Wes Tender

This is far too sensible as a possible explanation. Go away and come back with some crap analogy along the lines as others expounded by the wrist-slashers and those who are already turning their attentions to the next owners.

And at exactly this time last year, things were pretty grim and we hadn't won a trophy. One step at a time, fine. But if the players' mental attitude is the same as that of some of the wrist-slashers on here, then that win won't happen until they come across a team whose players are even more depressed and mentally defeated.

Lowe is gone. Get over it and move on. You're getting worse than Dalek with his Hoddle fixation.

Isn't it a bit more difficult rolling your sleeves up with your hands in the air?

I didn't hear any booing when Lloyd James came on and I'm two thirds up block 42. I think that a thread like this critical of the atmosphere (or lack of it) in the Northam, is not altogether unexpected considering where we are in the league at the moment. What was cringeworthy were the Alan Pardew chants everytime a goal was scored against us. That was ridiculous bearing in mind that it was his team letting in goals at one end and failing to score at the other. Thank God there weren't any AP chants on Saturday and hopefully that episode is now closed. As soon as we start winning and climbing the table, the Northam will regain its atmosphere. In the meantime, it rather seems a bit pot and kettle when the rest of the ground is always so lacking in vocal support and atmosphere.

I was going to write it up, but having read your post, it pretty well says what I would have.Although I came away disappointed and frustrated, with the benefit of hindsight, I am hopeful that we have turned a corner by settling the defence, although not gaining the confidence boost that a goal would have produced. Sometimes it just happens that a rival goalkeeper produces a couple of saves that prevent us winning a game, but as you say, their substitute striker should have put away the clear chance given to him when he broke through one on one with Kelvin. Now there was a striker lacking in confidence. Ditto Lambert also found himself through and just lacked the sharpness he had last season and was closed down before he could pull the trigger. But his two free kicks in the last few minutes were good and only kept out by great saves by their keeper. There were two handballs that should have resulted in penalties, but the referee was poor. It is on incidents like these that the fine dividing line lies between 1 point and three. Colchester are unbeaten in the league so far this season, so no disgrace the draw under our current circumstances. Their stand out player was the midget David Perkins, 5'5" of blond terrier. Another midget in their team Kemal Izzet is only 5'6". I recall that a couple of seasons ago when we were struggling in the Fizzy Pop league, a team of brick sh*thouse players from Colchester bullied our kids off the ball all match. At least nobody bullies our players any longer, apart from Chamberlain, who being smaller as a kid, invites a physical response from players that find him too fast and clever to stop playing any other way. Once again, he was our man of the match. Our defence partnership of Seagoon and Fonte looked more solid this match and Barnard's industry was something else sorely missed the past 4 matches. IMO the only thing that might have turned this draw into a win, was the guile that Lallana provides of defence splitting passes. The goal drought is not for want of chances, but the lack of a cutting edge. But already it is feasible that Adkins has begun to instil a bit of belief and perhaps we are not far away from a win and some increased confidence.

It is a 10,000 metre final at the Olympic games. The runners arrive at the first corner and what's this? The World and Olympic champion and 10,000 metre World record holder is bringing up the rear of the field! Catastrophe! He's obviously ruined his chances of another Olympic Gold. His career is over, he's a has been. It's now only between the first three runners for the gold,silver and bronze, everybody else is out of it. Of course, it couldn't be that others have gone off too quickly and might tire. It couldn't happen that there is another "Zola Budd" type incident that puts the leader out of the race. Those who believe for one minute that we have ruined our chances of automatic promotion because we have had our usual slow start and take no account of all of the possible twists and turns of the season, are complete idiots. For ourselves, we have players returning to strengthen our squad. We can also strengthen by loans and signings. Conversely other teams might be weakened by losing players either through them leaving or through injuries and suspensions. So we have had a poor start, but ended the last season strongly. There have been plenty of examples historically of teams seemingly running away with the title only to splutter and falter within the last half dozen games. A bit of perspective is needed by many.

A great example! Typically of those who went off at half-c ock, he decides that the decision is not only crzy but wrong without having in his possession any of the relevent facts that brought the decision about. Well, we had a poll on this after it happened and AFAIR, the number against his dismissal only managed to hit about 50% or so. The more intelligent position adopted was that until all of the facts were known, then "I don't know" was the sensible option to vote for. Obviously Mr "Shoot from the Lip" O'Callaghan doesn't fall into that category. But I admire the bravado that he adopts of being able to communicate the opinions and feeelings of 90% of the fans. You're truly a man of the people, Mike. With the passage of a bit of water under the bridge, his comments look faintly ridiculous in hindsight. Perhaps we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt; perhaps he said "in my opinion", "it seems to me", "on the face of it", "the way it looks to me" or some such qualification. Maybe the journo decided to leave out those caveats. With the Echo, that wouldn't surprise me.

I agree with you that if the breaking news is outside of office hours it makes it easier for them to ring a number and get the response from rent-a quote. Otherwise it is just plain lazy for them not to expend half an hour to go to the stadium to ask fans in the vicinity for an opinion. I have emailed Dan suggesting that until SISA or the Saints Trust are much bigger or more relevant organisations, that they take heed of the poll on here, recognise that they don't speak on our behalf and withdraw any connection to SISA or Saints Trust from the comments from such as Nick Illingworth/ Rich Chorley/Mike O'Callaghan/Perry Macmillan.

The solution is simplicity itself. At most times when a newsworthy story breaks, if that story happens during normal office hours, there are inevitably normal fans attending the ticket office or the shop. All it requires is for a journalist to get his arse in gear and wander along to the ground to interview half a dozen such random fans to ask for their opinion. That way they are far more likely to get an accurate picture of what the ordinary Saints fans feel on almost any matter. The vox populi will have spoken, which must be better than some agenda-ridden organisation

Why should we bother to take the time? No guarantee that the opinions expressed will alter to reflect the views of other ordinary fans. The much better and more effective route is to tell the Echo and other media that these people do not represent the views of the ordinary fans because they have not been democratically elected by a substantial number of us to be our spokesmen. This is the whole point of this thread.

Spot on. The acronym SISA is often printed in its full form and so the impression given to readers is that the opinions printed are those of a spokesperson representing a large body of fans. Their opinion is therefore perceived to carry more weight than one offered up by other individuals. I call on the Echo to drop the SISA part associated with the opinion and just use the individual's name until SISA become a more democratic organisation with a much more significant number of members.

Yes, likewise I also expected more from the start of the season and was fairly confident that we ought for once to get off to a flyer. But then playing these inconsequential pre-season games that were presumably meant to instill confidence and didn't and the apparent lack of fitness of the players and the poor start against Plymouth and Leyton Orient, began to ring alarm bells. Even during the match against Bournemouth they shaded large parts of the match. It didn't look like a team hitting the ground running, firing on all cylinders. But we had a poor start under Pardew last season and it got better. We have plenty of time to turn this season around too.

The last one is the important one; Are you happy that SISA speaks on your behalf? Come on Mods. Let's have this poll and then send the results to the media who use those organisations as being somehow the mouthpiece of the fan base and prove to them once and for all that they represent mostly only themselves.

Good idea. Let's do it please Mods.

Thank God for another thread demanding exactly the same thing as all of those others. I think that there is room for several dozen more threads, until somebody breaks down and comes clean.

Plymouth were demoted last season, much as we had been the year before. Rochdale had been promoted and seem to have some impetus so far. But my point was that our expectations on relegation were that we were still capable of beating teams like those. This beginning of the season isn't that much different to last although some seem to have forgotten that.

Some people have very selective memories and perhaps need reminding of certain things so that they can gain some perspective. This last season that you enjoyed so much; how did it begin? I'll remind you. Draw against Millwall 1-1. Beaten 3-1 by Huddersfield. Beaten by Swindon 1-0. Drew against Brentford 1-1. Drew against Stockport 1-1. Drew against Colchester 1-1. Drew against Charlton 1-1. Best Yeovil 2-0. Draw against Carlisle 1-1. Beaten by Bristol Rovers 3-2. Now, being as how we had the season before only just been relegated, with a respected manager beyond what might have been expected for the third division, are you honestly telling me that you were happy with that start? Charlton were perhaps the only team amongst those who we might have reasonably expected to give us a game, but wouldn't you expect us to have beaten most of the others? That sequence took us right up to the end on September before we started to function properly and string together some wins. I seem to recall some very dark mutterings on this forum about how many felt that Pardew wasn't much cop.

Well, of course I arrived at the stage that I boycotted matches when Lowe was here and was prepared to continue doing so until he was gone. Having started, I promptly missed three wins in a row, having only experienced one or two in the entire season up to then. But under Lowe we were a PLC and I was a shareholder although only minor and Lowe's cronies held only about 30% of the shares, so could be toppled by a widespread boycott. It had taken me almost a decade of Lowe's mismanagement to arrive at that position. This situation is entirely different and frankly I wasn't that impressed with Pardew to feel the urge to give him support at the expense of not watching the team. Especially as I believe that there were good reasons for him having to go and regardless of how it has been dressed up for the sake of expedience.

So, he's having a sulk then? That's going to massively improve his chances of being bought by a higher placed club then, isn't it, scoring fewer goals?

He wasn't fit starting the season because he had been carrying an injury. He has not been receiving the service. Like all strikers, he is going through a bad patch, a lack of self-belief perhaps. It happens to all strikers. There, I've done your homework for you. All you have to do is pad it out a bit to the requisite number of words and you can present it as an essay.

NDA were signed by both of them. Pardew didn't have to sign, did he? It takes two to tango. Go away and think about it a bit more, as it rather looks as if this thread is a reaction to the loss of another game rather than some righteous indignation about a miscarriage of justice. Is Cortese worried about the reaction of a few like you? I don't think so.

I'd hate to be on trial with you as the foreman of the jury. Even though you have not one shred of evidence as to the reasons for Pardew's departure, you don't allow for one second that there might have been very good reasons for Cortese's actions. The only scapegoat here is you, prepared to take Pardew's side without knowing why. It isn't a very intelligent position to adopt, is it? As has been mentioned, there is no way that you are going to get an explanation from Cortese, or indeed Pardew beyond the OS announcement. With a little bit of sober thought, surely you would realise that if Pardew was as keen to throw his toys out of the pram as you, he would have been moaning to all and sundry at how unfairly he had been treated. Have you heard anything from him? Even the alleged premise for your boycott, that Pardew would have achieved better results than have been attained since his departure is not beyond challenge. Presumably you think that Lambert is only off colour because Pardew wasn't there, that Barnard would have been firing on all cylinders and Lallana knocking them in for fun. Or that an entirely different team would have been playing in a completely different way under Pardew.

Did the Scun thorpe fans used to have a song "N A old Iron" by any chance?

Where did Nick say that having a poor start made a rubbish rest of the season acceptable? Most of the more sensible and intelligent fans realise that the season is a marathon, not a sprint. They also realise that it will take a while for the new man to assess what he thinks needs changing and put those changes into effect before we turn things around. You say that Saints have c ocked up royally, but that infers that a decision has been made by the management that is wrong. Now, unless you are privy to the facts behind the dismissal of Pardew, you are not entitled to make that assertion. Along with many others, I have heard something apparently from a good source that leads me to believe that had Pardew remained, the spirit within the team might have suffered. Although I don't give credence to something unsubstantiated, it is however a good example of a circumstance that might challenge your contention that the club have c ocked up royally. Adkins appears to me to be a very level-headed bloke with many good attributes. Yes, I'm sure that he realises that he is under pressure to succeed, but then so is every manager of every team to a greater or lesser extent. But Adkins has the benefit of being at a club way below where it was just a few short years ago, but a club with no financial worries, a good stadium and training facilities and loyal fan base. Therefore if he is confident of his own abilities, which I'm sure he is, the burden of expectation should not weigh too heavily on his shoulders. We have a very decent squad of players who ought to be able to deliver the goods with a bit of motivation, something that Adkins is also apparently qualified to do. I remain unconvinced that Pardew would have done any better than Wilkins after the Bristol Rovers win. For me the key difference was the loss of Lallana and then Barnard, with Lambert off-colour. Barnard is back on Saturday, I believe and that will be a boost. Lambert will improve his fitness with every match. I don't think that we're far off where we should be and a win will boost confidence and self-belief and set us on the right road.