sidthesquid

Not classy I agree, but he was happy to whinge on on his website about why he had no idea why he was being forced out. It's just how it is

1 They will come back stronger for the experience 2 Those older players look keen & hungry again (refer back to last season if in doubt) 3 I doubt the loans cost us anything 4 We might, but we might not We have some good young pros who have taken their chance with more to follow. Oh, and we might not go bankrupt &5 believe it or not I have enjoyed this season's madness more than the dire garbage served up last season

They needed to go. We still only won 3 in 13 games under Pearson. What we should have done is replaced them with better players, but (partly) because of their ludicrously large salaries we were not able to change things as much as certainly I wanted. I know I am in danger of sounding pro-Lowe here, but I watched every home last season & it was awful. At least this season I have enjoyed seeing lads like James & Gillettt & Lallana slowly start to be moulded into decent players. There wasn't any pleasure in seeing the pedestrian shte served up by Wright & Safri & Euell (it's true) etc as they went through the motions for their big pay-cheques. I think the experiment failed, but don't forget just how dreadful is was before

I'm not trying to rewrite history, merely saying that some good may yet come of the Poortvliet experiment & trying to remind people of the context where the experiment came about

I don't know for sure any more than you do, but I'm fairly sure Schneiderlin, Gasmi etc etc still came to less than one of our big earners. £10K a week is a lot of money, particularly when you times it by five or six I don't suppose the bank would take a 'but honestly we'll get 25 thousand here if we can keep Saga and Skacel' as a negotiating stance I accept that some very poor decoisions were made, but don't rewrite everything to fit your agenda with the benefit of hindsight. Personally after last season I was hoping to see all the old pros go because I thought they let us down terribly last year and I wasn't alone - now everyone says of course it was obvious we should have kept them (I even read on here a few weeks ago someone wishing we had kept Jermaine Wright!) They were all crap last year, we needed to rebuild & cut costs but plan A didn't work. That's life

Generally CCC officials are pretty good - made easier because most CCC players play football in the right spirit, little niggle or diving, just full-blooded physical competition. You notice it more when you get an Rse like Riley down here

It was not an unmitigated failure. It really irritates me that people are suddenly anti our good young players just because Rupert is supposedly in favour of them & suddenly players who have rarely ever cut it for us are afforded God-like status just because he wanted to sell them. It was a failure because they went too far with the youngsters, but if we survive this season we will reap the benefits. Please don't take your hatred of Lowe out on our young lads

Of course it was money. We had to ship out anyone that anyone would take, not necessarily who we wanted to go & quite frankly if any of them were that good we could have sold them for millions as well as getting their salaries off the books. But nobody else rated them that highly either.

Looks obvious now, but Burley D&G Pearson & JP all failed to spot it

Maybe, but the point I was making was that everyone is rewriting history a bit and saying what we all ever needed were the experienced pros & last season was proof that there is more to it than that

You are better than that first comment - he knew, we all knew, that the club's finance's dictated that we needed him to move on. He couldn't find a decent offer (not surprisingly after last season) & decided (quite legitimately)to see his contract out. That is how it works in Planet Football Second comment 100% agree

I half agree - I agree with the above but the youngsters have also come on leaps and bounds. Of the above Davis Perry & Skacel have played a lot of this season & last (& Saga was around last season,too) & Euell in particular has hardly set the place alight until the last few games so its not like they've just been rediscovered. I think the biggest plus is Saeijs. Otherwise just a better manager getting more out of the players

Remember last season? Expensive & experienced players = relegation dog-fight

The other point I was trying to make that yes, the experiment may have failed, but it was not (I hope) a complete disaster because good will come of it. Also, as an aside, a lot of us bought into the idea after last season's dismal displays (and I still think that last season saw some of the worst, most uninterested players ever to turn out for us playing in some of the most boring games I have ever watched) and wanted it to succeed not for Lowe's sake, but our own. And going forward I still believe that reliance on good young players coming through our academy is the right solution for us, but as I said before, you do need a balance & we lost that earlier on in the season. So, yes the experiment failed, but I still think only just. And I would still rather have had this season's experiment of giving the young lads a go rather than last season's experiment of overpaid and underperforming 'experience' which netted an almost identical result Result of experiment - a healthy balance of young and old is required. Please note, whoever is in charge next season

The point is, the daft experiment, as you call it, was forced on the club by the absolute necessity to shift out the high earners. I don't think even Lowe would have domne it without that need

The point is James, Gillett, McG, Lallana start next season as experienced first teamers and Gobern, Paterson etc will be much more likely to step up to the mark when needed. And, remember also, the need to ship out the old pros & play youngsters has not gone away - we are still financially stuffed

I reckon about a third of our games were good or we were genuinely unlucky, a third middling to not great and a third were disastrous (not all JP's fault - 2 missed pens v Watford springs to mind). I agree it was not good enough, and much as I liked him it was obvious he had to go, but like all experiments some good will come of it, but the visionary will not be the one to reap the benefit. If we survive this season we will go into next with a much stronger team

Mr Wotte has tried something rarely seen at Southampton in recent years - playing players in the position they are happiest in and getting a totally balanced team. Euell & McG have been a revelation in their new roles, the mix of young and old, grafters and passers has made all the difference. It's so simple, sometimes, football

I'm beginning to worry about this outbreak of optimism - has spring reached the dark side of the Apls at last?

It wasn't all an unmitigated disaster - the last month or so of his regime - from Forest at home - was, but up to then it still looked like it might just work. I agree JP looked like he'd lost the plot, but it is a very fine line betwen success & disaster in football and we were just the wrong side of it. Think back to last season - we had the most experienced team ever, probably, (I remember several games where are average age was about 30) & they were still dross. I agree we went too far the other way at times this season, but try to remember the historical & financial context, too

This thread should be merged - can you do that? - with the one about Lowe's experiment being not completely wrong

I agree that letting all three go was careless to say the least, but I still think the failure to get Euell, Thomas and particularly Skacel, who looked like he was going for £million, off the books forced their hand somewhat when they got an offer for John

The whole Dutch/youth experiment was both brave and reckless and it nearly worked. Personally I really liked the idea of our young Academy boys showing the rest of the CCC donkeys what for but it was too much too soon for a lot of them. But cast yourself back twelve months and we were in a similar situation to where we are now, but with what we perceived were a bunch of over the hill journeymen who were only here for the money and giving our young lads a go seemed a good idea. And there were 5 academy boys playing yesterday, 4 of whom barely ever got a look in under Burley, and all of whom have benefitted enormously from playing regularly in the first team. And Paterson, Gobern, White, Thompson etc will all come back better and stronger for having played in the first team. Unfortunately it didn't QUITE work earlier on & Poortvliet seemed to lose his way with some bizarre selections and his pig-headedness over persisting with 4-5-1. Part of our revival is down to the returning senior pros, but not all of it. At the end of last season I would have been happy to see Euell, Skacel & Saga go & with their wages the needed to see them go, but fair play to them, they have knuckled down and earned the right to wear the shirt again. Saeijs is a masterstroke, but a lot of it is down to Wotte playing the right people in the right places. I really don't think the plan was that bad, particularly in the current financial climate, and I could see us doing well next year with more academy players becoming regulars. It was just that it suffered, like all mad/brilliant plans, from a lack of balance, which I think we now have

I think you are right - he just played like he'd gone on loan (14 games + 15 as sub for 3 goals). My point was that losing him at the start of the season didn't seem as big an issue as it might now with the benefit of hindsight

You just start a post like this every other day, don't you. He went because someone was prepared to take him & as he spent the last half of last season away too at the time it was not considered too big an issue Don't keep trying to rewrite history