CHAPEL END CHARLIE

There are so many examples of football clubs successfully changing managers that the point should hardly need repeating . Any idiot can have a plan , finding somebody with the ability to formulate a feasible plan and carry it out successfully is the difficult part . Are you seriously comparing Alan Pardew to Ted Bates and Lawrie McMenemy ? If so I'd say you were in danger of being a tad 'premature' there . :smt103

It's a question of judgment as much as league tables and stats . I thought we were pretty good candidates for relegation last season long before we played our first game even , the season before George Burley carried the air of failure about him long before Christmas and a unlikly job offer arrived courtesy of the Scottish FA . Football history shows that the dangers of acting prematurely are as often as not matched by the equally disastrous consequences of procrastination (re Middlesborough) , on balance a reasonable fan might say that the clock is ticking on Alan Pardew's reign now unless a sustained improvement in results is realised over the next two months or so .

You talk about belief and faith as if Alan Pardew's appointment was akin to the second coming of Christ , personally I prefer the more prosaic qualities of responsibility and accountability . Reading the above there appears to be no amount of on the field failure you're not prepared to tolerate . If we were to lose every game between now and kingdom come that'll be fine with you as long as we keep the faith in Alan Pardew because everything will turn out all right in the end ....... I can't think of any other walk of like (the Civil Service excepted) where that point of view would be acceptable or even practicable . I can assure you if I failed to do my job in a timely and efficient manner I'd be out of the door before you could say "Saints failed to hold onto a lead" and I'd wouldn't have much cause for complaint . I see no good reason why any football manager should be regarded as above criticism or somehow immune from the consequences of failure , they get paid a lot of money - they have to deliver the goods .

That's the point we just don't have unlimited time - nobody does in football . Unless we were fortunate enough to find another manager of Nigel Pearson's calibre it would probably be too late by next March to affect a season saving change of manager . Timing is everything both in comedy and football management it seems , this is not yet the time to sack Pardew but he's living on borrowed time now . Beat Gillingham on Saturday and then maintain a reasonable standard throughout the crucial October - December period . My definition of reasonable is that we should be no worse than 4/5th bottom on 1-12-09 . Anything less than that and the club should be looking for a new gaffer as a early Christmas present to its long suffering supporters .

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Just for the record let me add that this (low) opinion of Chris Perry is yours alone and is not a view that seems to be widely held on here or more importantly at the club .

I think it's fair to say there were the makings of a promising keeper in Bialkowski when he first came here , but ever since his serious knee injury he's been gash in all honesty . I assume the injury has healed properly so it's just a massive lack of confidence that's holding him back - many would say a Goalkeeper who doesn't believe in his own abilities has no place in professional football . For his sake (& more importantly ours) this player needs to either sort his 'head' out or find another club .

He failed miserably at Leeds so McAllister should fit in well at Fratton Park , you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh

If Kelvin were injured all recent experience shows that Bialkowski would be a complete disaster , even more worryingly this may well also be true of Forecast . If it were my choice Poke would be recalled as our second choice keeper and the other two shipped out - but I don't know who'd have them to be frank

All right then as an academic exercise we'll ignore the inconvenient start of the season and just consider the last 6 league games . Played - 6 Won - 1 Drawn - 5 Lost - 0 Points = 8 (1.3 points per game ave) Even these (slewed) stats give us a predicted finish of 50 points - that will probably leave us something like one place above or one place inside the relegation zone . I'd say that was too close for comfort , wouldn't you ?

Why on Earth would we ignore the first 3 games - won't they count ? You can twist and turn the numbers anywhich way but loose and it changes nothing - I repeat the only stat that counts is that we are scoring one point per game (on average) and that Sir will relegate us if we don't change it round . I see no point in burying our heads in the sand and comforting ourselves with delusions such as 'We're too good to go down' or the increasingly tiresome 'A few more weeks to gel' . That type of attitude could well be called Living in Denial , not only does it serve no good purpose but it's actually counterproductive as it allows everyone to avoid confronting the true scale of the teams underperformance . Alan Pardew , his coaching staff and above all his players first have to accept that their work (so far) has not been good enough , all else is an illusion . By the way - 9 League games played out of 46 , I make that very nearly a 5th of the season already gone . How about that for an interesting stat .

I expect the manager and players are thinking more or less the same thing right now - We're too good to go down . Just my opinion but I think that attitude is the worst possible reaction to our situation , the sooner that everyone at the club (and on here for that matter) realise the true depth of the trouble we're in then we just might just start to fight our way out of it . Right now I'm not convinced they even know they're in a battle . Complacency is the enemy of performance .

It's not some 'agenda' it's mathematics . Those maths are very simple and quite unavoidable - our current one point per game average will lead to yet another relegation this season , with the 10 point penalty or without . We are failing again .

The only stat that's worth a damn is that we've played 9 games and have scored 9 points as a result . If we were to continue in that form we would finish the season on 36 points and be (easily) relegated again . There is nothing worth celebrating in dropping another 2 points to the likes of Carlisle Utd . You've been following this club long enough to know that at the end of the season it's the draws that kill you .

Newsflash...... "but we're up to 10th in the Form Table and I've got the paperwork to prove it" cries beleaguered Saints fan as team slumps to another disappointing draw .

You must have bloody good eyesight to spot that :confused: In terms of both team performance and the league table I'd say we are in more or less the same place we were on the first day of the season . The correct term for that would be 'Stagnation' not progress .

Oh everyone wants success all right - but at what price ? Although not an exact analogy the comparison between Gaydamak/Storrie's reign at PFC and Peter Ridsdale disastrous chairmanship of Leeds Utd is not entirely without foundation . If you spend enough you can buy almost anything in football (PFC's FA Cup win being a prime example) but if that spending is based on 'Other Peoples Money' rather than income or even prudent investment then you're building on foundations of sand . Looking at the latest developments down the M27 that's a mistake they seem determined to repeat .

With Thomas (and Papa) looking set to miss this one I prefer to see this game as an opportunity rather than a problem . Lloyd James returns to the RB position and Gillett (not Wotton) should come into replace him in midfield . Mills has done more than enough to earn a starting place IMO . The problem of finding someone half decent to play up front alongside Lambert remains as acute as ever unfortunately . .................Davis................... James...Trotman...Jaidi...Harding Lallana...Hammond...Gillett...Mills .........Lambert....Saga.............

Any change that involves forcibly moving existing season ticket holders out of their seats will certainly cause offence , upsetting our fans for some extremely dubious (and potentially expensive) reason that as far as I can see offers us precious little real advantage seems both unnecessary and pointless . Nicola Cortese may well be considering this , but not for very long I guess .

Odd fact of the day is that (as it stands) a south coast club occupies the bottom spot in the Premier League , The CCC :cool:, and League One . If Torquay have a bad month we could well have a full set .

Anything more than £25k would have entailed upgrading from an brown envelope to a Jiffy bag - that would have looked suspicious .

Are you planning to equip the Kingsland corner with a 'Cloaking Device' so tactically effective when employed by Klingon Battlecruisers ? - if so it's a excellent plan .

I happen to know that the Pinnacle bid was accepted because MLT slipped Mark Fry £25k in a brown envelope - but in case the lawyers are reading this he did no such thing . (he did really)

5% of our players out :mad:

I'm sure many on here have experienced that tiresome 'What do I do with that £12M I've got cluttering up the place' moment - I know I have .