CanadaSaint

I hope they're right, but this should have been easily resolved if that was the case. And, looking at that link, I can't help saying that we have some real t*ts for fans, don't we?

I agree, but without knowing what his contract says we don't know it really is £150,000, do we? Where did that figure come from? I mean, it could be three years at £400,000 or more per year, and then we're into a very different ball game.

But surely that would render Adkins open to a lawsuit for compensation. Surely he would need a formal agreement from Cortese to reimburse him before walking away from Scunny, wouldn't he? As jam reminded us earlier in this thread, Portvliet was on the hook for former club compensation when he came here - and paid it without any help from our then-skint club, I think.

Isn't the enforceable compensation limited to the balance-of-contract remuneration?

If we're really being nostalgic here, you ended up thirty feet away from where you started. And the songs and chants I'll never forget: More support - from the stands! Scheme, Jim (Melia), scheme! Give it to Ron, Give it to Ron, on e's 'ead, on e's ead! Not to mention the horrendous smell of urine in the toilets. But best of all the players were far more in touching distance - in many more ways than one. They lived on the same planet as us.

Dave, I suspect that you're dead right about this - and about Adkins' post-game attitude tomorrow. I just hope it's not us being unreasonable because I can see this guy fitting in very well with our squad, our structure and our five year plan. He might be the only one of the (supposedly) fifty who fits us that well. The "life changing opportunity" may not just be one way.

You're right. I'd forgotten that. Gosh, this can be a nasty business.

Indeed, but it's sad that honour always seems to have a cost - at least in today's world. I admire him for being willing to pay that cost, and I hope we soon become the beneficiaries of his principled approach. I just wish we could get the deal done and get him in, because I feel he's right for us. Dean Wilkins is really in an impossible position tomorrow - the players may well have tuned him out before they even tuned him in! And that could well be another six-pointer.

Whatever the actual compensation gap between the Clubs is, it's probably a trivial amount when you think about the sums we cough up in transfer fees, agent fees and wages for players who turn out to be unmitigated sh*t. We'll happily pay that to one player who won't contribute anything in his entire career at the Club, and yet we'll haggle like a gypsy over a lesser amount for a guy who's supposed to make us much better virtually overnight. Get on with it, already Nicola.

I buy into Cortese's vision and that includes the structure he has set in place to achieve it. I'm not 100% convinced by any means but I certainly think he's on the right track. However, I don't think he's been unfairly treated - other than by a few anti-Cortese zealots. He has brought a lot of the frustration and criticism on himself with p*ss poor communication, and I'd fault him all the more for that because he is capable of doing it extremely well - as the invited fan session demonstrated. The silence comes across as arrogance and contempt, and that perception is - if anything - magnified by statements that are obviously prepared by a PR firm or a lawyer. I'm not asking him to breach confidentiality or divulge information that is best kept confidential, and I rather like him holding his own counsel instead of yapping all the time. I'm just asking him to talk to his club's fans like a human being more often - especially when he makes decisions that significantly impact them. And if he doesn't want to do it through the media, he should do it through the OS. Until he does, the sh*t will continue to fly.

That's a completely different situation because the deal was done and Hoddle left. It is unprofessional (and even unprincipled) to blab about a deal that wasn't done. All you do is embarrass a variety of people (including the person who does takes the job) for the sake of a cheap laugh or ego tweak. That, as I said yesterday, can come back to haunt you in later dealings. If you don't see that or agree with it, fine, but don't compare it with the Hoddle situation because the two are night-and-day different. (Besides, Rupert - and the Club - ended up looking rather silly over that little outburst.)

I'm not seeing those hands up in the air. See, I couldn't be guilty because I've had the same screen name since Day One, years ago - unlike some people who have to keep chopping and changing in a futile attempt to rehabilitate themselves. Come on - squeeze those words out: "Sorry, Canada, I was wrong."

Yeah, I was pretty wowed by that, too. All the more so for the fact that this mentazm1974 dude doesn't seem the kind to fabricate stuff. Given his understandable contempt for the media, I wish Cortese would feel that he could talk directly to the fan base a little more often. He comes across well, even if he's delivering unpopular stuff, because his rationales are normally sound. But the silences create suspicion, a perception of arrogance, and the feeling that he feels contempt for the fans as well. And I mean him talking - not some PR and communications firm.

Keith Legg? Of course you were wrong. How the hell could I be Keith out here? It's 4,270 miles, you know. What on earth could have given you that impression? See, wrong yet again!

Dune, my buddy, he also said "The best way to win an argument is to be right in the first place." I think you might have missed that one. But I still find you entertaining and provocative and, as I said elsewhere, I always read your posts. Especially when you've been on the sauce.

I just wonder what the dressing room thinks. I mean, it's one thing to watch Coronation Street and another thing entirely to be in it.

I think he said "implacably" when I hope he meant "impeccably".

I completely agree. Oh, the excitement of your first erection.

If it suits him, yes. Or, more likely, f*ck you up, if that suits him.

You never know when you'll need a favour - especially from a neighbour. A behind doors friendly, a vote in a league meeting, a loan player, a cup of sugar.

Regardless of the reason he did turn down/may have turned down the job, it is really not very cool for that to be leaked. It's either a disrespect to a fellow chairman (if your chairman leaked it) or a disrespect to the fellow manager who eventually gets the job (if Howe leaked it). The mature and dignified thing would have been to stay quiet. And the smart thing, too. You're now on Cortese's sh*t list, just in case you need a favour down the road.

But in fairness, Norm, the thread title wasn't very clear - "Eddie Howe Turned us down?"

Art, notwithstanding the results since he left (we weren't getting results before that) I'm far from convinced that the players "respected Alan Pardew". And I would bet that this "physio come manager" is on an entirely different plane to Pardew - tactically, motivationally, intellectually, conversationally and just about every other way. So how about giving him a chance to prove it?

And, with that article, I suspect that any prospect of a repair of the Echo/Cortese fence has disappeared.

And all these years I thought that was his "bit on the side".