Arizona

Sorry, you're right, he was 25 when we signed him, thought he was younger than that. Yes, I do not argue that you need some experience in defence, however I think quality is far more important than age. I would quite happily have young players like Bale in the side and don't think we nescessarily need 4 30-something dinosaurs in defence.

Bigger tits.

Not really sure what you're getting at there. What I am saying is that there is no way a man who has played most of his career at LB is refusing to play at LB. Especially if he really is on a £4k per match appearance fee.

You can't seriously believe that Skacel is refusing to play LB?

Plenty of arguments against the original post, not least that no new players would ever make it into any defence and clubs would be playing defenders into their late 60s. Anyway... Wayne Bridge, Dean Richards, Jason Dodd, Gareth Bale... all young players who came into the first team and held down a place. Darren Powell, Andreas Jackobsson, Tomasz Hajto, Darren Kenton... all complete carp. If you're good enough you're old enough. Only true words Harry Redknapp ever said.

More bull from Wilde there. Since when do you need a continental manager to introduce young players into the first team? There is nothing what-so-ever to suggest JP and MW will perform any better than Pearson could have. Wotte has worked with the Dutch U-21s, Pearson has worked with the England U-21s. He also gave first team opportunities to Lallana and DMG during his short spell in charge, not to mention giving Dyer a second chance after the injuries and handbags.

Velociraptors are roughly turkey sized, whereas deinonychus were more like the Jurassic Park - human sized raptors. I'd say that was more turkey sized, especially considering Jesus was around 2,000 years ago who people were much shorter. Personally I'd have either a dimetrodon (not technically a dinosaur) Or better yet and ankylosaur, nobody f*cks with them.

Can't see it. Neither Arsenal nor Saints would have anything to gain by keeping such a deal secret.

Irrelevant, unless Arsenal paid the transfer fee. We still had to find the money from somewhere.

My understaning of the deal was that the fee, including appearance fees etc, would be spread out over the course of his contract, which is I believe 4 years. So we are infact paying around £300k pa. assuming we don't play him about 5 times a year. This is kind of irrelevant anyway. I cannot believe Pearson was on more than Wotte and JP at all, let alone £300k a year more. Don't foget in January we loaned out Rasiak and Skacel (in part) to save money. I don't think we'd do that, then bring in a coach on £9kpw a few weeks later.

Given that Rudi was happy enough to play last season at LB, on loan at Hertha and has indeed played there for large parts of his career, I am inclined to think that's bull. Only MHO of course.

You think Wilde forked out £1.2m of his own money for an unproven French teenager? That was nice of him. Anyway it's irrelevent where the money came from, the fact is we did have it. I can't believe Pearson was on anything like £9kpw, but even so it is less than the £6pw MS's transfer works out as, plus £2kpw each for JP and MW (who I am faily sure are on more anyway)

So how would you explain spending £1.2m on MS if we couldn't afford Pearson? Assuming that transfer is spread over 4 years, that's the equivalent of paying NP £6kpw for the same period. When you add Wotte and Poortvliet's wages onto that, we'd have to be paying Pearson £10k+ pw to genuinely not be able to afford him. There is no way on Earth that is the case. It is pure, distilled bull-plop.

The Rockie Horror Show - 1973 according to wiki. I think if I were to go back it would have to be far enough to be significantly different. I don't do drugs, so the 60's and 70's would just be lost on me. It'd be nothing but inferior technology and incredibly bad fasion sense. I think it would have to be somebody wealthy, circa 1500's - Henry VIII's time. If you got bored with a woman you could just accuse her of witchcraft and lop her head off.

I don't think you are giving him anywhere near enough credit there. Compare te team that beat Bristol City and Sheff Utd to the one that lost to Bristol Rovers shortly before he took over and there is an astonishing improvement IMO. To go from that and the Plymouth game to getting points away to Blackpool, Wolves and Scunny in the next few weeks, not to mention the vital win against Leicester, deserves huge credit IMO.

IMO it is complete bullsh*t that we couldn't afford to keep Pearson, but IF it were true, then it is only because we chose not to afford him. Forking out £1.2m for Schneiderlin and claiming we can't afford Pearson is like spending 2 weeks in the mother of all Caribbean beach houses, then claiming you can't afford to pay your council tax.

Maybe not, but they had the one thing we have been lacking for ages. Stability. That is never going to happen in our current situation, which is why I think we will struggle. Whenever we find a tallented player, he is likely to be sold to balance the books. It is also impossible to deny Lowe has a history of replacing managers. Reading had players like Lita, Kitson, Sidwell and Doyle scoring goals, whereas we do not have a player (that is being played ) who can find the net at the mo. I have seen nothing to suggest JP is anything special so far. Lowe's PR team spent the summer talking the talk and JP has done alright, but Norwich, Donny and Derby were all very poor teams and I don't think we look anything like a playoff unit.

All we need is a chairman worth £400m and we'll be sorted.

I would have kept Pearson TBH. He did very well with very limited time and resources available. He took over a team which had lost something like 5 out of 6 and made them hard to beat in about a week. This despite having a much tougher set of fixtures than JP has had thus far. He brought in 3 excellent shrewd loans in Perry, Lucketti and Wright. He also got the best out of players like Vignal and Licka, not to mention players who had previously been very poor, such as Wright and Euell. Basically I was very impressed after being initially sceptical and the decision not to retain him (Purely egotistical and not financial) was a poor one. That said, I will give JP every opportunity and hope he brings us success.

Already been done...

Great white shark. Then I'd teach it to do tricks, like the dolphins at Sea World, only not as ghey. Things like eating fat American kids and long division.

Exactly. I still maintain that Rasiak is the quickest player over 1 yard we've had in recent times. Whenever a decent ball came in, he was usually there ahead of his marker to stick it in the net. We don't seem to have that with our current crop. BWP and Dyer are both capable of running down blind alleys at 90mph, but other than that there is no pace and very little intelligent movement. Holmes and Skacel both have intelligence and can make themselves space to put a cross in, but neither is available for the team for different reasons.

Surely not eating would improve your chances of winning that?

That should read, "every big CB" some of the little guys have read the game pretty well and been reliable. I am thinking Perry and Baird here. Davies was also sharp enough in his time here.

Being African and/or tall doesn't nescessarily make you good. There have been plenty of big centre-backs for Saints that were crap. Davenport was a lanky git, but always seemed to be beaten in the air by players a foot shorter than him. Baird on the other hand could jump like a salmon and managed to keep the rather large Steve Howard quiet enough in the playoff second leg. Darren Powell was a pretty big bloke and conversely, the worst centre half I have ever seen in a Saints shirt. Mettomo, Hajto and Jackobsson were all built like brick outhouses and were all crap. The good ones are usually taken and, in many cases, being paid far more than we could offer them in the French First League.