Professor

The theory was good. Young players, with a few experienced heads around them would grow into a stronger team and should get better as the season progressed. The whole team is six months older than it was when the new board took over and they should be getting better by now. Some of the loans, Cork for example, are clearly quality players and some of the signings, Holmes for example, also look quality. Injuries have had an affect but not enough, in large squad, to account for the poor performances. Yesterday was dire, but once again the more moronic members of the crowd start chanting against the chairman. All that will do is demoralise the players even more, as it did during the late Prem years. Maybe it is time for Lowe and Wilde to consider if the Dutch experiment has worked as on yesterday's evidence the team are simply heading for relegation, but Lowe needs the support of the fans to make changes, not mindless abuse.

Four games without defeat is progress by anyone's standards. We won't continue unbeaten, but at least the defence and the midfield are playing well enough and we have more strength to come in both areas. JP is saying everything that fans are saying, about the need for the attacking players to take their chances and for the midfield to have more goes on goal. Changing the faces every week was the Burley way. Lets hope JP does not go down that road. He seems to take the view that they will get better and gain in confidence by playing, and by working on the training ground. Some fans will always think they know better, but if they did, they'd be running a professional team themselves - and those posting on here are not!

One of the most depressing things I've read on here for some time. Like a lot of others I'm sick and tired of the incessant sniping at Lowe, regardless of what he does, says, or doesn't do or doesn't say. The obsession by this group of posters to keep up their pointless campaign makes the following of Saints less enjoyable, and might even contribute to less enthusiastic support in the SMS. I appreciate that some of those doing it on here do not go to the SMS, but the vitriol on the forum is as incessant as it is unpleasant. Lowe wasn't on the pitch yesterday telling DMG to hit a shot over the bar, or in defence encouraging them to let in a late equaliser, but he gets more hatred heaped on him, presumably because of a home draw instead of a home win. The team is now on an unbeaten run of four games, we have a cup draw which is arguably the dream tie, and every reason to think this team can only get better as the players gain in maturity and experience week by week. Despite that, the negatives have nothing better to do than carry on about Lowe. Those who are determined to keep up a 'Lowe' debate regardless of how the club does in future should understand that they will only generate opposite views and argument without doing anything at all towards helping the club we support.

Lowe is not saying that you have to let a player go as soon as he expresses an interest in moving. The Barry situation at AV is a case in point. Players are under contract and there are steps, both carrot and stick that can be used to try to influence a player to do what you would wish him to do. Only if that is not successful does a club ultimately have to accept that trying to hang on to an unwilling employee is not likely to be in the club's best interest. The world is not black and white but is far more complex, which may be why Lowe's article proved not to be understandable to someone just looking to find something in it to complain about.

You need to look at what he is saying without applying a closed mind attitude, then it will become clearer. You cannot stop a player leaving if he is determined, but you can try to discourage them with prospects of things improving here if they stay. At the time those players left we had a manager who was losing respect (Burley) and a board that was failing to manage the club effectively. Different, and better management, and not necessarily Lowe, but better than what we had, could have made players want to stay.

I don't bother to post so often these days given the level of simplistic solutions that some people keep returning to. (1) The directors have a duty to the shareholders to try to avoid administration. (2) If the cost cutting measures by the current board had not been taken the club's financial position would be even worse than it is now. (3) In an administration, the administrators act in the interests of the creditors, not the previous directors and would only sell to former directors if there was no better offer. To those who constantly return to the refrain that if only Rupert Lowe was not involved all would be well, its true that is consistent with the LAW OF LOGICAL ARGUMENT - "All is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!" If the club needs to raise capital in January and has no more credit with the banks, selling players is the only option. Better ideas, on postcards please to SMS, but doubt if the postman will be busy.

I don't think anyone can say that DMG doesn't know where the back of the net is, given the number of goals he's scored over his career, but just like Saga, a striker can hit a lean patch. Remember when Beattie went months without scoring? Then BWP comes along and gets 2 goals to show that the opposite can happen. Seems to me that if SJ and GR were still here, we'd just be complaining about different players!

The anti-Lowe anti-Wilde stuff is just so boring, that I rarely bother reading the same old rants from the same old names. What a shame that there can't be a single forum dedicated to the anti's then they could spend their time being miserable together. Even the insults are just so repetitive that nothing is new any more. Rants on here will not change anything and the only thing that will get this club going again will be if some of the signings turn out to be successful, or if some of the young players turn out to be diamonds. For that to happen you need luck. Football coaches know full well that you cannot say with certainty that a good 16 yr old will turn out to be as good in his 20s. Luck has kept us afloat financially, but we need more, only you can't go out and buy luck.

For someone who claims to be something of an expert on football, Longshot's use of the 'pumping' analogy is surprising. Water can be pumped, if you have a constantly replenished supply. Likewise, money cannot be pumped unless you have an unlimited supply. So, just where is the board supposed to get the money to 'pump' into Saints? Elsewhere there are people on here who complain that Lowe failed to 'invest' after the cup final in 2003. Invest with what exactly? Football clubs have the money they earn from gates, TV, commercial activity etc. Apart from a very few of the likes of Abramovich, club chairmen and directors do not have millions of pounds of spare cash to give their clubs as a free gift, and we all know that for Championship clubs, even £10m is a drop in the ocean and would not buy guaranteed success. Maybe Longshot would contribute a year's salary to set an example - I think not.

The report in the Sunday Times was of "fluent Southampton". Implying not just a win, but a well deserved win. Very positive stuff.

Absolute rubbish. Death is a certainty but we don't spend every day telling friends and family that we are all going to die!! The criticism of the negativity is absolutely spot on. Fortunately, administration is less of a threat this season because the board have made cost savings, (which the negatives constantly complain about), and within the budget available the club have acquired or borrowed some talented players to add to the home grown ones. Given that young players have more scope to improve than older ones, there is reason to believe the team can do better as the season goes on. But there are no guarantees in football so people who want certainty of success should try a different activity to being a football supporter.

Its still only one result, and we may feel its cancelled out the next time we lose a game we should win, but the fact is that its 3 real points and every point is gold dust at the moment. Its raised hopes again that JP can get the team to improve consistently, and its encouraging that there are still other players in the squad that could yet strengthen yesterday's side. The dream? Just 3 wins in succession. Is that too much to hope for?

Its actaully getting worse amongst the anti-Lowe obsessives to the point where they appear to want the team to lose just to feed their obsession. Unfortunately none of us can choose who else follows the club, but its clear that some people just follow it and others support it.

Like CE I have followed the club since 1960 and like him, I don't see the point of watching your team lose week after week, with the result that I am also one of the missing thousands, except for the occasional match. But if results improve, I will be back regularly again. Where I differ with CE is his apparant belief that our club should be immune from the falls in fortune that affect almost all clubs from time to time. So far we haven't sunk as far as Aston Villa, Wolves, Leeds, and the fact that a couple of those have come back from the lower levels should give us hope. But there are no guarantees, and CE shows his simplistic colours by talkiing about the Lowe and Wilde board as a 'regime' implying that if only someone else was in the chair everything would be fine. Maybe CE is just showing his age as the optimism of youth fades away.....

As another supporter for over 50 years, I can tell you that the negativity is one of the reasons I'm attending fewer games. In half a century I've put a lot of money into the club for my attendance year after year and even more when I used to bring my sons with me. Maybe it was always like this and its only the web that has allowed us to know the attitude of people we would never normally talk to, but the fact is my opinion of Saints fans is coloured by the viciousness, and the vacousness, of some of the comments I read on here. Negativity makes me less comfortable being in the SMS with so many people who's views I simply cannot condone. So to the extent that there may be others like me, who would not want to find myself sitting next to some of the people who post on here, the negativity is costing the club money. At the root of all this Lowe hate, is still the ridiculously simplistic attitude that if only there were a different chairman the club's managers would manage better, transfers in would be more successful, and the team would play better. None of that is true because football is far more complicated and because luck plays such a major part, but this club seems to attract more negatively minded, so-called fans, than most. In fact, negative is not even a strong enough word for some of them, and some of you reading this are amongst them. I have no hope that attitudes will change. Its just very sad.

Its not wanting to support Lowe that makes people fed up with these boring Lowe Out statements, but the unrealistic belief that a different Chairman could do any better with the same resources. There is no simplistic, easy answer, to bring success. Getting rid of Lowe was tried and where did that end? Bottom place on the last day of the season and staying up only by the results of other teams. In fact the very act of getting rid of him when it was done by Michael Wilde was so badly timed that it damaged the club's chances in the following season. At another time it might have been OK, except that Wilde proved to be no better, and neither did Crouch. So if Lowe were to walk away without any succession in place, where would that leave us? In administration probably.

A different manager would not have made better players available to us, or have produced any more money to spend on transfers or wages. The knee-jerk reaction is always the same for some people - if its not the outcome we want, lets just find someone to blame and pretend that someone else would have made a world of difference. That is complete fantasy. Lowe is still the chairman who appointed Redknapp, and was heavily criticised for it because under Redknapp we sank to bottom place - but there is no knowledgeable football commentator who would say Redknapp was a bad manager. The reasons for relegation were complex, as is our current position. We have a management team that is doing the best it can with what is available, just as any other manager would have to do. There is NO simple answer.

We have some decent players, good enough to get the occasional result, but not enough good players to enable us to beat many of the teams in this division. The transfers in and the loans appear to have been the best available for the price we can afford. Despite what some people say, this is not last year's youth team, but its not a good enough team. We have an honest manager who tells it like it is, and who appears to be tactically aware. Changing the manager would not change the squad or add any money to the budget, in fact it would probably add to costs, so its hard to see that as a route to take. For the Chairman or the other board members to walk away would probably have a negative impact on the playing staff, and on the banks who are supporting the loans and overdraft, so that administration and the Blue Square could be a real possibility. As a fan, I feel helpless, because we are all of us, helpless. I am still being depressed most Saturdays by the results, but at least I am not going to the SMS to have my misery confront me. I never thought I was a fair weather supporter when I stuck with it through the relegation fights, year after year and saw the pre-season optimism drain away, year after year, but there is a limit to how much pain you can allow your following of a football to team heap on you. IF things get better so will my support, but when or if, who knows......

Only Davis and Skacel aged over 23, and half the team under 20. That makes them boys in most people's book, but they played as men. And the great thing about footballers who are playing at this level at a young age is that they will get better. All this team needs to do is survive in the CCC this season because they could be a revelation next year. What Jan and Lowe have to do is decide which players to keep and which to let go, as they won't all make it, but also to see if any of the successes among the loan players can be retained.

Have to admit I haven't bothered to read the posts on this thread as I assume its just another opportunity for the anti-lowers to have a group hug, which must be quite consoling. By all means ignore this comment if you like, but apart from poor performances, one other thing that puts some people off supporting Southampton is the constant and long-lasting campaign of vilifying the chairman and then vilifying people who don't support the hate campaign. None of this will stop until Lowe's time is over, but neither will it drive him away, whereas it is driving other fans away.

Shame its not possible to praise a young player without taking a swipe at Lowe - never mind that Lowe did not 'flog' Theo, but got the best deal he could for a player who had been persuaded to go. If Oscar does break into the first team on a regular basis, he will be noticed and it will down to him whether he stays here, not the chairman.

Trouble is Wes, that despite all the posts on here suggesting that if Lowe was to sell his shares, everything would start looking up, there is absolutely no evidence to support that. Its equally probable that with someone else in the Chair the club will still be facing relegation and financial meltdown. Lowe wasn't on the board last year when we sank to bottom spot. So......, much as the depressive atmosphere is understandable, there really is no easy way to save a club that has expoenditure exceeding its income. A different board would have exactly the same problems.

Yes it is the same one, and despite having followed Saints for nearly 50 years - possibly before View From the Top was soiling his first nappy - I'm not going regularly to SMS because I've deteriorated into a fair weather supporter! I now go occasionally. This is in no way a criticism of RL, MW, and JP who are doing their best with the limited resources available. I do believe MW was at fault for the disruption he caused with his regime change but that is water under the bridge. I simply do not want to spend my Saturdays (6 hrs including travel) in seeing my team struggling, week after week. When home form improves, so will the frequency of my attendance. My vote for an author is for Scooby.

Interesting report. People are only slowly coming to realise that the writing on a web site is publication, just as much as in a newspaper or a book. In the past only authors or journalists had to worry, although letter writers to Newspapers have been subject to libel action. We like to think we are just debating amongst ourselves, just as we would in a pub, but its just as well to be reminded that actually this is fully in public. Do the mods have anything to add?

Worth resurrecting this thread - briefly. We now know that the Arsenal team that beat Fenerbahce 5 - 2 on Tuesday night had an average age of 22. That seems to disprove the thinking behind this thread - which is presumably intend as a criticism of Poortvleit. The Arsenal result doesn't mean Saints can do the same, but its quality that counts, not age. Anyone recall where the experienced Saints team of last season finished in the league? The Saints squad needs better players, not older ones, and younger players have the capacity to get better, which older ones do not. I wouldn't turn down an experienced FB or two in January, but this squad will get better.