gordonToo

Has to be Graeme.

Frankly, I don't believe him. What track record did JP and Wotte have to be given the job over NP and to say that NP couldn't work with youngsters is laughable.

What a load of ******!

Can't say I'm surprised and even more reason for a total clear out from top to bottom.

£40m

Were you at WBA for the match where Prutton could have made us safe when presented with an open goal with 5 mnutes remaining? It's far too simplistic just to blame HR when the underlying problems had been in place for more than a season, i.e. Lowe's unwillingness to accept that a succesful club depends on a good manager and a pool of talented players.

Are you perhaps suggesting a link between the missing £40m and the esteemed ex-chairman?

If he gets 6 points from the last two games I wouldn't rule him out completely. I'm not holding my breath though.

I take it the two directors in question are Saints fans?

"I have sympathy for the fans but the fans know as well as the rest of us that this has not been a shining example of football management" Mahwhinney.

According to the Times, SLH went into administration because the administrators and Barclays believed that it would be easier to find a buyer with the [old] board out of the picture. Nothing to do with Lowe then. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/football_league/article6155153.ece

Magilton's assistant was ..... John Gorman.

If the club folds they are stuffed anyway. My point is that if fans are being asked to part fund the wagebill then some sort of collective gesture from all concerned would not seem unreasonable.

How about the players deferring their own wages until the end if the season? All of a sudden it's now the fans problem and we're the ones who have been hammering on about the lunacy at SMS for far, far too long. Barclays also needs to take another look at the situation if it really is just a question of £500K or fold. Do they all take us for fools?

Shock! Horror! Poortvliet underwent the agony of seeing his assistant Mark Wotte take over from him. 'Mark told the board that he could turn things over.

Even Clive Woodward would be hard pushed to get any sort of performance out of the current set up (not). The league table doesn't lie and the team are now playing as though they know that we know that they know they ain't good enough for the CCC and on recent showings probably Div 1 as well.

Are you serious? JP is an old ex-pro fom the backwaters of Dutch non-league football who demonstrated zero ability to manage and motivate a CCC side while he was here. As crazy an appointment as you are likely to find anywhere and matched only perhaps by the wonder management duo of Clive Woodward and the ball juggler. Even you, Professor, must wonder if Lowe belongs on another planet.

Wotte says he will stay in charge IF we stay up.

It's the old half empty/half full argument. If they play as they did against Preston, Cardiff and Ipswich AND if they steer clear of injuries, a middle table position is not out of the question. I think they will do it (just) but my main concern is that the transformation may have come a month too late when it was clear in December that JP couldn't adapt and had to go.

Maybe MW didn't want the 1st team coach position last summer as he knew the experiment was high risk and likely to fail. Far better, surely, for him to bide his time and then pick up the pieces once failure had been acknowledged? We'll have to wait for the end of the season to make a final assessment of MW but so far the signs are encouraging and if his ego is a match for Lowe's then so much the better.

It seems to me that RL is signalling that his micro-management days are as good as over as Wotte is acting very much in the style of a British manager as opposed to that of a continental first team coach. If so, then further protest is unlikely to achieve anything of substance. So far as I'm concerned Lowe can remain as plc chairman provided he leaves the football side well alone which in any case is Wilde's area of responsibility (allegedly).

MW is on the record as saying he didn't come to Southampton to be first team coach and that he joined the club as Academy manager which, to be fair, was a key position in the overall experimental setup. The problem as I see it is that JP proved unwilling, or unable, to adapt to the realities of CCC life even when it was stariing him in the face. Now whether MW wants the job on a full time basis remains to be seen but it was clear from Saturday's performance that he''s able to produce a team that's signficantly more than a sum of the parts and I haven't felt able to say that since GWS was here.

It could be the case that some sort of bottom had to be hit before a recovery was possible and it's also just possible that this conicided with JP's departure, and with it an implicit admission that Lowe's final experiment was an abject failure. For me, Wotte seems to have a good grip on what's required and is demonstrating a level of self belief and confidence that we have missed all season. As a result there doesn't seem much point in doing anything other than wholeheartedly support him and the team and hope that the change is not too late. Once results start to turn everything else should fall into place.

There are some people in life whose judgement fails them with almost every major decision. Lowe is one such person and sadly it is only the major shareholders that are able to call him to account. Unfortunatley most of them seem to suffer from the same affliction. The worst mistake? I'd have to say involving himself with SCW which served only to heighten his own sense of self importance and steepen the decline on the playing side.

Remove criticism as a valid reason for posting and you might as well close the board down.