CB Fry

Um, I think the point was we didn't need more "time" to hunt for that replacement - it wasn't like the Scotland thing was completely out of the blue - the whole thing took a good fortnight so they already had time to draw up shortlists. The point was and is the Dodd/Gorman appointment was a non decision, a bottle out which was completely uncalled for. Billy Davies was sitting by the phone, and Alan Smith seemed to be on every available media outlet begging for his boy Chris Coleman to be given the job. And isn't it funny that they their search sped up somewhat one day after national humilation on BBC1? So much for taking time. The point is, our posh friend doesn't have a monopoly on appalling/gutless/cheapo managerial decisions.

Crouch and Lawrie had an opportunity to appoint a decent British manager when Burley left, but Lawrie took the opportunity to act the big man and play out his little "I've still got it" fantasy.

Reid was excellent by any stardards at City and excellent by any standards at Sunderland - at both clubs he lost his job on the back of the expectations he raised. Neither club have done any better in terms of league placings since Peter Reid left. That said, I think, like Trevor Francis (have a look at his record at SWFC, it is very good) he is a man of the past. Although he would be better than Wotte, who wouldn't, I don't think he would be much better or anything like the stable long term replacement we need - for one, I don't think he'd be hungry enough. He's rich enough to walk if it went wrong. So it is a no from me.

It's interesting how comparable the situtations between them and now are. I was convinced we were relegated under Jones and it was a spectacular run of home performances that turned it round (Wotte and Lowe please note). Under Souness, at least we could score goals and we had some pretty good options going forward - Eyal, Egil, Dia - so we were always in with a shout. I had little hope with Jones, and some with Souey. But Home Form under Jones and Goals under Souey saved us. But this lot? We are so relegated it's untrue and even a proper manager appointed tomorrow wouldn't save us. We've lost far too many homes games and games againts our basement peers to have any chance now. We're down.

Yeah, because those two really get on, don't they Le Tiss is one in the gigantic majority of people in the football world that think Glenn Hoddle is a total cn ut. Basically, that's everyone except Paul Ince and John Gorman.

2-1 defeat.

The whole thing was part of Lowe's PR masterplan. Le Tiss has been "spoken to" by Lowe's people and is now "toeing the line". That's why Le Tiss picked an away question in the "home and away" round because Lowe told him not to pick a football question because he was hoping a hockey question would come up instead. Thought I'd save Stanley the bother of sticking a conspiracy up.

The problem is you two, no-one in this thread gives a monkeys about why those people are being laid off. Alpine used it to make a pathetic cheap point against Lowe or possibly just some other people on the forum which I don't think any of us really understand, least of all Alpine. And the rest of this thread is garbage in the same vein, and I include my posts here in that. Alpine is being a nasty little arse, and he can't dig his way out of it. People being made redudant in a local firm really isn't sport for the main board of this forum, and I think the thread should be locked. The eternal Lowe debate can carry on elsewhere without Alpine using these unlucky people as a human shield for his rantings.

My source told me that two people in the room who will remain nameless said that all children under the age of two within the city boundaries must be slaughtered and their heads brought as offerings to the Mick Channon suite. Then, and only then, will the renewal forms be sent out. Oh, and the price will double.

That's right, I'm a Lowe luvvie now. What is laughable is you starting a nasty little thread and using the premise that "someone else would have done it from the other side" as a reason for doing so. If you were so sure, why not keep your powder dry, wait for Jonah or whoever to start it (lets assume they would, even though I am not sure) and then take them apart then? You haven't got the moral high ground here because you started the nasty little thread. No one else. And anyway my point is this - don't dare crow about "OS Spin" or "Lowe spin" or how people that decide to think differently to you as "gullable" or "fooled by Lowe's PR machine". You haven't got a fu c king clue why Crouch let those people go, but you've decided that it was for glorious, healthy, fantastic reasons because someone from his company said so and he works for Leon who can't ever be wrong..... In other words - you've swallowed the spin whole, lapped it up like the lap dog Crouchpotato you are. Unquestioning, unconditional love. Lap it up LeonLuvvie :smt054

That one sentence shows more uninformed, unquestioning, unconditional LOVE than any one of the rogues gallery of "luvvies" ever dish out to their "hero". Say what you like about Jonah, but I can't see him going all goey eyed and melting into an orgasmic puddle if a firm Rupert was connected to laid people off. But you can hardly contain yourself at Crouch's strong, butch, bravery. Ooooh, I'm all a-tremble. But here you are, creaming yourself because your boyfriend has laid off and put 50 or more families in financial no mans land. Oh Leon, what a hero you are :smt054 so strong :smt054so brave:smt054 so business savvy :smt054 and so rich :smt054 you can afford £2m for a football side project but not £2m to keep 50 people in work :smt054I've wet my pants. :smt054 Welcome to the strange world of the Crouch Luvvie. Alpine's Love that dare not speak its name. PS - when you have a mo, can you go into detail about the whys and wherefores of these 50 redundancies, as you seem to be convinced you know all the details. Do let us know. Because you wouldn't just take anything he said at face value surely? Don't Luvvies do that?

What about "saving jobs", Alpine? Administration would chuck a few workers on the scrap heap, wouldn't it?

I like the way you compare a football club with employees pulling down six, seven, eight grand a week as comparable to a building firm where the people being laid off would be on, what, twenty to forty grand a year? So putting £2m into SFC wouldn't "save jobs" really, would it? And Lowe getting those high earners out of the club is something you'd support now to "save jobs" is it? Yesterday you were screaming for the club to go into administration, how does that "save jobs"? This thread is nonsense and you know it - if one of the firms Lowe is involved in lays people off you'd have a bloody field day. Christ there is so much to hate Lowe for, but to hate him for, ummm, not laying people off like Crouch has, or something, errr hang on, I'll make my point in a minute, err, good old Crouch, Lowe out. PS - 50 x £40k equals.....go on, I'll let you work it out.

So just to confirm, Crouch's redundancies are good, strong, healthly redundancies, whereas Lowe's redunancies are nasty evil redundancies. I hope you get in touch with all those that Crouch has let go and let them know how lucky they are.

Fair enough, I will concede Hull, but you have to remember Hull had decades of being nowhere near the top flight behind them, and it has taken eight years for them to get to the Prem, which for Hull is pretty good, but for Saints from now would be pretty bad. Hull's rise is a bit like Wigan's - a tiny club rocketing through unexpectedly. MK Dons are doing it as we speak. It's less "we survived admin" and much more "tiny club makes it big". None of those clubs had a nearly new 32,000 seat stadium at the point of admin, so it really isn't the same thing. We've got too much baggage and history to have a mindset like a Hull fan in 2002 when an exciting adventure was starting. If we are, say, eighth in Div 4 its not the same as if Hull in 2001 were eighth in Div 4. That's humilation for a Saints fan, it was just "normal" for a Hull fan. Also, Bradford are now near the top of the fourth tier after being relegated from the Prem in (funnily enough, good old Wikipedia) 2001. So a long way to go. At the moment some people might say "eight years to get back into the top flight is fine just as long as Lowe goes" but that's easy to say now. Eight seasons is a bloody long time. Hanging on in there is preferable to administration.

Yeah, right. Because all the dopey fans not as clever as you now think Liptak is a world beater. When you say this stuff you hero worship Lowe, because you look at him like he's the most powerful man on earth. You post something that reads like a hero worship of Lowe nearly every day. Everyone else - it is worth keeping an eye on Stanley - his admiration for the absolute power he thinks Lowe has is really fascinating. Calm down.

Correct. The people who want administration are divs who don't understand it and think it is some "clean slate" super tonic that will have us shooting up the league in no time. Just like, well, ummmm, errr....Bradford?

This is so very, very true. Dodd and Gorman because they were cheap and Lawrie got to act the big man. Pearson because he was also cheap, mates with Lawries son, and Lawrie got to act the big man. We could have got Coleman, Davies or any proper manager the day after Burley left but we didn't. We know all about Lowe and Wildes faults, they are legion. But lets not forget that Crouch has some serious flaws - mainly that he is full of it, has offered this £2m on about four occasions each time with a condition attached that he knows means he won't ever need to cough up and that he is besotted with Lawrie Mac which will always be to the detriment of the football side of things. We need new club leader, and we need a real manager who is his own man, not a puppet in the pocket of Lowe, and not someone subservient to Lawrie Mac either. All of them OUT. New CEO. Le Tiss for Honourary Life President. All the rest of them including Lawrie OUT, OUT, OUT.

I'd like to know what the board of Wolverhampton Wanderers have to say about this so called plan. I don't think anything significant is going to happen without their say so.

Six managers in one calendar year is not "bad luck". You would never be so stupidly forgiving with our current chairman, so why the doe eyed hero worship of Milan?

So there I was, walking down the sidewalk in LA, looking at LA people going about their business in LA which is where I live, and its a busy place in LA where I live and I was looking in the shop window of an LA shop in LA where I live and I thought to myself about the next transfer window while I stood in LA looking through this LA shop window in LA. Where I live. So, who do people think we should go for in the transfer window this summer?

The one thing I did like about our "day in the sun" was that we did do it with players we could at least empathise with a little bit, and with players that were actually at their peak at Southampton - "our" players. Beattie, Marsden, Pahars, Niemi, Lundekvam, Svennson, Bridge, Oakley, Richards, Paul Jones. Never surpassed what they acheived at Saints* - truly Southampton players. Our players. Pompey can't say that about Sol Campbell, or Peter Crouch, or Kanu or Defoe. It was when we signed the likes of Mark Hughes it felt wrong and sour. He was a waste of space for us. I look at our glory day (it felt like a day, fleeting) with fondness because it wasn't built on slabs of cash thrown at mercenaries. We could have built on the Cup run a bit more, maybe, but Pompey and West Ham did throw money and they've shown very little really changes, and often things get worse because teams reach a level they can't surpass. All three of us lost managers in the season after our cup final/eighth place acheivement. Of the three, Saints with a comfortable finish of 12th actually did the best of the three so far in the season-after, Pompey's final placing notwithstanding. Of course we know what happened next. And you can pre-judge Zoltan, if you like. Be my guest! He is clearly awful....he couldn't even get into the Stevenage team last season! Another pointless waste of money in an utterly clueless, pointless season. I don't think we will end up non league, but you are right - under this dopey, selfish, pig headed regime it is the only direction we are going.

That's funny, when I say the exact same thing - no-one apart from the couple of wind ups on here want Lowe involved in the club - you tell me I'm wrong. What gives?

Martinez is 35, Ferguson is 37. Not sure how being two years older qualifies as "a bit old". Age-wise, both of them could still play professionally. 37 is young for a manager by any standards. And, err, Nigel Pearson is 45.

Pompey got to eigth and a cup final, and so did we. We had to play a brilliant London team in Cardiff, Pompey got to play a rubbish Cardiff team in London. There is barely any difference between our "highs" especially since our first season after the cup final was far more successful than Pompey's is turning out to be. Pompey did better in Europe, but we were fourth in January in our season after the cup final, so lets say the two even themselves out. And since 1997 up until the relegation season we only had one season as relegation battlers (Jones second season), whereas throughout the rest of the nineties we were perennial relegation fodder, save Alan Ball's single full season. I think that's pretty good. So why have Portsmouth had a "day in the sun" and we haven't?