CB Fry

He won the LMA league manager of the year award. He was a fine manager for us, and has proved to be excellent at the other clubs he has served - very well thought of at Wolves, and it is only a few Cardiff dinlows with their expectations raised (by Jones) that are slating him now. He was struggling when he left us though, and I don't think you can slate Lowe for what he did at the time - its difficult to see what else he could have done. But in response to the original poster, if Cardiff are dumb enough to get rid, he wouldn't be short of job offers and we couldn't afford him.

What? They were rolling in parachute cash and were the favourites that season to win the league. Finishing in the play offs was the barest of bare minimums, and although they were seventh they finished miles off - something like ten points. Suggesting Hoddle not relegating one of the richest clubs in the division that season, and the favourites for the league title as some kind of success is just retarded, a bit like saying we should judge Wenger on whether Arsenal stay in the Premier League.

I don't. His utter failure at Spurs and Wolves suggest nothing other than acrimony and relegation in his second spell in charge with the fans backlash against Lowe and Hoddle ten times deeper than anything we're even seeing now. Hoddle would have been gone before Christmas with us staring relegation in the face, and we probably would have ended up with Wiggers anyway.

I've had a look but couldn't see any mention of Leon Crouch and Mark Dennis in the stands with us, about three rows back from me. He didn't seem particularly amused by everyone bouncing up and down to the Fratellis when Forest scored their second and third. Possibly the gallows humour a bit too close to the bone. Great atmosphere throughout, I had a little tear in my eye especially when the Forest fans applauded us. The getting on the pitch nonsense was a bit unneccessary though, but no major harm done. Oh, and not completely sure of her legality, but Leon's (I think) daughter is definitely worth one.

No they didn't. That rumour is a load of old ********. Football clubs don't get other football clubs to buy players for them.

:rolleyes:

Appalling idea. Please, please, no. We need a manager with absolutely no affinity with us whatsoever. It worked for Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Villa, Fulham, Birmingham City, Wolves, Reading, Burnley, Preston, Leicester City, Peterborough and pretty much any successful club you could ever name.

What kind of garbage is that? Most of those years in the top flight we actually in people's living memory which does count for something. Or are you saying that people would instantly describe, say, Blackpool as so much bigger than saints because of their success pre and post war Saints have a natural level, it is between the bottom half of the Premier League and the top half of CCC. When we finished eighth in the Prem we were over our natural level. This and next season we will be below it. When we finished 12th in the CCC, or 17th in the Prem, we were at our natural level. Or are you seriously suggesting the rest of football are saying "oh yes, Southampton are now just about right. I always thought of them as a third tier team. I mean, where where they in 1936?"

We wouldn't still be in the Premier League if we were still at the Dell, we'd have been in League one for several seasons by now. Don't kid yourself that your toilet stadium gives you some freedom to be in the top division. You're up to your necks in debt and unlike ours, which is about to be written off by Aviva, you're stuck with yours because the PFA and the League will make you pay up every penny to every player you've given a contract to. You can't even sell out your sh i t tip in the greatest season your club had seen in half a century. I wouldn't swap places with you son, you've got Kiddo and Harty, the poor man's Ricky Sbragia and Les Reed to steer you to the second tier next season. Enjoy the summer fire sale, Storie saying "well, we've got to cut our cloth" and the inevitable spiral from there. And your "bestest fans in the world" will be gone gone gone - you won't get the 25,000 gates we've got in the CCC and you'll be back to your little 6,000 hardcore. Love the lecture about us "punching above our weight". You are fly by night Premier League gypos. We were the real deal, season after season. And we will be again. And you and your 6,000 will be back at your natural level too - twenty odd concecutive seasons in the second tier, anyone? Anyway, **** off the main board.

They're worried because they are too close to it. The recession doesn't turn St Mary's Stadium into Bootham Crescent. The recession means people like Aviva writing off debts left right and centre and Aviva foreclosing or refusing to speak to anyone with an offer on it leaves them with a useless piece of building worth nothing to anyone, least of all Aviva. The recession is good for Saints because it makes the lenders pretty weak, although granted it also is harder for prospective buyers to get credit. I don't know anything, but I bet we don't fold.

Arf. Like the original bidders were walking into a football club in administration and massive debt and being surprised it wasn't the little goldmine they thought it was.... Whatever happens we won't cease to be, which is the main thing. An "opportunist" won't have much to "strip clean" so sorry that's just a pompey pipedream for you. And it probably will be a consortium of local businessmen. At this stage getting to the Premier league is not the first concern. We only need to climb out of league one, and we don't need a kings ransom to do that. How is that super dooper elite new stadium coming on, anyway? Oh.

"Far more used to Premier and CCC status" - eh? - they only became top flight fixtures in the nineties. We've way ahead of them on that front. And they got relegated the season after us. Edit: sorry, I was wrong. Charlton's consecutive run of seasons in the Premier League started in, er, 2000. Saints had been in the top flight for twenty odd years at that point.

Of course we are . You lot can bleat awaywith your "boo hoo we're going out of business" routine but frankly we're not. We're a couple of days away from a renegotiated stadium debt and we're laughing. Half way up the CCC within three years.

To be fair, this is exactly the "why don't you invest in the team" argument that everyone wanted him to do for years. Problem is everyone wants to have it both ways.

The sooner the money runs out, the sooner we get an eleventh hour deal. Crouch putting money in to salve his own ego is just slowing everything down.

Do they even do finishing money in that division? I thought it was just a prem thing. Pretty sure there is no placement money in any other league.

Christ. The sun is shining, you know. Cheer up. If we're in L1 for more than three seasons I'd be amazed. Where do people get this idea that we are some washed up flea pit club like Aldershot or Bradford Park Avenue and are therefore doomed to "fold quite quickly"? We'll be playing in SMS well into the next fifty years and we'll be CCC standard within three years from now, and then who knows.

If you're happy to write off the chances of Sheff Weds, Notts Forest, Leicester, Leeds, Norwich, Ipswich etc etc of "ever being in the top flight again in my lifetime" then fine. But I think all of those clubs will be back in the top flight one day, and so will we. We're not going to fold, for god's sake I wish people would stop being such drama queens.

But Mawhinney has said the "sporting sanction" has to be seen to have punished the team. That is the spirit of the law he was talking about the other day. Stockport haven't been punished at all, especially as they have gone into admin as tactically as we did when they know it won't hurt them. This one does stink, I'm afraid.

Be fair Jonah. Lowe going along to watch Saints at the invitation of a competitor chairman is the thing that's "weird and quite obsessional". I think a normal person would either a) go off and do something else and give up Saints as a bad job badly done or, if we are going to accept he does have feelings for the club b) have enough empathy with the fans to understand his presence on Sunday would antagonise them, be easily interpreted as a f-you and completely counter productive. You can't blame fans for feeling sick he's going to be there. The "weird and quite obsessional" thing is him thinking going to the City Ground would be anything other than an appalling idea.

Correct. I am one of those that is not questioning our deduction or how it is applied in our case - we've broken the rules and its a fair cop. But this is unfair - the punishment is, according to Mawhinney, supposed to be applied when it hurts the most - either to relegate a club or start the season on minus ten. Stockport haven't been punished at all, and now have an unfair advantage over us next season. A complete joke.

I'm not a great student of it, but it always seems to me that the JPT is normally always won by a League 2 team. I get the feeling it is a bit of a Carling cup for the teams pushing for promotion to the CCC - an expendable waste of fixtures. Don't be too surprised if we don't go all out to win it. That said, I think we should - if we are going to go up it will be through the playoffs and getting a trip to Wem-ber-lee under our belts earlier in the season would be the best preparation you could get.

I'm not sure I buy into Crouch screaming about Lowe's "cheek" when the multi millionaire Leon Crouch has been walking round St Mary's with a bucket asking for donations from average wage earners to fund a business he is a significant shareholder in. And that bucket money going to pay the wages of men on five grand a week. That's cheek and absolutely obscene in my book. But should Lowe be at Forest? Of course not and this just goes to show what an odious, snivelling little git he is. He'll get a mouthful from me and 2,000 others on Sunday.

Christ. Just felt longer then!