Wes Tender

A complete demolition of Tom's little diatribe. Well executed, point by point without having to resort to abuse. Take a lesson from this Tom. If you're going to label most of the posters who disagree with you as morons or cretins, then you had better argue your corner more sensibly and with a better grasp of the facts, lest it rebounds on you like this.

Hughie. Could you please not take what John Smith has been saying these past few days as being his gospel opinion? Read back a week or two on his past posts (found easily by clicking on his user name) and you will see that he is on a wind-up, being satirical/sarcastic, however you want to see it. Take it from me, unless he has totally lost his marbles, he is having a laugh. By the way; some good points you raised there.

And here is you bemoaning whether many posters on here have half a brain cell and you come out with claptrap like this? You obviously don't appreciate irony or the number of times that you have contradicted yourself. You would totally change your stance on Lowe and give up your ST just because he might appoint a manager you despise? What a knee-jerk reaction based against the background of saying that a manager should be given a couple of seasons to see what he could do. Where was the time given to Pearce? And just because you can't stand Davies, stating that it would be the single worst decision in the history of the club is laughable when considered against other major happenings such as the reverse takeover, the Stoneham debacle, Wilde's contribution both in bringing about the original board changes and the current ones. Get some perspective instead of indulging in wild hyperbole. This couple of seasons that you want JP to have; is it totally unconditional? Regardless of whether we get relegated? If not, at what stage should the bizarre experiment be ended? The impression that I get from your post is that if Davies were to be appointed and succeeded in getting us promoted, on the face of it you'd have preferred JP to stay, even if he failed.

A comprehensive rewriting of history. Many were very much against the immoral dealings of the board at the time of the reverse takeover and against the arrival of this nobody and his titchy little retirement home business. There was very much disquiet at the way that he dealt with the Stoneham project and through his greed and inability to work with the Councils scuppered the stadium planned for there and had to be bailed out by Southampton City Council. So whether you wish to deny that he has always been the devil incarnate, on the other hand it is entirely fair to say that since the day he arrived here there has been dissent against him to a greater or lesser extent. Granted that it floods and wains depending on our degree of success in the leagues and resurfaces with every one of his appintments, which have been amongst the most frequent of any club in British football, but it has always been there.

I couldn't buy 2 tickets anywhere adjacent to each other in the Northam midday. I had to settle with two together in block 5 the Itchen, one directly in front of the other. It just goes to prove what I have suspected for some time; there is an optimum price that can be charged that will encourage better attendances and that if that price is seriously breached, people will not consider it value and numbers will drop, unless the team is winning regularly. Seemingly the board have not had the imagination to attempt to find what that price is until now. They have reasoned that as we were prepared to pay £26 for a Premiership match, that we would be prepared to pay the same to watch the youngsters, because we are fans, aren't we?

Some say that as much as 65% of communication is non-verbal. As a result, it is often difficult to know when somebody had a smirk on their faces when they conveyed their thoughts on here. That is why these little things were invented :cool: I ought to say exactly the same things about the post from John Smith too, because anybody who has read his posts in the past few months would know that he had given up attending all home matches as a matter of principle whilst Lowe remains in charge. Therefore, I think that I am right in thinking that his post was laden with sarcasm, although some have taken it as face value as being supportive of Lowe, which I'm sure would horrify him.

The three bottom teams are all just 4 points below us. If they all win their next match, we'll have three teams just one point behind us. For anybody with any sense, it is not working at all, just that it hasn't placed us in the drop zone by the skin of our teeth. Personally I wouldn't want to be in this position with two games to go at the end of the season.

If you believe that the fan base is united, then you are deluding yourself.

What is the damning indictment of Poortvliet is that half of the fans posting on here do not think that he is doing a decent job. As for Lowe, sufficient that he is badly devisive of the fan base is reason enough, although why he is able to impose his bizarre policies on us with just 6% of the shares is a travesty. Of course, he can only manage that with the support of those others discredited by their immoral dealings at the time of the reverse takeover and the other despised major shareholder who did not have the moral fibre to stick to his principles when he last ousted Lowe. It isn't just Lowe that many want gone; it is all of them.

The manager before Poortvliet was a viable alternative before Lowe dismissed him. And are you talking twice as much as the Dutch three, or just Poortvliet? Whether an alternative was good enough to get us out of the current mess is debateable. It is not a fact that somebody else costing an amount within our means could not do better than Poortvliet. That is pure conjecture. The part about Lowe not doing a U turn isn't part of the argument that there is no viable alternative. That is part of a separate argument as to why it might not happen even if there are available alternatives.

Right on the money. As you say, the fan campaign is a viable option as a weapon to remove them, but seemingly doesn't appear to have gained much momentum, although it could certainly be the case that instead of a mass organised protest, individuals have taken it upon themselves to stage their own stay away protest until the charlatans are gone. It's more the death of a thousand cuts, rather than a stroke to the jugular. It might be that the people who would have organised such a mass protest are not united themselves, or feel that they have been ostracised too many times as rent a mob and that therefore their association with such action could actually be detrimental to the cause, no doubt labelled by the board as the Neanderthal element. I think that we are currently in a wait and see situation. Although there is apparently this stay away element building, I believe that there might be a boiling point that we are yet to reach that will act as a catalyst to the mass campaign. I can only speculate what that might be. Relegation, or even the time that it becomes almost a certainty might be it, especially if we continue with our current run of poor results and no action is taken to replace Poortvliet. The sale of key players might act as another catalyst too, unless they are replaced with decent players. If our league position improves, the pressure for change diminishes, but it grows weekly if the current trend continues.

Just as there is no viable alternative to Lowe, and no viable alternative to Gordon Brown either? There is always a viable alternative. Lowe probably has'nt even begun looking at the lower reaches of the Spanish league, the German league, the French or Italian leagues yet. There must be some managers there who have played in the World Cup sometime in their lives who now manage a third/fourth division team in their leagues and who would jump at the chance of playing for even a failing 2nd division English club. Failing that, there are always the Maltese league managers. I bet most of those are really cheap

Pot and kettle.

I can't speak on behalf of the others you have mentioned, but you accuse us of foul-mouthed abuse. I challenge you to quote anything I have ever written on here that amounts to foul-mouthed abuse. Put up or shut up. Do you not find it at all ironic that having accused us of it, you do so yourself by calling us morons and idiots? And as for your opinion that calling somebody a PR plant is a disgrace, then presumably you will also call the employment of PR plants by the current chairman a disgrace too, in the interests of even-handedness. Had he not done that, then there would not be the suspicion that he is doing it again. If the level of debate is so low on this forum, what are you as a contributor doing to improve it, apart from hurling petulant insults at others whose opinions you don't share? As others have said and I paraphrase, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Coach of the Year? That's something that Colliseum have more chance of winning than Harry Redcrapp

Of all the posters who have suddenly surfaced on here recently out of the blue, you're the one that I most credit with being the PR plant. No doubt you'll respond by saying that you have been a Saints fan since Ted Bates played, to justify yourself and how you used to post as somebody else on the other forums. Your argument falls flat on its face where you say that the kids are improving with every game. Pray tell us when that improvement will produce a home win then. And whilst you're about it, when do you predict that we will produce 90 minutes of decent football instead of one half, whether that be the first or the second half?

A conveyor belt of developing youth is a good idea for a club on restricted income. What is not a good idea is bunging them all in at the deep end before they are ready, to sink or swim. That way, not only can the loss of confidence be crucial to their future, but there is not enough time to develop their replacements when they are sold on.

He used to do OK when he had some sort of whiphand. Now that everybody in football knows that we are paupers desperate to sell players to keep afloat, our bargaining power is zilch. Perhaps Stoke will be able to offload some other players to us that are totally surplus to their requirements as part of the deal. Pulis doesn't have any other sons, does he?

I replied to you in the same manner that you posted to me. It doesn't give me pleasure adopting that line, but then again it was an arrogance for you to put yourself up as a qualified arbiter of how clever somebody else may or not be, so please consider that next time. If you had bothered to log on more frequently and therefore had more of a feel to the situation on here as a result, an alternative conclusion might be that there is just a sense of total frustration with most. Frustration that the situation that exists cannot be altered much, so people feel helpless. Everything has been pretty much debated to death and no changes have resulted. Until January, when there will be another round of hand wringing if we sell off our best players (again) there isn't much to say, apart from having to argue the toss with those who somehow believe that everything is just fine and who try to rewrite recent history. No doubt we are also responsible for the declining numbers at the home games too, unless you would care to share your wisdom with us as to what you think the true reason is for that.

And nobody has yet mentioned the stadium debt when making comparisons with the 1950s. We didn't have any then. Plus players' wages have risen substantially since then too in real terms.

....i'd still have twice the brains you have.

.........goes to Buctootim. He was the one making the comparisons. Where's the contradiction? If JP's record achieved in the same number of games that Pearson had, was applied to the end of last season, then we would have been relegated. It is those who say that Pearson kept us up by the skin of our teeth that are disingenuous because he had inherited his position in the league as a result of what Burley, Dodd and Gorman had left him. If you like, conversely, if Pearson's results were substituted for JP's at the start of this season, we would still have been ahead of where we are now, 11th place if I recall what I had worked out on another thread. I don't think that anybody would have been calling for JP's head under those circumstances.

We're on an economy drive at the moment, so biscuits and coffee only for the top table.

How about argueing the merits of Pearson against Poorvliet on a level playing field? How can you even begin to make comparisons when the situation Pearson faced was an inherited one? If he had started the season having had a pre-season to cast an eye over the players, then fair enough. But no way can he be blamed for just narrowly avoiding relegation when he started from the position left him by Dudd and Gormless. That would be like saying that the marathon runner almost finished last having started his race just a few places ahead of the stragglers at the back of the field. If any comparison is to be made between the manager at the end of a season and the new one at the beginning of the next, it has to be done on the basis of an equal number of games. And on that basis, Pearson's record is much superior. On that basis, if JP had the points that he achieved for us this season, we would have been relegated.

At least you're consistent in wanting stability, but that is what we could have had with giving Pearson a chance. But the massive upheaval was introduced by Lowe, who not only changed the manager for somebody untried in this country, let alone at this level, but who also changed most of the team as well as the style of play too. So much for stability. But because the bizarre experiment was purely down to Lowe and nobody else, if he were an honourable man, he would fall on his sword if it fails, as much as he could take the plaudits if it succeeds. Just don't be a bloody hypocrite, Lowe, and tell us that Poortvliet deserves more time, when you have already given him more time than most other managers during your decade in charge. And if somebody did replace Lowe and got rid of Poortvliet, then Lowe couldn't bleat about it, as he had not the slightest compunction in replacing Pearson, on the face of it purely out of spite because Crouch had appointed him. If anybody has any evidence to the contrary, let them provide it now, of forever hold their peace.