cambsaint

He made one absolutely massive mistake.......... He didn't make it impossible for Lowest to return as chairman!!

The only rational course of action is a boycott. Any action that is a criminal or civil offence, particularly if it is violent or offensive will be counter-productive. A boycott is relatively easy to organise and will finally convince any other sane directors, shareholders or creditors that Lowe has no future. As long as fifteen thousand loyal fans turn up to watch Lowe's ludicrous experiment, then it will continue. Our only other hope is that Wilde realises relegation and administration are inevitable; unless he and Crouch can settle their differences for the survival of the club and put a realistic rescue operation in place. Cambsaint

I think the only answer is a stay away. Relatively easy to organise and makes the point that unless Lowe goes there will be very little gate money coming in and Barclays will have to act.

As I understand it when a company goes into administration, the accountants appointed run the company and decide on the disposal. Of course Lowe could put in a bid, but so could Crouch, Wilde or anybody who could raise enough the moolah to satisfy the administrators. Lowe and his cabal could have got us out of this mess in the recent past by issuing preference shares as a means of lending the club money or even a rights issue. What did they do-when in control- appointed a manager who was allowed to break the bank and previously the club bought back shares thus reducing it's liquidity (I think) and supposedly increasing the share price-presumably because they thought could sell at. I doubt if they will attempt to or even could buy the club up after admin, and unless Lowe has a really wealthy investor in the background I doubt they would want to. Why a really wealthy investor would allow Lowe anywhere near the club after his catalogue of failures, would amaze me!. Worry about the realities don't be paranoid about possibilities. Che sera sera.

I wouldn't invest a brass farthing into anything Lowe had a hand in, no matter how rich I was. Cambsaint

What a mess....KP put his ego before his duty as team captain and aired his dirty linen in public. I always had my doubts about him as captain-compare with the equally single-minded Boycott a disaster as captain. Correct decision to let him go. Moore just wasn't up to the job but should have been sacked quietly behind closed doors. I expect we'll have Strauss, but imo we should bring back Vaughan and see if he is good enough to be a Brierley type of captain. His cover drive is still the most elegant in cricket and his form will return. We just have to hope that English cricket can unite as a team and beat the Aussies when they are at their most vulnerable for years. Cambsaint PS Its shows what a mess Saints are in when I find cricket in the winter more interesting than Saint's football.

When my son and I watched the replay at full speed we both thought that if we had been reffing in real time we would probably have awarded a penalty. Similarly I would have sent the saints player off. Although it wasn't replayed I would have liked to have seen the pull back on the Saints forward that the radio 5 commentators said was a pen. having umpired at cricket, (but never reffed seriously) I know just how difficult it is to make the right decision in real time. My favourite comment was from an umpire in the fifties who being berated by a Yorkshire player for giving him out LBW and said it wasn't out replied- "Look in tomorrow's papers lad, and you'll see whether you were out lbw or not." Personally although I've seen some diabolical decisions I think that the TV pundits make too much of it, it's easy to be right sitting comfortably watching countless slow-mo replays. Either we accept that there will always be mistakes or we insist on the fourth official reviewing comntentious decisions-and the players or managers shouldn't be the ones to decide what is reviewed!. Cambsaint Anyway it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the outcome we were absolutely clueless with exception of Davies and Perry.

The Echo article is concise, objective and true; an excellent piece of journalism. Illingworth's article is full of meaningless platitudes and states "the bleeding obvious". Added to which it isn't the fans that are pulling the club apart, its the directors and shareholders. We the fans have no power except not to attend.

Our current "youth team" will be lucky to finish in the top half of CCC div1 and with no money to strengthen the squad we may well struggle to survive; our gates will fall dramatically and administration will be a certainty. Add on ten point deduction for admin we will probably be in CCC div 2 in two years- Thats how bad it really is.

Some may think (justifiably or not?) that the actions of certain individuals in wrecking a once great club, may evince strong emotions among supporters such as blind hatred! The only thing that surprises me is that I haven't completely lost interest and still care enough to follow my club.

Thankyou, Fitzhugh Fella for an excellent and balanced post. There only seem to be two ways forward, either administration, and that is like playing Russian Roulette;or for Lowe to resign and as you suggest appoint a board that can truly represent the combined wishes of the creditors, shareholders and supporters best interests. It is self-evidently in everybody's interest to remain in The CCC this season and in future years challenge for promotion, while using our youth system to bring on good players-not to provide a barely post-pubescent and hopelessly inexperienced reserve team and hope for the best. Even our past greats had to be nurtured and didn't mature instantly. I just hope that it's not too late and/or Barclays will remove Lowe if he can't see sense. I have never felt so depressed about Saints or so pessimistic about their future, and I started supporting them in the last years of Div 3South! The worst thing is I expect them to lose now, any other result is an unexpected bonus. For Saints to prosper, somethinmgs got to change quickly.

I think he was foolish to take the job. It was obviously a poisoned chalice. I doubt if any manager could do better with such a bunch of inexperienced post-pubescents. I would only judge him if he were given fa spine of four or five experienced pros who actuslly had some tactical nous. Don't blame the monkey, he's only dancing to the tune of the organ-grinder.

It's a balance, you want good racing like it was when I used to watch a lot of motor racing, but you certainly dont want great drivers killed. You want overtaking and tailgating again, imo aerodynamics are largely to blame for the uncompetitiveness, you used to slipstream to overtake, now it just ruins your handling. The expense must be curbed but the technological advances have beeb massive-who twenty to thirty years ago would have imagined the advances. The safety advances have been the most useful. A lot of the advances have dripped down to comparatively humble cars- good braking and safety, handling that was unthinkable a decade or so ago, excellent fuel economy, and probably most important tyres, brakes and electronic stability safety features. The only problem is that they have made cars too fast for the abilities of most drivers-but that's another thread. We will have to see what comes but never underestimate the ingenuity of the very cleverest engineers to defeat the best intentions of the rule book!

If you study goal difference it is usually extremely accurate in predicting final league positions, with the occasional notable exception. We are in very deep doo-doo.

Unfortunately for the analogy, Bligh for all his failngs as a man was a very good sailor, and reached safety against all odds when most men would have perished. Don't see Lowe doing that in the 'Good Ship Saints'; except possibly in the panto season.

I would support people being thrown out and banned by the club for racist or extremely abusive chants-still probably almost impossible to get a conviction beyond reasonable doubt in a jury trial (I hope)- unless standing next to a plain-clothes copper- and considering a very respectable friend of mine was done at an away match by two lying coppers in the sixties I for one would doubt the authenticity of some statements. Quite frankly this appears at first sight to be a gross abuse of public funds:-but then if they didn't waste taxpayers money on this they would either give it bankers, waste it illegal wars, or give themselves huge and unjustifiable salaries and pensions. Cambsaint

I shall never forget Boxing Day 2003 when Siants were taken apart by Fulham in the shape of Malbranque and Saha at Loftus Road. Rumour has it that Strachan asked Lowe to buy Malbranque and his outright refusal sparked his resignation, and our ultimate fall into mediocrity. My son and I wnt with so much hope, memories of the glory days under Macnemeny were rekindled. Our hopes began to fade that day to be shattered some weeks later by Strachan's surprise resignation and the atrocious series of errors Lowe made in appointing his successor. It seems particularly significant that probably the only time in Lowe's life when he actually listened to anybody else, brought about the (imo) dreadful mistake of not reappointimng Hoddle. That match also holds other poignant memories for me,-returning to Mum-in-law's home in London when she was still happy, well and alive; andit was one of the last away games I watched before heart disease greatly curtailed my football watching.

I have just been watching Delia, and all the references to her beloved Norwich City in which she and her husband have sunk a great deal of their money. It has given me an idea for Rupes to rescue the finances of the club. The idea is that Rupert gets his own show, and associated book contract-it would certainly suit his ego. It could be called "See You Next Tuesday" (or in text abbreviation-"C-U Next TueS") Obvious episodes would be: "How to 'buy?' a football club on the cheap." "An idiot's guide to man management, motivation and retention." "An egomaniac's guide to win fans and influence them." "How to eat on the cheap by murdering your own ducks and assorted game." and best of all - "How to decorate the Itchen Bridge." If it made a lot of money he and his mates could sort out the clubs finances by way of a one-for one rights issue- £7.5 mill at current values-just what we need. Other ideas for programme episodes welcome. Cambsaint.

To me the main architect of our current desperate state is none other than Burley. Although at the time I agreed he was probably one of the best options, it is the players he was allowed to bring into the club on huge wages, while other better motivated players left for a song. We can only surmise why the executive at the time allowed him almost free reign to bring in some of those players. Certainly they are all responsible for our current plight. Considerable blame attaches to Lowe's policy after relegation for crassly demotivating the team and getting rid of useful players at firesale prices-(just look at Stoke). It is impossible to know how much blame attaches to Crouch, or even if he would have invested with associates if the malevolent influence of the Lowe cabal had not been there. However we must all hope that we weather the storm of the next eighteen months and refinance, get a new committed set of directors in, lose our AIM status and return to a closed company. In my view Lowe's Chairmanship, apart from SMS (and it is a moot point whether another chairman may have managed that better because he was effectively rescued by Southampton City Council), and the inspired appointment at WGS - which was undone by downright shortsighted foolishness, has been a disaster. He has truly destroyed the "Spirit of Southampton Football Club." Finally a big thankyou to The Scottish FA, the best bit of business we ever did. Unfortunately even though our youth are beginning to flower, we run the risk of our finest being sold off. Finally IMO a good chairman would be looking at a rights issue to secure the overdraft rather than the almost certain relegation and further drop in attendances that selling our best players would bring. Cambsaint

Jonah: Try to buy an Arsenal share. I think being a company limited by shares, and therefore having limited liability; and being a listed plc with shares being freely traded on one of the stock exchanges are very different. I freelyadmit to not being an expert in company law, but I think some of the clubs you listed my be "closed", or if not all the issued shares are in a very few hands.

Why on earth should anyone have to justify not goping to a football matxch to anyone other than themselves (or perhaps very close family). It's their money, their time; and they can spend it how they damn well like!!!

I wouldn't mind six or even seven talented youngsters if we had two half-decent experienced centre backs who could read the game, an experienced midfielder who could read the game, and a proven goal-scorer, on the field from kick-off. We are sleepwalking to relegation, but chanting the mantra "Our football is too good for us to go down ",we slightly remind me of the excellent West Ham team who really were far too good to go down. (But they were far far better than us, and with an inept manager they went down. cf. Spurs this season.)

Shilton-I swear that he could alter his arms and upper body like a fish mid-dive. He is in a class of less than ten for the world's best ever let alone Saint's.

The saddest thing for me is that I felt virtually no emotion, except slight relief that we had avoided the thrashing I was expecting. This is a new lack of emotion for me after the best part of fifty years supporting Saints, and for nearly forty years of my wife has been saying "I just can't understand why you let that silly football team losing annoy you so much-it isn't as if they're any good."- she can't understand my indifference either. I too watched the 9-3 thrashing of Wolves, one of the few matches I watched that season as I reluctantly took a Saturday job in the year before going to Uni. Cambsaint

The only we are ever going to get Lowe out is by supporters designating one game in three or four as a "Lowe-Out stay-away game". There are segments of support who won't join in this, but if the attendance dropped tp around 5K on a couple of games IMO Lowe would be forced to fall on his sword. As for the ludicrous comments that there is nobody better:- It is good corporate governance to separate the non- executive roles. A Chairman should alwys be a non-exec (ie he sets the direction and criteria for the executive officers to follow). It is almost certain that Lowe interferes in every aspect. No decent business would allow anyone with negligible knowledge of football to do anything other give the manager his financial budget, and leave everything except contract negotiations to the manager. If the manager doesn't agree with the budgets -he either puts up or shuts up. If the team doesn't win the manager is not performing to his job spec and he goes. There are several posters with sound business knowledge who have followed and played football for years, but most of those would have the commonsense to realise that they were hopelessly out of their depth in the pro game. It appears Lowe doesn't and never has. He isn't a life-long football supporter and still has the arrogance to imagine that he has the necessary skills, this alone requires his removal to solely financial non-exec duties. Regrettably only Barclays/ Norwich Union or his cronies can remove him. The only thing true fans can do to ensure his swift removal is to stay away. This season, for the first time in fifty years I really care very little about Saint's results. This hurts me more than their losses ever used to!!!