Wes Tender

What? In the same way that you are prepared to paper over the reasons why Cortese dismissed Pardew without knowing them? Anyway, ninth most successful manager in the country with a team in the 3rd division, plenty of money available and a Premiership quality set-up? That site is not available, but I don't need to even look at it to know that it is not a level playing field and that you can produce statistics to prove anything.

Did Pardew die? I must have missed it. In that case, I am deeply sad that he has departed this mortal coil. Man has but a short time to spend upon this earth etc.

Wrong! This thread is outgunning the appreciation thread by almost 4-1 and there have been some duplicate posts on that thread which have also been posted here to boot. So perhaps the tide has turned because (a) people now hold some credence to the rumours that Pardew deserved to go and (b) in the cold light of day, there is optimism that we might yet appoint a replacement that will make Pardew's departure a blessing.

A very well balanced and reasoned critique of Pardew's reign here. Agree with most of what you say.

He's gone, Get over it.

He's gone. Get over it.

I mistakenly started reading the thread from the beginning and then responded to the ridiculous assertion the Pardew would have won the matches against Swindon and Rochdale without reading what others had said. Having caught up on all of the posts, yours, Benji, is what I agree with, with Beppo also explaining why DPS' post was so speculative and without any basis of fact. As you say, the team played well enough for most of the match and dominated large parts of it. Contrary to other opinions, they did look up for it until they had gone down 2 goals, but they had plenty of chances to have been two or three up, but missed sitters. Barnard or Lallana or an on form Lambert would have converted most of them, but naturally the situation would have been no different had Pardew been on the touchline. As others have commented, those who think otherwise are indeed delusional.

Like we beat Swindon last season twice under him too, eh? And like we beat teams at the bottom of the division too last season? And like we beat Plymouth and Leyton Orient this season too.

For me, Pardew came to us having been a failure at West Ham and Charlton, so the impression given was of somebody who had been a reasonably big fish, having to drop down the divisions to re-establish his credentials. At the time, I would have much preferred Curbishley and that is where I am at now too. Pardew has to a certain extent raised his profile again, but the sceptics who might offer him a job now will cite his failure to get us into at least the play-offs with the largest budget in the division and the assumption will be made by many that if he was so employable and indispensible, why is he not still here? Rumours that have surfaced on here, will have surfaced elsewhere, so to a certain extent, he is damaged goods, rightly or wrongly.

Well, Bristol rovers beat us 3-2. But you're saying that regardless of us being without two of the top scorers in the division last season and the third of the top scorers being off colour would not have made any difference had Pardew been in charge? Right.

Well, without Lallana and Barnard and with Lambert off colour, I doubt whether we'd have scored. But presumably Pardew's first choice defence wouldn't have conceded those two goals?

Funny that. His name had popped into my head too.

Precisely. This was Pardew's team. Do they really believe that the players could only play for him exclusively? I remain unconvinced that they would have played any better with Pardew on the touchline. He was not some great motivator or tactical genius. I suspect that the result has a lot more to do with the fact that Lallana is absent, as is Barnard and that Lambert seems to have hit a poor patch. Either of those players fit, or not suspended, would have put 4 or 5 past Rochdale.

Thanks for posting that John; I just couldn't be arsed frankly. As you say, its all been blown way out of proportion. But when you are trying to gain some perspective and you are up against statements like this:- then you know that there is little point in arguing the toss against somebody who knows exactly what Cortese is thinking or what his motives are. As Windmill says, who cares. Apart from some who wish to impress others with how important their contribution is, based on their intimate knowledge of the advertising industry. But as you rightly point out, John, there is little connection with the sort of brands like McDonalds and Coca Cola and a football club and there are several strands to it crossing over from advertising, publicity, sponsorship, promotions, corporate hospitality, merchandising, etc. I wonder if CB has expertise in all of those fields too and can therefore assess accurately what the effect would be of a policy on one sector towards the others. The most important factor affecting all of those, is success on the pitch, not some petty little squabble with the local rag or a red top comic. As many others have pointed out, we have gained more publicity from this than we otherwise would have had it not happened.

A good shout SR. Pardew is gone and nothing that a moronic element of the Northam can do will get him back. You are absolutely right that we do not know the circumstances of his dismissal, so to make any sort of judgement on it and apportion blame is just plain stupid. The team will also have been distracted by it all and need us to get behind them instead of distracting them further with chants that do nothing to urge them on. If our support can do something positive and help us gain 3 points, that will steady the ship and restore some confidence.

In the first two paragraphs, the parts highlighted in bold are the reasons that I will not pass comment or even express an opinion as to what may have happened to justify the circumstances. All I would say though, is that considering the slashing of wrists and wringing of hands when the sh*t hit the fan, most are being a bit more circumspect about the situation now, some even accrediting Cortese with an element of trust, or benefit of the doubt at least. As for the last paragraph, the forthcoming match against Rochdale, I think you know that in matters of player psychology, the right mental attitude, esprit de corps, etc, I think along the same lines as you. Often a team with the right mental attitude can beat a superior team on paper, if they play as a team and have the belief that they can win. On the face of it Pardew's departure has given them a jolt, but likewise the team might also have had their confidence knocked had they lost against Swindon under Pardew, given also the situation of Lallana, Barnard unavailable and Lambert off-colour. As to whether they would play better tomorrow with Pardew or without, that depends on what happened to bring about his departure. It could be that the circumstances were such that player unity and belief in him was shattered. Who knows?

There are several aspects of advertising apart from just that around the pitch. The photographic ban on photographers from the newspapers will have minimal affect, as in this division we get hardly any exposure of coverage with photographs anyway. Even then, an image of players might well have sharp focus on the subject matter and the background of the adverts is just a blur. Furthermore, those advertising around the pitch have to hope that an incident worthy of a photograph has their advert visible behind it. No, most of the pitch side advertising is done to get the name in front of 20,000 or so people who attend the matches and the products and services are those that might be used by them locally. Shirt sponsorship? Well, most would say that it was a masterstroke to have no sponsor this year, as sales of the special edition anniversary shirt have broken all records. Stadium naming? Well that is up for grabs if somebody offers a good price for it and that sort of sponsorship is totally unaffected by the photography ban. The biggest fillip for companies advertising themselves in football is the exposure they get on national TV. Now, it has been suggested that because Rupert Murdoch also owns the Sun, he will feel disinclined to televise matches involving us with Sky. I don't believe it. Sky's policies will be based purely on how attractive the match is commercially to its viewers and if we are high-flyers, they will feature us, sometimes against lowly opposition, hoping for an upset. You can bet your bottom dollar that we won't be hearing the commentator calling us "the South Coast Club" as the idiot Sun journalists do. If we are successful, the media will show us on TV and write more in the press. Ditto, the more successful we are, the more revenue we will be able to generate through sponsorship, advertising and corporate hospitality. This young guy in charge of our marketing seems a bright spark, well-connected and well qualified. I'm sure he knows what he is doing and that Cortese will take his advice as an expert in that field.

Why can't the chairman see what? I'm sure that he realises that we have made massive progress and would probably have gained automatic promotion this season. We still ought to be able to achieve that with a half-decent manager, given the quality of the squad we have. But we are unable to comment, as nobody has told us what the facts are and that is something that Cortese does know. So we must trust his judgement until we can express a valid opinion against his decision based on something concrete instead of rumour and conjecture. That depends. We lost Lallana and Lambert seems off colour. We have lost a match against Swindon where nobody can prove that we might not have lost it under Pardew too. After all, they beat us both matches last season and it seems that Danny Wilson outsmarts Pardew tactically. We are now out of the Cup competition that we won last season, in the first round. We do not have Barnard available either. So even if Pardew had remained and none of this had happened, who's to say whether the match against Rochdale would be any easier. After all, there were teams far below us in the league last year that we couldn't beat at home.

You might think it a bit bizarre to have existing contracts covering various scenarios that might occur, but why shouldn't there be? The club must have good legal counsel, so surely not beyond the realms of imagination that there are contracts already prepared to cover the signing of players, contracts for new staff and managers, but also ones that cover the circumstances of a manager/player/members of staff having to be dismissed for whatever reason.

You were doing fine until you got to the bit highlighted. Quite how you can reason that we are somehow worse off than when Pardew arrived, is quite beyond my comprehension and I would love to hear your reasoning behind a statement which on the face of it is quite bizarre. Somebody else said that we were back to square one and I argued the toss on that, but you seem to suggest that the situation is worse. When Pardew arrived, we had a squad totally demoralised, having just been relegated. A reminder of the team that played that first match against Millwall might be instructive. Football League One - KO 12:45 Southampton 1 (0) - 1 (0) Millwall Paterson 51 Abdou 67 Southampton: Davis, Murty, Thomas, Perry, Harding, Lallana, Wotton, Schneiderlin (Thomson, 83 ) , James (Gillett, 75 ) , Saganowski, Paterson (Gobern, 70 ) And Murty and Harding were not there before Pardew arrived. Do I really need to say more about the improvements in the team since then? And what of the mindset of the players? Although there might be some dissention in their ranks over the departure of Pardew, at least this is a team that narrowly missed promotion, winning the majority of their matches and the Johnstone's Paint Trophy at Wembley. This is a team comprising several who were captains in former teams, players who have leadership qualities. They've seen it all before and I would expect them to quickly adapt to the new situation. So let's hear you argue your case against those points.

So at the Swindon match, all of those fans who were chanting Pardew's name or the morons who were chanting "on the pitch", were all supporting the team were they? Seems to me that given the choice of supporting the team or showing support for a departed manager who has left for whatever reason unknown, many chose to support the departed manager, so for the time being, your 99% figure looks a bit ropey.

What has that got to do with anything? People on here don't need to know the facts to reach conclusions and form opinions. If this didn't occur to the person who decided to have the poll, why should it occur to anybody with even less sense, like those people who voted yes instead of don't know?

You can see it, I can see it. Everybody can see it apart from those who run the comic. I wonder what they will do when we make the headlines with our new management appointment shortly?

Thanks Benji for the succinct summary and the further comments you made on it. Bang on the money for me. But this post above is also very true and recognises that we fans will accept many things provided that the team is doing well. Personally, I reckon that it was eminently possible that we would have lost the match last night under Pardew and it was not impossible either that we might also have lost to Rochdale under him too. Why? Because the team that beat Bristol Rovers so convincingly did not have Lallana available against Swindon to pull the strings with his creativity and Lambert also seems off-colour. For Rochdale, we are now without Barnard too. If as you say, SouthportSaint, Cortese realised that as a distinct possibility, then all he had to do was wait until next Monday and many would be applauding him for sacking Pardew. But although nothing is known for sure as concrete fact as to why the decision could not wait, I seem to be one of the few who believes that Cortese must have had very good reasons and I still trust his judgement. With luck, those who went off in a huff and raged at Cortese without any foundation for their anger, will now be starting to feel a bit stupid with themselves and as you say, most will have forgotten what it was all about if we appoint a top name manager and go on a run of wins.

So did Pardew choose them to be bought just because they would only play for him, or because he thought that they were model professionals who don't let their heads drop at the first sign of adversity?