the A team and the loser into the B team? St Landrew can protest as much as he likes about how simple it is to understand, but this is just bonkers. Running a poll on "who in your opinion is the second best right sided striker" is bizarre and it's no surprise you've confused everyone. Whoever wins/loses is going to cause debate because when you run the A team poll you'll be deluged with requests saying "why on earth can't I vote for Keegan/Davies" The excluded Keegan/Davies would deserve to be on the A list more than, say, Marian Pahars who then qualifies for the A vote by coming last in the B vote. Brilliant. Vote for your number one, and then give the number two the B slot or re run the poll on a "best of the rest" basis. I know it's only a bit of fun but it's gone a bit weird for me.

This is clearly the situation - we want to shift off the high earners and keep the kids. That is the core of the plan. Of course it won't stop people whining on that selling Lallana at the first opportunity is what Lowe "really wants to do" because he's evil and everything and "obsessed about money" even though selling Lallana won't actually make Lowe any money whatsoever. All in all, though, this is a bit of a silly thread to start on the 14th January. There's no point being smug that the kids are still here with two weeks of the window to go. Surman and Lallana could both be sold tomorrow. I think it's touch and go, and the longer noone comes in to take Skacel and Euell off our hands the dicier its going to be. We clearly need to sell someone and if Surman is our only sellable asset he's going to have to go. It's the old "Michael Duberry rule". When Leeds were skint and had to sell some players everyone thought they would just sell Duberry and Seth Johnson to balance the books. Easy. But no-one wanted to buy them, especially on the silly money they were on. Which is why Ferdinand and Woodgate were sold. My advise for the "I told you so's" on both sides - keep your powder dry until Feb 2nd. There's a long way to go.....

Nice attempt at taking the moral high ground, but it doesn't wash. Two days ago you started a pointless thread (that was rightly ripped to shreds) bleating about how we have never again matched the highs of beating Man Utd 6-3. An assertion that was not only total rubbish (we've had plenty of highs since then) but was started by you purely to wind people up - I think you just "wanted an argument" myself. And then you followed it on with this lot of nonsense dredging up Stoneham a project missed by absolutely no-one except for a few desperados who just seem addicted to having a go at Lowe for absolutely anything even if it involves them lamenting the fact we didn't get a 25,000 stadium in the middle of nowhere surrounded by branches of Subway and Frankie and Benny's. And linked it to a posting on 606 which any fule kno is full of utter rubbish, all the time. So two threads in two days serving no purpose except to wind people up and start arguments. Every Saints fan breathing air (except about two wind up merchants on here) wants Lowe gone, and Lowe gone tomorrow. There are plenty of sticks to beat him with - if you want I'll give you twenty of the top of my head to you get started. Just let me know and i'll reel them off. But whinging about an isolated result in a **** poor season in 1997 and grizzling about not getting a stadium noone really wanted anyway, again more than ten years ago really is pointless. You know you started both threads as a wind up, not least because you said the other day that Lowe support in the fanbase was 50:50 so you think you need to convince people Lowe needs to go by going on about stuff that happen a decade ago. 50:50! Good luck finding that 50% pro Lowe fanbase.:smt044 We're united. We want Lowe out. Stop flogging dead horses.

Absolutely no doubt you're right about that. I just had a quick look on the web to see the kind of potential earnings a cinema would make. Even if the rent worked out as double Saints wouldn't ever have bought all the land and then rented it back to retail outlets anyway. We would have been saddled with even more debt. The point is I can't see a business model where the playing side of the club could be financed by adjacent businesses. Last time I looked, Lowe was getting slated for trying to fund the club off the back of other interests (finance, catering, radio) and now he gets slated (not by you) for not doing more additional business activity. My problem with threads like this is the mindset is "whatever Lowe is for I'm against, whatever he's against I'm for" with utterly no thought beyond that. I doubt very much if we had a stadium in the middle of nowhere surrounded by souless Toys R Us and Odeons the likes of Channon's Sideburns would be thanking Lowe. They'd be slating him for concentrating too much on evil business.

Actually, I think it is pretty unthinkable. How much profit does one cinema make? If its half a million quid I'd be surprised. And that would be the profit your Odeon PLC would make, not our cut. I can't imagine any retail development that would be able to bankroll the wage bill of a football club. Actually, I've just had a quick look. Cineworld group made a profit of £52m in 2007. Fag packet maths across an estate of 75 cinemas gives you £700,000 profit per cinema. So Saints cut of that would be what - 5%? So it might get Woggy Taylor back on that. Funny how the stuff that was good post 97 is brushed aside as "all history" (you remind me we lost your despised 2003 FA cup final) , but stuff that was good pre 97 is sacrosanct (your fantastic ZDS cup final...which we, errr...lost.). I notice it was you getting all upset with lines like "when did we ever beat big clubs after Lowe turned up?". When sensible people like Steve Grant answers with facts that amount to "actually, loads of times" but you're complaining about the thought police. It's pant wettingly hilarious, it really is. Why on earth do you care about Stoneham? It's over. We have a brilliant stadium in the heart of the city and a stones throw away from where the bloody club was formed in the first place. Bleating on and on about how fantastic it would have been to have an out of town stadium surrounded by branches of Pets at Home, Homebase, Pizza Huts and Halfords really is utterly ridiculous, and about as far from the true meaning of football as you can possibly get. Here's your factual answer - Stoneham was sh ite, and we're well out of it.

The other day you were whining on and on about the 6-3 Man United game like it represented some high water mark in the entire history of the club that we have never ever matched since and quite rightly you got laughed out of town. And now this drivel. Who gives a **** any more. It's old news and most of that stuff you've dredged up from some other dinlow on the tinternet is half arsed garbage anyway. And as for "have a look at Derby" - what the f u c k are you talking about? Pride Parkway/The Wyvern is a load of reclaimed brownfield with a Sainsbury's, Toys R Us, Homebase and about twenty other stores, Pizza outlets, burger joins, Car Showrooms and god knows what else. Ie a fu ck of a lot more than you could fit at Stoneham. And lets say, well, absolutely none of it, none of it, NONE OF IT has the slightest thing to do with Derby frigging County football club. Let's hope you never do the old "purity of football/football shouldn't be a business" routine if you're going to slate Lowe for..... not securing planning permission for a frigging supermarket and a burger bar next to our ground. Is that what "football people" would have worked on, then? Turn it in you dopey twonk. No one wants Lowe here anyway, so you going on about stuff that happened over ten years ago really is pis sing in the wind.

Hang on, you're the one making out how fantastic everything was before 1997...... And anyway, I can answer your question - we turned down a £5m plus bid from Strachan's Coventry city for Pahars who wanted him to replace Robbie Keane. And yes I compare Merrington to Gray and Wigley - all three were excellent servants to the club and all three did fantastic work with our youngsters and/or the first team as superb coaches/assistants. All three should never have been appointed as manager as cheap option. Anyway, I don't need to add any more to this thread - you've made yourself look a complete tool enough already.

What a load of sh it e. In the four of the five seasons before Lowe turned up we survived relegation in the last week of the season. We were sh it e and could easily and justifiably gone down in any one of those seasons. We stayed up in those years because of one bloody player. The only season in those five years we were any good was under Bally, who then quit because of lack of support to be replaced by an underqualified coach who then did shi te the following season. In the years before 1997 we also sold any player of any value to the first club that asked - Wallace, Shearer, Hall, Horne, Ruddock, Flowers. And so on. And don't mention Le Tiss - our board accepted offers from Man U, Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea at various points. So don't make out we were some wonder team who were destroyed by Lowe. We were rubbish in the years immediately preceeding his arrival. The five years following 1997 were infinitely better, so put that in your pipe.

"Steve Wigley has a touch of the Arsene Wenger about him" "He's [Wigley] is like the new Alan Curbishley" You could not move for people bigging up Wiggers when he was appointed, and even six games in people were still salivating over the dinlow. And then the same people salivating about Dodd and Gorman even though, again, it was an obvious disaster of an appointment. You couldn't move for the hero worship. And the precise same people have the gaul to moan about the appointments in hindsight.

It's not even about "believing the club" though, is it. You don't have to believe a word the club says to see why Cork is now at Watford, especially as Cork doesn't actually say a single negative thing about Saints not wanting to keep him. It's people like you, with a failure to understand the English language and the basics of football business, who have put a load of thoughts in Jack Cork's head that aren't there, but suit your own preformed opinions. Or do you seriously think that a Watford signing, on a Watford Official Website interview is going to bang on about how he didn't want to leave his previous club.

And I take it you also believed Jermaine Defoe when he said today that "Portsmouth didn't really want me". Unbelivable the lengths at which dumb football fans will lap up any old fanny doled out by a football player making his excuses for switching clubs for perfectly understandable financial (Watford offered more money) and personal (managed by the manager who had him as captain of the Chelsea youth team) reasons. Seriously, there was nothing going to stop Jack Cork going to Watford. Get the f u ck over it.

Come on Hypo, be fair. Not sure how you can expect people to be super optimistic when we have been so utterly dreadful for the entire season, especially as all our major victories have been total false dawns. Remember how we "built on" our victory against Reading away? Me neither. Leicester won twelve games last season. Twelve. Relegated. S****horpe second bottom won eleven games last season. Eleven. Eleven or twelve games of Leicester and S****horpe "turning the corner" of "we'll build on this victory" blah blah blah. Even the relegated teams win the odd game by the law of averages, and all season that is all we've been doing, winning the occasional game. I think a measured response to what is at present another isolated victory is the right response. We need four points minimum from Norwich and Doncaster before I get the slightest bit excited.

So just to confirm he's obsessed about money, only here for the money, absolutely money mad, money-money-money it's all he thinks about. So how the **** is he going to make any money whatsoever by us being at the bottom of the league and having to sell what little assets we have. Him "asset stripping" (yawn) doesn't make him a penny short term or long term. You do talk one-note toss, Stanley. Whatever anyone thinks about Lowe (and I have some choice words for the tw at) he clearly is here because he wants Saints to do well and he clearly wants to get Saints in the Premier League. And that is good for his bank balance, his ego, as a form of retribution and his reputation. Those last three are easily as important as money - if he was that money obsessed he could have sold up eons ago and made tons of money elsewhere. His objective is "keep Saints out of administration, build for promotion, get promoted". That, to me, is unquestionable and is genuine for what its worth. He doesn't want the club to fail on his watch. It's his methods, his attitude, his decisions and the rest of it that are the major problem. This is mainly fuelled by pig headedly being desperate to be seen to be "right all along". Of course, he's not right. He's a plank. That's what will see us in League one and bust, I'm afraid.

What are you on about? When did Nigel Clough play for Bob Paisley or Joe Fagan? He must have signed for Liverpool in the Souness era, more than ten years after Fagan stood down to make way for Kenny. Clough Jnr has played under such managerial legends as Souness, Roy Evans, Brian Horton, Alan Ball (bless him) and Frank Clark. Clough is a massive gamble in my book, he always said he didn't really want the grief of managing at the highest level (similar to the MLT worldview). It will be a tragedy if Burton choke now and Cloughie doesn't deliver. Any other manager with only experience in the Blue Square to show for ten years managing wouldn't get a sniff of that job. It's a surname-led, romantic appointment. They could easily join us in the dogfight now.

Except you have made this up. Pekart isn't not playing because we can't afford to play him. We signed him when we were skint and we haven't got significantly more skint since signing him. If we really couldn't afford to service the loan then we'd have cancelled the loan and sent him back to Spurs, wouldn't we? He was a useless donkey who couldn't get a game for our shower. He's hardly going to admit that is he? You couldn't make up what some Saints fans will swallow.

It is not a "fact" we couldn't afford Pearson. Of course we could. We could afford Pearson. We could afford Pearson. Stop making up shi te. And we are no more financially poor than Blackpool, or Barnsley or Plymouth, all of which sit above in the table without the need for "Steve Jobs or Peter Keynon" at the helm. Running a club on a shoestring is not that difficult, but its a hell of a lot harder when the idiot in charge of it replaces a decent promising manager we could afford to keep with a no mark no hoper from the Dutch semi pro leagues. Lots can be different with someone else in charge and not a penny more in the bank. A decent manager and a decent squad blending some youth and some experience and organised by a manager with a degree of experience and ability - Pearson, Cotterill, Holloway, Davies as was available, Dowie, Adams, Tilson etc etc. None of those managers are dream appointments for me but all of them are better than the berk from Dutch park football we have in charge now.

You don't need to try that hard. I would suggest that at least once a month Big Lawrie in his column, or in a radio or TV interview, makes some reference to "me, Bobby Robson and Brian Clough" as if he is part of some holy trinity of great English managers. Time and time again he'll us that phrase. "Me, Bobby and Brian". When, of course in reality he is nowhere near that level. Nowhere near. Lawrie was successful at one club, once. Those other two were successful time and time again, at different clubs, at the very highest level and in Bobby's case on the International Stage too. Both had success in Lawries time, but both had success before and after Lawries time - much much longer than when Lawrie burnt out in 1986. Lawrie - good manager, brilliant manager for us, but nowhere near the elite. Plenty of managers have achieved just as much or more than our "big man" from John Lyall to Ron Greenwood, from Graham Taylor to Howard Kendall, from David Pleat to Bobby Gould, from Ron Atkinson to George Graham. All had as much or more success over more time at more clubs. All transferred their skills and extended their careers more successfully. All said, he is a Saints hero, but his big season back in charge last season hardly set the league alight and when the time came to make a decision he couldn't resist the appointment that gave him the most power: Dodd and Gorman. He out Lowe-d Lowe with that one. No question the back of Lowe and co would be a good thing, but breaking free of the shadow of the ego would be a brilliant thing for Saints as well. Lets move on into the 2010s.

WTF? I listened to Steve Claridge on Five Live and he waxed lyrical about Saints and the Dell - about how professional the club was, how they "knew how to treat you". He was full of praise for Saints, as he always is, despite what some people think. I have no idea who or what you were listening to.

Just like Chelsea and Liverpool were under no pressure and strolled against Barnsley last season? Just like Chelsea strolled against Southend yesterday? Just like Man City were going to stroll against Forest at home yesterday? Just like Stoke strolled yesterday? Is this the first time coverage of the FA Cup has reached Northern Ireland or something? The OS can be guilty of stupid propaganda but a young player for the underdog team saying "the pressure isn't on us it's on the big club" is hardly crime of the century and certainly not "tosh". He's right. Saints aren't under any pressure whatsoever today. If we lost four nil no one will bat an eyelid.

Seriously, Lowe out. I don't think a boycott needs much more than that. This isn't the People's Front of Judea. We don't need a manifesto on parchment to get going. Anyone who reads my post history would know typically I'm not someone who thinks "anyone but Lowe" would be so much better, but now, in 2009, anyone but Lowe would be so much better. A boycott/protest etc to remove Lowe (which very quickly would rid us of the worst manager in the top four divisions pretty quick too) is fine. I am gutted that Forest have taken Billy Davies who would have taken the Saints job any day of the week minus Lowe. Lance the boil, get him out and lets try not to get relegated.

What utter, utter shi te. Must have been a different club that sold Channon, Williams, Shearer, Wallace, Wallace, Wallace, Kenna, Flowers, Hall. Must have been a different club that agreed to sell Le Tissier at least twice before Lowe turned up. And I can remember the first thing Ian Branfoot said when he came back to the club as manager (and I'm not here to defend that t wa t) was that our youth development programme was a shambles. Oh, and Wayne "sold for a profit" Bridge played more game for Saints than Alan "bred for the club's benefit" Shearer and Rod "leaving this club over my dead body" Wallace ever did. Enough ill informed toss please.

Alan Ball springs to mind.