CanadaSaint

For the sake of accuracy, he proved he can score against a side in the Premiership.

I don't understand why some people are being so venomous on this thread. TT offered his view. Most people disagreed with it. Let's move on.

CBs who can then be caught at the wrong end of the pitch when a counter happens. Seriously, after spending all that money we must have someone to take these kicks other than the person we'd like to have on the end of them.

As I said earlier I think we overdid it and paid the price. We'd proven that we could unlock their defence easily, so there was no need to throw caution to the winds and leave our entire right flank open. AP should have seen that and adjusted - it was right in front of him.

He frustrates me, too, but he's going to be a hell of a player. He tries to be too clever with his chances instead of just whacking them in.

We over-committed, leaving our right flank completely open. Three times at least. Thomas can't spend that kind of time up front if he knows he has no chance of getting back. And AP can't watch him do it without making an adjustment. Generally, though, we were much the better side but we had to score when we were on top. God, what a sick feeling but I'm still proud of them.

You can still chase the game without leaving yourself that open to THE clear threat. Thomas is not so critical to our attack that it's worth leaving that entire flank open. Again and again and again.

F*cking naive on Pardew's part. The writing was on the wall in the first half about the fast break with Thomas caught upfield, and now we've fallen for it three times. I could f*cking vomit.

I'm interested in number 2 because the longer this goes on without the league stepping in to help, the more likely it is that they are willing to see a team go under in order to nudge others towards greater financial sanity. If they were going to act, surely they would have done it by now.

It's because we're seeing no such people around that I posed the question I asked in post #396. What are your thoughts on that?

Excellent. I'll give it your regards when I get back at the end of March - I ran away to Phoenix for the winter (Edmonton's only downside)!

It seems like a sh*t or bust strategy - literally, but the odds are moving more towards "bust" every day. And one thing I'm wondering is this. The football authorities (even, perhaps, including the Premier League) must know that football is unsustainable in its present form. Do you think they might be willing to let P*mpey crash, because they're not one of the big clubs, in the hopes that this would cause everyone to wake up to the realities? I say this because they're certainly not lining up to help P*mpey and may well be subtly pushing them over the edge.

I hear you, Redondo, but I can't help wondering if - somewhere down the road - we'll need an Echo that isn't cowed by the fear of anger from within the Club. That has happened before and it will doubtless happen again, so we can't criticize them now for doing something we might fully expect them to do in the future. I'm not viewing this so much as Cortese vs Murray.

Did Jo tell you that your behaviour was "un-ass-eptable"?

Not yet. I've always been a good boy. I got a little angry but DP and I have good history.

Fair observation. I should have said "help to get this issues resolved" because I think Cortese has people who keep a close eye on this forum as part of his "finger on the pulse".

Fair enough, Nick. I'm p*ssed off at all of them. No, if it's true that the Echo has pushed out an olive branch and Nicola ignored it (which I end to believe because - as you said - he does have an ego), I don't think he has shown maturity. The charity story (seen through the eyes of a non-Saints fan) didn't look good, and the club will need general public support down the road. But it's certainly true that Murray has himself acted like a pompous pr*ck and showed a lot of immaturity by throwing petrol on the fire. They both need to park it and move on because there are much bigger issues on the road ahead than frigging Staplewood. What has been getting my goat all along is that people have been so quick to take Cortese's side on this without knowing the facts, and that a lot of those same people would have savaged Lowe (who I dislike intensely) if he'd pulled the same stunts. This forum taking Cortese's side without knowing all the facts is not, in my view, going to get this issue resolved.

Why don't you try reading my post first - as in the part where I said "You - like virtually everyone else spouting off about this topic, including me - have no KNOWLEDGE about what has really happened here." We know, or think we know, certain things. I suspect there's a lot we don't know, and I've said that on multiple occasions. And I'm not judging him on the opinions of Murray, who seems to have his own set of problems. I'm asking both of them to show some maturity and get this thing resolved, and I'm also asking people without the necessary knowledge to stop taking sides and making a bad situation worse. What exactly are you doing other than joining in with the populist movement to shred the Echo, and misrepresenting the comments of people who aren't so quick to join the lynch mob?

That's offensive. Because I don't agree with you about the spat between Cortese and the Echo, I'm dumped into the category of people who "seem to have an agenda against NC and the club" and told that we'd have to be "a ****ing moron to agree with what the Echo did". You - like virtually everyone else spouting off about this topic, including me - have no KNOWLEDGE about what has really happened here. I'm urging both of them to act with some maturity and sort it out. You're acting like a lynch mob cretin, firing accusations and obnoxious comments around willy-nilly.

No it's not irrelevant. The analogy is not helping. This is about the media business, and the news was apparently in the public domain and being reported by other media outlets. The integrity goes both ways - Cortese can't expect to hold the Echo to a deadline if he's failed to maintain confidentiality and other media are running with the story. It started as a rather silly squabble about a nearly-nothing event. It could have been quickly resolved, but now it's escalating and both parties are to blame for that. So are we. Cortese seems very attuned to the fan base (including this forum) and if we were saying "sort it out", I think he would have done it. Instead, a lot of people on here are saying "Stick it to the Echo". No wonder it's getting worse rather than better.

And your point is what?

You can't keep minimizing the importance of these papers as the centre piece of your argument. Let me put it another way. Even if other national dailies don't jump on this story, they keep a very close eye on eachother and will certainly know about Nicola's "attack" on the Echo (that's how they will probably see it). It doesn't matter who "has the most money" when freedom of the press is at stake. That's a completely non-negotiable item for them. This is not a very smart p*ssing contest for Nicola to have, but it's certainly not doing Murray any good either. Time to make up, boys.

How about the Express? They're now involved. Tomorrow a few more nationals might join them - (rightly or wrongly) seeing Nicola's actions as an attack on them all. Now who wins? Anyone? There may come a time when Nicola really needs the media to see things from his side (for example, some tussle with the FL or the FA), and guess whose side the media will take. I'm not saying he needs to drop to his knees and grovel, but that he needs to recognize the need for a solution. DP, I don't think we KNOW who's right and wrong in this (other than both parties), so how can you conclude that "you'd have to be a ****ing moron to agree with what the Echo did."

Dead right. This escalation was entirely predictable and would never have happened if the two protagonists had parked their egos and acted like adults. And we could have helped by asking them to do exactly that, rather than by being so quick to take sides when we don't know all the facts.

I don't mind them having stale nibbles. I just don't want to read anything in the Sunday papers about erect nibbles.