sadoldgit

I acn't be arsed to go through everything here Wes because you have your opinion and nothing will change that. What I will say is how much investment did anyone else bring in when Lowe wasn't here? FFS, good stuff happened, bad stuff happened, as it did to clubs that Lowe had nothing to do with.

What would you rather have? Some like Harry "We'll go up f'sure" Redknapp (and no we didn't f'sure) or someone who is pragmatic and realistic?

Managers can only manage in the league they are in. YOu can carve up the results anyway you like. A manager in the Premiership will have better players to work with. Hoddle did okay with us but how long would that have lasted if he stayed? Hisman management skills are supposed to be non-existant. Anyway, all that stuff is history. Pardew is here now and needs total support. Not the meely mouthed support we have given to managers in the past. Burley didn't get us up but we gave it a good shot that year. It was the best season we have had for years but he still gets slagged off. McMemeny would have lasted 5 minutes these days, the fans on here would have ripped him to shreds well before the cup win. Give Pardew a chance. Not a few games, not a few months. It could well take 2 or 3 seasons to get promoted. There was no magic wand to get us up from the CCC, there is certainly no wand to get us up form Div 1. It is going to take hard work and patience, the latter being something that is in short supply on internet chat forums.

Yep, well I hope this new guy is such a loser that he can take us to a Cup Final too. Still, better just to stay focussed on the negatives eh? Not so complicated then.

Check the stats. As I said beforem success for us was staying up, which we did for longer than we probably should, plus a purple patch under Strachan. The move from the 15k capped Dell was a positive. If you are going to give the bloke a kicking for the negatives you aslo need to balance things up and accept there were positives too.

Other revenue streams, a good infra structure, first class academy...what did the Roman's ever do for us eh?

Wind the clock back a bit Wes. Staying up was success for us which we did for most of his time here, add in a Cup Final, highest ever Prem finish and European football I would say we had a decent run before the wheels came off. My arguement he had more better years than bad years overall.

Yes it is interesting that our two "best" managers had longer to build their teams. THey also took longer to achive success - in fact McMenemy took us down and we stayed down with a team full of 1st Div standard players for a few seasons before he had success. Burley inherited a pile of rubbish from Redknapp and in his first full season was perhaps unlucky not to make the play off final. If he had been able to keep Bale, Baird and Jones and if Hone hadn't effectively come out and publically pulled the plug on any ambition re promotion, perhaps he would have done better if he had stayed longer - we shall never know. What we do know is that when we stick with managers and give them time it has worked better for us (in terms o success) than chopping and changing all the time.

I suppose it you want to split hairs, Lowe was more successful than unsuccessful in his tenure but hey, who cares any more? Getting back to managers, only three have managed to average 1.5 per game or more - Burley, McMenemy and Hoddle. Bates is next with 1.4 per game. Strachan started well but faded. His figure of 1.35 a game is slightly better than Ball's 1.34 per game.

Yep, ain't gonna happen. I think the best we can hope for is mid table this season.

Lose ratio: Redknapp 30.6 (drew a lot) Ball 31.3% McMenemy 31.5% Burley 32.3% Hoddle 34.6% Strachan 35.4% Bates 35.9%

The Forecast is not good then?

McMenemy had the best squad ever. Bates had Ron Davies and two fine wingers to supply him. Don't you think that Burley would have liked Channon, Keegan, Armstrong etc? But he manged to win more matches with inferior players.

What is success? Burley said clearly the aim was the play offs, which he achieved in his only full season. With a slice of luck we might have gone further. We were ceratinly one of the top 6 sides in the Championship that season. What we didn't have was consistency, something you can't buy unless you have a bottomless pit of money. He won nearly 43% of his matches. I don't think he did that badly. Be nice to get somewhere near that now wouldn't it?

Win ratios:- Burley 42.7% Hoddle 42.3% McMenemy 41.7% Bates 39.2% Sturrock 38.5% Strachan 35.5% Doesn't make Burley the greatest manager we ever had but does show that he won more his his matches than anybody else, so not such a mug maybe? Certainly much better than Strachan!

You can think what you like, it doesn't change the stats and what he achieved in a short time. How many away games have we won since (and how many 6-0)? It is just a shame that we didn't keep the services of somebody that knows a thing of two about a "winning mentality" too. Funny that this is a hot topic now but was derrided at the time when we had the "best" exponent of it in the business.

So you are telling me that they just had one brief spell of spending cash and were instantly successful? I seem to recall all of those clubs spending a great deal of cash over a long period of time.

McMenemy had better players to call on and didn't do as well points wise. I am not saying that Burley is the best manager in the world but in his only full season for us he did okay and we have gone downhill rapidly after he left. Perhaps people have forgotten what is was like to win matches because he was the last manager we had that used to do that.

Yep because as we see elsewhere money means success. Remind me again how many European Championships have Chelsea won and how much have they spent? Redknapp was given £6m to keep us up (quite a lot of money for us wouldn't you say?). That worked.

Shown up? Didn't do too badly at Ipwich and Hearts and took us to the play offs, so yeah, he must be rubbish. If you want to have a pop at managers why not Redknapp or Pearson, neither of whom had good records with us.

Really? So what, he is still the most successful manager we have had in terms of points on the board yet he is constantly ripped apart. Trouble with many fans on here is that they are never satisfied and equate money with success. We were a lot more "successful" under Burley than we have been since (yep, we actually won games, and away from home too) but you wouldn't think so to read here. So what about Scotland, hardly blessed with World class players are they? The last decent season we had was when we made the play offs and guess who the manager was? Give the bloke some credit. I would swop those days for these in a heartbeat.

Funny that as he averaged 1.54 points per game - more than any other manager we have had.

Sadly we didn't have the best close season in terms of building the club back up but it looks like we havethe right people in place and finally a squad that should be able to do well. In that sense I think he is right and this is the start for us. What we still have to contend with is the negative, losing mentality of the club. Whether Pardew can turn that round this seaosn only time will tell, but I think that is his biggest problem. Of cousre all those who derried the likes of Woodward will not agree, but we could sure use someone here with those skills to help the manager change the "attitude" prevailing at the club. Still, whatever, we need to start winning, and soon.

Here Waigo here Waigo here Waigo ... (pinched from someone on the Echo site)

Yep, it is a wind up. We haven't signed anybody and the club has no ambition (as per your mail yesterday). Don't know if these players are any good, but surely even you can see that Pardew is actually trying to improve the squad?