Verbal

I kind of expected it would get to this. But, 19, you'll have to carefully explain to your lawyer friend the details of the abuse you heaped on Daren and Wes, (admittedly as your alter ego Sundance Beast), otherwise he might think you're an innocent being torn apart by the internet wolves. Which you're not, obviously. But again, it would be nice if people would stop harping on about whatever confidence was betrayed. It's pretty disgusting really.

Well, only up to a point, Lord Copper. Personal attacks are certainly wrong, and it's uncomfortable reading. Daren's and Um's references to 19's mental health issues (whatever they might be) is not playing fair. I also recall Sundance Beast's vicious personal attacks on both Daren and Wes Tender - or, to be more precise, attacks on their families. And for 19C to pretend that he's not SB is untruthful, clearly. However, this really would be a dull place if we didn't argue our positions in a vigorous way. I find this thread, for example, illuminating, in the sense that it's flushed out the thinness of the attacks on McMenemy. We can, and should, have the most head-crashing rows - but there's no need to resort to ad hominem attacks

That's because you're on your own.

I’m sorry 19, but the logic of your post is again utterly self-defeating. If the basis of your strongly expressed animosity towards LM is merely some unspecified ‘alleged rumours’ for which there is, ‘in your opinion’, ‘little evidence’, what the hell is your point? How can you possibly be so angry about something that someone, by your own admission, may or may not have done? And having dragged Lundekvam into your self-created cesspit of immorality-beyond-redemption, you seem to be gearing up to pull MLT in as well. I think the reason people on here get so angry with you right now is that just at the point when we seem to have consigned the pygmies to history, you seem to want to continue fighting the old battles in some sort of vain hope that some old wounds can be re-opened. Please: get over it and lighten up!

This is what I don’t get, 19. As you’ve clearly demonstrated, you have no direct experience or any real knowledge of McMenemy at all. I’m sure some people on here think you do, because of all the pointless speculation as to whether you’re Marland or Lowe or whomever. But you’re not. So what on earth is your animosity actually based on? Are you really so intensely committed to your position, based on the odd rumour you’re heard third-hand about LM’s conduct during Alan Ball’s spell as manager or during the Crouch interregnum? And are you incapable of learning from, say, David in Sweden’s or Vectis’s posts? Because you sure as hell need an education in the history of this club; your ignorance (or let’s call it a series of blind spots, to be a little kinder) has been unwittingly paraded often enough, I would have thought, for you to have a long, hard look at yourself. But no, the best you can do is keep up this bizarre and quite unconvincing vendetta. Now that your one and only hero has left the club in ruins, and those ruins are in the process of being rebuilt by an owner in whom everyone has the highest hopes, isn’t it time for rethink? Or a change of identity?

Never did understand the suggestion that something underhand had happened with the 'missing millions'. The money was squandered in plain sight in serial acts of utter uselessness and unbridled hubris. Now that he has his apology from the Guardian, Lowe could conceivably be writing his own mea culpa to the club and its fans for his considerable part in its near destruction. If he is (which admittedly is a bit of a long shot), someone really should tell him not to bother. No one gives a damn. Today felt like the day we finally left the pygmies behind.

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.