CB Fry

Typical arrogance as usual from you - what "scale" do the rest of us think it was at then? Because everyone is wrong except you. The only people who are wrong are the people hopping from foot to foot pretending there were no boos/Sky made it all up/its was towards Mawhinney/it was silence misconstrued as boos (?)/etc/etc. There were boos in the ground when Cortese was on the big screen. That's all anyone has ever said - the theorising and waffle has come from people pretending it didn't happen. It did happen. Loud enough for me and lots of people around me to say "what are they booing for". It was nothing major but it did happen. Why people on here are desperate to pretend it didn't is just maddening. And no, it definitely wasn't "silence misconstrued as boos", whatever the f uc k that's supposed to mean. That's it.

You're only saying that with hindsight. The Wilde crest of a wave was as huge as the ML one, especially first half of the season. Being that we've just had eight months of grizzling about how important pre season is you'd have to George Burley was the luckiest manager on earth, as his pre season started in February of the season before. But funnily enough none of the people grizzling about pre season this season talked about how lucky Burley was back in those days to have that oh-so-precious massive pre season - they had to find something else to single us out as Britain's most hard done by football club. Funny that. And they'll find something else next season you can be sure of that.

Fair dos, I thought we overtook Preston on the last day. But we were hardly fixtures in the play offs all season, and we benefitted from Preston collapsing in the final weeks. Anyway, my original point was we didn't go into those play offs thinking "I can't see us losing it". We weren't on the crest of a wave. We scraped into the play offs and entered them not as favourites.

I'd take promotion this season and a mediocre season in the CCC next year over a season of winning L1 at a canter next season. Because the chances are we'd just be delaying our mediocre season in the CCC by a year. Let's get promoted as soon as possible and start building for the push to the prem.

No we didn't. We scraped into those play offs when it wasn't even in our hands on the last day. This time we will storm into the play offs because scraping in is not an option.

I was mexican waving at Lord Mawhinney and no one else and anyone that says different clearly wasn't at the game.

Lord Mawhinney did not walk onto the pitch at the exact five second moment Cortese was on the big screen. Christ almighty. Mawhinney got booed when his name was called out. Not before, not after. Cortese got booed (a lot fewer boos mind) when he came on the big screen just seconds after people cheering Markus when he was on the screen. Or were those cheering Markus really cheering Lord Mawhinney, because the two noises were seconds apart? I know this is fuc king with people's heads, but the two occurances of booing happened at different times.

Difficult to say really, it was certainly enough to be clearly heard amongst 70,000 football fans. Was probably a few hundred - it's worth mentioning the atmosphere was pretty disjointed all afternoon - the singers being spread around the place meaning songs didn't really take off except in little clusters. So in that context, a collective noise like a boo must have been from a not insignificant number. But it was nothing like a majority of fans. It was, frankly, just a bit strange and not really worth dwelling on. Just ridiculous people on here pretending it didn't happen and that Sky or TDD is making it up. But then we had the same smart arses pretending the Echo made up the trouble in the car showroom after the pompey game "to sell papers" so I'm not surprised.

Let's get this straight. I was there, and when the screen was on Markus there were cheers, and when the camera moved to Cortese there were clear, audible boos. There was nothing else happening in the stadium that would have resulted in simultaneous booing. And no, it was not Mawhinney, unless you seriously think more Saints fans cheered Mawhinney than booed him, because the cheers and boos where seconds apart. Funnily enough in those seconds Markus, then Cortese were on the big screen. I turned to my mates, and the other people around me, all of which said words to the tune of "what are they booing him for" and such like. And remember Mawhinney got booed when they said his name, which was before that. He got his boos. Christ almighty. It happened. Get over it.

It happened when the ten other people on this thread said it happened. Pre match - Markus on screen - cheers, moved to Nicola - Boos. It happened. Not alledged, nothing to do with Mahwinney or Mexican waves. It happened, pretty clear all round the ground.

This. Ten points off the play offs at the end of the season is "par". Acheiving it will not be an outstanding achievement, just acceptably good. Lots of people on here drone on about how terribly difficult we've had it, but I'd bet all the money in the world that Kenny Jackett, Danny Wilson and Aidy Boothroyd would take our resources over what they've had to make their silk purses from.

Merrington obviously didn't read the thread on here after that game that said his role as a commentator is to say how brilliant we're playing regardless of what's actually happening on the pitch.

PompyPride - not allowing a level playing field? Or challenge that Chelsea shouldn't be allowed to play Drogba? ... restraining Portsmouth from playing in the premier league, because we invoked administration under the insolvency company act is .. an unreasonably restraint, stoping us trading and playing in the premier league. who man united or Chelsea choose to play has nothing to do with this fundamental freedom which is to act within company law by protecting the company and giving it time to re-structure its debts and survive a winding up petition. You know what, I'd keep schtum about "company law" if I were you. I'm not sure your scu mmy little club has got the moral high ground here.

I thought having a manager who doesn't hand pick entirely his own backroom staff was a bad thing. Oh, sorry, that's when it happens to us. When it happens to another club it's a measure of consistency. Beautiful contortion act to make out that despite sacking a manager after one game and said manager spending money on new players they have more staff consistency than we do. It's the usual story - every other team has it easy, Saints have it tough. Why could they? Their change of stewardship was a hell of a lot later than ours was and at least Pardew got to select which players he wanted to buy. I'd love to see the whining on here if we had a manager inheriting a squad hand picked and pre-seasoned by the previous manager. I doubt many fans would be talking about "measures of consistency". What ever happens its the same old story Southampton - battling impossible odds all the time regardless of money spent or players bought. Britains underdog. Every other team in britain - got it easy.

£1.7m you say. £1.7million! One point seven whole million! We've bought at least three players for a million each this season, and we easily spent One point seven whole million in January alone. Add to that we kept our million pound goalkeeper and our million pound midfielder we already had, plus the likes of Lallana who could have gone for about £2m. Anyway, just saying.

Hey, I am patient, and I don't want the manager changed and I do think we will make top two without much difficulty next season. The points I am making is about the performance standard this year has been okay and nothing more. With the resources we have thrown at the team this season then it's not much to ask to be minium 10 points from sixth. And we probably will acheive that come season end. But that was "par" and pretty sure Cortese and Pardew were aiming for above par, especially when we started parachuting in £1.5m centre backs from the league above. That is patently not the actions of a club gradually scaping together a team from the wreckage. It's the actions of a club that wants success yesterday. In that context performance this year has been below par. There's too many seeing Saints as some underdog team scraping up the table against all odds. Frankly that's offensive to the rest of the division who we tower over financially and with infrastructure. So to everyone - I don't need lectures about "give the manager time" and all that horses h it. I've heard it and you'll notice I haven't ever said Pardew should be given anything else than total support for the forseeable. I don't want him sacked so spare the cheap points scoring implying I do. My comments are mainly aimed at those suggesting he has achieved some miracle this season, when actually we're still below par.

If all we needed was time, then we didn't need to spend any money. Kenny Jackett got Millwall to the play offs in his first full season on a shoestring, and Danny Wilson is doing much the same at Swindon in his first full season. But we have blown the rest of the division out of the water financially, and we are not Man City trying to get atop of the Premier League as your cliched comparison suggests. We are trying to outdo Swindon, Huddersfield, Colchester, Millwall and MK Dons to reach the giddy heights of sixth in third tier. Not quite the same as winning the worlds biggest, richest and toughest league. Nicola Cortese says today we've thrown too many points away, but I guess he's just a Championship Manager geek you can ignore.

How about neither, and who says "we have the money to start over again"? There is a lot of arrogant complacency setting in on this forum that we will have a bottomless pit of money to spend forever. Pardew was given boatloads and boatloads of cash for this level with a view to getting in the play offs this season. I think it highly likely he has spent most of the summer budget already. That's why it was imperative to put together the gold standard run into play off contention to reflect the platinum standard investment. And that's the heart of the point I have been trying to make which everyone misreads with their tedious "oh you want to sack the manager" snidey replies. Too many fans want to have their "look where we've come from, slow and steady building" cake and they want to eat it too with talk of even more money in the summer, which isn't really "slow and steady building" is it? It's chucking money about. Skint teams like Swindon do slow and steady building. Other teams, like us, chuck money at it and then expect results immediately, which is fair enough - otherwise why bother spending anything? If all we want is slow and steady building well we could have done that with frees, kids and loans like Swindon, Colchester and Millwall. Too many Saints fans want to have it both ways - Harrods spending and Big Issue "we're so helpless/look where we've come from/slow and steady" mentality. Well you can't have it both ways, and a poor end to the season, if it happens will show that you can't. And you certainly can't assume "we have the money" to do anything.

Shouldn't "the game plan" assume that League One is going to involve lots of matches on ploughed fields, and lots of games with referees who are, well, lower league standard. Anyone managing a football club in League One should be planning for those incredibly likely scenarios. Otherwise there is something chronically wrong with the plan.

Wouldn't that mean spending money which of course doesn't make any difference to performance on the pitch according to you? Surely we'll be fine if we spend not a penny this summer because we'll have stability and a pre season and everything?

No, just know more than you do. Which isn't difficult as your regular routine of embarrassing yourself on here demonstrates. Anyway, fingers crossed we scrape free of the drop zone, eh?

Still in a relegation battle according to you though, so I know more than you do. But then we all know that.

So bumming around around 10th in the third tier you see as some kind of triumph but you are nitpicking our record in the biggest league in the world? So you think we should have been challenging for the top four with Ken Monkou, Hassan Kachloul, Robbie Slater and Chris Marsden in our team? So success only exists in the lower leagues

That would be why they gave him transfer funds and a pre season to prepare for the following season then Gunn was given one game.

Honestly, you don't need to press the cliche button so soon. I don't want Pardew to leave, never ever said he should. But I am fed up with people who won't accept that this season is currently below par. Being within 10 points of the play offs - ie play off form all season - is par for a club with the resources we have. We're not quite there but we might just scrape it by the end of the season. At the end of the day if you can't suggest we should do better when we have spent what we have spent then when can you? It wasn't so long ago you couldn't move on this forum for bellyaching about a previous chairman who wouldn't invest in the team "if we'd only bought Malbranque etc etc". It's hilarious that when we were skint the accepted wisdom was that "investing in the team" was the way to succeed and previous chairmen were slaughted for "not investing in the team". But now we are investing in the team and all anyone can say is "it doesn't mean anything, you can't get success from spending money". And instead of aknowlegding what we have got, it's just whining about what we didn't get "we didn't get a pre season". I bet Swindon would have sold their pre season for a £1m striker. It's rank ingratitude. Blessed with everything we could want, but still whining about one thing we didn't get. As far as investing in the team is concerned, Nicola and Marcus shouldn't have bothered then. I wish we were as skint as Millwall and Swindon. Because christ you'd have some grizzling on this forum then.