Legod Third Coming

Thank God that's been cleared up. I thought you were singing 'his missus looks sh!te!!' Which is pretty uncalled for in my book...

I'm not convinced we have to hoof it in this league do we? At SMS on the bowling green, possession is nine tenths of the law surely? I like keeping the ball. It guarantees the opposition don't score... And I wish people would stop moaning and whistling when our players hold onto it while they look for a good out.

And the £3 ticket tax

...on the ball? Watching Barca highlights and looking at the posession stats made me wonder who in our side is genuinely comfortable on the ball. I can only think Lallana, Chambo and to a lesser degree Morgan and Fonte. So should we be looking for more players who are happy to caress a football?

Blimey, I didn't realise paying your respects was rationed. Better stop bowing or doffing my hat at passing funeral corteges in case I have to laugh my way through the rememberance ceremony in November, eh...

Matching sideburns, conclusive!

You'll most likely get one. As Trousers says, we do raise our game against better sides. If it costs us, then we should worry, but good teams often play badly against bad teams. GREAT teams brush them all aside with equal disdain.

I think so Charlie. We played beautiful football under Jan the Man, but were hammered. Give me a result in a results based business every week thanks!

It is disappointing Nick and I hope that those who run our club don't confuse success, leadership and forward-looking with disrespect of the past. After all, the Nazis were visionary... One of the things that has always made me proud to be a Saints fan is that the provincial nature of our club gave it heart. However 'big' we become, we have always had, to my mind, a big heart. And we mustn't let success and revenue dwarf that heart. A lot of fans are shaken by Deano's death - he was a young man, footballer or not, and he is a stark reminder of the fragility of human life. We want to show our respect and the only way we can is at our games - not Wolves' games or Spurs' games or Bradford's.

I don't often agree with whispering death but I'm afraid I do here. It's not hard to have a minute's silence for a 36 year old man who has left two young boys behind. I always felt that Deano was a big man with a heart who put his all in for our club whenever he played.

I think this is amazingly disrespectful.

I agree with that DD. However you cut it, we should be beating teams with a fraction of our resources.

Really? Pardew was fired after three games. At that point we were 14th with a plus 3 goal difference. We had a game in hand on Bournemouth in 5th - on plus 6 goal difference. At worst had we won our game in hand we would have been 6th. Brighton were on seven points having played one game more. So tell me, how has the situation improved?? What bugs me about the internet is that facts are readily available to anyone but only some of us bother to use them... and they're FREE. To anyone. No really they are... even 'simple ones'. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/league-one/2010-2011/table/2010-08-28 (As to why discuss Pardew, it's the fecking internet and I didn't ask you to join in did I??)

We'll neverf know the ins an outs but I'm not convinced Rickie is a crock. Pardew played direct often and that plays to Lambert's strengths. In Adkins team he seems to sit deeper and just doesn't get the ball in the same sort of places. That's why I liked the 4-5-1, it plays to Rickie's strengths. The tippy-tappy approach Adkins favours does not suit Lambert. He's not a mobile striker, even last season. Although I readily accept he doesn't look right. Is that fitness/injury? And how does Pardew carry the blame eight months on? I also don't see how you can say it was clear as day Pardew had buggered up? Buggered up what? We started against Plymouth like we finished the season but Hammond missed a sitter as did Harding... if those go in we could have won that game 3-4-0... we didn't. We were mugged. Two weeks later we had run Birmingham to within a kick of a replay and then thumped Bristol. Those four games under Pardew were no different to how we're playing now as far as I can tell, so I'm not sure what Pardew is supposed to have done wrong? Other than a lot of innuendo and people complaining we wasted pre-season - which may or may not be the case. If it is, why has Adkins not rectified whatever Pardew did? I also think you're being kind to Cortese. The timing of his decision to fire Pardew was crass. I imagine there are a string of managers fired after winning 4-0 away from home...!! Any Chairman who fires a manager four games into a season just as the transfer window closes must surely be considered naive at best?? The only reason I think we would have had more points under Pardew is quite simply that he built the team. The players came in to play in one of his two formations. In October last year when Pardew had assembled his squad we scored 17 goals. There were 6 games. In Adkins first 6 games we scored 6 goals. I know that's pretty rudimentary maths but it does kind of demonstrate that it took Adkins a while to find his feet and get us playing his way - which had Pardew been here we most likely wouldn't have needed. I do agree with you, however. Had Adkins been here from June we could equally be much further up the table. I'm convinced we would be. Which is why the blame really does have to sit with the Chairman.

99% of these threads are hypothetical unless we started to pick the team, tactics and appoint the manager since I last checked?

Scarfer...

I'm sure the lads are, so why do people on here bang on about drawing our away games and winning at home? And why oh why do people say the odd loss is inevitable? I bet Napoleon never sat down with the Generals and agreed that losing was inevitable...

Why can't we just win every game until the end of the season and make all these bizzare numbers where we earn 2.25 points per game redundant?

Er not quite my friend. You've just made a hundred highly paid odds compilers redundant... Only the Tote pools pay out odds on weight of money alone. The remainder use odds compilers and take account of inside information, analysis, trends and eventually what people are backing to make their book. So in fact, bookmakers do base their odds entirely on what they think will happen. If they didn't they'd be bust.

Amen.

The challenge here for me is this: 1. Whatever problems people believe existed at the start of the season, haven't gone away under Adkins. We're still inconsistent, a number of our players look unfit or at least slovenly and results are more or less the same. You say Bristol Rovers was flattering, but to me so was Swindon, so I think it's best just to focus on results. And the results are pretty much knock for knock. 2. I don't think you can only blame one party when a relationship breaks down. In the case of Cortese, he must back his manager if he appoints him. Even if there are a string of people at his door complaining. That's the basis of successful leadership. If his manager speaks out against him (and I don't believe it was as black and white as people make out), then they have to settle this behind closed doors. I happen to think that Pardew was right - we needed to learn how to win, to feel victory and that the cup was able to give a lift to the whole club - I don't recall Markus looking upset at Wembley... But that's just me. I'm not convinced it cost us anything in the league. Promotion from -10 was a massive ask and in 20 cases of clubs deducted points (even as few as three) only one has ever been promoted. We simply couldn't afford to lose games. But I agree with you 100%, having lost trust in Pardew, Cortese should have acted in June. If we don't go up, the only person to blame will be Cortese and not, as so many keep assuming, Adkins. Adkins results are as good as you could expect from a League One quality manager in his first big job.

Those stats are all games all months - on average there were seven games in each month.

Maybe he was the Poyet to Dennis Wise at Leeds? Everyone thought it was Eddie but really it was Lee all along?

You missed my point... Barnard arrived in January. In January we scored 8 goals. October - 17 November -14 December - 11 February - 11 March -17 It was almost like it took a while for Pardew to work out how to accommodate Barnard and make it work... that's what I meant with started to stop scoring so many goals. Or this might be total coincidence but for some reason in Decmber, January and February we just didn't score as many goals. In my mind this is linked to a change in formation but maybe there's another explanation??