Wes Tender

Another couple of gems to search out there; they've come across an old shirt that used to belong to Paul Gascoigne and selling it cheap because of water damage. Then there's a Pulis shirt too, unused and still in its unopened cellophane wrapper and an old Delap shirt with stretch damage under the armpits.

What is imperative for us is that what he believes to be good for the club's creditors (his job) also turns out to be for the good of the club too. If he shows cleverness in that direction, then I'm sure that we will all be very happy.

I was going to get a couple of tickets either later today or tomorrow. The organisers made a few fundamental mistakes which have been the cause of the low attendance IMO. 1) The match was to held at the wrong time. Sunday lunchtime is often an occasion for family get togethers. 3pm would have been much better. 2) The publicity was poor. The idea was good, but we needed to see actual names of the stars attending to attract more people. 3) Perhaps the price was a bit high. £10 might have attracted far more people. 4) Perhaps the timing of the match has been overtaken by events, in that the Administrator appears to be closing in on a deal for somebody to take over the club and many believe that the additional fundraising is therefore unecessary. 5) Many might have been unsure where the money raised was going to. This needed to be set out and written in stone that the money raised would be ring fenced.

What is encouraging under these current circumstances, is the knowledge that Pompey have been through all this heartache and yet have come out the other side successfully. If we are as lucky to find new owners with the money to invest in us, we can but hope that we will rise again like a Phoenix and that this might be as far down as we go. Often the darkest hour is just before the dawn. So thanks NSS for taking the time to share some snippets that have come your way. In my business I have some good customers who have supported Pompey as long and as avidly as you and although we have some banter along the way, neither of us would wish to see the other club drop out of existence.

A fine distinction that I don't disagree with. Engineered either separately or jointly between both parties, but however it came about, it still went forward with unseemly haste IMO, when there were other interested parties hovering around. Interesting to speculate how our fortunes might have been changed had the old board waited to see what else was on offer. We might have been playing our football at Stoneham for starters, which would have been a much more attractive asset for investors as part of the proposed Sports based development that was being proposed for that site.

I'm with you here, SS. It is instructive to listen to all of the blame being apportioned now that some are throwing their toys out of the pram, or attempting to rewrite history. Now is the right time to hear about the detail on this. As soon as we have been taken over, provided that none of these past protagonists are not involved, then would be the time to draw a line under the whole sorry episode and move on, united.

There you are, you have just furnished the reason for why the redecorating was necessary.

I suspect that Pearson is interested in Gillett for precisely the same reasons that Pearson himself was a mainstay of the teams he played for during a long and steady career. Gillett has many of the same attributes that Pearson had. He always gives 100% effort, plays with heart and soul, never gives up trying. Some players are gifted with supreme skills that mark them out, but apart from them, the ones that you would want in your squad are these true professionals who give their all for the cause. In many ways, Gillett is our Scholes, a terrier of a player, a fighter. If we had a team of players possessing the attributes that he has, then we could have reasonable hopes of gaining promotion next season, despite the points deduction. Leicester under Pearson identified those players that suited him and developed that mentality into others and if he is interested in Gillett, he obviously recognises the role that he could bring to his team, so we ought to strive to keep him if at all possible.

The fault in your argument lies in the bit where you state that "most of will agree that if Lowe had stayed around we would not be in administration" What the situation would have been is as much up for conjecture as to whether we might have survived both administration and relegation had Lowe not dismissed Pearson. Nobody knows what would have happened had Lowe not been ousted by Wilde and I would challenge also your opinion that "most" agree one way or the other. But anyway, I said that the relegation AND the idiot policies taken this season had been the main contributors to our ultimate demise. Lowe was not in a straitjacket with the sole choice of only appointing inexperienced Dutch management, only playing the kids, jettisoning all three of our best strikers, etc. Granted that those policies would have had us relegated anyway once Pearson was gone, but the ticket pricing policy of charging that amount to watch the kids lose at home apart from 4 wins and the number of those boycotting Lowe's return were big factors into why the financial side didn't stack up.

Agreed that there were many factors and facets which can be argued in many directions and blame attributed to a greater or lesser degree on all the bit players in this depressing saga. But in this case, the simplistic answer irrefutably just happens to be the main one; that relegation first from the Premiership and then the subsequent inept management of our policies this past season were both the major catalysts for our further relegation and the resultant administration. Its been a little like the captain sinking the Titanic and then subsequently managing to sink the life boats too.

Don't you accept that by posting such drivel in the Echo, Lowe's piece deserves comment in return? After all, the purpose of this forum is to encourage debate and allegations made by the single individual most responsible for the biggest drop in the club's fortunes arguably in its entire history is surely a worthy enough topic for debate. Anyway, until we are taken over by somebody else in a grouping that excludes Lowe, nobody can be entirely sure that he is gone.

In a similar vein, when we were looking for new owners at the time of the reverse takeover a dozen years or so ago, the old board acted with undue haste then, when apparently there were another two or three other groups who had expressed an interest in buying us. As a result, we got Lowe and Cowan, when had the old board been a bit more patient, we might have gained owners better equipped and financially stronger than the small retirement home company. Of course, some have claimed that the offer from Secure Retirement was "incentivised" but it ought to be a lesson to us all that it will be in our best interests this time around to look at all the serious offers that might arise.

Gillett has been one of the few players coming out of last season with any credibility. But the fact that Leicester rate him just points up further what a good judge of a player Pearson was.

What I find to be incredible, is that in all of his hissy tirade, he does not even mention once the part played in all of this by the Quisling Wilde. That is obviously because Wilde was Lowe's poodle, the vehicle by which Lowe was able to get his feet under the table for a second time. But by not mentioning the financial decline during his two year absence and choosing to ignore the part played in that by Wilde and the people he employed to run the club, makes Lowe's argument totally unbalanced. But then unbalanced is also the epithet that best describes Lowe's mental faculties too, so it is somehow appropriate.

I was preparing for this situation to arise the minute that Askham and his cohorts accepted the reverse takeover instead of waiting 5 minutes longer to see what else might materialise. On that basis, I'm not going to get suicidal about what may or may not happen now until every avenue has been explored.

Lowe has shut up recently because he vented his spleen immediately after his resignation when we went into administration. He has already said all he wanted to say, which was that he was totally blameless and it was all the fault of those who took over after he had gone the first time. If he continued to make comments now, he would invite further vitriol onto his shoulders and just sound like a broken record. As for Wilde, the guy has absolutely no redeeming features at all. For a start, it is totally useless him claiming that he wanted a British manager after Poortvliet's departure. Firstly, the useless JP had already had too long and therefore it was almost too late for anybody to save us, but secondly Wilde held the whiphand. It was only with his support that Lowe held power. If the Quisling had any balls at all, he would have told Lowe that the Dutch experiment had not worked and it was time to ditch it. If Lowe did not concur, then Wilde would withdraw his support. But the fact that Wilde did not use his clout to get what he said he wanted, proves that he had no balls and it is therefore useless him bleating about it now.

Why ever not? Especially when you are listing half a dozen players if the useless Millwall reject Smith is included. You don't need hindsight to have assessed those players we signed. Most on here had concluded correctly that they were a load of carp. I suspect that if Gasmi had the potential to be the next Rooney, then that potential would have manifested itself way before we took him on.

No, Rallyboy. You only have to read some of the responses in this very thread to see that there are Lowe apologists who still believe that his pay was justified, even that it was lower than they might have expected. But the most telling responses are by those who have contrasted the amount that Lowe and Cowan took as pay and realised the hypocrisy of Lowe claiming that they couldn't afford Pearson's wages. We now all know what the result was of Lowe's cheapskate two for one policy and what a total waste that was. Had Lowe succeeded in getting us promoted back to the Premiership, then I would not begrudge him awarding himself double the pay as a bonus. But nobody can blame others for getting on his back because of his pursuance of cheap inexperienced management which subsequently failed, exactly as predicted by some on here the minute the appointments were made.

Perhaps Lowe should set an example for him and repay the settlement that he and Cowan received when the two of them were ousted the last time, eh?

The cost to the club is millions in the amount he took out of the club as salary and also millions through the sums he has lost the club through relegation twice, the disbursements paid to him and Cowen when they were ousted before, money wasted on paying off the contracts of poor managers appointed by him, money wasted on crap players, etc. Had he managed to keep us afloat in the Premiership, it might have been justifiable. But to have cost the club so much money to have brought us down to this level is totally inexcusable.

And I buy two lots of tickets to each home match and also have expenditure on other ancilliary items too, so still probably spent more than two adult members of your family. But although your family love watching the Saints, you are not prepared to take them to watch one of the most vital games ever played, one that features past legends of the club, just because you object to the players wages. I detect the foul smell of hypocrisy wafting from your direction.

The fact that finds it impossible to penetrate your cranium is not that we would have been in this desperate situation because he was ousted in 2006; we are where we are because he returned with the aid of the Quisling and by dint of crass stupidity with his bizarre experiment, royally f*cked us up good and proper. As for your last sentence, how can McMenemy be silent on the one hand and then highly critical and damaging in his views? Have you just contradicted yourself, Nineteen?

I don't personally interpret Mike Osman's plea as being derogatory to fans, inferring that if they don't attend then they are not real fans. While analysing that slant, why not place equal emphasis on the fact that he is stated to be pleading for the fans to attend? Surely that desperation for the event to be well attended indicates that it needs to be a success because that income is vital to keep us afloat. I'd rather concentrate on the reasons for the message rather than trying to read into it subtle nuances that Osman almost certainly did not intend. As for Nineteen accusing me of offering attendance at this event through feeling guilty at boycotting earlier matches, my conscience is entirely clear. I boycotted three matches on a matter of principle, but nevertheless almost certainly paid more through the turnstiles last season than he did on his early bird ST, so don't try and make out that you're a better fan than me, Nineteen, when you have already made it clear that you will not be contributing to this fundraising match.

Well, I don't care if there are some moaning minnies who take umbrage at the request for fans to turn out for the match. I'll be getting a ticket for me and my son. It will make a change going to a home match and not bothering about whether we win or lose. It is nice to see that there were those players in the club's past who are still prepared to make a personal sacrifice of their time and effort to help save the club that they played for and served with distinction. Credit to them and respect to those who answer that call in our hour of greatest need.