Graffito

Got to be OWTS hasn't it? It could be the poor sound quality but I find the PA, whether music or commentary, very irritating. It interferes with the atmosphere in the crowd, whereas a good slow rendition of OWTS would get the crowd going, as Bubbles does at WHU and Glory Glory etc does at Tottenham.

One difference between now and the relegation battles in the top division which could work in our favour is that the standard of the Championship is generally reckoned to be more even than in the Premier League. Put another way, would we have beaten a top four team in the Premiership two weeks running when in the bottom three? This may give an in form, confident side a better chance of picking up points. I'm hoping anyway.

The answer to the question posed by the original poster is "no". Whereas there may be an element of outcome bias in some of what's now being posted - because we now know the decision to go with youth and with an unkown manager didn't work - it looked to some on here at the time a high risk strategy. It's claimed e.g. Mike Richards recently, that the strategy was based on economic necessity. Would Lowe have pursued this strategy if the club had been financially stronger? I think he might. Finance was only part of the reason. The strategy fits with Lowe's views on the "Gaffer Culture", on turning "raw material" into players he can sell on for a profit and also he wasted scarce resources on more youngsters that have played few or no games for the first team when the money could have been used to keep a striker or bring in some experience.

False optimism - no. Misplaced optimism - maybe. We need to see over the next two games whether the previous two very encouraging performances amount to a dead cat bounce or whether we're on our on the up.

1-1.

1-1.

I agree with you. A supporter on the Board should not be viewed as an end in itself. One member one vote, as with Barcelona, would be a major step forward. However, I would call this a democratic approach rather than a socialist approach.

Isn't it about time we put Mary to bed and focussed on a rather important match tomorrow?

I get a whiff of something and it's not info.

To hell and back, even when I don't do the 240 mile round trip.

Why can we suddenly afford to play Saga ? Because somebody has suddenly realised we can't afford not to play him.

If this season plays out as I fear it might, Lowe's biggest mistake will be the so called total football experiment. I can see the rationale behind playing the younger players, given the club's circumstances and I admit to having been impressed with early season performances. But the problem was always going to be in the execution of Lowe's strategy, in particular selecting the right manager, an area in which I'm afraid Lowe has previous. This was a high risk strategy, a gamble with the club's future which shouldn't have been taken.

You gourmets are well out of context. If all you can talk about is bacon then we Saints fans deserve what we get.

More from the Eggheads - home support does not make a difference (unless directed at the referee. Perhaps we should concentrate on the B*stard in the Black). Far to much to paste but if anyone's interested, here's the link. Seems counterintuitive to me. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/feb/03/features.sportmonthly16

Home support makes a difference. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3123723.ece "Scientists make themselves heard with crowd noise studyJames Ducker It seemed like a needless rant to some, but it was with good reason that Sir Alex Ferguson criticised the atmosphere at Old Trafford on New Year’s Day. Manchester United might have beaten Birmingham City regardless of their manager’s claims that the club’s supporters were the quietest he had heard them, but scientific research has proven that crowd noise can play a huge part in the fortunes of a team with home advantage. In their 2002 quantitative study, “The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football”, for the Psychology of Sport and Exercise, an official journal of the European Federation of Sports Psychology, Alan M. Nevill, Nigel J. Balmer and A. Mark Williams established that the noise of the crowd influenced referees to favour the home team. In their study, 40 referees from the North Staffordshire Referees’ Club, from the newly qualified to those with 43 years of experience, were asked to assess the legality of 47 challenges or incidents recorded during a top-flight match between Liverpool and Leicester City at Anfield in the 1998-99 season. Twenty-two referees watched a video of the game with crowd noise, but no commentary, while the other 18 viewed the video in silence, with binary logistic regression, a technique for making predictions, used to assess separately the effect of the independent variables — crowd noise and years of experience — on each outcome. Those viewing the incidents with background noise awarded 15.5 per cent fewer fouls against the home team, compared with those watching in silence. The study indicated that the dominant effect of crowd noise was to reduce significantly the number of fouls awarded against the home team, rather than to increase the number of fouls against the away team. Other investigations have unearthed similarly revealing results. In his 1999 study with Roger L. Holder, entitled “Home advantage in sport: An overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home”, Nevill, a professor at the University of Wolverhampton, concluded that “crowd factors appeared to be the most dominant cause of home advantage” after an analysis of 40,493 football matches showed a home winning percentage of 68.3, excluding draws. In their 1977 paper, “The home advantage”, B. Schwartz and S. F. Barsky established that home advantage was rooted in the social support that partisan fans give the home team. Stephen R. Clarke and John M. Norman found in their 1995 review, “Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer”, that there was a depleted advantage in matches involving the 13 London clubs because derbies tend to attract an increased number of away supporters and, as such, there was more vocal support than usual for the visiting team"

Hits the right note. Nice post.

Stan, I answered your question but you didn't answer mine. Sorry if I contributed to spoiling your thread, it's just that I'm fed up with Saints losing and all, and Wales beat England in the rugby so I just wanted us all to lighten up a bit. Anyway, I'm off down the pub. All the best.

He's talking balls again.

We should be playing in the Premier League but as every isiot and his dog knows we're barely good enough for the Championship and probably won't be in it come May. Now, explain what you've done to the pr*t, I'd really like to know.

blinding fcking insight...and here's me all this time thinking it's all because we keep letting them in. thanks Mark, my penny's finally dropped.

why have you stuck half of Rupert's head to half of Brian Clough's? I haven't It's got one enormous ear as well.

Be honest, are you ever happier than when your miserable? And why have you stuck half of Rupert's head to half of Brian Clough's?

It was a wet one.

This one beats me. We give him a contract at the beginning of the season (so high wages aren't the issue?), we struggle all season to get crosses in from the flanks, we have no real pace, yet we have a winger who goes like a whippet and we loan him out to rival clubs.

Mickey, I agree that no one person is responsible for the club's predicament, the others running the club over several years share blame with Lowe. But you can't blame the fans. We have no control over the running of the club and little influence (except if we stop going en masse - a high risk strategy). As you say, the fans are the lifeblood of the club. It's about time the club realised that.