sadoldgit

If you can accept 3rd tier football at any price good for you. As for being insane, if the best premier league position, an FA Cup final and European football (all achieved in the last 10 years) wasn't good enough for you I despair if you think that 3rd tier football is an adequate replacement and equates to "being on the rails."

And never has a poster had such an appropriate avarter. I see from another thread that you are already anticipating the next defeat and the response. No doubt Alpine you have already drafted your posts for that occasion?

I answer to your question, I would rather be in the CCC than in the 3rd Divison of English football under anybody solely in that we could potentially be one season closer to promotion to the Premiership. Still, personalitities mean more to you than the league position of the team Let's see how you vote if we are still in the same league in a few years time eh? ps, I assume that Pardew has now reached hero status in the Alpine household now that Pardew has managed to do in three games what Pearson took 13 to achieve???

Your choice of course. Lets see if you and your friends are still saying that in two years time if we are still in Division 3. Interesting stance though. Of course I knew all along that Alpine would rather us be in the third tier of English football with any manager than conrenders for the play offs with Burely, but each to his own. I just find it very sad that people put the position of the club before personalities. Still, on the bright side at least three wins on the trot should shut up some of the people who were calling to sack the manager for a while.

Here we go again. Same old same old. Three wins on the trot but all you can think about is what happens when we lose again, which we will at some point. Every silver lining has a cloud.

I'd say the play offs were progress wouldn't you? I'd say being well away from relegation problems was a plus wouldn't you? We are constantly told that we were plummeting down the league when he left yet his stats show a win every other game, does not stack up does it? Would that money have been "frittered" if we had made the play offs and been successful??? We so nearly did - not his fault by the way - some individual players errors. Yes I expect there was malaise. Hone's incredible statement did not help not did getting shot of Jones, Baird and Bale, but lets just blame someone who won football matches for us quite regularly eh? Remember that feeling? Still Dunc, you have got your way. I remember very clearly you saying you would rather we were relegated than have Lowe at the helm so at least one Saints fan is happy!!!

Head in the sand mate!!! Don't you read the threads here? As for Britain's greatest Saints fan, what the f*** are you talking about???

...we have coverted include Ian Dowie and Roy Keane. Both proved (so far) to be one hit wonders who probably just fell into the right job at the right time but have shown since they can't sustain it. Alan Pardew hasn't set the world alight so far but is quitely going about his job and putting pieces of the jigsaw together. Given time I think he could be an excellent manager for us but as we have seen in the last few weeks, the usual suspects have already been slagging him off and some even calling fr him to be sacked. The two most would say best managers we have ever had both took time to get their success and were anything but overnight wonders. Pardew should be given time. I can remember teams put out by both Bates and McMenemy being beaten by lower leage opponents. Torquay wasn't great but it did show that we can come back and get a result when we are not firing on all cylinders, something that Saints sides in recent years have not done too often. Pardew is not going to make us an overnight success story, but given time he might just get us out of this awful division and turn us into real contenders in the CCC.

Agree completely. I think the producer sits down with Durham and his partner before the show, they decide on a topic and who is going to take which side. One example was the other night when Durham was kicking off ablout not wanting the World Cup played here!!! What self respecting football fan would not want the greatest competition in the world played here!! The saddest thing is that it is so obviously designed to get people wound up and phoning in (Rod Marsh was very good at it) but lots of people don't see through it and engage in the process. As you say though Mike Parry is good value for money as are Hawksbee and Jacobs in the afternoon. John Gaunt was one of the worst though. Always going on about his expensive car and just a total knee jerk reactionary. I always got the feeling he was actually laughing at his listeners whilst counting his money. Nasty piece of work. Silly voice too.

What I like about Burley was that, statswise (and here they do not lie) he won every other game he played. I don't think that Pearson was here long enough to make a judgement but find it funny that he was seen as many as some kind of hero despite nealry taking us down and only winning 3 games. Perhaps if he had stayed another season he would have done better and deserved the plaudits, we shall never know. I enjoyed Burleys only full season and think he was a better manager than many give him credit for, stats or no. He certainly does not deserve the slating he gets here and was screwed by the Board in his third season here. If he lost interest who could blame him after Hone's statement? But we were still stronger with him here and plummeted when he left. It is easy to find all sorts or reasons to knock stats but I would give anything for a manger who could get 1.54 points per game now. Personally I am vey happy with Pardew and I am prepared to give him time, something many here are not. I started this thread because I think the way many Saints fans judge our managers has precious little to do with reality and more to do with the own agendas. We find all sorts of excuses to knock a relatively successful manager and yet we big up people with poorer track records. Pardew was only here five minutes before the knives were out. Go figure.

Compare der Pardew dot com, compare der Pearson dot com. Simples! So then 13 games for Pardew and 3 wins and 13 games for Pearson and 3 wins. Pearson has hero status and Pardew gets a slagging.

Especially as we have only been beaten once since the beginning of September and that with an injury time goal. If Pardew wins his next game that is 3 in 13, same as Pearson who is a hero to many on here!!!

Indeed, although strange given that we have played 5 matches in September and only lost one with a goal in injury time and we are talking about the future of our manager...hey ho.. Still, here's to 3 points today and the start of the season!!!

Perhaps he should? He did manage to win three on the bounce. I think we would be doing much worse points wise if he was still here. Both Ferguson and Howard Kendall were facing the sack shortly before they both turned their clubs around. We all think the manager is rubbish if he doesn't do the business in our timeframe but the truth is you never know what would happen if you kept him on a bit longer.

Maybe the new owners will stand by their manager? What would hve happened if we had dumped LM after he took us down? The only successful managers we have had have been here longer than 5 years and took time to get success. At some point surely we have to keep faith in someone for longer than 5 minutes?

And Roy Keane has spent £8m in the CCC - a lot of money - and Ipswich are nowhere. We might have splashed (relatively) out on Lambert but I wouldn't say that we have gone on a spending spree. If the owners expected to get out of this divison this year I would have expected more money to be spent on players to be honest. The spend so far (to me) seems to suggest that they are just looking to stabilise rather than take the league by storm this season. 5 year plan remember? Not 3 years.

Of course we must start winning games. But if we are going to judge managers after 10 games there would be an awful lot of people looking for work right now!

Agree, rarely used him in his strongest position. Thought he was awesome when we took Spurs apart.

Who has the money? Our owner has money, that does not mean that SFC has money. So far I would say that he has kept a Lowelike grip on his wallet!

But they are still trying to get up. It comes back to what I was saying before. There was no self belief in this club before and it is going to take time to get that back, Pardew or no Pardew. Yes the start to the season has sucked. Yes he and his players (and lets not forget they have the actual reponsibilty of winning matches) have to up their game...but 10 games in.... Facilities don't win matches. Look at Portsmouth, some of the worst anywhere but they won a cup. Remember that movie, If you built it, they will come?" We are (slowly) rebuilding. Hopefully the points will come.

It might not be, but if you start with minus 10 it is a reality.

Didn't these teams keep most of their better players? I am not saying it is a given that if you go through massive disruption you can't bounce back quickly, but what it does do it make the job that much harder. I don't think we have got over relagtion from the Premiership yet. Some clubs get their act togther some don't. We haven't yet and the old scapegoat has long gone so we can't blame him any more. We seem to have this idea that we belong in the Premiership and that by some miracle we will wake up one day and all of this will have been a bad dream. Look round you, it happened to bigger clubs than us too. Why should we be immune? It and old chestnut but the almighty (once upon a time) Leeds feel harder than we did and it has taken them a lot longer to get their act together.

Why should we be doing better? For the same reason that we "should" have gone up when we spent £7m? Tell that to the Ipswich fans.

Do you really think that we went into this season well prepared? Do you think we come into this season full of confidence? We were a club in turmoil and we are still in transition.

Really? Why can't we hold onto a lead then? Are you telling me this is a strong confident outfit firing on all cylinders?