saintbletch

[Warning contains high degrees of political and economic allegory] Oh the beautifully ironic symmetry of it all. I was just watching Gordon Brown on Bloomberg addressing the CBI telling our nation's business leaders what he plans to do to get us out of the situation that, whatever the rights or wrongs of the argument, happened on New Labour's watch. As you'll know, Brown is advocating significant government borrowing to fund tax cuts and increased government spending in an effort to stimulate our economy into life. He's on stage talking as if completely blameless for the dire situation we're in. He's talking in the abstract of how he will now take the correct action to fix the economic problems we face. He's telling anyone who'll listen that he and his party are the ones that now have the answers to a problem that he allowed to happen in the first place. This curative action involves hocking our country up to the eyeballs with absolutely staggering levels of debt, and will ultimately have to result in increased taxes and reduced public spending once/if we the economy returns to "normal" levels. And then a mate sends me a link to the piece in the Echo from Lowe. Where Lowe talks as if it was all milk and honey when he so nobly stood down only to have to ride back into town and force hard medicine down the patient's throat. Our Championship status was Lowe's recession - our largesse under Crouch was Brown's stimulus package - our current reliance on the academy the payback for the stimulus package. Trace the problem back to the root cause and you can't escape the fact that we wouldn't have needed a stimulus package if we hadn't fallen into recession. I would have preferred Lowe to have look forward and not back. (And I do recognise that the global recession is something that can't be pinned on Gordo completely but the lack of regulation of UK registered financial institutions and the resultant bailout can. I also recoginse that whilst it's incredibly risky, this bailout package looks like a necessary evil). Hope the economy and Saints can get back in the Premier League soon.

Agreed that it's nice to read a neutral heaping praise on us. Just hope we can keep the plaudits coming but not at the exception of the points. As Brucey didn't say.... "What do plaudits make?"...

Fair enough and I'm sorry to hear that you will never again feel the thrill of a win turn to the the desperation that a loss brings turning again to hope at the next win.

Thanks for clarifying that. I presume you're also an active poster on www.whatwilltheweatherdotoday.com where every additional post you make demonstrates just how little you care. Admit it. You care about this club. You're caught between supporting the team wholeheartedly and the feeling that you're being taken for a ride. Your self-protection instincts kick-in to tell you that to save yourself from being "hurt", you have to back away from the club. But you can't. You feel impotent. If appears unfair. It hurts. Welcome to my world. Personally I think it's more complicated than "I could not care less about the club".

Can I ask why you posted this on a Saints' message board? You presumably saw the irony in the fact that you "could not care less about the club anymore". I would that thought that if you "could not care less about the club anymore". You might just log off, cancel your subscription and go watch Premier League shove ha'penny or some such. Instead you appear to demonstrate how much you care about how far the club has fallen. On your general point, and from someone who does care what happens to the club, I agree that it is sickening to see how far we've fallen. But in my opinion, and I'm far from thinking that I have the answers, but crying boo-hoo and looking back whistfully on what once was will get us nowhere.

But the bloke that started this thread by hoping that the team I support loses on one weekend to the leaders in the Championship isn't making a valid point. And your analogies are not accurate either. IF he were to have said that he hoped we'd be relegated, or hoped that we went into administration I could see some sort of warped phoenix from the flames argument, and I could see the connection to limbs being removed. But wishing that we lose one match just appears to be an attention seeking, melodramatic, look-at-me-ism. I hope we win. And then I hope we find someone with enough cash to remove Lowe and the damage he may or may not be doing. But in the interim I'm going to support the team.

Good report thanks. Isn't Joseph Mills know as fish?

Good point. I guess I was being facetious but as others have said it seems unlikely. Anyway I wonder how many of our squad players we would have throw in to add up to the £1.5M rating? It would be like queuing behind someone at the supermarket trying to pay for £300 of shopping just using money off vouchers. "...and with Bradley Wright-Phillips that makes 10 players, some training cones, 432 club ties and we'll throw in the secret recipe for the vegetarian lasagne from the corporate catering team."

I think I've found another one.

[The mercurial Rupert Lowe gazes down on Wotte and Poortvliet with apparent admiration before issuing his command] "Kill Them"

That was the reason for the original reference. Chapman was obsessed with TCITR, thinking it a source of many answers to life's riddles. He was also hearing voices at the time he shot Lennon. Apparently his room was full of copies of the book and the morning he kill JL he bought another copy, shot Lennon and then stayed at the scene reading TCITR until they arrested him. Great book Mentalist

True. Apparently Glen is a big fan of The Catcher in the Rye. Well he was in his previous life.

I agree with most of this, but I wouldn't underestimate the value to a quality young player looking for the club to nurture and develop them or the value to us of find such a player (if you were underestimating it). IF this project that we're currently going through comes off, I could quite easily see us loaned quality young players or being the club of choice for academy starlets. As the conditions to entry to our first team appear to only be that you have all your adult teeth, we will give games to talented players. Plus we've shown that we can move talent into the Premier League in recent years too. As for the original question. I think we can offer very little to quality, older pros - least of all a cash pay day at the end of their career.

Police are searching for a hit and run driver who yesterday disrupted the photo shoot for Southampton's coach Jan Poortvliet's up-coming "Dance like C3PO" DVD (in shops in time for Xmas). Jan is recovering in hospital, whilst police are keen to hear from anyone with information that might help them find the driver of the Aston Martin car registration "007". He was described as wearing a tuxedo, bow tie, blue bathing shorts and a smug grin.

21 shots on target. Really? And yet we only won by 2 goals. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the match and thought we played well. But we've got to start putting away more goals when we are given the opportunities. We won't play 10 men or get awarded penalties every week.

Love the double entendre! Personally I'd like to volunteer Trousers. I think he could write an excellent Trousers' Takeover Talk column. It would feature his own tire[some]less brand of investigative journalism where he could interview ITK posters and speak to the people at the centre of the stories to get to the facts so he can ignore them. In his rabid search for the truth, he could use the SaintsWeb subscriptions to travel all over the world to cut through hype and ignore denials. He could visit Paul Allen on his yacht to find out what stopped the deal going through at the eleventh hour. He could talk to the bloke who had the video conferencing business in Guildford and ask him what scuppered the deal with the Arabs. He could explore the rumour that Jonathan Fulthorpe is in fact not a barrister but instead a barista who works in Costa Coffee in Eastleigh. He could travel to north Basingstoke to ask Barry just what was in the briefcase. He could visit Alan Shearer's northern mansion and explain to him how each Newcastle denial he issues leads him inexorably closer to the St. Marys' hot seat. He could create the world's largest library of photofit ear pictures and compare them with the ears of every Director's box attendee to answer the question "Are you David Dein?" And once a year on March 1st, we could celebrate St. David's day by asking what would it take for Lowe to sell up? As a Life Long Saint, I think he deserves this once in a life time opportunity to become the single biggest user of Google images. You know this makes sense. What? He already does these things? Oh...

A pretty good analysis, and a well thought out response (if a little sarcastic). I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle though. He may have been forced to rotate as you've described above but I don't think JP is concerned by rotating the squad. I think he believes that the players should be able to play in different positions. I think he believes that the only way to bring on the youth is to continually blood them in competitive games which means the side will change. I don't think he has any fear of putting a youngster like Fish Mills at left back against Barnsley. Again I think it's a key part of the "company's" plan. Whilst I can understand this in a well performing team, we haven't yet found the system and or players that really gel. The issue I have with JP is the CM position which I think is so key for us. I don't feel that he respects the importance of stability in that pairing. I thought Spiderman and Gillett were forming a really good partnership early on and it "seems" to me that he doesn't play them when given the chance. I could be wrong and it could be down to injuries or other circumstances. I also remember him taking off both CMs (Gillett and Spiderman) in the game at Blackpool at the same time, after which we seemed to be clueless and led to many people on here asking if Jan had a plan B. That said, I firmly believe that it's early days for us. The greater concern for me is dropping heads and lack of effort / commitment.

...when you can legitimately shout "I'm the Kingsland, I'm the Kingsland, I'm the Kingsland over here." ?

I hope I've got you right here, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but in answer to what is your alternative to the current setup, you've identified: 1) Compensate 4 coaches by paying out their contract in full 2) Convince an experienced hard-nosed coach to come work with a team that now has no real assets - 5 games into the season - without the benefit of a pre-season - with no money - sitting bottom of the league - with a squad of youngsters 3) Hope really really hard that we can find investment by the main sharefolders declaring some sort of truce. 4) and the last thing that will help us climb the league is for the club to be more honest. In my humble opinion this is not a set of real, workable alternatives. This is a list of your biggest gripes with the club. If I'd read this at the end of last season, I couldn't have faulted it as a "valid" plan for the coming season. But we are where we are, the die is cast, we have made changes and commitments to our bank and the plan is going to be executed. Don't fundamentally disagree with your view of what is needed, just how unrealistic I think you're being.

Absolutely agree and for the record my expectations might be lowered going into the season but my dreams are not.

What is slightly better for you? Can you define it for me? 4th bottom? Top 6? Where? And can we still get there from where we are now? I can only assume that your expectations must have been sky-high this season to be so apparently angry that anyone else would derive pleasure from watching the team this year. If your expectations were that high, then I might suggest that it's you that needs to re-evaluate where this team of youngish players can finish this year. And I haven't seen a season of car crash defending. I saw some really naive stuff at QPR that got worse when we were down to 10 men but on the whole when we've had grown-ups in the team we've looked OK. Svensson against Blackpool had a bit of a 'mare though. But that match was lost as a team not through individuals.

Thanks. And I certainly understand your point and I really meant that it is only through lowered expectations that I can cope. If I felt we were still a promotion candidate this season then I'd be desperate that we're now sitting bottom. I hope we'll finish 4th bottom or higher and I reckon that I've seen enough in the team to suggest we could do that or much better. I should also stress that I'm a card-carrying anti-Lowe poster on here and so this is not some form of pro-Lowe wind-up. I saw the lads play Winchester pre-season as well as the Stoke, West Ham and Celtic matches and I just felt a connection with the kids. Thought they were a breath of fresh air and decided there and then to put my Lowe-issue behind me and support the lads this year.

So YOU expected us to do better? A team of yoof players, managed by a lower league Dutch coach playing total football in the Championship? I expected that to mean a very tough year. And so it seems to be. But with my expectations lowered, and my obligation to support the team, I really enjoy watching us.

I guess for me it's about expectation. With my expectation lowered, I can enjoy the footy more. Where in the league did you expect a team of 19/20 year olds to be? I expected and expect us to struggle and if I'm seeing commitment and talent then I'm OK with that.

Is Perry out too? Your glass is half full today. I'm not sure what is too different about this position from every other position on the park this year. We've been blooding kids everywhere and paying the price, depending on your outlook, all season. Why not at CB? It's not as if this kindergarten crop have won every game and this is now going to upset our fine balance. The plan this year involves the youth - with all the risk that may imply. I'd get used to that if I were you. If the glass had slightly more liquid in it, I guess it could be a great opportunity to blood some more talent. Perhaps the lad Cork that Chelsea have high hopes for? Perhaps Lancashire that is highly thought of here. Alternatively it could be an opportunity for you to sit in the car with the engine running, attach the hose and close the garage doors behind you.