Wes Tender

Usual crap from our totally inept manager and his inept players. During the first half, our two wide players had apparently only got behind the Plymouth backs once and we had only one shot on goal. During the 90 minutes their goallie hardly had anything to do. What is the point of having wide players in the team if they can't be arsed to take on the backs and get behind them to put shots into the box from deep? As usual, we only started to put any pressure at all on Plymouth when we were already two goals behind. And just to prove how brilliant Notts Forest are, having beaten us convincingly, they were tonked 4-2 by the bottom team Doncaster, which will put them just a point behind us too as the teams above us start to open up a bit of a gap. Time to start the protests in earnest at St Mary's with the Reading match. We've had over half a season now and if this half was replicated we are looking dead certs for the drop. Let's do something about it right now before it's too late. Time for Lowe to go, time for Jan to go.

Thanks CB. IMO an excellent post with many useful ideas as to how this could be achieved. I think that this is the way ahead. As you say, I think that one event well supported would have them gone very quickly, especially if they knew that we were serious of repeating the exercise the following home match. I love the idea of watching the match from local pubs. There would be a real sense of unity having dozens of fans in a pub watching the TV and seeing the banks of empty seats and hearing the comments from the match reporters. There would be a real sense of unity, better than people just staying at home and watching the match.

Well, I think that the time has come. We've had him forced back on us by the Quisling Wilde's alliance with Lowe and his cronies and there is nothing that can be done by way of an EGM to rid us of him through the shareholdings unless Wilde changes horses yet again. For me, the manner in which Lowe thrust aside any dissent at the AGM to the way that he has been doing things since his return was the last straw. He was his usual arrogant self and had not one ounce of humility in his body. His mad experiment with Poortvliet has not worked, it is plain that JP is totally out of his depth and on the face of it Lowe will not dismiss him, as it will mean having to admit that he was wrong in appointing him. So we can sit tight as we head inexorably towards the third division, or we can do something about it. If we each take our own action in isolation, we will not achieve much, or at least not very quickly. If we act together, we are the most potent of weapons, as the dire financial position we are in means that the income generated by us paying for tickets is now the single most important source of revenue the club has. They need a certain number of bums on seats at each home match, or the overdraught increases. A mass boycott is IMO the surest way to bring the quickest results. Even if Lowe obstinately refuses to budge, the threat of continued action would force him to resign sooner or later. But the possibility exists that Wilde or Lowe's cronies would tell him to go and it wouldn't be long before the bank threatened to pull the plug either. The purpose of this thread is to examine all the ideas for protests on one thread and to attempt to gauge the support for such actions and to fix a date when they would take place. If agreed, then it will require volunteers to help organise and the press would have to be notified for maximum publicity and to notify all of the fan base that don't come on here. If you posted an idea or suggestion on another thread, could you please repost it here? Your thoughts....

You don't think that Lowe would allow such a thing to be smuggled into the stadium and unfurled in front of the World's cameras, do you? The brown shirts will jump on the thing, arrest the protestors and send them to the gulag. Otherwise, great idea. How about "We've got the worst Chairman in the game"?

I was discussing this sort of action with several at the AGM. These were people who had vowed never to come to a home match whilst Lowe remained as chairman. An idea similar to yours here. How would it be that a match was selected, all of the stayaways paid just £24 or whatever to buy a ticket. Consider it an investment in the downfall of Lowe. They all attend making a huge gate, much larger than usual. Come the kick off whistle, they all turn around and file out of the stadium, alongside ST holders. It would be made plain that unless Lowe resigns, the exercise would be repeated with just a stay away, no tickets bought. Provided that the strategy was well supported, either Lowe would be forced to go, or his co directors or Wilde would tell him his time was up, or the bank would pull the plug on him. The point would be proven that such a number of fans would be prepared to return on Lowe's departure. Perhaps we should have a separate thread and place all the suggestions together, see what support any of them gain.

HaHa! Nice one. What's that in his hand? Is it a tissue of lies?

I came away with exactly the same feelings, as you probably gathered from my summary. I felt a mix of emotions concurrently, angry, helpless, indignant, patronised. As is often the case when debating as to who did what to whom within our club, one gets little snippets from time to time that put matters into a different perspective. For all that Crouch's indignation could make him look like a impetuous idiot unable to contain his emotions, the impression given was also that he was not about to have history rewritten and blame heaped onto his shoulders for events that he was not responsible for. Who amongst us would tolerate that? The same could be said for Mary Corbett. Ultimately, it comes down to who you believe and knowing how passionate Mary and Leon are for the club and having had dealings also with Lowe, I am inclined to believe their word over his. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Take the matter of Pearson's wages which Lowe said at the meeting were far above what we could afford. Mary said if I heard correctly that he was on about £170,000, which I do not think was excessive for him. She said that even having left the club, she has spoken to him since and he still has affection for us and was sad that events meant that he could not continue here. So much for Lowe's assertion that he had been invited to put his hat in the ring and had declined. I find it difficult to believe Lowe's insinuation that the wages of Poortvliet, Wotte and that other Dutch coach would have been less than Pearson's wage and even if they were, so what? Conclusion? Lowe dismissed Pearson out of spite to Crouch and couldn't wait to attempt the plan he coveted earlier to dabble with going with the youngsters, playing the 4-3-3 style of football that Lowe claims they had been brought up on in the academy and which his lower division Dutch manager was a proponent of. It is sad that the club has had to suffer the petty bickerings and clashing egos of those running it. The fans have mostly made up their minds as to the main culprits and reached the same conclusion that the shareholders have. We cannot make progress in the face of such massive divisions and that the main culprits are Lowe and Wilde.

I see from a cursory glance at a couple of pages that some of the events of the meeting have already been covered. All in all, it was the most volatile AGM I have ever attended. Most Chairmen of a PLC faced with such hostility at their AGM would have the decency to resign, but in Lowe we are not talking about an individual who is guided by a code of decency or indeed honour. We are talking about a Chairman who somehow feels it appropriate to read out an anonymous letter (for Christ's sake!) that sang his praises and massaged his already giant ego. What was the relevance? Was he perhaps using it as a guage of the meeting's demeanour? Well, if he was, then he got his answer very early on, as many saw what a crass little exercise it was. When the meeting was thrown open to the floor following his attempts to pursuade us that his return was part of his mission involving great personal sacrifice purely because of his deep love for the club :smt078 and his desire to right the financial mess that the two years of his absence had inflicted on the club, we got down to the nitty gritty. Thankfully, one of the early questions was asked by Duncan Holley, who set the tone admirably and let Lowe know that he was in for a rough passage when it was cheered by most. Lowe had asserted that the Academy was set up by him shortly after he had arrived and Duncan had shot him down in flames over that and other matters. One of the first questions (more a statement really) had been made by a guy who had contributed a similar statement at last year's AGM too. He proceeded to give Lowe a fulsome verbal arse-licking, to the derision from most. I concluded that we had thus identified the writer of the anonymous letter, which was written in an uncannily similar vein. More of this guy later. Leon Crouch had also made a long and damning speech attempting to correct some statements from Lowe which had heaped the blame on Crouch's shoulders. Crouch had poured doubt on whether he was the culprit on grounds that he either wasn't on the board at that time, or that some decisions had been forced on him by the Executive directors or the Financial Director David Jones acting with them. I had listened to Jones' account of how he had acted on Lowe's board, been asked to carry on for the sake of unity with Wilde's board. He came across as having acted reasonably and I would have voted for him to remain on the board until both Crouch and Mary Corbett had been very critical on his inability to get the board to rein in costs and accusations that he had leaked inside information about board decisions to Lowe and his former bedmates. There was a very good contribution from a rather dapper and eloquent chap who quoted the wisdom of a former boss of his, John Lewis of the Department store and Waitrose fame, he having been a manager in that group. Undoubtedly it will have fallen on deaf ears, (even though he repeated it for effect), as did all the calls for lowe to resign, as there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. I think if memory serves, the question made by this guy had been directed at Lowe, but probably sensing that it was a difficult one to answer, Lowe got Cowen to field it. Cowen duly obliged with in his usual boring monotonous voice. Crouch had become increasingly incensed at some of the answers that Lowe had given and several times had heckled him or stood to be offered a chance to respond. Lowe had asked him to sit down, telling him that he had already had a chance to speak and that others should be given a turn. Many had heckled Lowe along lines that as a major shareholder Crouch should be allowed to speak, that he had double the shareholding of Lowe. In exasperation, Crouch had stormed to the front of the room, stood defiantly in front of the top table and asked any to stand up if they wanted Lowe to resign, whereupon two thirds of the shareholders stood and cheered his belligerance. Then Lawrie MacMenemy stood and also laid into Lowe in his stentorious tones, dismantling one by one of Lowe's claims about the academy, the dismissal of Pearson, the appointment of Poortvliet amongst other subjects. He concluded that Poortvliet was totally out of his depth here and that we would be relegated if he pursued the same policies. At the end of the question and answer session at 12, Lawrie's wife asked Lowe why the portrait of her husband holding the FA Cup had been replaced by that painting of the Steam train gifted us by Doncaster Rovers. Lowe's response that there was simply no room for it brought gasps of incredulous amazement from the room. To my mind, just that simple little cameo of a situation whereby probably the most important event in the club's history could be consigned to a lower importance when it came to allocating wall space at the stadium encapsulates the ignorance and arrogance of Lowe. At the end of that session and before the dull accounts section, Crouch called on all those who thought that there was no point in hearing any more to leave, whereupon half of the audience rose to their feet and headed for the door. Many then congregated in the ante-room to discuss the events of the meeting and would probably have caused a disturbance to the meeting inside by their loud talking. At that stage, the Lowe Luvvie of whom I spoke earlier emerged and several thought it was a good time to tackle him as to why he was pretty well the only voice supportive of Lowe during the hour long meeting. Ted Sainty, who had attended and asked his own question during the meeting, was interested to hear what his reasons were. Ted had stated that he had supported the Saints for 68 years and was horrified that Lowe had brought us down so low. This guy said that he had also supported the Saints for many years. Not as long as Ted, several of us chimed in. How do you know? asked the guy! Doh! the guy was probably in his 50's This must be an great example of the Tim Nice But Dim type that supports Lowe. Discussions continued between many of us as to how we can get rid of Lowe and the other charlatans in the face of their share majority. That is a matter for debate in another thread.

Ah. The fans' fault. Everything started going downhill from the first moment that I and people like me stepped inside The Dell to watch my local team. Had I known at the time that I would have been culpable for the arrival of all these charlatans to run the club, perhaps it would have been better had I not bothered.

Certainly. I have some work to catch up on this afternoon, but will be happy to give chapter and verse later. Dull is one thing that this AGM wasn't. And as a bonus, there should be some decent footage on the telly afterwards as there were reporters and cameras outside waiting to catch comments from those who attended.

Ignoring the personalities involved in this debate, the discussion revolves around one concept; whether it is right to boo the players or not. If one has made an effort to attend and paid out money in exchange for entertainment, one has a perfect right to expect that the players do their utmost to earn their wages, which even at the lower end of the scale would dwarf the earnings of most at the game. Furthermore, they are supposed to be professionals. Is it therefore OK for the manager to bend their ears, but we who have paid to watch them, who effectively by our attendance pay their wages should have no say? Kelvin was cited as an example of a player who got lots of flack, but because he is a true professional it made him determined to prove the doubters wrong. Has McGoldrick got the balls to take on board the criticism and prove his detractors wrong? I don't see much effort in that direction yet.

I'll be happy to post back here the answers to those questions with Jan

Isn't he? If he had any sense at all, he would have stuck with Pearson. The advantage there was that if things went pear-shaped, he could blame Crouch for appointing him, whereas if they went well, he could bask in the reflected glory. In short, he was on a win/win situation. Lowe gambled everything on this mad experiment working and getting rid of Crouch's man was a bonus. Unfortunately it hasn't worked, so all the blame sits firmly on his shoulders and IMO his reputation for sensible dealings has gone right out of the window at the same time. We are a joke and he is the chief clown.

Which part of Patred's post was vitriolic? IMO it wasn't particularly even a rant. It seemed an entirely sensible and well voiced opinion which you obviously do not agree with because as you say there was no solution mentioned, but even as it stands there was no necessity for Patred to guess at a way out. Um has mentioned one path and undoubtedly there are others. What is clear to anybody who has exerience in business is that there is very rarely only one option available. Lowe is not the only option as Chairman, JP is not the only option as manager, playing the youngsters is not the only option either, neither is playing this particular style. There are four lots of variables which could have produced different results for a start. As things stand, the slow lingering death is the most likely result of the current policies and management, as less people will attend unless results turn around, until our revenue is no longer adequate to keep us afloat.

I know Ted and his family. I expect that they will be there and if so I will sit with them and we can all cause a stir together.

I know from having attended numerous AGMs that the usual score is that they are dry, dull affairs, especially as the Chairman does his best to disallow too much dissent. Occasionally people like Perry Macmillan and Richard Chorley make a contribution and there are a few murmurs either in agreement or the sort that infer "oh no, not those trouble makers again". I expect that Lowe and the board have deliberately called this AGM at a time and date that encourages a low turnout. Wouldn't it be a great idea if there was a stonking great turnout of all those small shareholders who wanted the current board gone and loads of dissent and angry responses to the board trying to whitewash their way through it? Wouldn't it be fantastic to see Lowe squirm his way out of it, with numerous shareholders not accepting his attempts to move on to discussing other things. Here is a golden opportunity to show that even at a meeting of shareholders he does not have the support of many, other than the few individuals that brought him to the club, or the Quisling who had formerly ousted him. If it is reported that there was widespread condemnation of Lowe's chairmanship at the AGM, there could be sufficient pressure for him to be forced to stand down, whether that pressure comes from the other board members, the bank or whoever else. Lowe can dismiss dissent from the fans as being the rants of the Neaderthals, but widespread dissent from shareholders would be quite a different matter to his mind.

Well, if they do, I will just have to break the silence....

The AGM is on Tuesday and the title should be changed. I will be attending and hold out some hope that somebody will attempt to condemn Lowe and Wilde's stupid experiment which has had plenty of time to prove its futility.

So come on Jan...name the two who were up front, because it wasn't obvious to me who they were.

Oh. And yet another plus today....the Skates lost. See, it wasn't all bad.

Having calmed down a bit, I must state that there was one bright spot today that made the expenditure of £30 almost worthwhile. That Forest goal scored by lobbing Kelvin was absolutely sublime. A moment of genius worthy of Beckham and quite possibly the first division goal of the season. I was privileged to be there to witness it. The rest of the match was pure sh*t and better forgotten, although I will quite happily point to this game if any of the happy clappy brigade think that our youngsters are better for their attitude and commitment than last season's players. Forest proved with a younger team than ours that youngsters don't have to be a push over if they have commitment and skill. Unfortunately most of ours don't. Another bonus of today is that any scouts watching might have deduced that the better players amongst our youngsters aren't really up to the standard that they require, so those like me worried that we might lose them can console ourselves that we might get to keep them after all.

If such a scenario came to pass, I for one will never pay one single penny into the club again if Lowe tries to resurrect the club from administration. It would be up to people of like mind to convince the administrators that there would be sufficient opposition to Lowe that allowing him to continue would not be a viable option.

Today's match performance was totally unacceptable and had it cost me £48 instead of £30 for me and my son, I would have been even more angry than I am. As it was, I had to sit in the Itchen for the first time as I couldn't get tickets together in the Northam. If there is a stand called the Chapel, then we should rename the Itchen the Morgue. We tried to get some chants going in support of the small band of true supporters in the top corner and got the sort of looks one gets for farting loudly in front of your maiden aunt. As for the match, some things have become patently obvious. Poortvliet is way out of his depth and should go, along with his fellow countrymen. McGoldrick is just not up to being the front man and should be placed in the reserves for as many matches as it takes for him to improve his ability, his confidence and his attitude. We should throw out the Dutch total football and revert back to a system that is more appropriate to the game played in this country and at this level. Lowe should resign as chairman and if he won't, his boardroom colleagues should tell him that his time is up. Whilst he remains, there will never be the unity required to fight ourselves out of thi mess. I will be at the AGM on Tuesday and for once, instead of the usual dull affair that it is, I sincerely hope that Lowe is strongly taken to account for dismissing a young and able English manager and replacing him with somebody with no experience of football in this country and at this level.

Whether the decision on who was brought in was made by JP or Lowe or somebody else, all it does is highlight further that JP is inexperienced in this division and in English football. On that basis, he might not be to blame, but then neither should he have been appointed manager if he wasn't capable of making those choices and selections himself.

The highlighted bit is the contentious point. As IMO you correctly surmise, most of the kids could have done with another year or two in the reserves, or loaned out for experience. One of the key players you mentioned (Euell) is an old experienced hand as is Scacel and even when available they weren't played until recently. However we have managed to afford Wotton and Perry quite cheaply, although they themselves have not been ever present either, so often the team was too full of raw kids and lacked experience and balance. When you consider the loans brought in and the number of those who have either been a flop or who have only just recovered from injury, or indeed have not even played for us yet, it is plain that JPs main failing has been on the basis of inexperience of what was required to be effective in this division. Sacking Poortvliet might well make sense depending on who replaced him.