rallyboy

Newport and Saints? The9 you really are a lucky charm! But fear not, a new club can rise and be called Rupert Rovers, wearing a traditional red and white shirt and yellow cords, nickname - 'the financial whizzkids', and a new club badge, a flying duck atop a bloke with ruddy cheeks sucking on the barrel of a twelve bore.

Woodward built an infrastructure for English rugby world domination that lasted three days and he is now kicking his heels on the Olympic sidelines as he has been found out. Hoddle showed everyone with his post-Saints coaching results in the Premiership and Championship that he was a great singer.

don't underestimate the damage that can be done to finances by big dividends and director's expenses. The one year I did study the figures, that amount was huge and unjustifiable. Is there anyone out there who has studied the accounts over the last few years and knows what sort of amount has gone out via the boardroom?

admin and the removal of Lowe could leave us as the next Leeds Utd who crashed spectacularly and have never recovered... Or should that be, a club currently making a healthy profit and with every chance of swapping divisions with us quite soon.

It's very simple Mr Wotte, go out there and collect the three points, no I don't want excuses or your lifestory, just the points. No, 0-0 doesn't count, it must be all three - and remember, less chat more points - that's all we need, off you go now....

I thought we established long ago that Lowe mainly returned to keep his own faltering shares alive, in case Crouch had taken the club under? And if his shares were going to lose their full value he could always recoup some losses via director's expenses en route to administration.

anyone who has seen games in the last three years will already know that lack of talent is no barrier to pulling on the shirt and playing on the hallowed pitch, if a few dreams are realised and Rupert gets a new suit out of it then I can't see the harm. I like to believe that there is something special about running out at St Marys and don't start me on the Wembley semi-final situation, but the fans have been starved of 'fun' for too long so if a few people have a great day, it would be a bit miserable to object. But then again most of us are!

I recall the 4-1 win, hardman Burns was left in a tangled heap in the build up to one of the goals, most amusing, we just hassled them off the ball. It was nice to see the champions of Europe frightened of coming to the Dell, and when we could beat Liverpool and Man Utd over the next couple of decades it was a test for visiting teams, and here we are now, praying for a solitary goal to see off the whipping boys of the second tier. I guess the golden era is officially closed for refurbishment.

Just got round to watching it this morning, what a great game, and what a crap pitch! I had forgotten how good both our goals were, and that run where Curran looked like the fastest man on earth... They should bring the seating policy back so Benitez and Ferguson have to sit next to each other on a bench!! And is there anyone else out there who has a silk scarf in the loft that reads 'Southampton - league cup WINNERS 1979'?

With the Charlton game we are well beyond 'must win' territory. It is now a personal thing, an acid test of the season. The message to Wotte and all the players is - If you end up drawing 0-0 at home to the division's whipping boys you may as well just put dresses on and dance for us, all the way down to League Two. Alternatively, find some fight from somewhere and show everyone that we are good enough to stay up. Nail the Charlton coffin lid on and bury them!

cheers for the 'Frank' answer FC, it is possible to see other points of view. My main concern is that Rupert has lost the fanbase and that makes him damaged goods. He has lost me, I don't trust him, and I think he has demonstrated very poor business skills. The business cannot move forward with him at the helm, I think he has unrealistic views on how much the club is worth, I suspect he would ask potential investors to jump through hoops and they will look at it and wonder how the man who has driven the business to the brink has the cheek to make demands. He may well be keeping us out of administration, a situation that he has at least half the responsibility for, but at what cost? We are on life support, slipping away with every day. I still think he doesn't understand that what goes on out there on the pitch is hugely influential on the rest of the business, he seems to think they are different depts. He has chased away 10,000 off the gate, and saved the cost of three stewards. I also think his judgement has shown to be flawed too many times. Partner this with the disdain he has demonstrated to his customers and what are you left with? A once great club heading for the third tier under his watch, and if that occurs then he will have to accept the blame. Accusing Crouch of mismanagement may have some truth, but when you have a whole year to turn it round and you fail this miserably? The simple thing is that we don't always know the exact state of affairs or who has been to blame on some occasions, BUT what we all saw ages ago was the flawed dutch experiment that ran on six months too long. That has been his most recent public mistake, and finances cannot be the reason - are Doncaster etc richer than us? Can we not compete with Swansea and Barnsley? The mistakes are stacking up. Is it wise to loan out your best striker to one of your relegation rivals? No, it would be money better spent paying him not to score the goals that could relegate you and cost you further income. That was mental. The last thing the bank wants us to do is go down, they will lose the lot, why have they allowed it to get to this? Too many poor decisions, often things that fans could identify as incredibly obvious mistakes. Rupert has turned us into a small club, Wilde and the rest have fiddled as it all burned around them, and if the boys have a bad day in Blackpool we could get even smaller by 5pm tomorrow. coyr

hopefully Brett Ormerod is out on the lash and eating one of Blumenthal's experimental fish dishes tonight.

I have tried to look at all arguments fairly but it is beyond me that anyone can look at the management of the club over the last ten years and still think that Rupert has done a good job. Yes, there are others to blame, but can people honestly say hand-on-heart that they think with his appalling track record, that Rupert has the skills to salvage our football club? He was the Frank Spencer of the financial world before he came into our lives and I trust him as far as I could throw Ken Bates and Peter Ridsdale. So Lowe fans, please tell me what he has done that should make me have trust? The stadium was negotiated on a deal so bad it is still crippling us, so that doesn't count as a positive, and he has cut costs and slashed income this year - which is called closing down in my book. A genuine question - what has he actually done that has helped us, and for which I should be grateful?

yeah, fair play to Rupert, he really has managed to turn the club around. His intention was to get us out of the championship this season and he's right on course at the moment.

if the rest of the season is anything to go by it will be Kelvin Davis heading in a corner. He has carried the team for half the season and must realise by now that if you want something done properly you might just have to go up there and sort it yourself.

That result changes little, we still have to show more committment and quality than Forest and Plymouth. Barnsley have more fight than we do, sad but true. What I don't understand is how we got to the point where we are a smaller/less equipped/worse-organised club than Doncaster, Swansea, etc etc.

someone commented that they saw Swindon and we aren't that good, and I saw Orient v Crewe and we wouldn't have got much change out of them two either - teams battling at the bottom of the table. So Div 1 is no picnic, we may have to wait another year or two before we slide to a level where we can hammer someone. Is it just me or has the light at the end of the tunnel gone out?

Take That? We don't want over-the-hill prima donners going through the motions just for cash on our pitch.

flippin hope it is us, but in an ideal world my plan A would be to secure a four point cushion before going to the City Ground! Hopefully Wotte has thought of that too....

Guessing about managers? What a great game. Strachan's record before coming here was horrific yet... 'we should have got Hoddle back when we had the chance', his record after leaving us certainly showed what he is capable of as a coach and a man-manager... Burley was a quality manager with Championship pedigree. Woodward built a structure to keep England at the top of rugby for a generation. And Harry was the man to wheeler-deal us out of a crisis. Billy Davies?? Chimps could toss a coin and come up with an answer, which seems to have been how the current board has operated for a while so it might just work, we have to stumble across an answer eventually.

yeah, people wittering on about us catching teams in mid table when we can't see where our next goal is coming from.

Let's just have a reality check for those who still can't see a problem... I have seen people going on about Watford and Derby - FORGET THEM, they are way up the road, and the same goes for Blackpool if we fail to beat them - a point will do them a treat. Barnsley are likely to scrape points from their two in hand so they could be out of touch, and Norwich have found form and are getting away. So, Forest and Plymouth are the targets, if by winning at Blackpool we involve more then great, but can people stop getting excited when teams seven points above us draw?! And as for us settling for draws at there next three, forget it WE MUST WIN if we are to mount a serious escape bid. Forget the blinkered ''oooh, we are still mathematically capable of surviving, we just have to miraculously produce the best run of form since 1894'' etc. GET REAL, the table doesn't lie, we are down there because we are that poor and things must change.

I guess that is good news, maybe the other party will now be charged with wasting police time. And a nice touch from the Echo - when I looked the story was accompanied by an ad that read 'been the victim of rape or a sexual assault? You can get compensation'.... Great product placement and advertising ethics. Not.

For anyone who says that they don't care what our rivals are up to :confused: - you must never have been labelled a 'dirty scummer' and certainly couldn't have been there the night they committed the cardinal sin of abusing a minute of silence. Never forget. The rivalry is VERY real if you live on the front line and have to deal with it every day, you also get far more interested in their plight as a result. So, it's a HUGE day for both clubs on Saturday. If they get nothing at Boro they deserve to go down, and it is good to see that they are still five years behind us as their club is also a house of cards and the longer they hold onto their ludicrously overpaid players the more damage it is doing. Their business model and wage structure is based on Champions League income so staying up ain't no good to their bank balance. They will be forced to have a summer clearout and if they go down they could well be in a worse state than us soon, which personally cheers me up no end. Don't believe the hype, their figures don't stack up. 'Sven for Pompey!' - oh, nearly, it's minimum wage Hart instead.... So I proudly revel in their failure every time it happens!!! With so little to cheer can't we have a few laughs?

Let's get a roller on it, and I don't mean one of the reserve team players' motors. The ball bobbled all over the show the other night and when you have a couple of players who can't trap a bag of cement, you don't need to make life more difficult.