The Kraken

Just send an email. Dan put his address up on here; dan.kerins@dailyecho.co.uk. Also the general address for comment is echosport@dailyecho.co.uk.

I completely agree with you. And I'd urge people to write to the Echo. If there is a significant reaction to this article, and indeed SISA's general f*ckwittery in future, they will be inclined to print those comments as a reaction piece. Which might have the ultimate goal of showing SISA up for the self-publicising minority they clearly are. I've sent an email to Dan Kerins, which he has responded to me by stating I'm the only one to formally respond so far! However, my email will be forwarded to the Sports Editor. As will anyone else who takes the short time to write just a few lines condemning SISA's actions. So help me out, don't let me be seen as the sole nutter complaining to the press! There's a chance to put SISA back in their box here, let's take it.

Danny, as you requested I just emailed a response to you on SISA's article. I think its fair to say we will continue to disagree with each other relating to the standing I believe the Echo encourages with SISA and Saints Trust. Yes, I accept that you do some of the things that I referred to. And I very much welcome those. The fans' piece today is a point in case; it gives a substantial amount of space to one person's opinion, and I think it is a good thing. But I think it almost reinforces my point; alot of what you print from SISA are not shown for the individual opinions that they are; they are labelled under the SISA banner and therefore appear as the common thinking of a supporter association. As you yourself point out, they are "relatively small organisations", so does the Echo not have a duty to outline just how significant or otherwise these supporters groups are? You're right that when people see Fans Chief they assume all fans, so with that in mind surely there's a duty to correct that? You mention polls and that you use them, but then say that they are seldom used as a story in their own right. But I'd question that, and say that the results of a poll are much, much more important than a written opinion piece by any one person. The poll indicates the overall thinking of a cross section of the fanbase. I don't understand why it would be so seldom used.

Not necessarily the mods responsibility though; perhaps there could be an arrangement whereby Echo reporters can engage with the fans through here. For example, for todays piece. Fine, SISA have made their statement and the Echo deems that newsworthy. But make it a feature piece. Have a poll, either on here or on the Echo's site, asking if people agree with SISA's stance or not. And provide some quotes that adequately sum up the balance of resulting opinion. That would provide some genuine balanced reporting and a forum for those people who don't want to be pigeon holed into the collective thinking of a minority of vocal protesters.

Dan, a couple of points. Your statement “I'm not aware of the Echo ever referring to SISA as the voice of the fans (or the Trust for that matter)” is not true. On a number of occasions the Echo have referred in the headline to SISA or Saints Trust representatives as “Fans’ Chief”. It may be by implication only but by that you are suggesting they are a true voice of the fans. And yes, Steve Grant is regularly quoted too; however, the difference here is that he is listed usually as “Saints Web Forum owner”, which while giving him a title does not infer that he is speaking on behalf of the organisation he is associated with. Secondly, as the starter of this thread, my points was not for it to be solely designed for SISA bashing. What I would truly like to happen is for the Echo to be able to report the views of a cross section of fans in the best manner possible. I simply don’t think you do that when giving such prominence to the likes of SISA and Saints trust. I would suggest there are a large number of ways in which you could provide good, balanced reporting: 1) per today’s edition, have a “fan’s view”, where a different fan is invited to pen his own opinions. 2) Use this site or the Daily Echo site to run a poll on certain issues and report from them. 3) Have a “for and against” debate; you give space to SISA, why not find a way to offer others a chance to counter the demands made by SISA? I think my main point is that you often rely on the opinion of just one person, then attempt to inject gravitas by including their title. I’d like to see the Echo find much more creative ways of gauging fans opinions rather than simply giving Nick Illingsworth a call when you need a suitable soundbite.

Why did you email the club? I think they already realise what a non-entity SISA are. It's the Echo that need prompting in this department. Although I've previously contacted them on a number of occasions and also tried to engage Dan Kerins on the matter on a couple of topics on here, all to no avail. And I agree with CanadaSaint, it would be nice to see a poll on the matter; if nothing else to determine whether this forum alone is content at the Echo claiming that SISA are their Fans' representatives.

They do not speak for me, never have done and never will.

You may not question their motives, but I certainly question their methods. What exactly are they trying to achieve? There has already been a public statement on behalf of the family that they will continue with Markus' wishes to support the club. This is just creating an argument with Cortese for their own selfish, self-publicing interests. Yes, they may only represent 6 people. But that's my whole point, the Echo's promotion of such an otherwise insignificant number may have the misleading effect of suggesting that these people actually speak for a signigicant number of fans. 6 of them want answers to this question. It would seem from this thread alone that quite a few others don't want to badger the Liebherr family over such a trivial matter. Yet which is the one that always gains the ear of the local media, and how is that in any way fair and balanced reporting?

I think Saint Mears has adequately proved the point of the whole thread!

Incorrect. I have nothing against SISA/Saints trust existing, that's entirely up to them. i personally think they serve absolutely no worthwhile purpose, but if their "members" want them to continue, that's up to them. What I very much object to is a group of a handful of people being falsely represented in the local and national media as spokespersons for the entire fan base. And I should note; I blame the Echo most of all for this, as it is only the publicity they give that causes these non-entities to continue. Everyone knows that SISA consists of a handful of people yet the Echo continues to promote as them as the voice of all fans.

Dan Kerins seems to get half of his material from this site; he seems to give the anti SISA/Saints Trust threads a miss though.

I'd love for this to happen, once and for all. Lets find out some answers to some simple questions: How many fans are members of SISA? How many fans are members of the Saints Trust? How many fans do SISA claim to represent? How many fans do the Saints Trust claim to represent? How many fans are happy for SISA/Saints Trust to speak for them? (And lets be straight here, the Echo's headline is "Fans want Liebherr family assurances", and Mike O'Callaghan from SISA and Illingsworth from Saints Trust are often referred to as "Fans Chief", so they are being seen as representing fans as a whole.

I agree with all that; the bit in bold is the one that annoys me the most. The Echo know that SISA speak for no-one but a tiny collection of publicity hungry individuals; yet they continue to give them the publicity they crave as it fills column inches without them having to do much research. Lazy journalism.

According to the Echo, yes, this Saturday.

No, he really didn't. He made a statement along the lines of "I can't talk about it but I had no choice." Which neither confirms nor denies things one way or the other. He could simply have aluded that Pardew and staff refused to work with Reed's side of the house, therefore going against Cortese's blueprint for management of the club, therefore leaving himno choice but to find another man. Don't try and misinterpret words just to suit your argument, especially when the club have issued a public statement on the matter.

The rag-tag lovers of self-promotion, SISA, are at it again in today's Echo, demanding that the Liebherr family offer a public assurance to supporters regarding the future stability of the club. According to SISA, the Liebherr family are now "duty bound to listen to the supporters who fund the club and the limited company. If the family are committed to the club's welfare their first concern would be to acknowledge fans' perspectives and that committment can only be confirmed with an announcement clarifying exactly who is monitoring the club's progress above Mr Cortese". Personally, i think that if SISA themselves were in any way committed to the club's welfare rather than promoting their own weird self-interests, they'd shut the f*ck up for once and give their whole desperate need for publicity a good rest. The rest of their public statement is a complete pile of jumped-up incendiary nonsense, and shows their moribund association up for the spiteful argumentative non-entity it really is. By the way, if anyone wants to go their meeting to tag along with their bullsh1t, it's happening at 1.30pm at Northam Social Club.

I agree with the sentiments, but not the complete extent of it. In Davis and Bart we have two top end goalkeepers for this division, and I'm not sure if we could get someone in for a low price who would be significant'y better than them. Jaidi is looking like age is against him; perhaps also being unfit is highlighting this, maybe he will be judged when (if) he makes it to full fitness. Hammond, agree totally, he is indicative of the current malaise of the whole team. We desperately need a new CM to come in and invigorate the team. Morgan, I disagree. He is a class act and even off colour is better than pretty much anything else in this division. If he needs an arm around him / kick up he arse then I expect Adkins to persevere with him. We do still need at least one winger; with Lallana out we're starved of creativity and Puncheon has been largely under par. However, I think there's much more to come from Puncheon with a bit of management. Chamberlain has bags of promise but is young so the end product is not there yet. An Antonio replacement is an absolute must. As for strikers, I've always believed we need one more to give Lambert a break now and again and provide a new angle. But I think Barnard has been very lively this year and I'm hopeful his return with Lambert will reap dividends.

I admire your optimism, but we're not having a bad period. We're having a bad season. Unfortunately this is no temporary slight dip in the form, and much hard work is needed to turn it around. Making light of it doesn't change how much of a hole we're in right now.

I disagree. I think this team is as good as we think it is; or at least it can be. We're just massively out of sorts at the moment in terms of fitness and confidence. Jaidi is showing his age perhaps, but the others you mention are all capable of sorting themselves out and proving to be the players we know they can be, at least at this level. NA has a big job to do, no doubt. But it's not as big a job as Pardew had when he first came here. I do think that Hammond is on thin ice, as the leader and driving force oin midfield he has been poor and a perfect example of how under par we are compared to last term. I think Adkins will already be looking for 2 or 3 loan signings who can come in playing at a high level and inject some belief into this demoralised squad. Maybe the weight of expectation was managed badly; maybe the poor pre-season was the factor; maybe Lambert being off colour and Lallana's injury are affecting us more than they should. But I'm confident Adkins can be thespark to turn us around, I just hope he can do it sooner rather than later so that we can stay in the mix for something this season. The comparisons to last season are already massively evident, like then I don't want to have to wait until we're into October before we find our feet.

Hmmm; not sure I agree with that, to be honest. The signings of Richardson and Butterfield were good, and necessary. Semi wasn't good enough, neither was Lloyd James at RB, so it made perfect sense to buy League 1's leading right back plus a player who operates as mainly a RB and also other positions, and who graced the Championship last season. That said, we needed to fill other positions on the pitch too. The signing of Dickson was a bit strange for me; no doubt he's a good player, but in Harding and Mills we already have two very good players for this level in that position. For an initial outlay of just £125K we've certainly got a good, young player in quite cheaply, but he doesn't really add too much to the capabilities of the squad other than to give an extra dimension at LM. But I just can't agree with your assumption that it was a tactical choice not to bring in replacements for Waigo and Antonio. Not least for the fact that Pardew highlighted the need for replacements there in pre-season himself. Also, Dean Wilkins recently said that they tried to bring in players "but it just didn't happen". Until I see evidence to have it disproven, I believe that Pardew knew he needed to bring in players but, for whatever reason, the right players were either not identified by Pardew or were denied to him by the transfer committee. So we started the season 3 players short of where we needed to be. It's a total club failing in my eyes.

Oh dear; you seem to have a rather tinted view of history. I feel embarrassed that I have to point this out time and again when idiots come up with this "told you so" nonsense over the lack of transfer activity. Go and have another read of Alipne's "Where are the transfers" threads that he made in the summer. Go on, go have a read. Do that and you'll notice a few things: Hardly anyone disagreed that we were at least 3 players short of where we needed, with pretty much everyone hoping for a CM to challenge Hammond & Schneiderlin, a replacement RM for Antonio/Waigo, and a CF as backup for Lambert. Alipne's contention was that these signings should have been made early in the summer. Others were prepared to more patient, on the condition that the players would arrive in good time. Most people agreed that if those players did not arrive by the start of the season, it would be a bad thing. However, some argued that the squad in its current state should have been good enough to get through the first few games in good shape. Most people agreed that if those 3 players hadn't arrived by the end of the transfer window, then we wouldn't have a squad strong enough to give confidence to a top 2 finish and we may have to rely on loans. Pretty much everyone agreed that, without those 3 players as signings or loans, this squad is not deep enough over the course of a season to secure a top 2 finish. Now, you can try and carry on your "I told you so" routine if you wish, if you want to try and portray yourself as some form of visionary. But it just won't be the case, I'm afraid. Alpine was proved right in his "where are the players" threads; however, so was pretty much everyone else, as they didn't disagree with the fact we were players short, simply that it was expected for the club to not implode and fail to bring in the players needed.

Well put. If the club had simply said "Alan Pardew, Wally Downes and Stuart Murdoch have been relieved of their duties with immediate effect" and left it at that, then there may be something to all the conspiracy theories being thrown around. They didn't. They chose to explain that a breakdown in working relationship between the first team and development centre was the only reason for their dismissal. What Warsash is asking fans to do is completely disregard the official line given by the club (when they were under no obligation to give any reason whatsoever) and believe instead a portion of hysteria and conjecture that has arisen from this message board. No, I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon, thanks. Besides, it makes no sense that all 3 were sacked for the same "non-footballing reasons".

They absolutely can. Whether they will is another matter.

Talk is cheap. Pardew was saying exactly the same thing last year while we were stuttering our way towards October still without a league win. Adkins will be forgiven this result; he will not be forgiven a defeat on Saturday. We really, really need a win to get things going but that's going to be very tough, he still won't have had a proper coupls of days on the training ground to really get into the players' heads.

We need our players to stop shirking responsibility and step up to the plate. Less talk on the OS, more talk on the pitch.