Wes Tender

I'm trying to brighten my mood by wondering where we might have been had he the opportunity to have progressed with us instead of the incompetent Dutch duo acting under the moronic nincompoop Lowe.

No we didn't. Hull thumped us 5-0, but look at what Hull have achieved in the Premiership. There were no other thumpings, all other matches beyond the Plymouth game having been close. And Pearson managed three times as many home wins as Poortvliet in less time than he had. His record is 6 draws, 3 wins, 3 losses. Under him, we also beat Bristol City who were top at the time and also beat Sheffield United which we didn't manage tonight.His record also includes draws against teams like Wolves and West Brom. His goal difference whilst here wasn't bad apart from the Hull result and we were hard to beat. Look at the appalling defence we have with our huge goal difference.

Pearson came here with nil experience of the team and had to hit the ground running, whereas Wotte has been here as long as the hapless Poortvliet and as part of the "seamless" melding of the youngsters, reserves and first team that was heralded as revolutionary, Wotte should know all of the players inside out. If you can't see any difference between the two situations, then more fool you. Anyway, having checked, Pearson's first three games when he was fully in charge were all draws, as he wasn't in charge as such for the Plymouth game.

2 points out of nine for Wotte is simply not acceptable. For all that we have fought back from behind showing spirit and fight in his first three games including until the last minute tonight, it all means nothing at all. What counts is results and points on the board. If we continued this way for the rest of the season we will be nowhere near having any chance of survival. I boycotted my very first game that I could easily have attended tonight. I could have got there without problems, I could easily have afforded to pay for me and my son, but for the very first time since I've been a regular fan, I decided that I really couldn't be bothered if Lowe can't be bothered either. I listened to the radio commentary instead and in retrospect, I'm glad that I did. I have a quiet sense of satisfaction that I deprived Lowe of our £48 and didn't come away from the stadium believing that I had wasted it. I sincerely hope that if we lose against Watford on Saturday, there will be enough of a groundswell of dissent to stage the mass boycott of the next home match that will finally rid us of Lowe and the Quisling. With luck, the new board's first action will be to dispense of the services of Wotte and the other Dutch guy and replace them with somebody who knows what they are doing. If anybody has the gall to say that Wotte deserves more time, I for one will respond that Lowe didn't give Pearson enough time. As we slump ever deeper into the mire, I note with some satisfaction that Pearson's Leicester won convincingly 4-1 against Walsall. I wonder how we'll fare against Walsall next season?

That is indeed the next plan. All those who want Lowe gone will stay away en masse. Bravo, Prof, you're ahead of the game for once.

Our only hope is that Wotte on so far patchy evidence appears to be less clueless than Poortvliet was. At least he has put out teams that have more of a blend between youth and experience and he has learned the lesson that we are more effective playing in a different formation to the one dimensional JP way.

There was a spate of signing in crap players or loans this season, of which the boy Pulis appears to be one of the most worthless. Apart from a few runouts in the reserves, he might as well not be here at all for all the benefit that he has brought. The same could be said of others such as Peckart, Robinson, Gasmi and Smith. Apart from the new lad at CB, the rest seem to have been a total waste. There is very little to suggest that the latest signing will set the World on fire either.

If you believe that what I wrote was part of some conspiracy theory, then you are deluding yourself. I have been in business long enough to know how things are done and even then, one doesn't have to be in business to know that certain tenets hold good and are mostly a matter of common sense. When Woolworths or MFI were deep in the mire, did the canny people make a bee line to those stores to buy as much as they could when the prices were at normal levels? Or do you suggest that the chairmen of all the other clubs are too thick to reason it out for themselves? If you don't believe that this is the reason why they have not made offers for those players that are saleable, perhaps you will put across your reasons for why they have not done so. The other reasons could only be that either those players are deemed not to be good enough to attract serious money, or that the prospective buyers are themselves in financial difficulties, which would bring them back to waiting until the prices dropped in the event of us going under. Which do you think are the reasons? What did I expect for this season? Well, as soon as Lowe and Wilde returned, I had a pretty good idea, especially when they got shot of Pearson and appointed the lightweight non-entities from Holland. I knew enough not to renew my ST. I also predicted on the poll at the time that we would be relegated. We aren't there yet, but then we would have to improve our own performance or hope that others are actually worse than us for us not to go down. So no shock horror from me.

well, it's still snowing heavily here at West End

I hope it's called off as I'm not in the mood to go anyway. I just feel that after the protest on Saturday, the time has come for us to stage a mass boycott as the only way of shifting Lowe. We played well enough on Saturday, but didn't get a home win yet again. I've really reached the stage that I'm pis*ed of with shelling out £48 a game for me and my lad and not seeing a win for it. The club should have given discounted prices for matches after the Nottingham experiment, but show no sign of doing so. I've had enough of paying Premiership prices for watching the players of last season's youth team, although there are some of the better older players being given a game more recently. It's bloody cold out there and if it goes ahead, I'll listen to it on the radio. In the meantime, I'll hope that there will be some developing momentum for a mass boycott at our next home game, but I'm starting early.

You mean that JFP is one up in the posting of boring comments and everybody is bored with him? I agree.

Like most Lowe apologists you fail to think a little further as to why there might not have been these sales. Could it be that the chairmen of other clubs are canny enough to realise that if they wait for us to go into receivership, they can get those players they want for far less than now? It isn't as if there have been many clubs fighting to buy any of our players, as none currently has set the world on fire recently, except perhaps KD.

That explains a lot. So you're a Reading fan, eh? Well, I didn't think that you were much of a Saints fan, being as how you used every opportunity to disparage the views of those who wanted to rid the club of the two most divisive people who have ever had control of the club.

So we didn't manage to ship out our Chairman... Nobody else out there wants him? :smt022

As the Irishman responded when asked for directions:- Ah! To be sure...if I wanted to go there, I wouldn't be starting from here.

Flashman is him to a tee. Probably why Nineteen Canteen/Sundance Beast was attracted to it as a moniker.

As usual, it isn't the fault of the board, it's the fault of the fans. I'd just like to present a concept for your response and see where your position is on it. A company has a product and customers pay a comparatively high price for it. The product is not of merchantable quality. Do the customers have the right to complain and if their complaints are not answered, acknowledged or addressed, should they blindly continue supporting that company and its product, or would it be more sensible to stop buying that product until such times as it has improved? What do you think? Who is the idiot? The customer who complains, or the one who continues to buy regardless of how shoddy the goods become? Of course I realise that there is a difference between a football club and most other sorts of company. I realise that, but Lowe apparently doesn't. He thinks that he can serve up brisket at steak prices and that we will continue to support the club regardless. Your attitude in insinuating that those who protest against Lowe are somehow a bunch of mindless idiots, is similar to the attitude and contempt that Lowe holds for the paying customer. Until we get a chairman who doesn't alienate the paying customers, we will go downhill because of the board, not the fans. The board is the cause, the fans reaction merely the symptom. You treat the symptoms by removing the cause, not the other way around.

http://www.football.virginmedia.com/page/Football/Championship/Home/0,,12555,00.html

Not many are saying that Crouch was brilliant, me included. But a deluded few are still insisting that Lowe is the only person currently who can run the club. That is obviously a nonsense. Was he born to run Saints as his destiny? IMO Crouch would be doing a better job of it with Pearson than Lowe/the Quisling and the Dutch nonentities, for the simple reason that the club would have been more united under them and attendances would have been larger. But there are many other experienced and well thought of candidates to take over the Chairmanship, so anybody who says that Lowe is the only option is obviously going to be slated for their blinkered devotion to the incompetent idiot.

Hypothetical questions are a waste of time except as a form of diversion from reality. But just to humour you, no, I wouldn't be marching to oust Crouch and Pearson. I'd have renewed 2 season tickets too and would have been confident that as a result o higher attendances, more money would have been available to spend on better players. Pearson would have spent that money more wisely than JP, having a far greater knowledge of British players and we probably wouldn't have been in this position. But if hypothetically we still found ourselves in this position, I'd accept that Crouch and Pearson had done everything to the best advantage. The protest is as much against Lowe's past decade as it is about the past few months, but the bizarre way that he has handled our financial situation and the dismissal of Pearson and the appointment of the Dutch jokers was the last straw.

Always a good laugh when somebody posts on here to puff out their chest and tell everbody else how petty-minded and juvenile they are and in doing so, shoots themselves in the foot. The majority of us posters apparently can only see things in one dimension, whereas you support what Wotte says as the facts are there in black and white. Presumably you're twice as dimensional as most of us, being able to see things in the black dimension as well as the white one. You obviously don't accept that there are any shades of grey about the Wotte opinion and he is 100% correct. How one dimensional is your opinion?

A very perceptive post.

No it doesn't. Your one of the most negative sods on here and can only count such as Nineteen Canteen/Sundance, Manji and Johnny Farter as co conspiritors. I don't see your numbers increasing.

Unable to post this morning, but having had a read through on my return home now, I have to have a good belly laugh at the sourness and churlishness contained in the posts by Nineteen Canteen / Sundance and Manji. They're obviously not very good losers, are they? The protest went really well and yet still they won't admit it. Nothing that was predicted by them came to pass, the numbers were much larger, the age range was varied, it wasn't hijacked by the yoof looking for some aggro; in short, it reflected great credit in the supporters. They can't even bleat that it had any effect on the players. In fact, if anything, the atmosphere inside the stadium was probably more supportive than usual, the fans having had a warm-up beforehand. The arch luvvies ask what it achieved? Well, it achieved several things. It brought about a unity of purpose amongst dissenting groups. It will have demonstrated to many that if we act together, we can gain publicity both locally and nationally. Even if Lowe, Wilde and the other charlatans ignore it at the moment, they must accept that now every football fan in the country knows that Southampton fans want to rid the club of its current chairman and board. There must be many businessmen interested in football who will have similarly noted that opportunities might be created in the near future to gain control of the club if either the current board is ousted or the club goes into administration. But if Nineteen Canteen, Manji, or Johnny Fart think that this didn't achieve anything, they should know that this was just the opening ploy, the shot across the bows. Once it becomes clear to the organisers of this march that Lowe and the Quisling will arrogantly turn their backs on their efforts, or better still label the organisers as Neanderthals, they will quickly be open to thinking about the next move to ratchet up the stakes. In my opinion we should have stopped pussy footing around and gone straight for the mass boycott. The march was great and made a point. The boycott will not only make a point, but will hit the board hard in the pocket. The finances are in such a parlous state if they are to be believed, that a few thousand off the attendance figures would have us with such a shortfall agianst our running costs that it would cause alarm not only in the boardroom, but also in the bank manager's office at Barclays. The next home game should not only have a march and demonstration outside the ground; everybody on the march should also not buy a ticket. Perhaps the local radio station could be pursuaded to have a louspeaker feed from their commentary broadcast to outside the ground so that we can listen en-masse and maintain some group spirit, or else CB Fry's original idea of having events supported by ex-players could be investigated. I'm seriously thinking that I won't be bothering with home matches from now on until Lowe is gone. Anybody else?

One of the best matches at St Mary's this season, full of blood and thunder. At least nearly the entire team showed commitment and desire. Lallana was one of the weak spots and perhaps he has instructions not to shine until the transfer window closes so that we won't lose him. There was even one incident when the ball broke loose and he didn't even bother to chase it although it was a 50/50 ball that he could have reached if he could be bothered. His team mates showed him up, always giving maximum effort with various degrees of success. In the midfield, both Wotton and Gillett led by example. In many ways Gillett looks like a poor man's Scholes, but he exemplified the never say die attitude of the team today. Again, Euell coming made a very positive contribution. Why doesn't Wotte start him? Tactically we were good, never letting Swansea settle on the ball. Like us, they are a good passing team, but our constant niggling of their players broke their stride and composure on the ball, forcing them to make errors and misplaced passes. We tackled with bite, earning the jeers of the Swansea fans chanting you dirty Southern bastards. I took it as a compliment, meaning that we had the grit that went with the more balanced team with more experienced players. I had the feeling that had this been JP in charge, we wouldn't have been playing the more successful 4-4-2 formation and that tactically we would have been more naive and one-dimensional. Both of our last two performances have been grittier under Wotte. Molyneux was very naive getting sent off and having been on a yellow was a total idiot for that tackle. Shades of Lancashire there. We can do without it as he put an additional burden on his team mates, who responded magnificently. Their first goal was down to poor defending and not closing down. All of a sudden a huge gap opened up in the middle of the area and a clever shot just inside the post left Davies with no chance. Their second goal was unfortunate as Davies stopped a shot but palmed the ball into the path of a Swansea striker who took an easy poacher's goal. Saganowski took both of his well. The first one was almost comical as he has beaten the goalkeeper and had two defenders who got back to beat. He turned one way than another, then back again. Just when it looked as if he had taken too long, he fired it in almost cheekily. The second was worthy of MLT. He saw the goallie off his line and produced a beautifully weighted chip over him. All in all an entertaining match and I felt quite bouyed by it on the way out of the ground for a change. Unfortunately the feeling persisted afterwards that for all the brave and committed play, we had dropped another two home points. We can't go on like this and survive in this divison. If the players' morale is raised so that they can grind out some wins in the next few matches, then fair enough. But a point a game simply will not do, no matter how committed we are. Thank God for Saganowski. It just goes to highlight the crass stupidity of Lowe for letting Rasiak, John and Saganowski go out on loan. Imbecile.