Wes Tender

This is nothing like the Labour/SDP split at all. Apart from that being a breakaway party and this is a growing new party, UKIP has grown on the basis of one area of policy, Europe, which has not been addressed by the other parties to the annoyance of the electorate. And your reasoning that UKIP will help Labour is also flawed for one simple reason, even if you believe that it is splitting the Tory vote. Without UKIP, Labour or the Lib Dems have benefitted in previous elections from large numbers of voters voting tactically to prevent one party or the other they disliked from being elected. Labour in many areas had been the recipient of many of those tactical votes, whereas now their recent past record of incompetance and their ineffectual leader will steer voters towards UKIP as the vehicle for the protest vote.

I think that you're right about the impact that they'll have in the European MEP elections. They are developing a momentum which will become hard to stop. First they have had a very creditable showing in the Eastleigh by-election coming second to the Lib-Dems, which has pursuaded voters elsewhere that they are a force to be reckoned with. Favourable results in the by-election coming second to Labour yesterday and a string of gains in the Council Elections taking seats from all three main parties has shown that they are a suitable vehicle for an alternative protest vote. Come the European Elections, that is what they are there for, to send a message loud and clear to the other parties that the voters are p*ssed off with not having had the chance to vote on the gradual erosion of sovereignty from Westminster to Brussels. This issue has become a boil that needs lancing. If UKIP gain a substantial number of MEPs, then the next election could be cataclysmic for the other parties. But they are effectively a one issue party and had the Europe issue been properly addressed by the others, there would have been no need for their continuing existance.

Well, I'm laughing my arse off because you've not realised that UKIP are taking votes off all the other parties.

It seems that in Hampshire UKIP got nearly 10,000 more votes than the Lib Dems, but 7 less seats. Ironic that with another voting system they could have been even further humiliated. In Eastleigh they lost 3 or 4 seats to UKIP. It will be interesting in the next General Election, as the Lib Dems always say that Labour stand no chance and that it is a straight fight between them and the Conservatives. I usually vote Conservative, but am seriously considering voting tactically next time to unseat the Lib Dem. If that happened throughout the country, they could be virtually wiped out, which would be great.

There is some validity to your points about our defence, but in my opinion there were two other major factors influencing our early season performance defensively. Firstly, we had a baptism of fire playing three of the top teams in the first four matches, this with players who had been playing in the second division the season before. Yes, it was only to be expected that they would take a while to acclimatise themselves to the Premiership strikers facing them, so it wasn't expected that we would get off to a strong start anyway. Secondly, it is evident that partly at least, we missed having Jack Cork available to us, as our defensive weaknesses were less exposed when he and Schneiderlin forged their partnership, once more offering valuable protection to the back four. We were also very lucky though that Shaw proved to be a revelation for someone so young, filling the LB slot instead of Fox.

The lad is to be commended for the clarity and insightfulness of his comment, which puts his old man's opinions to shame.

Carroll has his uses. He's very adept at falling down like a sack of spuds and writhing about in feigned agony as if he'd been shot. We might score a few goals as a result of the free kicks he will win through fooling referees. Other than that, he's just a big lump with a footballing brain the size of that possessed by most of his admirers

When he didn't have to wake up at 3.34am in the morning just to get something off his chest.

Hasn't this all been covered here:- http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?44595-FBs-vs-Spuds-IF-Shaw-is-still-injured The option covered there but not included here, is to blood Targett. I have no idea how realistic an option that is, but he is supposed to be the replacement if Shaw goes elsewhere and is only a couple of months younger than him.

Well, you don't have to keep up with any further developments on this thread if you're no longer interested, do you? Many posters when asked whether they would prefer the Skates to be liquidated, or to struggle on owned by the fans, expressed the preference that they be owned by the fans because that would provide much longer term merriment. And as for you rather having the position that they are in than ours when Barclay pulled the plug, well, I find that bizarre. Many on here were confident that we would find a buyer, as we didn't have a lot of debt and had a very good stadium, training ground and other assets. Because of the structure of their ownership, there will be plenty of fun to come because of the potential for disharmony caused by the egos of the various protagonists that run them.

Can you remind me of your post where you said that none of our players would be good enough to get into your team? Undoubtedly you have some quality there and it's just a pity that they can't play together as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals. That and the fact that some just can't be arsed to put in a shift.

You never know. There might be another dodgy Russian out there wanted to launder some money. The interesting thing will be seeing what happens if somebody like that wanted to buy them from the Trust and the small business owners who currently own them. Would they sell, or would they prefer to continue as the small so-called fan-owned entity?

This is a real hoot:- http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/south-east/89238-portsmouth-fc-owners-set-premier-league-goal Three promotions in quick succession? What is the idiot boy Farmery on? As for the attendances, they have had an average this past season of just 12,232, and their highest attendance of 18433 was itself below the figure plucked out of thin air by the Skates' resident village idiot. This thread has much more merriment in it yet.

delete

Spurs will smash us in the same way that City, Liverpool and Chelsea did? I don't recall them being that much better than us when they came here early in the season when we were probably a bit demoralised after our baptism of fire. If we play like we did against West Brom, then you're probably right. But who knows what team will turn up for either side. Spurs didn't exactly stuff Wigan, did they? But for a goalkeeping howler and an own goal, Wigan would comfortably have had all three points.

Yes, that's right, we will never know. But as a yardstick, it isn't a bad comparison to take Adkins' record up until he left, especially considering that at that time we had already played all of the teams and the season was over halfway through. Allowing also for the difficult start, the improvement in the players available and that they were more used to playing in the division the later the season went on, and nobody can argue that the comparison is stilted in Adkins' favour. Everybody makes comparisons based on the position that a new manager inherited and judges them on how they fared afterwards. Exactly the same scenario has just been applied to Redcrapp on the other thread, but nobody seems to be speculating that Hughes might have fared worse had he remained.

If you're going to take one game in isolation then I'll take the QPR game as my counter argument. Adkins had managed a 3-1 victory away, but Pochettino's team lost 2-1 at home against them. Which is the poorer team between Sunderland and QPR? Sunderland have been good under Di Canio, winning against Newcastle and Everton, without Fletcher, their top scorer, so they can't have been too far adrift when they played us, whereas QPR despite their star players have been relegation fodder most of the season.

Since Adkins was sacked, my position has always been that if we don't surpass the 15th position that Adkins left us with, then there will have been little point in replacing him with Pochettino. So no, 17th will not be good enough in my opinion. Nobody knows whether Adkins would have got those results against Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City. It wasn't that long before those matches that we had drawn against Arsenal and come back from two down against Chelsea away. At least Adkins managed to get a draw against Redknapp's star-studded QPR team with a much poorer squad than we had.

Against those teams Nigel got eight points, having beaten Newcastle and QPR and drawn against Swansea and Norwich

Far too simplistic and also too much a matter of opinion for those who support the so-called glory clubs. It is perfectly possible nowadays for a relatively unfashionable club to be bought by a mega-rich billionaire, who by throwing money at it, can buy the best players in World football and start winning the trophies which will attract the glory-hunter fans around the World. Then that club will by your definition be a big club. In my lifetime I've witnessed enough once great clubs face a decline into comparitive insignificance and enough clubs who were second rate minnows grow into big clubs, to be a bit more circumspect about the prospects for growth of any club in the future.

Absolutely. I detest this play-acting to get players sent off. The man is a dispicable cheating little c*nt, just like that carthorse Carroll. It's a shame that the football authorities don't impose sanctions on players like this when a replay of the match video would clearly show players diving and play-acting. If it was conclusively proved that a player cheated in that way and was subsequently served a one match ban, then maybe that would stamp it out.

West Brom's supporters were mostly seated throughout the match and put us to shame. They were probably the best set of fans I have seen this season. It was the worst atmosphere I have expereienced in the Northam for many a season. WBA scored an early goal and were so dominant that they totally silenced us. It needed us to score to liven us up, which ought not to be the case, but we never looked like scoring.

Match of the Day was interesting for several reasons. They have changed the opening sequence to drop the Lallana celebration. Probably thought that it was such a rare occurrence that it made it a curiosity. They now have a longer shot of us wearing the new strip, as the previous fleeting glance could have been of one of the other teams who wear the stripes. Interesting to hear the other Neville brother's punditry, as his opinion was that we would spend in the summer and as a result move up a level. The other feeling that I was left with was that Ramirez is the poor man's Coutinho. What a shame that we didn't get him.

I called it as I saw it. Which is what I always do. The last match opinion I gave had me accused of an anti-Pochettino agenda. Have you just woken up?

Out thought Out fought Out sung Out supported. West Brom had the better attack and the better defence today, they closed us down denying us the space to play our game, were more up for the 50/50 balls and gave us a wake up reality call. Pochettino is lauded as a tactical master, but what exactly was the reasoning behind taking Cork off? Did I miss something? Was he carrying a knock? Where was the high pressing game, the closing down of players, the desire? Only a few players came out of today's match with any credit and can hold their heads up high. It is clear that we will need major surgery to several positions if we are to advance up the division next year. On today's performance, hardly any of our players would be good enough for West Brom's team, whereas several of theirs looked better than their counterparts in our team. And yet if they get the dressing down they deserve and decide to make a serious effort against Spurs, Wigan have shown today Spurs can be matched or even beaten. This team is an enigma under Pochettino, where they can beat the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea, but get shown up by the less highly starred teams, many of whom might not have the really expensive players, but their managers are often tactically astute when it comes to figuring out how to counter our tactics.