Wes Tender

That's not what Adkins says on the OS. He maintains that Gobern was offered a decent contract. Also, Adkins highlights the amount of time and effort expended by our physios and medical staff to get him fit after a couple of years of not playing and also moving on Wotton to give him opportunities to gain a place in midfield. What comes across to me, is that Gobern had a moral obligation to have spoken to Saints and that if he felt that the contract offer was not good enough to have tempted him to stay, why didn't he have the decency to have discussed it and Huddersfield's interest? Frankly, if what is said on the OS about it is true, then good riddance. There seems to be echoes of Puncheon here, or at the very least, he has been badly advised by his agent on the best way to proceed with these things. With luck, he will do the same thing to Huddersfield a year or two down the line.

Of course, that is not a good example (and perhaps I ought to say that only you could come up with such a crap analogy ) , for the simple reason that there is an additional factor of support and loyalty in football that doesn't exactly feature where a job of stacking cans or operating a check-out is concerned. Some players do indeed go to clubs for less money because it was the club they supported from childhood, or because it is their local club. There are all sorts of factors that can sway a player one way or another, such as the manager, the facilities, the environment, their wife's happiness, even their children's schooling. It isn't all about money.

If that situation was debateable at the time of Adkins' appointment, I don't think that it holds good now, because of Adkins' achievement of getting yet another team promoted from the third division. Anybody with any knowledge of football can contrast the records of the two managers. Adkins has acquired a decent reputation for being able to work at an unfashionable club with no money and get them promoted. Now that he is at a club with money and good resources, he has enhanced his reputation further for getting us promoted. Many neutrals might even see it that Adkins succeeded where Pardew failed, if they weren't in possession of all of the facts of the situation. Pardew's reputation has been up and down, but memories linger at the poor performance at Charlton and West Ham. He didn't do too badly here, but a cloud hangs over his departure from us and he is yet to prove himself at Newcastle. As you say, Adkins is yet to prove that he can tempt a higher class acquisition to come here, but I see no reason why we shouldn't succeed with our current set-up.

What a load of rot! The bank pulled the plug on you because they suspected that you were trading whilst insolvent, something that I eagerly wait to be proven during the forensic examination of Oldco in liquidation.

There's something missing, alehouseboys; the rectangular red badge that says "Beware, stupid person"

Apologies, anothersaintinsouthsea; they were your links, not ginge's. Excellent work. I eagerly await Corp's explanation as to how he could get it all so wrong.

I've had a very enjoyable time reading the various assorted fantasies that you indulged yourself with, as revisited by Gingeletiss' link a few posts up. Somewhat ironic you accusing posters on here for their lack of investigative prowess when you yourself have been spouting so much drivel and getting it so wrong time and time again. If I were you, I'd hide myself away from all of those who have seen what a cock you are. But thankfully, I'm not you and also thankfully, I support a club that is owned by decent people and not crooks. Whilst you're on here, perhaps you can fill us in on the plans of the Russian mafia for you, so that we can revisit your fantasies again in a year's time perhaps and have even more belly laughs at your and Pompey's expense.

I think it might have been Turkish. He looks a lot like Nicola.

Exactly. Not that surprising that a football forum should be a bit quiet during the closed season and that the lack of chat about football should be replaced with bickering and nit-picking.

Is that you Deppo?

Now the Sun say that talks are being held between us and Arsenal re A O-C this afternoon. They also mention the money up front with the remainder to be settled later with strings. Well, these predictions of his impending departure have been rumbling on for the past several months now and nothing has come of them. As there are reportedly several of the very top teams in England after him, it would amaze me if we accepted £6/7 million up front and the remainder later. If we let him go at all, surely we have the whip hand and can tell them to pay everything that we want up front. or else F Off.

And with those highlighted words, you sum up the very reason why there shouldn't be so much store put on whether we ought to strenghthen the team or not. The fact is, until such times as it is clear that we will not be adding additional players to the squad, opinions are just idle speculation and conjecture.

It is futile saying that the division was much easier when Norwich went up, as the teams in that division are there for the same reasons every year. There were teams in the third division who were recently Premiership, both us and Norwich being two of them. Any teams in the second division are also there because they were not good enough for the Premiership.

I had links to the Owls' forum and they assessed it as meaning that there had been a court order placed on the defendents to pay something or other and having reneged on the payment, their actions were a contempt of court.

Found this on Google, but you'd need to log in to gain further info on it. This suggests that the hearing was finished, although on 21st or 24th is unclear. But as I asked, why no press coverage of the outcome? 21 Jun 2011 – T20107431 T20097808 T20107415, milan mandaric peter storrie andrew mehmet, For Hearing - Hearing finished - 09:58. 24-06-2011, Southwark, 9, T20097751 ... http://www.thelawpages.com/court-hearings-lists/crown-court-lists-results.php

What is the 15.14 next to it? If it's the time, then that can't have been today. Presumably the courts are closed Sunday. So if it was before, why is there no reporting of the case in the media? Am I missing something here?

What's all that about the contempt of court act 1981? A cursory glance shows that it is to do with information being leaked about the deliberations or discussions of the jury. Anybody know what this is all about?

You are either quite young, or have a very selective memory. If the former, educate yourself with a little history lesson regarding how Labour went about it in 1978/9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent This is one Council with the bin men having a bit of a strop because of economic measures being forced onto the Council through the incompetance of the last Labout Government. Back then, the industrial action was nationwide and covered much more than the binmen.

I knew that we could win you round. As you see, the evidence is incontrovertible.

I'm not talking about any boycott of the Lowe first tenure (I'm not sure that there was one particularly) I'm talking about the boycott when Lowe returned with the Quisling. I couldn't have made it much clearer, if you cared to read it a bit more carefully. I've just checked the attendance figures for most of the matches played during that period and attendances were well down, often being 14/15000. My understanding was that we needed 17000 to break even at that time, so we were short on too many occasions. So it is a fact at least that attendances in the third division were much higher than those when we were in our last year of the second. Why should that be, do you think?

I'll tell you were some of those supporters were who absented themselves in your so-called hour of need. They boycotted Lowe and the Quisling, realising that the most effective way to get rid of them, was to cease paying their hard-earned money into their pockets. You say that you remember the Branfoot era; well, then you'll understand how effective a boycott can be. As to how many boycotted, who knows? But I was one of them towards the end of that season, even though I had a paid ST. We were getting higher attendances in the third division last season than we got under that last Lowe/Wilde season with the Dutch jokers, so what does that suggest to you about the number of potential supporters who stayed away? It was a high-risk strategy, as we didn't know what we would get in their place, but we struck lucky and ridded ourselves of Askham, Richards and all of the other charlatans who held shares too. Anyway, the point is, that for this reason, comparisons of our attendances from the former era as a guide to what we could achieve now, are pointless.

Aren't they? There are some on here who have been called idiots, airheads, morons, etc, for even daring to suggest that it is even remotely possible. But also I don't believe I can remember anybody calling for an increase in stadium capacity right now either.

But I didn't say that we will get 50k crowds anytime soon. I did indicate that I had some empathy with the position that Tamesaint took, one of gradual extension of the ground capacity in line with increased crowd growth as it happened.

That's right, throw in a bit of sarcasm to keep the tread going. It doesn't add anything constructive or intelligent, but when you said a few hours ago that you were getting bored with the thread, we didn't realise that you were going to add to the boredom factor yourself.

What is idiotic are your thought processes, where you can somehow totally twist something said by an opponent to suit your own ends in an attempt to make yourself look clever by belittling your opponent in a debate. As your little illustration above concerns me amongst others, I'd better put it into the context it was presented in, so that posters can see the bizarre way that your mind works sometimes. Originally Posted by Turkish: Now, quite how anybody can make the mental leap to accuse me of saying that "Saints can get 50K and regular 45K crowds because they said it was impossible to put a man on the moon" is totally beyond me. I have never claimed that we should expect to achieve crowds of that nature; only accepted the possibility that it was not an impossibility under certain circumstances.