The Kraken

Don't forget the part that, once you've got people on board as members, they're not allowed to discontinue their membership. In a bid to boost your own ego and give the massive illusion that your defunct organisation is much more popular than it actually is, its a "once a member, always a member" approach. Why be honest about membership levels when you have your own self-promotion to think about?

In the past, yes. They are a complete irrelevance now, and should be properly exposed as such.

Thanks, I always thought it was just those four idiots at the heart of it, good to have it confirmed. And I'm glad to hear you gave them the short shrift they clearly deserve. But the Echo must also surely know what a complete non-entity of an organisation they are; christ, Dan Kerins gts half his material from this site. Aside from lazy journalism, I still don't understand why these four are given such status in print and constanly referred to as "Fans' chief" etc; it just sticks in my throat that such egocentric imbeciles are given such a forum to effectively speak on my behalf as a Saints fan.

I'd be thoroughly happy with O'Neill getting the Forest job and us ending up with the little sh!t that is Billy Davis.

Derry, honest question, if you know. How many members of SISA are there? And how the hell do you become a member (not that I ever would)? It seems to me like a complete closed shop for a bunch of nutjobs to get their faces in print, but the credibility they are given by the Echo is quite, well, incredible. How many were at the meeting you were at, and how did you learn about it?

Dave

No, I'm not. Granted, I've only seen him in three games so far. He's clearly not up to his standards of last year, but I also don't think the team are helping him too much by having so many hopeless long balls lofted in to him in poor positions. Yes, there's plenty more to come from him, but I think the perceived decline in his performances can also be attributed to the fact that the service he's getting from midfield is not what it should be. Edited for red wine spelling (and thinking, some woul say....)

He's a little off the pace, but nothing too bad. I just thought the balls into him today were not good enough, and not in the right areas. It seemed all too simple to loft a ball in from just inside their own half, which was either mopped up by their defence or worse, overhit and shunted out of play. Chamberlain at least tried to get the ball down and take people on, but I just didn't think anyone wanted to step up to the plate and grab the game by the scruff of the neck. Too much shirking of responsibility for me.

Why would you hand a season ticket back? As symbolic gestures go it's at the lowest end of the scale in terms of significance, and the club can just re-sell the ticket and make more money. Of course Clotese would say thank you; I'm disappointed he didn't explain their idiocy while he was at it.

Pressure my arse. We were overwhelming favourites for a very good reason, in that we have players who have proved it at this level and above before. Pressure doesn't account for our poor start, we should have hit the ground running from the firt game. Sheff Wed were touted as 2nd favourites to go up this year and sit at the top of the table, with a game in hand. Pressure didn't get to them so it doesn't apply here. Our players need to grow a set and realise they have to earn victories, rather than just waiting for it to come. Today's performance was risible, and utterly rudderless, for which Clotese has to take some of the blame for.

We really need a manager to come in and knock a few heads together. This team is good enough, they just need to bloody realise that they have to earn victories. It's almost as if we're just waiting for the breakthrough to come, lots of pressure but no real invention in and around the box. Our "star players" need to man up and get the bloody job done. And that'll only start to happen with an authoritative figure in charge, too many excuses for the team to hide behind right now.

The fact that the Echo continues to give them their oxygen of publicity just makes it worse. Lazy journalism in the extreme, the Echo are complicit in their duplicity. Shameful.

If these publicity whores would just f*ck off, I'd be a lot happier. To see the moronic gurn of O'Callaghan constantly in the Echo under his self styled moniker of "Fans Chief" sticks in my throat every single time.

No, I just don't agree with that I'm afraid. Guly can in no way be considered backup to Hammond or Schneiderlin; he adds to our options in giving us a new dimension but he is not a replacement for the current midfield duo. If one of them wereinjured I would expect (unfortunately) Wotton to fill in for them, and not Guly. Chamberlain may well prove to be a great player, but having just turned 17 he needs to be nurtured slowly and not thrown in at the deep end. He will have dips in form and also need rest, so to say he fills the void left by Antonio and Waigo on the right hand side is just not right. And as you say the CF slot remains unfilled. So, while I think we have added to the strength of the squad by signing Guly, he in no way fits the need of a traditional CM or RM, so we're still missing in those 3 areas. Pardew knew about Chamberlain yet still said he needed to strengthen there, so I don't see why we shoudl pretend that we now don't need to, just because we've failed to sign anyone.

Following Kelvin Davis going public in the Echo in the week, stating that Clotese is happy to wait "as long as it takes to find the right manager", I have no confidence whatsoever that the Chairman shares this aim.

It's over the top of course, as usual, but the criticism is half fair. All summer long everyone agreed that we needed 3 more players (CM, RM, CF); some people were prepared to be more patient than others in terms of when they arrived, as most expected the current squad to be more thank capable of getting off to a strong start. What we seemingly have now is a stuttering team (Bristol Rovers performance aside), fitness doubts over our best players, and still short of the 3 players our previous manager deemed necessary for the campaign ahead. Clotese has led the way in a series of failings at the club this summer.

What exactly has Wilkins said, and where? It perhaps would be beneficial to at least post a link to what he actually said?

He doesn't. Kelvin Davis was quoted in the Echo yesterday as saying that the Chairman is happy to wait as long as it takes to get the right man in.

Jesus, you love to attention seek over nothing, don't you? At the start of the transfer window Pardew said he wanted to bring in cover for Lambert. All throughout the window, amongst Alpine's "why haven't we signed anyone yet" threads there was consensus that following on from the signings of Dickson and the two right backs that we were still deficient in three areas; cover at CM; replacement for Antonio; cover for Lambert. Pretty much everyone agreed that was the case, yet here you are with another "look at me, I was right" post. Pathetic, especially when 95% of people were on the same sheet of music in the first place.

There's countless examples of it happening at the top level of football. Take the Premier League; Joe Cole at Chelsea; Ashley Young at Villa; Rosicky at Arsenal; Duff at Fulham; Adam Johnson at Man City; Milner at Man City; Modric at Spurs......I could go on (and on), but it's clearly prevalent at the top level of fottball so to not entertain it ourselves would be a refusal to adapt to modern football.

So he had a 2 year contract, with an option of a third year which has obviously subsequently been exercised. Who on earth decided that was a good idea?!

Really? As reported in today's paper... "Christopher Myers.....blah blah blah.....Any suggestion that his appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man". Seems pretty clear to me.

Go with pest control mate. My friends have had rats recently and they started with putting traps down, and caught 18 of the buggers over a period of time. Nothing for 2 or 3 weeks, then they started seeing rats again. They called pest control in and they had a good look round, and put some poison down (which apparently the rats take back to their nest as food, so it gets them all). Result, no more rats since. You could also try calling the council; they have specialist pest control, might be a bit cheaper.

And its featured in the Sun again today. Giving us yet more publicity from their "blackout of a once proud club".

The man from Del Monte did also; he was neither cool nor uncool.