Professor

We are talking about the Hoddle who was sacked by England because he wanted to make use of the supernatural as a management tool, the Hoddle who dumped Saints despite them rescuing his career and who came back to the club to take away their best player (although ironically for Hoddle and sadly for Dean Richards, it didn't work out). I recall being on a Red Funnell ferry soon after on a windy day when a pal of mine wasn't feeling too well and asked me to pass the Hoddle Bag.

If DJ had left Cardiff of his own accord or even been allowed to negotiate a 'mutual consent' parting, I could have agreed with the best all round idea, but to inflict the indignity of sacking him is, IMHO, disgusting behaviour. Super_Uwe may well have put his finger on it when he says that Cardiff may have been influenced by Swansea being promoted. The only shame about Dave's time at SFC is how badly he, and Mrs Jones, took the decision by the club to put him on leave when he was having to fight the unfounded accusations that the police were pursuing. It did need all his energy and attention, and must have affected his ability to concentrate on the job, but SFC did not sack him, they gave him leave on full pay, and if he had accepted the decision with better grace he could well have returned. Since then Dave has done well to rebuild his career and I hope he does very well somewhere else so that in due course he can make the appropriate gesture to the Cardiff board.

I'm sure Alex will be thrilled, even flattered, to be in the squad for the u-19s European Championships but is it entirely a good thing for the club? I'm not thinking just that it adds to his profile and may increase interest in him from Premier sides, but more concerned that he won't be getting a break from football over the summer. Alex is the only L1 player in the squad, apart Afobe of Arsenal who has been on loan to Huddersfield and there are only 4Championship players. The other 12 are all from 2010/11 Premier Clubs. This probably means that Alex is unusual amongst this squad in being a first team player. That puts him under more pressure than a lot of the others to be fit and refreshed ready for the campaign starting in August. The Euro competition consists of the Elite Stage this week and next weekend, followed by the Finals in Romania in July. Two short breaks of 2 or 3 weeks doesn't seem enough for him to unwind and then prepare again. My conclusion is, I hope England get knocked out in the Elite stage this week.

Jones got sacked for getting Cardiff close to promotion but not winning the play-offs, so logically, whoever Cardiff appoint as manager should expect to be sacked next year if the team does not win promotion. All or nothing, so how attractive does that make the job?

It's interesting that 9 months on from the Pardew sacking we still don't really know the truth of it. Losts of speculation and some of the guesses may be right. At the time, the pre-season didn't look that hard, more like a holiday followed by some easy games, but then the OS said it had been gruelling and now Connolly says so as well. Blaming pre-season last year for the bad start may be selective memory because Doddisalegend has already pointed out that Pardew got 4 points from the first 3 games which is not that bad. The home defeat to Plymouth was a shock, but the 4-0 away win at Bristol Rovers suggested things were changing, only then Pardew was out of the door. Who knows? Maybe Saints lost to Plymouth because the Pilgrims were so much better than Sutton, Barnet and Eastleigh, or were they demoralised by the home defeat to Reading!

Not sure any assumption can be made about decisions on pre-season last year being down to Pardew. Surely the trip to Interlaken was influenced, if not decided, by Marcus and Cortese. The OS did later describe pre-season as gruelling and Pardew said he regretted the injuries, but once they came back from Switzerland most of the games were against non-league sides. Interestingly, Butterfield was signed because of Frazer Richardson's injury in training at Interlaken, and that turned out to be a good move. As for Frazer, his injury was a dislocated shoulder from landing awkwardly after a headed clearance in a practice match, so like most injuries, a simple accident.

If AOC is pursuaded that he will do better elsewhere, it won't be possible to keep him, but if things go according to plan his future should lookprogressively better at SFC as times goes on and as more quality players are brought in. The longer we can hang on to him the better as he will also be a reason for other players to sign for us.

Interesting to see GK reactions. Dispointment at failing to save and anger with defenders but quite often an completely unfounded appeal to ref to disallow.

Near certainty 3. Signings will not include any player who has previously played for the club.

Nothing in football is certain, including signings but I offer two thoughts for near certainties:- 1. There will be a new player signed in the close season, possibly more than one. 2. The first signing will be a player who has not, so far, been the subject of speculation linking him to SFC.

We know how elated the Norwich fans feel, but Saints are not alone in getting into the Championship next season. Anyone got a link for the celebrations at Blackpool?

I don't know much about betting, but aren't the figures based on the amount of money bet with the bookmaker calculating the odds that will give him the best chance of making a profit? If so, the lower odds just reflect more money has been placed on those teams by punters. The table also excludes the playoff clubs at present, so two more teams, including the losing finalists of the promotion playoff have to come into the calculation soon.

The thread in The Saints Forum on Jason Puncheon moved onto an interesting discussion of racism. Wondering if its worth carrying it on as a non-saints subject on its own account. I'm old enough to recall a time when some older people, and maybe too many of them, believed out of their own ignorance that degrees of intelligence were linked to race. I don't think there is much of that kind of racism about today but what is about, is people tending to favour their own 'kind'. That may be on grounds of race, nationality, religion, or simply the area in which they were brought-up or now live. Kids on one estate hating kids on another is not racist but it has all the same evils about it that old fashioned racism had. In football, the rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton fans, which is not unusual between some supporters of nearby clubs elsewhere in the country, could easily become unhealthy, just as we are seeing in Glasgow. Race is used to insult people - words such as Chinky, Paki, Wog, Honky - just as non-racist insults are often based on physical characterists or place of origin - Fatso, Wimp, Scouser, Frog, Kraut - the list goes on...... The question is, what can be done about it if this is a natural aspect of human, and mostly male, behaviour?

Are some of the released players given a run out in the end of season games as a favour to help them find another club?

Agree! This says very well one of the things that worries me about The Prem. Its becoming a foreign-owned league of teams of foreign players, funded by foreign-owned Sky TV but with the players wearing the shirts of what used to be English Football Clubs. The PL only needs to start playing the matches overseas, as has already been suggested, for it to stop being English football at all.

Two good points, Wes. You do provide a glimmer of optimism, that when we get promoted, which I'm confident we will under the 5 (now 4) year plan, the good may out-weigh the bad. The Fair Play rules, if they work, do seem to offer hope for change.

As I said, I do want promotion but I worry that the consequences may be disapointing and that 12 months later I'll be miserable again! I'm not sure that the money in the Prem does really affect the dilemma, after all, we are led to believe that with the Leibherrs, money is not a problem. In any case most of the money of the Prem clubs just goes to overpaid players, agents and inflated transfer fees, and despite the so called 'wealth' fans have to pay even more to watch their team. The whole thing has a nasty smell, and yet I still want Saints to finish top of the NpC table. I suppose its emotion, not logic.

If Saints get promoted next season, the prize could be a year of anguish and misery as the team struggles for a few wins, gets lots of defeats and hovers around the bottom of the Prem until relegation in May 2012. The prospect could be of becoming a Brum-type yoyo club. Or, true to his objective of Prem League stability, Cortese sanctions some big spending. Most of the players who had celebrated the promotion are politely thanked and in their place come a bunch of over-paid foreign journeymen who kiss the badge when they score but don't actually care who pays them to play. Even then, the team can't compete with the super-clubs of manuyre, mansh*tty, chelski, etc. whose obscene money keeps the top 6 sown up. So what's better? Get promoted and have one of these two scenarios come about, or perform well enough to be competing in the top 6 or 8 places in the NcP but avoid going up? The dilemma for me is, I want promotion, but I don't want the consequences.

Some people know they are black and some know they are white, but some are neither one or the other. How many black grandparents must you have to have to be 'black' and how many white ones to be white. But the BIG questioin is, what on earth has this got to do with Jason Puncheon? Jason, like all of us, is who is due to nature and nurture, which has nothing to do with skin colour unless it is something that other people have used against us.

Appreciate this is all over now - probably like Gigg's marriage should be - but it might be interesting to note that this has confirmed what is known as the "Streisand Effect", that a misguided attempt to use the law to keep something quiet can have the opposite outcome and in the extreme.

Adkins should have known Blackpool would send him back. He should have had the locks changed on the doors to the building so that Puncheon couldn't get another ticket for the bus. There could have been a squad place available for him at SFC but he wouldn't have been in the first choice 11 on ability. But as people have said, his attitude was always wrong. Confirmed for many people by the way he dressed and conducted himself at the Memorial Service to Marcus. Getting rid of him asap may be more important than the fee.

Will we have to wait until Saints are back in The Prem before any of our players are rich enough or famous enough to use the courts to keep themselves out of the papers? Maybe we will feel a sense of pride, of having arrived at the top, when we discover one day, that one of our future international stars has had an affair and has used the law to keep it from his wife! Or not. This is a serious matter for what was once thought to be a free country. I know who the Premier League footballer is that had the affair with the lady, Imogen. Probably you know as well. Anyone who doesn't know, and if they can be arsed over something that doesn't matter to any of us the slightest, can find out on the web in minutes. But none of us can exchange messages about it without the possibility that we might be breaking the law by a contempt of court that none of us really know anything about. THAT is what does matter. That our freedom to discuss some run of the mill fact about a bloke sh**ging a girl behind the back of his wife and kids, can became unlawful, just because he's become rich enough on OUR money to get a judge to protect him! Anyone reading this who's having a bit on the side, man or woman, don't think you can use the law to keep it quiet unless you can spare more cash than the average fan will earn in ten years.

Its hard to predict how the relegated teams will do, even with the parachute payments, as they will all lose players and have to cut wages. West Ham and Brum both seem to have serious debt problems while Blackpool will be badly affected by the loss of Charlie Adam. As for Saints, it does look as if we won't be following the Norwich example of rebuilding a side for the NpC but will be relying on the promotion squad plus maybe 1 or 2 additions. If that is the plan, it seems reasonable to suppose that NA has told NC that the present team is almost good enough to compete at the top of the table with just a small tweak. If so, I hope they have plan B, which could be to make a reassessment after the first few results, and if it looks like more quality is needed to get out into the transfer market before the Sept transfer window closes.

Michael Svenssen - at the point when he incurred the serious knee injury in 2003/04, Killer was still only 28 and was regarded as a world class CB.

They'll be dancing in the streets of St Mirren with the Saints avoiding the drop from the SPL but it'll be quieter in the pubs of Raith, where a good season for the Rovers still leaves them second in Div.1 and missing out on promotion. Mind you, its hard to find these places on the map.......