Badger

A more pertinent question though is why is it our management regularly fail to bring in even loan players who can make an impact ? ie Campbell on loan for example instead of Pekhart,Robinson et al ? This is before mentioning Gasmi or Pulis. Yes,I'd accept Saejs is on loan,but for his success story we have a number of duffers littering the squad.

£7M of it from the sale of Bridge,on top of which we would no doubt have spent a further £2-3m on the back of the previous seasons ventures/income etc.Remember the £11m was an asking price from Fulham,no doubt we might have negotiated on payment timescales etc. Even without the Malbranque/Saha transfer,the point I would emphasise is ambition or lack of it.Remember we signed (ageing and injury prone )Phillips and Neil McCann that summer, what does that tell you ?

Agree with you. The sale of Bridge itself was not the issue,but the lack of ambition to adequately replace the ageing players or bring in the quality to improve. What might have happened had Lowe permitted WGS to spend the £11m he supposedly requested for Malbranque and Saha ?

Is he currently really better than what we have though ? Certainly he had the potential once,but would he now be an improvement ?

According to someone on here he is now the GK coach !!! Worrying.

I wondered if this move was influenced by Webster who may still be respected at Portman Rd.

No other contenders. Although Wilde and his false dawn of 2006,and subsequent 'u' turn in 2008 is partially responsible for our rapid decline, the whole thing goes back to Lowe in 2004. Lowe is the reason we are now in sh!t street.

Not dissimilar to us then, although we are probably more in the 'too little,too late' league. One thing though,if it comes down to and end of season eyeball to eyeball confrontation with Forest for relegation,I'd expect Davies to have his team more fired up than we will.

Is that the same refuse lorry that once crashed into a tree ?

Like him or not,Davies - or possibly kerbcrawler Pleat -has managed to bring in McSheffrey and Gunter on loan.Names we could only have hoped for. Results however are another matter.

Further evidence of the dearth of English prospects emerging in the game perhaps ?

Richard Hillman.

We've got our club back.. and go wilde Two truly memorable slogans that did not cost us anything.Such genius would have been the envy of political spindoctors everywhere.

He once got rid of Rupert Lowe..... (..oh sh!t !!!)

If the tree is found to have Dutch Elm Disease,perhaps we can blame Lowe for importing it here.

It will be when Rupert Lowe is found hanging from the tree.

And when are you harking back to, Cromwell ? He was not particularly pleasant to many in England either. Bringing it forward a few hundred years,were the British ,(or English as most of the Catholic Irish seem prepared to overlook the involvement of Scots,or Welsh in blame) responsible for the Potatoe Famine ? Troops going into Northern Ireland in the late 1960's were to protect the Catholic community. Admittedly this is only a very few extracts from history,but its easy for the extremists in NI to perpetrate the myth that all their ills,social,ecomomic and natural,are the fault of the English.

For the unitiated amongst us, is Cat C, a high or low priority ? I'm surprised if we have a high grading on the 'punch up' rating.

I'd settle for the first part of that frankly.The continued plight of the skates would be a bonus. I'm totally with Ponty on this one:

Neither did I.Please don't leave us in suspense without telling us the manufacturer. What is the favourite tractror on the forum ? Maybe we could have a poll.(it might even turn out to be a "straw poll"). John Deere gets my vote.

A pertinent question asked at the time though,was the deal "right" for the club,or "right" for Dullieu,Hone and Andy Oddknob - or whatever his name was - who were going to pocket out of it ? Then as now,such serious issues were clouded by the personalities involved and doubts over their true motives.Did Lowe and Wilde look to 'spike' the deal to prevent others taking from they considered their own trough ? Frankly,we will never really know. To paraphrase your final comment : The futures sh1te,the futures Low(e).

As I recall there was some inrigue as to the possibility of the two Dutch coaches,but no protests or 'backlash'. After relegation,the 'Arry saga,and of course the SCW/Simon Clifford circus hitting town, most Saints fans were numbed to whatever could come next.Afterall,anything was possible on Planet Rupert. The only feature or article at the time to question the wisdom of the appointment was that written by,attributed to Alan Ball.Shortly after GB's appointment Wotte was quoted as saying AB's article had been instrumental in "costing" him the job.Perhaps Wotte is now a little too cautious to speak ill of Alan Ball in fear of really upsetting the Saints faithful. This bit intrigues me also :

Agree with those I've marked in bold. I'd want Ted Bates in the legends,and for me Alan Ball as well given his contribution as a player,and then briefly manager in keeping us up. Others with an outstanding claim to be "legend" status are Mick Channon,Terry Paine and Ron Davies. Icons : John McGrath,Jimmy Gabriel, Ivan Golac and Brian O'Neil.

That is probably a fair summary. Above all though I'm pleased that he is making a recovery.

He'll probably end up at Watford anyway.