Wes Tender

I don't think that it is too far fetched to say that without Richard Wright in goal, we would be playing our football in League 1 now.

Um Pahars has given good reasons why it wasn't so easy for the major shareholders to remove the executive directors. Also, is Lowe classed as a major shareholder with his paltry 6% or so? No. He is only a force if his shares are allied to those of his cohorts. And even then that grouping would need the alliance of another major shareholder to rid the club of the execs. As you consider it all to be so basic, then likewise you must accept that either it was difficult to remove the execs because of those reasons that Um Pahars has given, or else the major shareholders did not think that their unhappiness with the execs was at the level that they thought that they needed to be removed. Which was it in your opinion?

Says the guy who has made soporific posts into an artform.... And the biggest hypocrite too, as he somehow thinks that criticism of Lowe is detrimental to the club, but was the most vociferous critic of the previous chairman.

I'll be there as my psychiatrist hasn't managed to cure my masochistic tendencies yet. I was surprised when buying my ticket this morning that I was able to get a seat for exactly where I wanted it in the Northam; a few feet away from my last season's ST seat.

I can't argue with anything you say in your summary, Steve. What a sad state of affairs it all was, a bit like a rudderless ship heading straight for the rocks whilst the crew argued amongst themselves as to who should be at the wheel.

Fair enough SSA. I was just wishing to establish how far you were prepared to tolerate the situation. I'm pretty sure that just as there's an element out there who would rather see the club go into administration to get rid of Lowe, there's also an element who have stated that they would prefer to watch our spirited youngsters rather than the journeymen, even if it meant that we would be in League 1. For myself, I want to watch the team that has the most chance of achieving promotion and as that suggests that they will be winning enough matches to get there, I'm not too worried how they play along the way. Winning is more exciting than losing, winning games gains crowds and increases morale. OK to lose entertainingly on the TV, but lose when the match is not on the TV and those who stayed away just look at the scoreline and really are not swayed by whether the lads played brilliant attacking football but lost to a bad refereeing decision, a sending off or any other circumstance; all they see is a losing run and crowds won't increase until we reverse that run.

I agree with the general thrust of your argument, but it needs to be assessed within the context that an EGM had been called to oust Lowe's board and that Hone, Dulieu and Hoos were appointees of the largest individual shareholder, Wilde. Whereas I agree that if a majority shareholding didn't like the direction that the Executive Directors were taking, they could have been told to change course, the majority shareholding was evidently in the hands of Wilde, Crouch and Corbett. Lowe held only a small shareholding percentage, but had the proxy of several others. So substantially it would have taken Wilde or Crouch allied to the Lowe group to have formed a majority opinion that might have swayed the Executive directors. Throughout this first couple of years, one is hard pressed to understand Wilde's position when he had stated in his manifesto that the non-executive directors should be in the majority over the execs and after that he had been deposed by the execs. I don't think that very much has been clearly established to explain satisfactorily the events that took place during the term that Hone and Co were in charge of running the club.

Spot on. It is a very particular type of individual who seeks to become Chairman of a football club and for most their ego is the driving force. For the super rich, it is just a toy that gives them credence in super rich society circles. It is the equivalent of the luxury yacht, a plaything. For those like Lowe who gain control without spending much of their own cash, it is more likely to be purely an ego thing. It is a chance to raise his profile above all those contempories of his who are his equals in the finance industry but who have not had the chance to be in on a sweet deal such as the reverse takeover in order to raise their profiles into the national public awareness. Under normal circumstances somebody as poor as Lowe would get nowhere near the Chairmanship of a Premier division club, but his fortune has been our misfortune.

I've got an even better idea. Why don't we rent the vacant space out to corner shops?

Neither can I believe that you implore us to invoke the Dunkerque spirit as a way forward. Having done so, would you say that it constituted a cogent, well constructed statement, or is it way over the top and lacking perpective? It is all very well expressing a preference towards watching a bunch of youngsters playing with heart and desire over a team of disinterested and overpaid journeymen just turning up and going through the motions. The trouble I have with this is that the so-called overpaid journeymen have commanded their pay on the basis that they supposedly have some prowess and ability that establishes their worth. If they do not perform to their ability, then presumably the manager is at fault for not motivating them sufficiently. But the point that I wished to make is that it was possible as a ST holder to watch most of the players in the current first team for free whilst they were in the reserves or the academy and now we are expected to pay over £20 to watch them. And the future seems to be that any of the youngsters who are really outstanding will be sold and replaced with the next crop of youngsters coming up. If some prefer to watch the exciting and committed play that the youngsters provide, perhaps they can avail themselves of the opportunity of watching the next crop for free in the reserves or academy now. And why are there only two options, thrilling committed youngsters or overpaid and disinterested journeymen? Can't we have a blend of talented youngsters playing alongside experienced and committed older players? The difference with the third option is that we might survive the drop to League one with a balanced team, but will likely fail with the first two options. Would you rather we played exciting football and dropped down a division? Personally I'd rather we played like the boring old Arsenal of old, winning most games 1-0 and ending up top of the league rather than exciting but heroic failure. And I'm also afraid that despite calls for us fans to get behind the team, much as I love the Saints, I cannot get too excited about the prospect of it indirectly helping Lowe and Wilde out of the sh*t. That is where the Dunkerque analogy falls down badly; one thing putting one's life on the line for your Country, quite another putting oneself out to help charlatans like the two of them.

I have discovered by trial and error that the best technique for piling on the score quickly and effectively, is to punch him from below the chin, using short upward strokes. Hitting him from the side is more wasteful, albeit more satisfying, as the movement of his face side to side is greater than it is up and down.

Hone, Dulieu and Hoos were appointed by Wilde. Hone could argue with justification that with SISU he had managed to come closer to gaining investment than Lowe had managed to in a decade. I think that it is difficult to make Hone and his board a scapegoat in all this. He had a difficult job when there was a lot of antagonism caused by power struggles between the execs and the non-execs. I wouldn't say that promises made by Wilde in his little manifesto were necessarily false; merely that he was unable to deliver on them, despite his good intentions.

Don't worry; we'll still have McGoldrick and there is a player in the youth team who is being kept under wraps at the moment and who will step up to replace Lallana . When he dons the first team kit, he'll amaze everybody with his free scoring ability and everybody will wonder what the fuss was about Lallana. It's all part of Lowe's long term strategy, so I have every faith in it. Not.

Seems to me that UPs summing up was perfectly reasonable and you know that somebody has lost the argument when they have to adopt a sneering tone rather than debating the points made and countering them. Whereas I am not a Crouch fan, it is plain to me that when it comes to apportioning blame for our current parlous state, Crouch is responsible for nothing near the culpability that attaches to Lowe and Wilde.

Also going on general impressions along the lines of which defensive combinations worked well for us, I recall that there were managers who came in to take charge of a team where the defence leaked goals and seemingly almost instantly that defence was transformed into one of the meanest defences in that division. The greatest example I can think of was George Graham taking over at Leeds. What is the ingredient that ensures these improvements? Is it just that the players lacked discipline, or knowledge, technique or ability? That certain things were worked on until they became second nature? That there was a lack of concentration or motivation until those shortcomings were addressed? Why wasn't there an older head at the centre of defence to steady the youngsters? Why weren't rival strikers man-marked? Why do we concede so many goals to set pieces? Why did we not have cover for the far post where there were acres of space to be exploited? Surely this stuff is elementary and I would expect a coach who has played as a top defender at World Cup final level to be able to put these things right.

During the past couple of years, there were occasions when we were firing in the goals for fun, having the highest number of on target strikes in the division, but letting in goals by the bucketful at the other end. Burley made some adjustments which should have been designed to tighten up at the back, but for some reason although we did achieve that, we stopped firing on all cylinders up front. My recollection is that although Bennett had a nightmare start, when he teamed up with Davies, the defence was the best it had been since Killer and Claus were a fixture. Unfortunately Bennett then moved on from his loan spell and Davies was out injured and what replaced them was nowhere as good. The next CB teaming that showed some real promise and made us pretty tight at the back was the Lucketti/Perry one, especially when there was Vignal at LB and Wright at RB. The trouble we will have is that Killer might not be able to continue, or if he does he may be sporadic. The same goes for Perry. The youngsters need a decent run in an established partnership with an older head to gain experience, but at the moment it seems hard to envisage which partnership might establish itself from several games. If there is constant change at the back, it will lead to disruption. I agree that it would have been good to still have Vignal available at LB and indeed Scacel could also do a decent job if his mental attitude was positive and receptive. And I never thought that I'd say it, but I'd rather have Jermain Wright at RB than young James.

I think that we might be better off if we heed the lessons of this last match and attempt to put out a team with a better balance between youth and experience. If we do not have cover amongst our existing squad with experience, then experienced defenders will be the number one priority with loans. If we do not learn from this major coaching lapse and put in other youngsters to replace those youngsters injured or suspended, it won't be a rollercoaster, as that infers that there are ups as well as downs.

So you don't disagree that there needs to be a better balance between the youngsters and the older players; you are merely asking for candidates to be named. In the same way that we are still attempting to offload a couple of our players, there are undoubtedly other clubs who have players surplus to their requirements too.

....and what a huge mistake it was.

Rupert's less than 1 million behind Neil Lennon. Surely after every loss, there's enough incentive to get him to number one....

Why didn't Mittal buy Newcastle or Villa? Could it be that they are already owned by quite wealthy individuals? QPR was a cheap club to buy, as are we. People of the wealth of Mittal only buy a club as a rich man's toy and it might be that by buying a London club he can make a statement that his penis is bigger than Abramovich's if he manages to get QPR above Chelski in the Premiership or Europe. But how much more fun would it be for a billionaire to buy a team of no hopers like us and get us to the top of the table? How much more media coverage would it bring him if he managed that? And make no mistake about it, Worldwide recognition and media coverage is what these people are in it for and crave. The development potential of having a London club probably means nothing to people like Mitall. Most of the footy fans around the World and in Mitall's Indian homeland are probably no more aware of QPR on their personal radar than they are about Saints.

It was a naive tackle, typical of a young player in his debut game trying to impress everybody with his commitment. The fact that his naivety left his team mates a man short and quite possibly changed the course of the game means that hopefully he has learned a very valuable lesson and won't be in a hurry to do it again. But it was also JPs fault for introducing a youngster as a CB without an older, wiser and more experienced head alongside him. That was also naive and JP should have known better as a World Cup finalist defender himself.

We were naive in the extreme. This naivety comes from having a manager inexperienced in English football at any level, who should have realised that it was suicidal against a team like QPR to have only one player in the back 4 with any real experience and that itself not really in defence, as I still maintain that Surman is a midfielder playing out of position. There ought to have been at least one of the CBs with an older, wiser head on his shoulders. If Dubai Phil is correct and Perry needed to be rested, then the only remaining available player who fits the bill is Wotton. But as I pointed out on another thread which maintained that we had adequate defensive cover, utilising Wotton as a CB deprived us of his steel and experience in midfield. Thank God that we had one part of that steely spine in place; Davies was truly magnificent in goal and without him we could have conceded 8. Could it be that there has been so much hype about Southampton's exciting youngsters and the total football, that JP actually believes that what we have is good enough without playing the older players like Perry and John? If so, I'm afraid that as exciting as the play is and the heart that the youngsters show, it will only lead ultimately to relegation. I don't blame the youngsters at all. Neither can JP's naivety be blamed. The total blame rests firmly on the shoulders of Rupert Lowe and his sidekick, the Quisling Wilde. What the televising of the match made abundantly clear is that there are teams like QPR in the same division as us who have managed to attract serious inward investment from not only high profile names like Briattore and Ecclestone, but then they compound their good fortune by getting somebody on board in Mittal who is richer than Abramovic. And who do we have in charge of us? A couple of small town businessmen called Lowe and Wilde who by comparison to some of the wealthy individuals in British football are paupers. With every match, it becomes increasingly clearer that other teams have already done their homework on us and put in place a strategy to exploit our weaknesses and that we do not have the personnel, let alone the tactical ability to change the style of play beyond what we have shown in every match so far this season. Even with teams lacking the quality that we have in some of our youngsters, those teams who are typical in this division play differently away than they do at home. An effective tactic away is often to pack the midfield to deny possession to the opposition and hit them on the break. We don't appear to have any change of tactic at all; we play the same way each match, regardless. In short, we are a one trick pony. It has also become obvious that the mix of players is wrong too and therefore some youngsters have had to make the step up before they were ready to do so. Lancashire today was one example. The tackle that led to Saints playing with a man short was enthusiastic but typical of the naivety of youth. With greater experience in defence, we could have managed a draw today, but as it is we have nothing to show for it except another defeat and presumably a further dent to the confidence of the youngsters which will soon start to play on their minds.

You're wrong, actually.

Well, let's hope that JP doesn't want to play the square ball...the round one works much better in this game And let's hope that regardless of whether the team give a performance of whichever level on the percentage scale, it is sufficient to gain us 3 points later today. Personally I'd rather they didn't bust a gut and won rather than gave everything and lost each week.