Alain Perrin

My favourite is "worst player I have ever seen in a Southampton shirt" - the favoured expression of the knee-jerking reactionist. People forget that it is rare for any player to come in and make an instant impact. Often they need to get to know the players around them, the pace of the game, the style the manager wants to play - not to mention the culture, language etc. And that's before the burden of any pricetag or knee jerk judgments of the fans comes into play. What factors turned Torres from one of the best strikers in the league to a donkey? If you were offered him for £5m would you take him? I probably would because he must have had something and there's a chance that can be unlocked again. Some people make snap judgments about players; they find it hard to change their minds and forget that players are humans, just as prone to bad days (weeks or months) at the office as anyone else. I subscribe to the fact that most players have something that attracted us to them, but they won't always be on fire. The only danger is when you buy a player who is fulfilling the "form is temporary, class is permanent" maxim - e.g. someone like Beattie who would go on a streak and then not score for a few months. Assuming the players you buy have the skills for the job, the managers job is to try to improve / fix the issues, and if they can't, move them on.

Sturrock was a drinker. No ifs, no buts. I don't think that helped his cause with Lowe or the players. Fact is you can do well at interview, on paper he'd had a good lower league track record - but he wasn't first choice (that was Hoddle) so was always on rocky ground.

I favour being positive but in the words of the man with the chin, "it's a funny old game". A couple of injuries and we could be seeing very different opinions for any of the bottom 6. I don't think QPR will survive but I think they will begin to pick up results as the players gel. Hopefully that won't be before we play them.

I think the way we are now playing will suit Fox more. He's always been better going forward than defensively, mainly because of positional mistakes and the occasional concentration loss. As we press more he makes those mistakes on or around the halfway line rather than in our final third. It gives him more time to recover and his pace helps here. Shaw is better, but he's young. Fox is more than adequate backup,

Like him a lot. Good decision making, brave and gets right up after a tackle. As the bloke who sits next to me commented, "it's like watching one of those 80's game shows". I think the end of season away day should be japanese headbands: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B006KAPIGU/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?creative=22218&creativeASIN=B006KAPIGU&linkCode=asn&ref_=asc_df_B006KAPIGU11862129&smid=A2WZL2HM3U892U&tag=googlecouk06-21

I'm not sure "true pro" can be assigned to someone with the sickness record of Pahars. Great footballer on his day and responsible for many important goals but sicknote towards the end of his career.

And this is the difference from our relegation season when we were losing and playing badly. Yes we're still in the mix, but I feel more confident with this squad than I did with that one.

Same club as Mayuka...

When he was good, he was very very good, when he was bad he was awful. Yes he scored some great and vital goals in his early years, but in his later life at the club he was a waste of space. All except for the 20 mins or so and his goal vs. Pompey. IMHO we spent too long waiting for him to get fit and that was very disruptive at a crucial time. We'd have been better of getting someone else in and saving his wages because he was a right malingerer. We made a similar mistake with M. Svensson - albeit his injury was genuine.

Redknapp is a broken record. He tried the same "no depth" line when Saints lost to Mansfield. Basically he just wants the owners to dip into the transfer market so he can buy Rosie a new collar....

PR plants would use paragraphs. Fact is Nigel was out of his depth at the beginning of the season but, like many of the players, he was learning to swim. He made mistakes, like many of the players, but the fundamentals were (in my opinion) sound. If you believe in happy endings, he would have probably got us to where Cortese wants to go but not half as fast as Cortese wants to get there. The one area I think NA was lacking was one that he couldn't learn - and that is international profile. Do you think Pep or Jose would know of 'our Nige' - unlikely, and the same would be true of players we were trying to attract. Having played for Argentina and managed in La Liga, Pochettino at least has that. Spending big is a way of getting there faster. And say what you like about NA, but his signings were typically English and from the lower leagues (understandably). Cortese probably thought, loyalty, schmoyalty - I want results. As an afterthought, I do wonder if when Nigel took the job he was told that it was to get us to the Premiership and then Cortese would reassess. Hence the emotion after promotion last year - that might be reading too much into a highly charged situation, but if he thought his job was done (or uncertain), would explain the comments. It is far to early to say whether MP does the business, but is probably better placed than NA to do it quicker; but that depends on us staying up. p.s. If there were big rumblings from the players I've not heard of them (at least not before the sacking).

With respect, I think you're seeing what you wanted to see. That was a NA team putting in an NA performance - plus extra effort/bite from Ramirez and Guly. It will take time for the manager to make any noticeable difference but I think we'll see more aggression than with Nigel. I have a lot of time for NA and will miss him, however I also recognise he had some shortcomings. Some he couldn't help (international profile etc.) and some he could (sometimes he was a little too nice, and that rubbed off on the players resulting in last minute equalisers etc.). Poccy (I'm not sure I will ever learn to spell his name) will have shortcomings when compared to NA - but hopefully will bring positives over Nigel too.

Player in proving knee-jerk forumentalists wrong shocker.....

I broadly supported Lowe for the same reason I originally started supporting Saints. I like the underdog. One thing I like about Cortese is that he doesn't care about anything but success. Loyalty would have kept NA on to the end of the season - but loyalty would have delayed the project by 6 months. NC doesn't care what the fans think because he knows that a few wins and all will be forgotten. And if it all goes tits up NC can just do a Lance Armstrong on whoever South Today's equivalent of Oprah Winfrey is. It's a win win.

Did I see you in the Echo ripping up a season ticket over the parking charges, or was that someone else? I support the right to protest but my issue is that the mob take over and it rolls into the next game, and the next game, and the next game.... The Lowe era shows this club does 'toxic atmosphere' very well and I worry what that means for this season. Everyone wants success, and none more so tha Cortese. Unlike the fans though, Cortese's time horizon for achieving success is much shorter (I doubt he will still be here in 5 years) and because of that he sees replacing Nigel as needed. Your average fan would be satisfied by the success that NA was delivering, but Cortese wanted more. Time will tell if that is greedy or inspired. I suspect that Cortese needed but a few of his player negotiations to break down because of "Nigel who? I want to play for a bigger name", before he decided NA wasn't the man for the next phase. I support Saints, whatever, whenever.

I don't think that the issue is that we had gaps, I suspect it was how/ with whom we chose to fill them. Adkins' first direction was to sign young British talent from the lower leagues OR people he had prior experience of (Gazza, Jay R, Hooper, Forte etc.). I'd argue that that approach works well in the lower leagues, less well in the Premier League. NC wanted marquee signings, Adkins didn't mind - but that wasn't his instinct. NA was probavly too nice - preferring to keep faith in Kelvin than get a new Number 1. Gazza was a classic NA signing (all except for the British bit). Nigel was neither a big enough 'name' to attract big players, nor did he instinctively want them. Cortese is a man in a hurry, and he seems to have a plan that doesn't want to be slowed by loyalty. He wants results quickly. Too quickly? And what does it mean for SFC if the plan doesn't work out? Time will tell. No-one though can suggest that NC shirks unpopular decisions in puruit of what is his goal. The easy ride would be to keep NA, but that wouldn't get you there faster (nor perhaps at all).

It has worked really well for Chelsea's home form....... And FACT it will change **** all.

I can see this as a completely plausible reason for NC to meet with him.... to sound MP out about Coutinho?

Snow day. Kids at home. Sneaky one off the wrist and then post crap on the internet..

I may being a tad suspicious but whenever I read this, I read it as, "I couldn't make a decision between Google Translate or Bing Translate so I picked one and polished it to make me sound like I can read [insert language here]". That said, if you can speak Norwegian, good on you. Useless for business, useful for picking up "tibud" (as they say in Estonia).

Details here

This thread has gone downhill since it was unstuck. Nicola out FFS. On the Liverpool trial front I suspect it was less about trialing him, more about selling the club to him. It is stated that he wants to be starting / close to a starting place and Liverpool are only really in the market for a squad player (Skrtl and Agger being their vowel depleted first choices). I suspect they wanted to get him over and try and sell it to him but, when the offer came in from Saints, there didn't seem much point - he'll be much closer to first team action at SMS. If it was a straight choice between Liverpool and Saints, I suspect most players would chose Liverpool.

Telfer: Hod-carrying golf driver or Under appreciated utility player (then reuse for Jermaine Wright)

Adkins also said he had never heard of Yoshida....