sadoldgit

A question you could ask of many football club fans.

To keep a Premiership club in the Premiership with crowds of 15k would entail some level of competence wouldn't it? Or was it just luck? You also need to look at what Wilde and others did to the finances when Lowe left.

It was on the bottom of a web page I was looking at yesterday. I will try and find it again. The mothers of the "boys" were saying they had been abused. I really doubt that they struggled much. From what I gather none of them complained!

I think many people thought that Redknapp was the man for the job. Clearly in hindsight it was a mistake. Wigley and Gray were both highly rated coaches and other clubs had used coaches and directors of football to good effect. The Dutch model also made sense on paper although once again it didn't work out in theory. For the failures there were also some good and high profile appointments Strachan, Hoddle, Jones etc - so it is not as though everything he and his Board did was a f**k up.

I see a woman has been jailed for 22 years in America (a teacher) for having sex with three 17 year old lads. 22 years? For a start I doubt very much if she had to tie the guys down but you wouldn't get that for murder here.

From what I read Les had not problems with Athletico and it is only when the player himself decided to join Spurs instead that we had problems. He was very complimentary about them.

We have had many decent players over the years but have rarely been able to keep them together. Even back in the 80s Keegan left before we brought in Shilton, which is a shame.

There is an article by Adam Leitch in the Echo about "Lowe's legacy" (MS) and about a meeting he had with Lowe and Wilde at the start of Morgan's career which is worth reading for those who think that signing Morgan was luck. It also gives Pardew a lot of credit for bringing him on.

Nice to see someone leave with a bit of class. Did a wonderful job for us and as much as I hope Manure have a crap season I wish him well in the future.

I would send Gazza out on loan to give him more experience and to see if he is ever likely to make it and bring in another on a one year contract.

On the outer reaches of the solar system.

The only difference being that when we bought Schneiderlin it was for his potential. Apart from that, spot on!

There is another thread here about deluded Spurs fans. Moving the debate along I have to say that I feel sorry for anyone running a football club and managing the fans' expectations. Keeping a club competitive when so much is about money nowadays is a tough nut to crack. Would MLT have stayed if he played for us now? Would Lawrie Mac had been able to bring the European Player of the Year to SFC now? Debatable. Even after the good work that the Board did last year and the brilliant season we had there are still those looking to get on the backs the minute something perceivably goes wrong. I see Lowe now getting the blame for hiring Redknapp where at the time I think most of us thought it a prudent move. No one knew that he would do such a crap job and blow £6m (which was a lot of money for us in those days) on rubbish. Still nothing I say will change anyones minds so I'll leave it to you guys to continue the debate.

There was a lot of blame flying around last week when Toby signed for Spuds. Someone even wondered if the Board would have the balls to come out and explain what had happened. Seems like they did and it has shut some of the bed wetters up for now.

You know this how? Lowe made many astute deals but it is easy to block them out if you want to remember the negatives.. We may well still be in Div 1 if it wasn't for the huge cash injection that we received from Marcus.

You might have thought he was crap. I didn't and others don't seem to share your view.

The word at the time is that Lowe bought Morgan to sell on and make a quick profit that would have helped the financial situation. For whatever reason, Lowe didn't sell him on quickly. Worked out well in the end didn't it?

Calum is not the sharpest knife in the draw. His career has gone backwards since his move and if Evans signs for Arsenal he will get even less playing time. If this story is true a loan move back to us may have set him back on track. As things are he will probably be off to a mid table side in a year or two.

Not to the same extent and since when did you worry about putting the right things in the right threads? Lowe became a pantomime villain as soon as the reverse take over happened and some people never let that go. Everyone makes mistakes. Yep, even the great Nicola Cortese made errors of judgement. Balanced people will weigh up the pros and cons and see things as they were. Those who need someone to blame will ignore the pros and focus on the cons. We saw it again in the Toby thread. I think those people are what Nigel Pearson would call ostriches. Apt for you Batman as you have spent so much time with your head buried under the sea.

The two regimes that followed were just as bad, if not worse. Fell free to slag them off too.

Spending £1m on Morgan was a blunder???

Unfortunately it wasnt just Lowe. When he left the first time we were left with people with good intentions who sadly didn't not have a clue about what SFC needed to keep going. Money was wasted and the club went into free fall. But the blame culture fraternity will always blame Lowe for everything - just as they are trying to blame Ralph and Les now.

Woodward was employed for his skills in sport psychology. He was in the forefront of this thinking at the time, now many sports use those techniques. I disagree that he wanted to do things on the cheap. At the time the TV money wasn't as great as it is now. For many years we were stuck with crowds of 15K. Duncan says there was a time when he said he didn't know where the next £1 was coming from and did well to keep us up as long as he did on a shoestring. He didn't have the backing of a foreign multi millionaire but still managed to bring in many quality players (and managers). To keep the club afloat in the top flight for so long on a small revenue stream took some doing. In that time we got to a cup final, had European football yet some still like to harp on about the negatives. It wasn't all bad and it did pave the way for a brighter future.

Do you believe only Cortese could have got us out of the lower divisons? Of course not be he was the one that did it so he got the credit. Lowe and his team deserve credit for moving us into a decent stadium.

And playing hockey didn't help! I remember Souness having a pop and saying how many people in football were called Rupert! And how many were called Nicola? I got all sorts of grief for fighting his corner but I still maintain that he did a decent job for us up until it was probably too late to do anything about the downward trajectory. To keep us in the Prem on crowds on 15k took some doing. Whilst Duncan wasn't a big fan of Lowe's even he accepted that Lowe had the club at heart and was doing his best. Given the grief that Reed got over Toby it is a sad fact of life that there are some who need to find someone to blame whenever things aren't going their way. Lowe was a perfect scapegoat as. from day 1, he was seen as an outsider. Still, that is all in the past and without him we would not be where we are now, so it all worked out well.