hughieslastminutegoal

What, has he got a suspected broken fingernail or something? Don't you at least suspect that any player who'd get appearance fee money will be suffereing from perpetual injuries as doagnosed by Dr. Lowe?

Die-hard fans complain about not being treated as such. Customers complain when they aren't getting value for money. Simple really - listen to both, because you need both.

Been watching them have you? If yes, envy? If no, how can you comment?

Now there we have it at last .. our trumpeted Academy just maybe hasn't been developing players of the right calibre. And yet Lowe thought it was a good plan to rely on them. Lowe was mesmerised by Theo Walcott, and hasn't taken the rose-tinted glasses off since. But how on earth can they be lacking motivation under the total football revolution which will bring yongsters from all over the globe to join in? If we assume (for the sake of argument) that JP is ok, again it must be something seriously lacking with the players we have, and the way they have been encouraged (or allowed) to think.

At last - someone has seen the light! Dutch football has all the blood and thunder of ...... a hockey match. No wonder Rupes is grinning.

This is the crux of the problem - people (and Lowe) have to understand that what you say is true for the die-hard supporter (say 12k-14k). If you want the club to survive and prosper, you must appeal to those people interested in watching professional football "locally", and persuade them that it is worth coming. The club doesn't and shouldn't exist just for the die-hards and stuff everyone else. People who criticize "plastic fans" are just being silly. They are the customers you need to get in order to generate sufficient income to push on. And to do that you need to be winning matches again (as people have said on other threads). I have no magic solutions to the financial situation, but I just do not believe that some solid, experienced, stronger players could not have been found at a reasonable cost to give the side some solidity, and mental toughness. That wasn't going to happen with the appointment of a coach inexperienced in English non-Prem football, and a naive belief in the Academy's output. Just maybe the way forward (temporarily) might be to cut the cost of the Academy to the bone, keep only the youngsters who are good enough for the first team , and get in some experience as soon as possible. Crewe are the only team who have made anything of trying to survive on youth, and they have only had fleeting stay in the CCC. It doesn't and hasn't ever really worked.

Leave a woman's bag on the byeline, and point him in that direction.

Hmmm. Shouldn't that be well done lad (singular)?

This clearly isn't our only problem. Don't you think there is any significance in the fact that KD has shone in every game he's played in - and has pulled of LOTS of excellent saves? Doesn't that tell you the opposition are getting far too many chances?

As has been shown but people refuse to take it in, take all results over the last 14 games and Saints postion was one position and one point below exactly half way. Therefore Pearson's results were "mid table". It was just that many teams down in the bottom third also performed far better than one would have normally expected, so overall mid-table form didn't mean a final mid-table position. Clubs got relegated with higher than usual points.

I've got a savings account like that - the total in it is greater than the exceedingly ordinary individual amounts paid in. The difference of course is interest - and that's just about all that can be said about Saints experiment -there is a little interest in it - but it aint gonna make us rich.

But we've got versatile 'Total Footballers' who can play anywhere... There's Cork - oh, JP said in te Echo he's really a DF. We have Wotton - oh he's a DF. We have Schniederin - oh, he's a DF as well. So much for signing versatile players who actually can't do the job you wanted their versatility for.

The word is spelt n a i v e - let's get it right because we'll be using it a lot.

Oops - of course it was BWP - but nevertheless, The Echo really made more of the court case again than the free petrol - they will bring it up at every opportunity for a few months yet. Your final sentence sums him up really.

If you are very rich you can afford to have your shopping list of stars - but it backfires with the occasional Shevchenko, as even Roman might admit. When you are a Saints however, how do you decide who goes on your shopping list? That's when it get's problematic if owners/chairmen are picking them. When you've next to no money to spend you MUST listen to the professionals (better if they are ones you can trust) because the players you buy HAVE to fit in to the coach's plan about what attributes are needed in order to fit into the kind of team he wants and how he wants to play.

The Echo clearly enjoyed the gilt-edged opportunity to bring up the nightclub case again, reiterating the "not guilty due to no evidence" result knowing full well that the implication of that reiteration is almost as damming as a conviction. They really don't like the little scroat, do they. I'm surprised they also didn't remind us about his contract prevarications, and his sudden about-face conversion to the coaching revolution once he realised no other club seemed to want him. No, I don't think much of him, either.

I wish it were a case of watching "local lads" but increasingly the Academies are full up with kids from abroad, or scouted from other cities. Other young players are bought from other smaller clubs. One or two who reach the first team might be genuinely local. Obviously it's nice to see young players from the youth team or reserves reach the first team, but let's not kid ourselves that they are necessarily "local". And that transfer window has a lot to answer for. The windows are short, and MUST be leading to spur-of-the moment, and at times desperate, signings often driving up fees because of silly last-minute bidding. Before these windows, you could take more time to watch and assess a player during the season before you signed him, and negotiate a transfer without some unseemly free-for-all scramble to outbid everyone else because the window is shutting. If you failed to get player 1, you had watched players 2, 3 or 4 and again could take time negotiating. The window was brought in under the mistaken notion that it mitigates against the richer clubs buying their way out of trouble if things are not immediately going right. It has had the opposite effect. The richer clubs just make sure they have more than enough players to start with, and the less well off struggle through, if they are lucky with an emergency loan or two, until the next window, when they then see fees pushed up out of proportion to a players real worth. Rich clubs can afford to buy a few duds by buying on reputation. Clubs like Saints really cannot afford that luxury and must make every purchasing pound count by making sure as best they can that the players they buy are the right ones. These stupid windows do not help them to do it. So I would want to watch the highest level football Saints can reach, but under a system that makes it possible for clubs to strive to attain and stand a chance of retaining Premiership football without having to threaten the very existence of the club just to cling on in there.

I think it is somewhat premature to say that such a policy IS ticking all the boxes except promotion. We have a manager who MAY work the system very well. If he does, who is to say he WON'T be poached? We do not yet know if it will even tick the box of not having a relegation fight. We hope it does tick that box, but at the moment it is a hope (and for some an expression of faith), but that box has not been ticked yet, and can't at this stage even be ticked in pencil.

I'm not sure that NickG has actually understood your point that Freguson etc WILL ALREADY know a great deal about a great player they are signing so isn't relying just on scout's opinion, whereas JP at best may have seen a video of our signings, and just maybe has seen a scout's report. I apparently make up stories when only asking questions or by suggesting that JP will probably know little if anything about the players being signed, but NickG it seems knows for a fact that JP has seen videos and scout reports of all our signings before they have been signed, despite JP's and Wotte's admissions to the contrary in some cases. Apparently that this puts Saints recent signings and a typical Man U signing on an equal footing.

Do you really think that using Man City (and previously Man U) signing recognised top quality players are examples equivalent to Saints signing the likes of Holmes, Wooton, etc. for a manager who pretty obviously hasn't seen hide or hair of them before? And should we take seriously your opinion that Furguson leaves signings up to his scouts and doesn't bother to check them out himself? What does he say to his scouts - "I've got £30m to spend on someone, go and find me someone to spend it on"? And rich clubs can take a small chance that an injury might be more long term than it might appear at first sight. Are you saying that Saints can equally well take risks with injured players given their stated financial plight? Is how the club is being run and the quality (or otherwise) of decisions being taken no longer an issue worthy of discussion at all?

The fact is ... that's not a fact. All teams get chances they fail to take. You can't just pick out our missed chances and ignore the same quality of chances created and missed by the opposition. If we had scored, who's to say the opposition wouldn't have gone straight up the other end and done the same thing? All you can do is rue the missed chances and practice harder.

We've lost 3 out of 4 league games. That's the difference between minor cup competitions and big boy's football, perhaps?

That is Jan of Orange's plan 2 when Total Football isn't working.

The "moany brigade" may be right or wrong, but if they hold an opinion, don't expect them to come here and change it after a win ot two...that would make them fickle fans people complain about. The most fickle posters are the ones who are busy happy-clapping after a couple of wins, talking about "at least a play-off place", and two defeats later are searching around for someone to crucify. A forum is just a place to spout off your opinion, right or wrong. Some people seem to want you to comit hari-kari as soon as there is a hint of a question mark about how right you were. I've been critical of Lowe and the risky path he is (at the moment) following. I may well be wrong (I hope I am actually), but hey, it's just opinion, it's not as though the "moany brigade" had tried to defend the holocaust.