Roman

I'm waiting for the first temper tantrum.

...you can't even play conkers.

I don't know about that, Weston. The forum loses is edge when it gets too 'polite'. I'm not defending outright abuse, but engaging with the (to me, at least) strident, thundering strangeness of Sundance is essential. Scooby is another matter and, frankly, his stuck-record impression of Little Lord Fauntleroy is more than a bit dull. Give Sundance his 'column' by all means, but don't expect many of us to respond with 'interesting, however...' Actually, I doubt he'll want to do it, because as far as I can tell, he ONLY writes in order to abuse something someone has had the temerity to say that might be vaguely perceived as anti-Lowe. That in itself would be fine, except that now his abuse has extended to making snearing comments about posters' wives. I don't see why we should give this particular charmer, in his self-appointed, Mitty-ish role as Lowe's internet champion, a free or easy ride.

You ARE joking, right? Tell me you're joking. And nice work, Baj. If it's not good enough for Sundance, it's good enough for me.

So clearly no one can put 2 and 2 together. Yesterday I ask if the Donny match can be fixed, and as if by magic we win by an og and a pen. I wasn't actually expecting that to happen, you understand, but just in case... What would you like the next result to be?

So, Sundance, I reckon it's about 20 hours since your presumably inebriated (and I'm looking for charitable explanations) comments. Does it really take you that long to compose a dignified apology?

And it's still - as it was with exit's email - a non-denial denial. Cowen has not denied that the rumoured appearance clause is preventing his being selected - just that he's 'available' for selection, and that JP makes these decisions alone. I can easily imagine the conversation between JP and Lowe/Cowen being something like: 'You can pick him but it'll take money away from any other position you might want to strengthen with a loan, etc. Your choice.' Hope I'm wrong...

What a nice man you are. The funny thing is, you try and come on all stentorian, but you're actually about as intimidating as Sam the Eagle. And please, stop telling us how to be good fans, okay? I don't know whether you are Lowe's proxy by appointment or approval-seeking self-appointment. But either way, your attempt to run 'interference' on here like a low-rent version of a Blair-ite 'media monitoring unit' is now way past self-parody.

Ooh, so close. The correct answer is John Sydenham.

Oh, okay then. That makes sense. Thanks.

Are you scooby in disguise?

Scooby, you should meet puff the magic dragon. Look two posts up. He feels just as you do about those awful people.

I think it's about time we got some of our games fixed. How about our first 0-6 of the season? Anyone know anyone who can make it happen? I'm afraid my contacts with the underworld are rather sparse.

Oh dear god. This is a whole new category of doing nothing - 'thinking of kicking some tyres'?! And good luck with fitting Sundance with new balls.

Sounds like you're having a little schadenfreude moment there, scoobs. You're not totally on board with the grand alliance?

Is this the first outward sign that the players - or some of them - lack respect for JP? I can't imagine anyone managed by, say, Strachan, Pearson, Davies, all the way up to Ferguson, just coming off the pitch and just shrugging their shoulders. They wouldn't dare.

Well there you go. I'm disappointed again.

You could always try Bournemouth, Bournemouth. You could even buy it yourself. I only disagree with offix because he's a cantankerous old pessimist, whilst I am serenely optimistic. (However, the toxic combination of optimism and supporting Saints means I lead a life of constant disappointment, so maybe he has a point - and has found true happiness in being grumpy and thousands of miles away.)

You only have to look at the noise being made by Lowe's proxies on here today for an answer to that. The disaster is the fault of the ungrateful fans.

I've deleted the content of your post in deference to people who have you on ignore. Damn. Now I've forgotten what you said. Oh well, never mind. It can't have been important or in any way interesting.

Funny word, 'ebb'. Say it a lot and it sounds like you've lost the will to speak. There have been quite a few ebbs, but I'm struggling to spot any signs of a 'flow' this time.

Ha! I have to admit that did occur to me. Hence a small reason for saying it.

I know, it sounds a bit weird. But there are a couple of reasons for thinking it might happen. One is I would guess that Wotte, Hockaday and Henderson are all too politically attuned within Lowe Towers to accept such a poisoned chalice. But the second, much bigger reason, is Lowe's predilection for doing the opposite of what anyone might reasonably expect. And in any case, if he does wave goodbye to Jan, he has to conjure up a Plan B from virtually nothing. I can see the announcement now - with the other Lowe, Wotte, Henderson and Hockaday all pledging their support and experience to back up Killer's commitment to the cause...etc.

Yikes! Gave me a bit of a fright there, Alps. But thanks.

They’re up in arms because it appears to many that a whole farmyard of chickens have come home to roost. The team. Jason Dodd, whatever you may think of him, made what could turn out to be a prescient observation on his way out the door at St Mary’s, that the kids ‘weren’t ready’. He wasn’t saying they ‘weren’t good enough’ – just not ready. Some may turn into real stars – and will be sold to bail the club out, no doubt; others will slip down the leagues. After last night, it’s tempting to say, well, look at Arsenal – they had a younger team than ours and flattened a team of seasoned pros who, in their own minds at least, should still be in the Prem. But Wenger has been assembling that team of teenagers for a long time, spending a lot of money in the process, and has been extremely careful to bring them up to Prem speed in a way that brings out the best in them. Just look at Theo, and the way he’s been eased into the first team over a couple of years. Our kids, on the other hand, have just been thrown in at the deep end – not just into the first team, but into a team that is under huge pressure to avoid the drop after a disastrous season with tougher and much more seasoned pros. The kids are being set up to fail, regardless of their quality. The manager. I’ll make one prediction right now – or two, to be precise. For all his efforts, Jan will be rewarded with the boot. I honestly don’t believe he could have done much else than he has so far, taking into account his own background and outlook on the game, and the several metaphorical straitjackets he’s been forced into – young, inexperienced players or varying quality; players bought by a chairman for no obvious reason (Forecast, Pulis…) in place, for example, of badly needed full backs; a chairman allegedly with delusions of dressing-room grandeur; etc. When Pearson left, I think the anxiety – to put it mildly – on here was that the passion and commitment he’d injected into a team in freefall was being thrown away, just when it had been rediscovered after the barren Burley years. We were losing someone who had taught the team how to fight and to believe. So who will Lowe replace Jan with? I’d be surprised if it were Wotte Hendaday. And we can’t afford someone like Billy Davies (which I take to mean that we can’t afford any outside appointment). Step forward, Killer. It’ll be a popular move with fans – at least as long as results start to turn around and he doesn’t morph into Dodd/Gorman; he’s already under contract; and it’ll also be an implicit admission by Lowe that he made a serious, and perhaps even fatal, mistake in getting rid of a like-minded Pearson. That, and it's just my guess, is Plan B. The empty seats. I’ll give Sundance and his strange little sidekick, Scooby, credit for consistency in their weirdness: if you believe them, the club is being brought to its knees by some kind of unannounced boycott by anything up to 10,000 fans. And their ‘selfishness’ will drive the club into oblivion. These two really should check in with their lord and master on this one, because they appear to be seriously off-message. Lowe is on record as referring to Saints fans as ‘customers’. The clear implication is that we are rational economic actors – we’re consumers looking at the club simply as a part of the entertainment industry. And if we decide not to go, it’s because the football on offer just isn’t a very appealing prospect. So for SunScoob to berate us for our appalling disloyalty is, by Lowe’s own definition, a bit like the manager at the local Sainsbury’s yelling insults at his customers as they defect to a newer, cheaper branch of Tescos. Of course, many really don’t fit that description at all. From Yorkie, whose age I could guess at, to S4AINT, whose age I know, it’s come hell or high water – or has been until recently. But Lowe was at least partly right: there IS a large minority of Saints ‘supporters’ who look at what entertainment is on offer and think: ‘Nope, I can do better elsewhere.’ As each home match creates a new record low in attendances, we’re about to find out how big that ‘minority’ is, and how hardy the diehards really are. I expect there is still some way down to go. Lowe needs both sets of fans – the ‘diehards’ and the ‘customers’ – to survive. I would bet good money that the business plan he presented to the bank included projections of home attendances, and they were far higher than 15,000 and falling. Now, at the best of times, a bank may look at this and start to think they’re throwing good money after bad. But these aren’t the best of times. We’re 100% dependent on a lifeline of credit from a bank – in the midst of the worst banking crisis since the Depression. If the credit crunch worsens, the bank could call in the credit line at a moment’s notice. But even if it doesn’t, and even if the team is asset-stripped to service some of the debt, I can’t see how administration can be avoided. The club’s most important source of revenue, the fanbase, is melting away – possibly for years to come. The pros and cons of administration have been debated endlessly on here, but it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it WILL happen, and almost certainly at some point this season or at its end. Hence the screaming and shouting from the Lowe proxies on here – blaming the victims of this unholy mess, in a pretty transparent attempt to deflect attention from one of the causes. So, assuming they’re not full of it, could all this add up to an explanation for the time it’s taken for the Fulthorpe bidders to heave over the horizon? That the are waiting for the collapse? PS. Sorry that this is interminably long – I’ve been away for a bit, so I’m still catching up with all the sturm and drang.