JackFrost

Lowe did a good job to run the club on a relative shoestring for a while but when it looked like we were going somewhere we made the mistake of buying in a load of solid PL jobbers as opposed to 2-3 quality signings that could have moved us to the next level. As soon as Strachan left the warning signs were there, and I don't think it's the fact we were relegated, but it's Lowe's shambolic running of the club during that period that grates with people. This was what was ultimately responsible for our relegation from the PL. Lowe failed to endear himself to the fans and did more to conform to the 'arrogant toff' stereotype than anything else and it's why the urban myths came about and the inaccurately directed blame towards him came about. However as Turkish said earlier it's all too easy to blame Lowe for our relegation into League 1. People forget that it wasn't just Lowe who appointed the failed Poortvliet/Wotte experiment but it was actually Lowe/Wilde. Whilst with hindsight it was a terrible decision the seeds had already been sown by then. It was the equivalent of choosing the wrong type of fire extinguisher to put out the raging inferno of debt that Wilde's previous recklessness brought about in the first place. Wilde was a chancer that exploited the "anyone but Lowe" fanbase, pounced on the cheap anti-Lowe stereotypes and the flawed notion that no-one could as bad a chairman as Lowe. He then manoeuved tactically to try and ensure the fans would blame his failings on Lowe, and the whole thing ended up in a complete cluster**** with Lowe, Wilde and Crouch all wanting control. None of them had the ability or resources to take the club forward and I wasn't actually that disappointed when we entered administration, because until of 3 of them exited the club we weren't going anywhere. At least Crouch actually put a load of his money into the club which is probably why he is remembered with a little more fondness. Lowe did a decent job and then let himself down with his ego and stupid decisions, but Wilde was far worse.

True. But this is a football club we're talking about

Jos was a shambles against Burnley. They way he's been playing recently he'd struggle in League 1 now. We should have already said "Thank you and goodbye" this month.

Exactly. The guy will post ANYTHING to get a reaction.

I think we need to play Fonte and Yoshida together to give them match practice with each other. With match practice I think Yoshida can be a solid backup. Whilst certainly not being in Lovren's class he can be half decent against quality opposition even if he makes a few mistakes. After Jos' last few perfomances I wouldn't play him against League One opposition, let alone Championship/PL opposition.

Another party did buy us

what's going on? CB Fry trolling again with the usual patronising technique? I'm surprised people still try and have constructive debates with him.

Wouldn't have been a Mr Ben-Haim by any chance?

Lambo peaked last season and has been going downhill ever since due to age and form. He'll always be a legend for us but sadly his time has past. Hope he proves me wrong but he was never going to sustain the form that got him all the way to the England squad. Might sound harsh but if West Ham bid £7 million for him we should take it and put the money towards a top class striker

THE definition of irony.

The one I remember is when Trigger's telling that story about a woman he worked with asking him "Fancy spending a weekend at this hotel?". He then reveals that he thought the weekend went great but she didn't want to see him ever again after it. When Del asks him why he says "Later I heard through friends, that she'd wanted to go with me"

Time for one of Richard Chorley's "OPEN LETTERS"?

God knows. Then again I've found some of his trolling hilarious in this thread

I think the club complained about the Lallana/Clattenburg incident not because of the level of insult, but because the comment from Clattenburg served no purpose but to wind Lallana up, which someone in Clattenburg's position should not be doing. It's a symbol of weak leadership.

Burley had £7m proceeds of the family silver to help him with promotion and did the bare minimum expected, he totally underachieved with us. I also seem to remember our results went remarkably downhill after Glynn Snodin left. Looking back George Burley was a very good manager up until around '05/'06 time and then seemed to lose the plot completely, and has failed at every job since. And the same old rumours have sadly stuck around ever since.

Jermaine Wright was one of the victims of George Burley's period when he lost the plot completely. Wright did his best but he was League 2/Conference level at best. I remember in the last game against Sheffield United in 07/08?? in the opening seconds when one of our players got into a yawning chasm of space on the wing and Wright received the ball. He had about a 20-25 yard margin of error and ended up booting it straight out of play. This was the season when we had something like 1 CB in the entire squad and Burley thought the best way of dealing with it was signing a countless amount of midfielders. I remember that players including Chris Makin and Jason Euell played in central defence and Burley insisted on playing players out of position, dropping players that had played extremely well in the game before and playing Jermaine Wright in every single game. Didn't someone on here have a friend who owned a pub, and Burley came knocking on their door in the middle of the night wanting a drink?

A while ago I got a part-time job working with a small company. The guy who founded it was a very good salesman but as a day-to-day manager was useless. He could only be described as a sociopath who gave two guys there preferential treatment to protect himself, and the 3 of them ran the company like an old boy's club and made sure all of their many failings were everyone else's fault. If anyone had a problem with that it was them that had bad attitude. It was clear though that the company founder was the one calling all the shots and played the other two like a violin, he had this attitude that NOTHING was ever his fault and he NEVER did anything wrong, and he was a master of manipulation and playing mind games. I was there about 3-4 months and it was clear the company was a shambles and propped up by wealthy parents to keep it ticking over, and he was merely a born BSer pretending to be a manager. There was a run of incidents where he started having pops at me in emails sent to numerous recipients, I replied with something along the lines of "In that case I'll show you the same courtesy", walked out and ignored all the phone calls in the next few days. I suspect he'll be running that company for the rest of his life, I think deep down even he knows he'd BS his way into another job ok but wouldn't last 3 months. The guy was completely incapable of even turning up to work on time or organising himself to a basic degree. When this was subtley questioned I believe it was called "flexibility"

It's also been the tough run of fixtures and the mistake of having and persisting with Hooiveld as our first CB backup. I think Yoshida can do a solid job if he's alongside Fonte or Lovren. He makes the odd mistake but does make up for some of them himself and whilst below the level of Fonte/Lovren I think he can be a solid backup if given match practice. I think Fox is ok as backup as long as he is playing alongside our best team although I expect we will look for better considering the ambitions of the club. Sadly Jos' time has passed. Great guy but at the moment he looks like he would struggle at League 1 level, has all but given up in more than one match and it should be 'thank you and goodbye' this month. Boruc and Wanyama will make a big difference though, they are key components of why we conceded so few goals earlier in the season.

And there's probably a lot of truth in that but the issue was the unions needed curbing at that time. They had far too much power and there were strikes all over the place. Relatives of dead people couldn't even bury their loved ones at a time when the gravediggers were on strike. There is a place for unions but they need to be regulated and when Thatcher came to power they were out of control. With the miners the industry had to be massively downsized because it had turned into a financial black hole and Thatcher took the opportunity to severely damage the union power at that time. In general striking should always be a last resort and unfortunately it has been resorted too far too quickly, and still is. In a lot of cases it is questionable to what it actually achieves and you will inevitably get "strikers" who merely jump on the bandwagon or see it has something that "beats working". Take the recent NUT/UCU strikes, I sympathise with those teachers that are on the breadline and are struggling but when you get (by their own previous admission) £60k-£70k per annum university lecturers joining in and claiming their getting unfair pay for the sole reason that the deputy principle/principle are getting bigger pay rises than them you have to ask is that a good enough reason to deprive students of their education which they have already paid for.

Considering you do nothing but post strong socialist opinions, omit facts that don't support your political viewpoint and seemingly supports every left-wing conspiracy theory under the sun. I really hope you posted that comment for a wind-up You've posted 3 times on this thread and each time conveniently omitted the fact that the entire industry was losing money hand over fist and had been for years, and entire regions of the country (Black Country being one example) had their coal mines closed down long before Thatcher even came to power. You also seem to be implying that the coal industry in this country was sustainable. Long-term it wasn't even close to sustainable but on the flip side Thatcher got it all wrong when dealing with this issue. She needed to take an exquisite dentist's drill to the industry to protect the workers as much as possible, but instead she used a chainsaw. She wrecked many lives and I totally get the anger towards her, but sadly a lot of the anti-Thatcherites had this view that just because their local coal mine was profitable in the short term it meant this would go on forever. I'd be more surprised if Thatcher/the police/coal board hadn't lied through their black teeth, considering those times. As Hillsborough have previously illustrated the murky goings on in the higher echelons of the government/police force back then were always going to draw public anger when find out and rightly so but it happened on both sides. Scargill wasn't exactly fussy who he got into bed with either.

People here are dismissing what Clattenburg said based on the level of insult and the club should "man up" because it was just a 'minor dig'. It's not the 'level of insult' that I have a problem with It's the fact that Clattenburg (allegedly) went even remotely near getting personal with a player. The comment is the classic personal patronising technique, used to deflect a conversation topic away from the issue in hand (the alleged handball) and wind up the individual. A common method to hide one's potential failings and the words used even have a bit of a sociopathic taint to them in my opinion. Clattenburg shouldn't be anywhere near that being the referee as it's a sign of poor judgement from someone who is supposed to be in control, regardless of what job they are in. As with Mikel there isn't smoke without fire and that is why Clattenburg should be investigated. I totally get why the club/Don Cortese want to pursue it even if it's more to do with the possible intention of steering Clattenburg away from refereeing our games.

Assuming this is true I think the issue here is Clattenburg's attitude. I suspect a combination of him giving decisions against us and the Mikel case last year has in part brought this on, but as FF said before it is Clattenburg's job to referee the game and not making petty comments to players when his decisions are questioned. By making such comments all he's doing is undermining his own authority and with the Mikel case there is previous. As someone else said Clattenburh will be gently steered away from refereeing our games, but I suspect this may be the intention in the first place.

That reminds me, did they ever get their clock fixed?

I think Lambert will be sold in the summer if the right offer comes in. In the last couple of years he's peaked and age/form is starting to catch up with him and I think the money will be reinvested in a top drawer striker

You almost make it sound like it was Wilde that brought Liebherr and Cortese here. Personally I don't think the best option was to gamble money we didn't have and nearly bankrupt the club as a result. Just because we got very lucky with Markus and Cortese doesn't make Wilde's recklessness a good thing. You also ask the "if Lowe was still here" question but the wonderful irony is that Wilde's failings were precisely why Lowe and the PLC would have theoretically still been here in the first place. . . . But you/Morph are right though, we can all look back on it now with amusement.