sadoldgit

I know where you are coming from. There seem to be many here who think we were some kind of super team and have a God given right to be in the premiership. We have had a handful of really good seasons, plenty of average ons and some down right poor seasons (with better players than we have now). Leeds have a far more glorious past than us but have fared worse recently. You evolve or you die. We haven't been able to deal with the loss of money (and fans) since relegation so we are currently "dying". It is currently happening to plenty of similar clubs around us. No it is not nice, but we are not the only ones suffering and we are not immune to the affects of relegation.

I think that we would be safe now if we had started the season with Wotte. He has less to work with than Pearson did and hasn't done much worse. Any manager can only do so much but once the whistle blows it is down to those on the pitch to perform. We have certain posters on here constantly telling us how rubbish George Burley was (despite him being our "best" manager in terms of points gained. When things are cr*p people look to apportion blame to one individual when, in truth, it is usually down to many factors.

The Southampton I know went down as bottom club a few years ago. It also went down in 1973. Without MLT the Southampton I know probably would fallen out of the top flight even sooner. The Southampton I know struggled to go back in the 70's despite keeping players like Mike Channon. Rose tinted glases? It hasn't all been plain sailing.

When will the penny drop? Charlton were held up by many of you as the club we should model ourselves on a couple of seasons ago. Yesterday they were relegated. A number of similar sized clubs find themselves in similar dire straights. There was mention of this on Talksport yesterday, how clubs suffer when they get relegated. We are not alone. If we were all this bile aimed at Lowe might make some sense. A far as I know Lowe has nothing to do with the running of Charlton, Norwich etc but they seem to have problems too. Perhaps if someone else had been in charge we would have survived, we shall never know. But the fact that a number of oter recently relegated clubs are also struggling would indicate the the job is not as easy as many would seem to think.

Bloody hell, you guys really love a scape goat don't you! Yes Lowe made mistakes but so did Wilde and Crouch. If they had been more prudent when in charge we might not be in this mess now (financially).

Christ, he has gone and yet you still ***** and moan. At wht point will you look forward???

What if it is Rupert Lowe???

Tongue in cheek Rich. I rated Fuller although I thought he could be an injury liability and I agree with you about Higgy. I often read about how impressive Delap looked in training but agree again that he was pretty poor. Shame we couldn't have used his throws as effectively as Stoke though!!!

Higgy, Delap and Fuller were all slated as cr*p when they were with us though?

Wigley did a good job lower down the order, why not? Makes more sense than brining in David Armstrong (as good a player as he was).

What position was Lowe playing? Can you really blame him for the lack of professionalism at set pieces? THose guys have been around long enough to know wha to do. You are right, the manager (and coaching and playing staff) have to take responsibility.

Her we go, the blame culute again. It is not the fans fault, it is not Lowe's fault. Just as relegation from the Premiership was caused by a number of circumstances so is the situation now. As Head Honcho Lowe has to take overall responsibility, but he wasn't out there defending like a schoolboy was he? Those guys are supposed to be professional footballers and know what to expect when they need to defend dead ball situations. The players, the coaching staff and the manager are all culpable too.

I wouldn't say that Dexter has set the world alight since leaving us. He is an average CCC player nothing more. Didn't make the grade at QPR and is now with a side fighting relegation (might just have well stayed then!). Put your mone on him to send us down though! But what is odd is that how many ex-players come back to haunt us either directly or indirectly. I would be interested in the stats but we must be high on the list of ex players who come back and score against us. Even Shipperley managed it when he couldn't buy a goal against anyone else!

Wes, I can remember plenty of dross in the Premiership too, including one 0-0 draw with Fulham that was worse than sticking pins in my eyes.

Personally I would have preferred to have avoided administration at all costs. As you say GM, the team look totally demoralised and, basically, dead in the water. Goodness knows what the people who work at St Marys must be feeling. Still, as we are there now we can only pray that this heralds a new beginning and better things to come. So much depends on who the buyer is though and we could well find ourselves with someone who is more liked than Lowe but without the nous and cash to get us back to the Premiership. Only time will tell. Very sad times right now though.

It makes you wonder who will be left next year.....

Oh, I must have missed the flak going their way then....yawn....

Yep, under that rubbish manager George Burley.

One of Lowe's great failings apparently is that he isn't a "football person". Given that both Wilde and Crouch probably know as much about football as I and don't get the same critisismthen I am not sure how important that is, but anyway... One of Lowe's decisions seemed to be based on sound football logic. Killer was a class centre half, great servant to the club and an all round saints legend. Didn't it make sense therefore to give him a coaching job? Yesterday we gave away three goals in 18 minutes from set pieces by schoolboy defending. You would think quite reasonably that Killer is involved in coaching the defence. Killer is a football person. Whilst Lowe continues to get flak for being, well, Lowe and Wotte for not getting us out of this mess, having dodgy hair and being Dutch, does that mean that Killer is immune from criticism for being a playing legend? Our defending is awful. Shouldn't the coaching staff be in the firing line too?

Ottery, this smacks of "What did the Romans ever do for us". Whaterver you think of Lowe we did stay up for a decade (which for us was success). We mostky lived withing our (meagre) means. We got to a cup final and Europe. We got a new stadium and our best very Prem finish. We aloso had some decent players. Running a football club is a very precarious business, as Charlton's fans will tell you. They have seen their club decline quicker than ours. Of course Lowe made mistakes, but no more than people with a more supposed "football" background. Clubs with a more illustrious past than ours find themselves in the same position or lower. This obsession with Lowe is ridiculous. Southampton FC are not immune to the pressures of the business world or the pressures to survive just as the likes of Leeds and Nottingham Forest have been. I am not an accountant and I really can't tell you how good Lowe is with finances, but the fact that we survived in the Prem with a Third Division ground and attendence must take some skill surely? It looks like he was making some headway into stablising the finances after the spending spree by Wilde and to a lesser extent Crouch. He did what he thought was right in order to keep us going and ultimately failed, but it is not as if he deliberatley went out of his way to sink the club is it? You might think differently. You would like to think that all of those who, over the years, have slagged off the Board for having no ambition would finally realsie what was meant by "Not doing a Leeds" but no. Still there seems to be this idea that we should have spent money we didn't have. If Lowe hadn't been so tight with the purse strings who knows, we might have gone down the drain sooner? Anyway, it is all academic now. All we can hope is that the next person (if there is a next person) runs the club prudently. Leeds have shown how difficult it is to get out of this mess. I read earlier that someone thinks it will take 5 years to get back to the Premiership. We may never get back.

Can you really blame Wotte for three terrible bits of defending? This is a poor side and I would be very suprised if Pearson could do much better with this squad. He did very well to get thre wins on the bounce and give us some hope. If players go to sleep who is at fault, the manager or the player?

Quite, I doubt if Alpine has heard of the expression "Out of the frying pan into the fire" which is odd given what happened the last time Lowe went. Let's wait and see what happens eh Alpine? Despite what you seem to believe, there are worse people out there than Rupert Lowe. (PS, whatever happened to the mooted Paul Allen takeover Alpine?)

Invicta for whatever reasons people decided to stay away (and lets face it, many did because they didn't fancy CCC football otherwise they would have come back when Lowe went the first time) 19C is right. A large number of fans also decided that it was better to see the club on its knees than have Lowe at the helm, and they have got their wish. No of course it is not ALL the fans fault, but as a dog is for life not just for Christmas perhaps that should be the same for the club? What will happened in the future if we stay afloat but we get another CEO who the fans decide they don't like? The club needs to be bigger than any individual. Customers, fans (a rose by any other name...) have the right to vote with their feet. Trouble is, if they withdraw their financial support in large numbers they could end up without a club to support! Look around you, there are many "hard suffering" fans at many clubs who carry on going no matter what. We have no God given right to exist let along compete in he top flight. The word "support" is unconditional. You either do or you don't. The more people that do the easier it is for the club to survive. There have been people on here in the past saying that they will no longer go to St Marys but will continue to go to way matches - quite happy to support our competitors financially but not their own club. The same people slagged of the Board for letting players like Rasiak go to our competitors - go figure? If people don't want to turn up that is their choice, but they also must realise that the club only survives on the patrionage of its support base.

This is what scares me, and why I have been praying that we managed to stave off adminstration whilst many of here were thinking that it would be the answer to all our problems (ie getting rid of Lowe). Lowe, for all of the issues surrounding him, was not nedessarily the biggest problem with SFC, as we well now may discover. Mr Fry has it in his hands to make a business decison that will dwarf anything unpleasant that Lowe ever dished out to us. Oh God, I am beginning to sound like Alpine!!!!