The Kraken

Quite how there can be so much spite surrounding one of the best periods of form I can ever remember from Saints is clearly lost on me. There was me thinking Saints winning games was enjoyable; not simply a method for winding up other fans about. How odd.

How on earth has he disregarded the CEO on the direction of the company? At the start of the season we heard all about the 5 year plan to the Prem, a 2 year plan to get out of this division, and the need to fill the trophy cabinet with "proper trophies". Despite much media inference I'm yet to hear a direct quote from Cortese that that has all changed and we're now in a 1 year plan to get out of this league. And we have one more trophy to add to the cabinet. Like you say the JPT is no play-off final, but still well within the scope of Cortese and Pardew's original targets.

Some of the manifesto statements are so vague as to be irrelevant; "we're going to get rid of 100,000 bureaucrats in the NHS and replace them with doctors, nurses and surgeons". Excellent. How? I had 50% tories, 25% labour and 25% greens.

I think there's a danger of under-estimating how much of a step up to the Championship it will be; a few years back the gap between the two divisions was not so great, but there are now a wealth of clubs in the Championship who are strong. Players that I think could definitely make the grade are Davis, Fonte, Harding, Lallana, Puncheon and Lambert. Schneiderlin would also fit into that category, though he might need a few games to adapt to the higher demands of playing against better midfielders. Jaidi's only suspect point would be his pace and fitness, he's not getting any younger and has sometimes looked off the pace this year. For me the jury would be out on Hammond, Barnard, Seaborne and Connolly, though they are all worth a try and at worst all good enough for squad players. Antonio is worth a punt in the absence of anything else for his raw potential alone, but would need to refine his game. There's clearly no place for Perry, Wotton, Thomas, Gillett, Holmes, Lancashire, Pulis or Molyneux, and I think Waigo would get found out, he's too hit and miss for my liking. The remaining youngsters are worth a punt to see if they can handle the step up. I'd suggest a new CM would be a priority, a Hammond of the Championship if you like. Maybe a dominant CB to pair up with Fonte, and certainly a new RB. But we shouldn't be too far away from being competitive, and you can also never under-estimate the power of a well-motivated, confident and cohesive team, which we rapidly seem to be becoming.

I guess it comes down to how you define "acceptable" in terms of performance. Our first ten games of the season were, results wise, very poor. While the performances definitely increased from game to game, the actual results remained poor and we registered only one win in 10 games, scoring a total of 9 points. However, since the beginning of October we have taken 64 points from 31 games; that's 2.065 points per game. Norwich are currently top with 86 points from 42 games; that's 2.048 points per game. So we've been literally in title winning form since turning our terrible early season form around. So you have to trade off the poor results of the first 10 games with the title winning form we've displayed since then. Its my opinion that the team needed some time to turn itself around and for the new players to settle, and to replace almost every player in the side and start producing the form we have within 10 games was quite remarkable. To sustain title winning form over a total of 31 subsequent games is equally impressive. Therefore I would contend that AP has done much more than an "acceptable" job to date; I think he has been excellent, and it would be very, very difficult to argue that anyone else could have done a better job of turning around our fortunes than he has. Room for improvement? Perhaps. But to be critical of our recent form by picking out individual poor results does the manager a disservice when you consider the overall season.

By my maths, since October (after we had taken 9 points from 10 games) we have taken 64 points from 31 games; that's 2.065 points per game. Norwich are currently top with 86 points from 42 games; that's 2.048 points per game. So we've been in title winning form since turning our terrible early season form around. Can't really ask any more than that.

Oh.

What a kick in the bawls that is.

2-3 Yeeeesssss!!!

Walsall have 1 back. Come on!

Jesus; 9 pages devoted to a complete non-issue. I had to make do with watching the game on Sky (as I'm in France skiing). If anything the very light booing was taken very well by the commentators, as it came in the middle of a conversation between them about how Cortese may be being hasty by his criticism of Pardew; how footballing fortunes don't just immediately turn when you throw money at the problem; and how the criticism of the boss and the side could very easily be taken as a negative, as in the case of Sullivan at West Ham. Rather than the small amount of booing being seen as lack of support of the chairman, given the context it came across as support for Pardew, in that the fans think he's currently a very good job.

I thought Claridge's commentary was a disgrace actually. Leaving aside for now his obvious lack of talent in this department, his refusal to acknowledge a Saints comprehensive victory was just the signs of a very petty man. In you can't be impartial, then don't be a football pundit. I lost count of the times when describing a Saints attack he described it as "unfortunate" that we mustered a shot / goal, and he just sounded so utterly depressed to be doing the job. There's a reason that Soccer Saturday keep MLT away from Pompey games, its because Sky want to avoid accusations of bias. Just a shame the BBC couldn't show the same impartiality.

Exactly this; it would be a little ridiculous of him if he went over the top with his celebrations and was there gurning like a complete loon. This was a nice trophy to win but AP knows there are much bigger prizes to win than this. You can be sure that if he'd have gone over the top there would have plenty on here criticising him for putting too much stock into a tin-pot cup and not enough into the league....

FC, another good post. Unfortunately it looks likely that we'll fall short of the playoffs this season, and ultimately our form over the first 10 games of the season will be the cause of that. My hopes and expectations for this season were always one of consolidation; I expected a mid-table finish as a minimum, with hopefully a late season push for the play-offs. In my eyes the most important thing was for the team to have shown a significant improvement over time, with proper title-winning form over the last half or third of the season in order to provide enough optimism/expectation of that form from the start of next season (if we don't make it this season). If we don't make the play-offs this season but continue to show an improvement in our points per game ratio, then I'll consider this season to be a relative success. If we bring home the JPT then all the better. NC set a 2 year plan to get out of this division; to do it in 1 year would be a fantastic achievement. But there's nothing in recent results to suggest anything but the fact that, if we don't go up this year, we will start next year as overwhelming favourites for the title and a well-justified burden of expectation.

Indeed. And ss I said in the initial post, the whys and wherefores of the reasons for that have been done to death. We took some time to turn things around, which was disappointing. But the point is that since we turned things around, we've been producing title winning form. Its certainly encouraging for what will hopefully prove to be a tight run-in. But if nothing else it certainly leaves a huge amount of optimism for next season if we don't make it this time around.

OK, this is maybe one for the stattos amongst us. Although it will hopefully serve as evidence to some that we're not under-achieving as much as some people may think. It’s pretty much accepted that our performances started to turn around after the Bristol Rovers home game at the end of September. The whys and wherefores of the reasons for that have been done over and over again, so I’m not looking to get into that. However, it was widely agreed then that if we were to push for the play-offs we would need to produce title winning form from there-on in. And, having had a look at the stats, that’s exactly what we’ve done. In the last 5 years the League 1 championship has been won with 98, 82, 91, 92 and 96 points respectively. That’s an average of 92 points required to win the league, or 2 points per game (essentially win all your home games and draw all your away games). After 10 games we had 9 points. Since then, we have played 22 games and scored 45 points, an average of 2.05 points per game. Even our recent “blip” doesn’t look too bad when you consider the amount of away games played. Even discounting our excellent last two home victories, the previous 10 games before those saw us play 3 home games and 7 away games. From that we scored 16 points, exactly the number expected from winning your home games and drawing your away games. So, despite the fact that we clearly have some difficulties winning away on soggy, muddy pitches, the stats don’t lie. We have been producing title winning form since October.

That's perhaps true; although I seem to remember at the start of the season a quote that NC was shocked at how meagre our trophy room was and that we would therefore be looking to fill it asap. In fact, here's the quote.. So I guess the JPT was prioritised in this regard, as at that time it looked our most likely avenue for a trophy for this season. As for the FA and League Cup, while we were never going to win them it could be argued that maintaining a winning streak keeps confidence levels high, which is perhaps why AP didn't want to send out a severely weakened team only to see them get battered. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, really.

That's a quite horrific fashion combination of stripes and hoops you've got going on there.

I'm not sure how you define "success", but it must be very different to me. At the moment we are 10th place in the league. Even without the -10 penalty we would be 8th. That's not "success". What we are doing is showing the signs of turning the club around over an extended period. The last 2 games, while great to see, are no indication of "success". Neither were the lull in performances since Christmas an indication that Pardew was a failure. We are still very much a team in transition. There's a very good reason Alan Pardew asked to be judged after 18 months, as he clearly didn't subscribe to your definition of instant success and realised it would take time to turn things round.

He really should make better use of commas and grammar. Pardew out ffs.

Frank's Cousin has it right. There's the typical tubthumping from either end of the spectrum; the "happy to still be a club and anything better than relegation is good enough" crowd and the "playoffs is the minimum expectation for the season" lot. The truth is that most posters fit into the middle ground, yet get continually accused of being in one of the aformentioned categories when they happen to disagree with one of the above. My expectation, and many others I'm sure for the season, has always been that mid-table is the minimum with definite signs of improvement in the second half of the season for a potential play offs push. If that happens then great, but the minimum aim was to start looking like a very good team in the latter stages of the season so that if we don't go up this season then next season there's no excuses. And that seems to be where we are right now.

You started the thread asking for opinions in the first place, precious. You really are a strange little troll.

Dull days in being wrong yet again shocker.

He's certainly a very accomplished WUM. Not yet in the class of NC but admittedly getting there.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that your continual stream of negativity is in any way interesting.