Alain Perrin

And if it goes tits up, the mob will cheer for the "great satan" has left the club. Then they'll all look at each other and say "what now?" (kind of like Bush in Eye-raq - "Right Saddam's gone, who's got a plan?". I'm not sure what the plan b is - does anyone?

See post #136 Thanks. You say "If an executive is involved in meetings to discuss team selection then IMHO it is wrong whether that be the England team, Chelsea or Saints." I suspect the meeting is not to discuss team selection. It is to discuss the team/squad - there's a big difference. Are you suggesting that the manager should not discuss with the executive whether Jack Cork's loan should be extended, we need a new right back or Svensson's injury is worse than we thought? "But there have been enough hints from some well respected forum members indicating his involvement" And yet there's been a statement as near to the horse's mouth (JP on this thread) as you can get that this is not the case, yet still you believe such ********. Pretty pointless. lowe not interfering in the team selections lowe not interfering in the team selections lowe not interfering in the team selections lowe not interfering in the team selections lowe not interfering in the team selections lowe not interfering in the team selections Any clearer?

TBF, it would be covered by a non-disclosure agreement.

Jesus, read what he said "lowe not interfering in the team selections,but a weekly meeting is held between JP,wotte,lowe and the coaching staff to discuss the team.lowe only came into the changing room to wish the team good luck. Which part don't you understand? Are you suggesting that JP and Lowe communicate about the team using codenames lest any subliminal preference is detected? Pretty certain the meeting is that they have is related to the strength or otherwise of the squad. All perfectly acceptable.

I bet he's moaning about it on http://www.juveweb.com/forum though.

I love stories like this. You know, where the innocent, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth fan asks if he could perambulate back to the railway station and gets called a ****. However, in your case I'm sure you were polite to them and they had no reason to be rude to you....

And with that post there was a sudden surge of membership - the servers cannae take it captain!

£5 has everything to do with it. Any impromptu or occassional poster will be put off by the registration process. I know you can post three times, but three times isn't enough to get hooked. I appreciate that money doesn't grow on trees, but an advertising model would encourage use, as opposed to discourage. No doubt poor form has had an effect too, but equally the negativity and repeated Anti-Lowe rants don't help. Some days this is more like a politics forum than a football one. Lowe / Wilde have a negligible impact on attendances and on forum use, they're just a convenient excuse for other reasons (X-factor, money, kids, weather, form, opposition etc.). It makes you hanker for the days when we lose, at least the wrist slitters have something to post about

Trousers' idea might work at the moment (when gates are low) but has two problems: - it will probably cause confusion as you'd have to have unallocated seating for a flexipass and some seats are already allocated for full season tickets. - for popular games there's a danger everyone would turn up at once resulting in not enough room in the inn. Especially as there would be a rush towards the end of the season (typical rise towards the season finale + people trying to use up their flexipass).

Agreed. There seems to be an obsession here (and to some extent in the media) with us playing one up front. To me that is just spin by old school diehards who don't understand anything other than lump it up to the big man. We don't play one up front, we play 3 upfront when attacking (with two of the middle five joining in). Far more attacking than we were with 442 last season - at least now we have players who get to the by-line. Personally I'd give the style of play 8/10 with results 4/10. As this team matures I expect the results to improve (remains to be seen what happens when the loans go though). So I'd keep JP on and give him some money to strengthen where he needs to (fullbacks being one area). However I'd still be biased towards a youthful side rather than the cloggers we've had sucking wages from the club in previous seasons.

Disagree that it paid for itself. The stadium cost £32m and in the best case in the four years it raised £10m of additional ticket revenue before any running costs are considered. You rightly say though that wages went up massively in that period, doubtless that ate a lot of the extra cash. It's like moving house though, you've got to do it some time - just occasionally redundancy and a credit crunch catch you out.

You can count the seconds before someone turns this thread into the usual boring rant.... I agree Norwich support has held up well, you could argue that Saint's support is more able to elsewhere (Pompey, Reading, even London clubs are all pretty accessible) than Norwich fans. Ironically Saints doing so well for so many years without a bigger ground was a double whammy - it didn't cement the fanbase (those who came in due to SMS and have since left were comparative newcomers) and it saddled us with a debt we struggle to service now. Put simply we didn't have St Mary's for long enough in the Premiership to coin in the big money, but had the costs that came with it.

QPR then. Bigger wages and close to the Leeds mainline.

More worryingly the phrase "it proves you can do it with young boys" makes an appearance. That's what got Gary Glitter into trouble Jan! Seriously though I think IF we can keep patience with this young side the future will be much much brighter than the past. COYR.

You sad obsessed twonk. Concentrate on the game.

Under Lowe, before and now, we have a transfer group at St Mary's that pulls together the interested parties to make a decision. Boringly I think it works at Saints in very much the same way as it does in many clubs. Players are recruited based on one of : 1) An agent / club touting them around. 2) A manager / coach requiring someone in a particular role. 3) Scout / Manager / Chairman seeing them play and recommending them. You wouldn't expect a player to be signed without Lowe / Wilde's involvement because they need to decide if we can afford the price and the wages. Equally the manager has to decide that he wants them and this would involve seeing them play (in the flesh or on video). YOU WOULD NOT EXPECT THE MANAGER TO MEET THE PLAYER BEFORE HIS CLUB AGREES WE CAN SIGN HIM - that's called tapping up. After this though, I would have expected someone in the club to have met the guy and seen whether he was a **** or not and fed that in. I don't think it needs to be JP to do this, especially when it is a short term loan (we can always send him back if there's a personality clash. Reason? "He's a ****"). The only exception I suspect is maybe Pulis which I personally think was a sweetner on the Davis deal. And if it got us more for Davies (once you've netted off wages) then that has got to be a good thing. What I don't get is what is the problem here? We've signed some cracking players recently (Holmes and Schiederlin) so to me it looks like it is working.

To be honest though you've been against him from Day 1, haven't you Um? So really what he says is an irrelevance, because someone will try and twist it so that it reflects badly. Jan is setting targets ("to go out to vin the prizes ya"), instilling confidence ("vot good qualities you have, you'll be big and strong enough") - all good in my opinion. So what if he didn't know about every team at the beginning of the season? Things change - Pompey and Newcastle have different managers now, players are signed, systems are altered. If you're suggesting that he doesn't have teams scouted, watch tapes etc. then I think you are mistaken. For example, replacing Perry with Lancashire against QPR because "they play with two quick men up front" sounds to me like he's being proactive (perhaps not always right, but that's a separate point) So (in my opinion) in terms of what he's said there is nothing there to dispute, yet you've managed to turn it into a negative. Excuse me for suggesting hypocrisy, but isn't that 'spin'?

You've got to respect someone who goes through so much pain and comes out the otherside with still a chance of playing. Great player in his day but feel he needs a Claus like player alongside him (I don't think he works with another combative CB). That said, ironically Svensson and his ever impending recovery played a big part in our relegation season and us failing to sort the CB situation out every season since. I just hope it doesn't cost us this year.

Heard he was quite good in pre-season, but I haven't seen him myself. Any one got any reports?

How is this possible? Many of the odd ball obsessives on here (you know who you are) will happily claim that he is taking training, deciding tactics. Really, if he wanted to be that hands on do you not think he'd be up close and personal with the players? The fact is that there are many on here would criticise Lowe if he performed CPR on a dying child at St Mary's. "There are qualified people who could do that", "He wasn't wearing a high visibility jacket", "A friend told me he slipped in the tongue" or other such ****e. (Look at your recent history - if more than 50% of your posts mention Lowe you need to get out more). Get a life and start supporting the team rather than worrying about the boardroom.

FFS. This has Lowe's fingerprints all over it. The last CB we had from Reading was a useless twonk and why should we have their cast offs. I won't be attending until we buy better players. We're destined for the drop, mark my words. Lowe Out.

The ungrateful ****, surely Lowe could have done something to stop his free will?

The ungrateful ****, surely Lowe could have done something to stop his free will?

There's a useful game you can play on this forum. Pick a poster, click their name and search all posts for this user. What you find is there are a large number of posters with a worrying, paranoid obesession with Rupert Lowe. FFS there was a heated discussion as to why RL was talking to JP on the touchline BEFORE the Coventry match and suggesting this was interfering. My favorites for Lowe obsession has got to be Long Shot, followed by St Marco - you boys have got it bad.

Jesus. Why don't you top yourself then? A point is better than none and sounds like we played reasonably well. WE ARE NOT GOING TO WIN THE LEAGUE. WE'VE GOT YOUNG PLAYERS. STAYING UP WILL BE A RESULT THIS YEAR. The only question is whether you'll get busy living or get busy dying.