The Kraken

Possibly because it's a forum for them to speak to fans and honestly answer any and all questions that are posed to them. I'm pretty sure it's not a pre-requisite of hosting such an event that they should have declined to answer any controversial questions lest they upset your clearly over-sensitive nature.

Seaborne has hardly featured so maybe him too. Lee Holmes is always unfit so throw him in. Wouldn't be surprised if Connolly is being nursed with minimal training so maybe off the pace. It's too long a list at 5, to be fair.

And I think that's where we completely agree. I found the whole Sun "Clotese" thing pretty funny; as club decisions go it was a fairly trivial one, but utterly stupid on his behalf, and he rightly received criticism for it. The removal of the ST payment plan and half season tickets was pretty shameful IMO, but much more for the fact of the way it was done rather than the decision itself. And again, it was for this that he was rightly criticised for. But some of the over the top comments I've read on here over the last 2 to 3 weeks, without being in posession of the full facts, have been quite distateful. I'll readily criticise Cortese when its justified, but he's been crucified on here only for some to completely retract their accusations later, which is just plain daft.

Actually, on this one I will disagree with you. True, Ryanair are complete shysters in extracting every last penny from the customer, but I'm not sure if the analogy is fair in this case. If the club were trying to keep ticket prices down, but simply trying to cover costs for online and telephone ordering, then charging a booking fee is actually a fair way to do it, in principle. But not at £3 per transaction, that's obviously too high. A reasonable fee, say £1 to cover the cost of postage and envelope would be a fair way to cover the actual extra costs involved in relation to over the counter sales. If you turned up at the ticket office in advance of the game then you shouldn't be liable to pay those extra costs. The £2 extra on the day is a decent way to try and get people to pay beforehand, but only if the booking fee is less than that. At a £3 booking fee it distorts the whole thing and makes the rationale for a single person buying over the phone in advance a completely pointless excercise. I think this was poorly thought through.

I guess there just seems to be such a demarcation between "pro" and "anti"; it's probably the fault of this site, I see the lables thrown around so often that it's used as a divisive accusation. A bit like "Lowe luvvies", where you couldn't avoid being associated with this moniker if you even dared to agree with just one of Lowe's better decisions. i just think its too easy for some to use the lables in order to try and "win" a petty internet argument than it is to actually debate the real issues. Your stance on Cortese is actually probably consistent with the majority of people who can see the situation rationally; I just find it needless to separate fans into pro and anti factions.

Joensuu; simple question for you. Why do you categorise fans as either "pro-Cortese" or "anti-Cortese"? Your last paragraph makes reference to it, but I think it needs pointing out again that many of us are completely neutral to him as an individual and are more than capable of judging each of his decisions on an individual basis. At the moment I, like many people, think he has presided over a number of good decisions (Pardew and coaching staff in at that time, Adkins now, Lou Reed and the development centre etc), and also over a number of poor decisions (lack of communication over ST renewals, payment plan, half-season tickets). I wouldn't even be able to tell youy if I was pro or anti the man, I can only comment on the decisions he has made for the club.

Agree completely. I think a huge majority of the fan base would have accepted the many changes we have had at face value if the club had simply communicated them better, or not suddenly gone back on previous promises with no warning given. The removal of half season tickets and payment plans, while both coming completely out of the blue, also totally reversed the club's decisions in their own supporters' charter. If you're going to bring out such a document in the first place then you have a responsibility to either abide by the principles you've laid out, or provide sufficient communication that the policies are changing. The club did neither. Cortese has said he hates dealing with the press; that's fair eenough, and no-one can argue that in this country we've got amongst the worst press in the world. However, he simply has to learn that shutting everything out except his own internal Ofiicial Site will not do the club any favours in the long term. I hate to say it, but Redknapp is a complete master at manipulating the press to suit his own needs. Cortese is a very clever guy and can surely learn to do the same, albeit in a much more classy and understated way.

Drive him away? Cortese is very ruthless in business; he started this project with long term plans; he started this project with his long term close friend; his close friend has since passed away, leaving the legacy of SFC solely to Cortese. If you really think for for just a second that he is even slightly bothered by the rantings of a minority of disgruntled anonymous faces an an internet message board, I think you might seriously have misjudged his character. And as you say, constructive criticism is fine, and in my opinion to be encouraged. The majority of us are able to look at club decisions on an individual basis and judge them on their own merits.

The thing is, I find it a little difficult to believe its all down to AP. We have fitness coaches and a whole sports science department which have fallen down in this area. Add in the fact that Lambert praised AP and his staff for getting his diet and fitness levels up to their highest levels, and it doesn't quite all add up.

Pardew certainly should take the lions share of the blame. However, in this age of football it's typically no longer solely the job of the manager to devise the fitness routines. In fact, listed on the OS alone we have 11 members of staff in our Sports Medicine and Science department alone. There has obviously been a massive breakdown in how all of these departments work with the (ex) management team, leaving us once again playing catch up with fitness levels and transfers.

According to this report from 606, supposedly passed on from a first team player, the first thing he needs to sort out are the fitness levels which are supposedly nowhere near good enough. Which is utterly shameful. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A74207108

Getting this back on topic and away from something that happened 6 years ago...... It is utterly shameful that our players are so unfit. How on earth has this happened? It's all too easy to just blame the ex-manager, though the majority of responsibility must fall on his shoulders. But we have a supposed network of fitness experts, in fact 11 staff members as listed on the OS dedicated to Sports Medicine and Science. Yet we can't even get our players near an accepted level of fitness even a whole month after the season has started? It's just unacceptable. Thankfully it looks like NA's first impact on the club will be getting the fitness levels where they should be. Something we have heard far, far too often as a club in the past. Once again we're playing catch up from losing the full benefits of a pre-season, though this one is entirely self-inflicted.

You seem to miss the point. All the other managers you mention had zero prior experience of managing at the level they were employed for at SFC. Only Sturrock had any significant previous record of managerial success in the English leagues. Nigel Adkins has a track record in this particular division of having achieved promotion twice, both in the last 5 years. In terms of what we need right now, he is it. Whether he will be the manager for the NPC and/or Premier League, I guess we'll jump off that bridge if/when we get there.

I stand corrected. Antonio in.

I think the one thing we can say is that he surely can't be any worse than Pardew in this department. Credit to AP, when we got the first goal we often went on to dominate games and won a lot of games very comfortably. However, when we struggled to get the first goal there was rarely a sense that we had a few tricks up our sleeves to change the way we played. Often when we went with, for example, 3 at the back for spells it actually made us look much worse and disjointed. Time will tell I suppose; and you can only do a certain amount with the tools at your disposal. But we certainly need a spark of creativity into the side, and Adkins needs to be the man to bring it.

In reading's 7 league and cup games so far, Antonio has started in 2, come on as sub in 3, and been an un-used sub in the other 2. And given that Adkins has probably never seen him play, and has certainly never worked with him, it's extremely unlikely he'll be coming back. It's certainly a position that I hope Adkins brings someone in for, but it's massively unlikely to be Antonio.

Which is exactly what we need to do. The squad as it is should be good enough to be competing for the top 2 places; add in 2 or 3 loans and there should be no doubt at all. they just need to take collective responsibility for the mess we're in and step up to the plate. Hopefully he can inspire some instant confidence and we'll see more of the 4-0 bristol Rovers performances rather than the insipid collection of misery we've been recently inflicted with.

Because he is a media whore who thinks it is his duty as "Chairman of the Saints Trust" to be seen as having an opinion on everything.

I'm just the opposite, now he is in place with 2 or 3 days to meet the squad I expect to see an instant impact. Footballers are a notoriously sensitive bunch, seemingly incapable of individual thought, and need a strong leader in place to get them to perform. Our current team, despite being out of sorts, is still a force which should be too strong for this league. And MK haven't exactly got off to a heady start themselves. I can see us putting in a very strong performance as the players will need to impress the new boss. And if we do that and Adkins can make 2 or 3 decent loan signings to bolster the squad in the areas we all know about (another CM, RM, CF backup for Lambert) then he will have gone a massive way to getting our pormotion hunt back on track.

Being as we are 8 points off the top now, and many will still expect a top two finish at the end of the season, I'd suggest being a further 2 points adrift come Xmas would suggest he would have done an average job. The current squad is massively underperforming in terms of potential, and short of a couple ofloans to bolster the squad it needs few additions. His main role will be to quickly address fitness levels and get a de-motivated bunch of players playing to their potential. If we're not within a few points of th leaders come Xmas I'll be disappointed, there are no stand out teams in the division this year, for Bournemouth to be in third place currently tells you all you need to know about the level of competition we face and how abject our start has been.

Egg on his face rofl!!!!111!1

I think you might have underestimated the hysterical nature of a number of posters on this very forum. Some will have the knives out very, very soon, have no doubt.

People will always have opinions about who would have been more of a success. But whatever the merits of the other candidates, Adkins is clearly a talented guy and is young and motivated to succeed. The most important team is for him to make his mark on an underperforming team, and for the fans to rally round and support him.

If you read S-Clarke's post about meeting with Cortese, this quote jumps out. He warned us to be ready for lots of stories from those who had never been offered the post claiming they had turned it down etc. and lots of other speculation and untrue stories in the press.

He's perhaps just the right man for the situation we're in now. I just hope he can have an immediate impact, otherwise our promotion campaign is going to be over before it even began. A couple of loan signings and a win or two is what we need in the next couple of weeks to get back on track.