Verbal

This from the poster who supports a team whose stripes are the wrong way round and make their players look fat. (And supporters for that matter - trust me, I know: I live dangerously close to that odd little shed opposite the beeb) Perhaps Lita might have taken a slight hint after being released by a slowly fading CCC club for the dizzying fee of £0. Anyway, you may be right - but don't come on here ruining our dreams.

I hope I don't regret saying this, but there were a brief few weeks last season when the Gillett/Schneiderlin partnership looked like it had real promise - and Schneiderlin strikes me as a player who needs a hustling CM sidekick. Even in the bouncy-castle world of League 1, he may yet be a revelation.

All of this reminds me a little bit of the reaction from Sunderland fans when we signed Kelvin. The vitriol was unbelievable - and KD was indeed a bit of a liability in a season where he was obviously trying to recover his self-esteem, let alone his form. But now look where he is - our first signing of the season was, by miles, our player of last season. Sometimes the talent and the situation just don't 'fit'. Charlton were and continue to be a club in freefall. The ONLY way they can hit bottom now is when (not if) they are forced into administration. Pardew appeared there as things were becoming desperate. No wonder it went pear-shaped I even wonder how Pardew might have fared here had he been appointed during the duck-fiddling regime. Not even remotely as well, I bet, as he can at a club reborn, that seems determined to support an experienced football manager - and a club that is debt-free and setting its sights on a place two floors up. Who knows - Pardew may be Burley Mark II, although I doubt he'd be as tactically befuddling. But Kelvin can certainly give Pardew chapter and verse on how to turn around any adverse fan reaction. If Pardew gives us a football team that - for the first time in years - is organised, fit and tough-minded, then he'd have silenced the 'dementers'. We've lacked these utterly basic qualities for so long that I think we'd be deliriously happy with just that (and a chance at the play-offs...).

The evil PayPal should have delivered a tenner - fingers crossed...

Correct. 'WTF', the Saintsweb trademark, will be the logo. Lucky player!

I'll bet that we don't re-sign ANY ex-Saints players.

Ever the optimist, perhaps, but that seems like the set-up to a typical Strachan punchline.

Agreed. They're like a couple of Siamese twins joined at the comb-over. They could even share the same sunbed.

God, this feels like ancient history, but... One of the stranger qualities Rupert Lowe managed to convince people he had was that he was in some way prudent. It's a myth. Certainly he was often stingy when it came to managers - a breed he had little time for - spending money in ways they saw fit. But he was utterly profligate in pursuit of his hubristic agenda. Hundreds of thousands spent on hiring SCW - an individual whose career since the Rugby World Cup has consisted of a succession of bad-tempered failures. And yet Lowe spent heavily in his belief that SCW was the future, and that conventional ways of managing football clubs weren't. He also had a well-established reputation for massively inflating the playing squad - quantity over quality. But the worst example of his hopeless profligacy was what happened last season, when he was disastrously lavish in trying on SCW mark II - the 'Dutch revolution'. So I don't really accept the premise of the OP. If Lowe had been prudent at any number of key moments in the last six years - and had any skills whatsoever in leading a united board - we wouldn't have been driven onto the rocks in the first place. His useless leadership was the fertile ground that bred the Wilde idiocy, the executive coup, the brief Crouch regime and the ludicrous wage bill. Now back to the real world...(And wouldn't it be the biggest insult we could muster to his lordship never to mention his ludicrous, hopeless name ever again?)

Tell me, 19, what first attracted you to a thread entitled 'Pearson to come back'? And would you please take a mobile-phone snap of the look on your face if he's appointed? Just as a kind of public service, you understand. I will now go in search of your sensible posts. I may be some time.

As opposed to being legless?

I can't help thinking that Oldknow was a key link. As a prime mover during the dark days of the executive coup - one of many incidents that drove the club onto the rocks - he'd have known all too well that the club was finally free of the people the execs wanted out all along: the forever-squabbling non-execs. Freed of war and debt, he'd have known better than most that the club was a potential bargain. Genuine question to people like FF, who leaked Oldknow's shenanigans and deep unpopularity at the time: has Oldknow turned a new leaf?

Quite right. It's odd that this fantasy persists. My source is tommac - who finally admitted in a pm that the only contact with the club was from two lawyers from a small part of Allen's empire. And even then, they only made the single vague inquiry after tommac, who'd acted as their flying chauffeur, had spun them a line about how much of a bargain the club was. After the lawyers' approach, ALL of the contact with Southampton was through tommac, who even finagled a 'finder's fee' out of the club, which I believe was a solid five figure sum. Tommac kept the 'PA takeover' alive so long that it became in the end little more than a hoax - as Jim Hone confirmed at the time. ...And minus one on Tony Adams, Mickey Adams or any member of the Adams family for manager!

Okay, just got back this morning from Cape Town, so haven't heard how the Tony Lynam statue is going. Any news?

As Wiseman rather startlingly says, 'We knew he [Richard Fry] was really in charge of the club.' So the man in charge causes the collapse of the club and then joins the company appointed to carry out the highly lucrative process of administration. Presumably Fry will be happy to answer questions about conflict of interest, and about how this isn't in any way dodgy. And Gold Star to Dubai Phil!

And the prize for stating the bleedin' obvious goes to...

I think you'll find that TT's particular brand of optimism could only emanate from the West Coast. You of all people should know that. Talking of which, I'm off now to Cape Town and the internet-free wilds beyond until Friday. If you lot haven't sorted this all out by the time I get back I'll be round all your houses.

With the merest hint of an 'h' after the 'b', mein liebling.

I liked this bit: So, of his original promises to the York City supporters' trust, he acknowledges: "Basically, I was lying to them. There is no way of dressing it up." Just what we need after everything the club has been through. Does SMS have some sort of banner plastered across it reading: 'Buyers wanted. Scam artists, asset strippers, and anyone who answers to the name of "Mitty" only need apply'?

I don't think he is, osm. I was in York the other day and was talking with people there about the awful recent histories of our clubs. They were spitting blood about Batchelor in a way that was really quite familiar...In their view he all but destroyed the York City.

Yorkie's gone very quiet. I bet it's him. And anyway, who the hell else lives in Yorkshire?

Agreed. And good to hear after the serial crowing by ITKs who can't resist letting us know that they've given MLT a personal ear-bashing.

Despair I understand. It's the hope I can't bear.

Why do people persist in calling it a Swiss consortium? It's Austrian. Alpine just has to add a few finishing touches like finding shirt sponsors. Prozac are top of the list but it's a depressed market.