sadoldgit

Eek.

There is always the need for a Plan B, trouble is most managers don't have one unless they can afford a very, very expensive bench. It is good to see the wins rolling in at last and clean sheets but whilst you slag off Pardew you seem to forget his team scored an awful lot of goals so I would suggest that he did something right. As for the good times, we have a long long way to go yet.

I admire his confidence and I hope he is right. But what if we don't get promoted this season?

I hope are right Bert.

Well I have to go to work today so I thought I would bring everyone else down too!

GOod post Phil, but you will always get those for whom everything is black and white and life is much simpler with good cowboy, white hat bad cowboy, black hat.

It is football. Apart from Shankley, Clough and Strachan (at times), who says or said anything we haven't heard a million times before?

Couldn't agree more. If it ain't got stripes it ain't the Saints.

Very gay name.

New manager comes in. Lots of enthusiasm from all. His every utterance is greeted as if Shakespeare's speak from Henry V. Everything he does is innovative. We are lucky to have him here etc. First season fails to get promotion. Threads start about not if but when we sack him. Falling enthusiasm. Public statements slated. No plan B. Lots of threads about the managers who got away or potential new managers. NCs judgement called into question etc. Second season manager sacked and it starts all over again.

In itself, something to be hugely grateful for. But if NC is going to take this club to the Premiership and beyond it will take more than not being in debt to pull it off. I just hope the family have the desire to see Markus's plans through to fruition.

It took a while for Burley to get a class centre half in but he did the biz with this guy. Was sorry when he left and I hope he gets his career back on track.

We are not a rich club. We have rich owners. Which is nice but if the money stays in their account it means f all.

Not the "wow factor" that I was expecting. Not sure if that came from the possibility of KK joining us maybe...anyway, early days yet but he has cracked on with his job and I hope the guy gets a chance to build.

We won't know until the end of the season though will we?

He didn't invent it but was one of the few at the time to bring it in. He was seen by some people at the FA as a "visionary" (although compared to most of them a blind man would be too). Bringing in SCW was a bol move and it is a shame that it wasn't implemented the way it should have been. With many other managers maybe it would have worked? Who knows. Keeping the club in the Prem with gates of 15k was no mean feat either.

Pleased for him. We should never have let him go.

Yes. Although it you want to count Lallanas injury that's 4.

These rumours are looking more and more pathetic. From what Pardew has been saying it looks more likely that Cortese fell out with him over football matters and threw his toys out of the pram. But as they all have to keep their mouths shut I guess each one of us will carry on believing what we believe already.

Yes he did. One of the highest scoring teams, won a cup, would have made the play offs but for the minus 10 and started the season red hots favourites to go up. You are spot on.

Any Eskimos?

These are the main problems that managers face each week and what sorts the successful ones from the unsuccessful ones. Things obviously worked for Pardew up to a point last season. You can see how difficult it is to transfer what you ask for on the training pitch into the game proper and a gamble to change things if they are going to plan. As ever, if you win your are a hero no matter what you did, if you lose you made the wrong choices. Hats off to Adkins for having the b*lls to haul someone off for not following instructions (if that is what happened). It will send the right message. You talk about our attacking options (and it is a huge plus having Lallana back of course) but for all of his industry Barnard is not scoring regularly and Ricky has lost his touch. If you aren't scoring 2 or 3 eack week, and we are not, then the defence and midfield do have to make sure we keep clean sheets. It will be interesting to see how Adkins takes things forward.

Agree

Wouldn't you swap league positions with them right now though?

Me too but we do that a lot here (not just with managers) so what can you do? We had a decent season last year, I hope we have a better one this year. Pardew played a big part in turning the club around and any success this season will be due in part to his work last season. I just hope that Adkins can get the team scoring as freely as Pardew did. Hopefully that will come.