Lord Duckhunter

Why are people knobs because they have a different opinion than you. What do you want a forum where you post your opinion and then posters line up to agree with it? That'll be pretty boring. In my opinion he's slightly the wrong side of the hill, it's not that his form has dropped, just what happens to every single player that's ever played the game. They get old. don't forget he's pretty inexperienced at the top level and has done wonderfully well to adapt and thrive in this environment. But, he's either carrying a knock, or he's gone.

Unless he's carrying an injury, his legs have gone. Looks one season too far to me, just hasn't got the zip anymore , but anyone who thinks he's not interested or not trying is a way off the mark. The England call up has muddyed the waters for me. Without it, he could become a Giggs or Scholes for us, coming off the bench, playing occasionally and helping the nippers. I'm sure he'd have been ok with that but quite understandably he wants to play week in week out, to get the dream end to his career. I hope he just needs a rest and can have one, cause he keeps playing like this and the beneficiary will be Andy Carroll.

Didn't they beat Man Utd at home in a semi final the other day? Sunderland are fighting for their lives and we should have put the game to bed before they even scored. Second half was pretty poor. Boruc made a mistake, but I thought Shaw could have closed him down better. We were exposed badly down the left a couple of times and Shaw had no protection. Thought Chambers struggled and Lambert is playing himself out of the World Cup squad. Never the quickest, but his legs have gone, doesn't seem to want to jump and instead tries to buy a free kick or put the defender off. Need Yoshida to step up to the plate now.

Bollards, the ones I know think he's great. He helped push the chuckle brothers out.

Samuel was always having pops at cortese. He's never bought into his genius.

£7 mil is a hell of a lot of money to turn down for him, so I can see why NC may have been pushing him out the door.

Some of the newspaper reporting and sucking up to cortese has been sickening the past few days. A life long friend who works in the press is always telling me how difficult the club is to deal with and how unreasonable cortese can be. He said its well known within press circles, and yet the story of "meltdown" seems to have over ridden any attempt at serious reporting and analysis. Like Nigel Adkins departure only time will tell if this works out in our favour,so we need to suspend judgement. From a personal perspective, I've lost a bit of respect and admiration for MP, his apparent devotion to NC grates a bit. He is not doing us a favour by staying on and I hope any drop off in his performance or "going through the motions" will result in a boot out the door. He is not the only young manager about that plays good stuff and uses the kids. All of a sudden Nicola has become the greatest CEO to walk the earth and MP has morphed into arsene Wenger if you believe the media.

Makes me laugh . There were reports of £30mil bid last week before Nicola left, now its meltdown. WHU and Lambert was clearly an option with Nicola there, yet its now an exodus.

Why does there seem to be this belief that on Cortese can take us to the next level. Personally I'd prefer David Dein if new owners were wealthy. Cortese did a great job, but he's not the only one out there.

I don't think MP has helped the situation with his "he goes,I go" line last year. The papers jumped all over this as proof that the thing would start falling apart and then added their sensationalism to it. Brian Moore was one of the few I heard who appeared baffled by the whole thing,when nobody knew what her plans were, who the new CEO would be and who she would (if anyone) sell to. Obviously we'd preferred the status quo, but feel we'd be in a worse position if the money people had gone and Nicola stayed. The press and vast numbers of our support seem to forget this. The money people are still here, its only the person who spent the money that's gone (bit like most divorces really). If she wants the money back, it ain't going to be in one massive fire sale of the talent. It will be in a controlled business like manner. We may end up losing Rickie, but whose money got him here, cortese's? Why in the modern world do judgement have to be instant. Lets give her a chance before slitting our wrists.

Great balanced article from Frasier Nelson in this weeks Spectator. Don't know how to post a link, or even if I can cause I use the app , but people should have a look if they get half a chance. There's normally a decent podcast each week , so I expect the article to feature in that as well.

My oldest lad works at sunseeker and this rumour has been all over the ship yard for a couple of days. Although why the workers would have any insight into the owners investment portfolio is beyond me. One of the Braithwaite's mother in law lives a few doors up from my dear old mum, I'll get her to pop round and see if she's heard anything

Involved in what way? Telling a few stories and waving to the crowd or having responsibility for something?

Why on earth would a manager or player walk before they really know what the woman's plans are? MP will look a right chump if he follows his buddy out the door and a Chinese billionaire takes over next week.

People need to take the emotion out of this and calm down a touch. The press have blown this out of all proportion, it really is silly season. As well as Nicola has done, the past 40 years we've been a top flight outfit. We were a top flight outfit even in league 1 on -10. We have the infrastructure and fan base of a top flight club. We are a great asset for someone , whether KL or anybody else. If Delia did the same thing at Norwich, if she stood down would the fans be wetting the bed, would the press predict the end of Norwich's dream. If the players and manager only want to play for Nicola,then they can **** off as far as im concerned. Id rather watch fox and guly playing 100% for the club I love, than a bloke sulking cause the chairmans left. If wright or McGoaldrought or Leon best, or bairdy had said they were leaving because old Rupes had been shown the red card, they'd be vilified on here. Put it another way, swap the names Nicola and Mp, with Redknapp and Storrie-tellers. If MP walks next week over this , I'll always consider him a disloyal twt

Exactly, what sort of idiot would sell all the assets whilst trying to sell the club at the same time. What does she think, that new potential buyers wont notice? Worse case scenario IMO, is a return to the Rupert Lowe model of producing players to sell for a profit. Is that really the end of the world, are we really heading for a Skate type meltdown? We have a fantastic academy , why would she, or any new owner , not base any future business model on that?

If he wants to leave because of a change of boss, he can **** off now as far as I concerned. I want people managing the club that want to manage Southampton Football Club, not manage for Nicola Cortese. Same with the players. Anyone who goes now before knowing what's going on, what direction the club is going and who will be owning it/managing it, is using it as an excuse to get out IMO.

My oldest lad works there and its all over the shipyard he works in that they're interested. He's just come home and told me. Proberly Just somebody putting two and two together and getting five, and then spreads. Within 2 hours it becomes a "fact".

Or Cortese could invent a fake sheik who doesn't exist.

I can't name one, because there is no need for any nursery to pay the living wage. People will work there for a minimum wage because of the taxpayers top up. Do you think that the money nurseries cost is in anyway linked to the child care portion of the wftc. If the government is going to help with peoples child care costs, where is the market pressure to reduce costs going to come from If the government decided to help people pay for their food, it wouldn't be too long before the supermarkets started increasing their prices. Same principle applys to rents, paying housing benefit drives the cost of rent up, because the market is not allowed to punish people for overcharging, via a loss of customers. Im not saying that we should cut all state aid in one swift kick in the balls. But we need to move towards a goal of welfare only for the few needy people temporary down on their luck and with no work. In work benefits can not be right. It is not sustainable to just chuck money at a problem, its a never ending cycle of debt. How does paying someone in work' s rent, keep rent prices down. How does susbsidising child care , keep prices down. What keeps prices down is people voting with their feet." Im not paying that " and "Im not working for that".

If a business can only make money by relying on government money to top up staff wages, then I suggest that they need to look again at their business model. If I had a cleaning company and paid people the minimum wage, which was not topped up by the government, I would have trouble finding staff to fulfill my contracts. I would have 2 options, pay my staff more to attract people or go to the wall. How i find the money to pay for the extra staff costs will depend on my ability as a business man. I could pass the costs onto my customers, risking them going elsewhere (but remember they'll have the same issues i have, with no top up from taxpayer) . I could take reduced profits or i could become the "John Lewis" of cleaning companies, paying my staff well, and attaracting the best cleaners around. People would pay a premium to have my well paid staff clean for them, and they have the satisfaction of not receiving hand outs from the state. At the moment there's no incentive at all to pay more than the bare minimum. The other thing these government wage subsidies do, is keep people at the bottom. I have experiance of this at work. Trying to promote people to supervisor level, but the loss of top up benefits means, they dont take any extra money home. Now, some people are happy with the chance, but most say why bother with the extra hassle and hours for the same money? Surely the best way to cut the benefit bill is to slowly move towards no more in work benefit, and I include child benefit in that. The first step in this long journey should be to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Your point about tax thresholds is very leftie . It is our money, by reducing tax and thresholds the governemnt is not giving us money, it is taking less of our money, a completely different thing.

The significant fall has been achieved by the welfare part, nothing to do with the "minimum wage". Meanwhile companies get a government subsidy to ensure that they keep their payroll down.

That's exactly what I said. I made no comment as to whether the minimum wage was right or wrong, only that IF you're going to have a minimum wage, it should not be so low that taxpayers have to top it up. My first post described it as a con, I reach that conclusion because it allows Labour to bang on about how wonderful it is, when its so low as to be meaningless. Its not a minimum wage, its a welfare to work scheme that benefits company shareholders and big business. My belief is it either needs to be set at a living wage, or abolished. At the moment we have to worst of all worlds , we dont force companies to pay a decent wage, but we ensure that they can always fill jobs by topping up peoples pay. What is asda's incentive to pay people £9 an hour when they can pay them £7, and the taxman give them the other £2? If i set up a business and budgetted to pay my staff £7 an hour and nobody would work for me at that rate, i either need to increase my wages or my business model is unsustainable. At present government subsidies mean I will fill those jobs and its happy days. Who pays for my happy days, blokes who are in genuine need of welfare, who end up having their benefits cut because the bill is too high and politically its an easier thing to do than insist that people are paid a living wage.

But why should the taxpayer increase those profits by keeping their staff costs down? Surely a man's labour should be subject to market forces. Pay too little and you'll not get any staff. At present if you pay too little the mug taxpayer will ensure you've got plenty of staff, without eating in to your profits.

The minimum wage is one big con trick, perpetrated by the Labour party, but everybody turns a blind eye and pretends it's so great social development in this country. How on earth can you set a minimum wage, that people cant live on? What basically happens is companies pay disgracefully low wages that we then top up, saving the said companies millions. If we didn't top those wages up, people wouldn't work for the companies, they'd be better off on the dole. The upshot of this would be that Companies would have to increase their wages to actually get people to work for them. Tesco, B&Q, ASDA, to name 3 make millions of pounds in profit, how much of our money is used to top up their workers pay which they should be paying? Long term the minimum wage keeps workers pay down, and company profits up.