CB Fry

Nicely done.

Absolutely correct, although the Pearson decision was less "questionable" and more pig headedly stupid IMO. Can anyone picture any other club on earth where a change of chairman would stick 5,000 regulars on the home gate? But there are genuine breathing human beings that think this is the case for Southampton. Mental. I don't want Lowe here any longer, but his departure in itself is not going to bring fans flooding back, or even make us play any better. It just removes the comfortable excuse for lots of fans not currently going because we are a bit rubbish and not in the Premier League any more (which is a perfectly valid reason not to go, BTW).

He did also say "the score is nil nil, as it was at half time" earlier, as well.

That statement is utter drivel from Lowe. Regular CB Fry haters will know I am often quick to attack those I regularly bicker with because I feel people too often dwell on the past - going on about the fact we were relegated, three managers in a season and all the rest of it. "Get over it" I'll say, "it happens" (well, maybe I stretch it out a little into a twenty line post....;-)). But christ, does someone need to "get over it". Step forward R Lowe. Get. over. it. That statement does him zero favours, and does nothing for the club, the unity of the fans, the faith of the manager, the players, the coaching stuff. Self serving, post rationalizing, kitchen sink excuse making drivel. Tell you what Rupert - if you are fed up with your detractors (rightly) blaming you for relegation, then maybe you should lead the way by taking the righteous path. Wacky, I know, but how about stopping blaming everyone else being positive about the future in a genuine, non sneering way understanding that whining about the mistakes of others does not fix today any more than "your detractors" moaning about relegation will get us (re)promoted. Repeat after me Rupert - we are where we are. Maybe if you started doing it it might, just a little, temper down everyone else. Maybe those that you rile might get slightly less riled. Maybe we might swallow this Dutch plan as a real plan rather than a plan designed to help you make a point to "us" about you being right all along. So Rupert son, get. over. it. and. start. moving. forward. Or, better still, fu ck off out of it now.

This would be the same Stern John who was our leading scorer last season and played a massive part in keeping us in the division and the same Kenwynne Jones who went on strike the moment a Prem club came calling making a sale the only option? Not my definition of a "bad, bad deal". I'll call it a bloody good deal, myself.

Good god, someone trying to start a "where's the money gone" rant for a £5m deal agreed nearly ten years ago? What next - "where's the money gone" from the £2m we got for Tim Flowers?

Remember all this was all during our glory days when we were a fantastic family club, regularly challenging at the top of the division before Lowe came along four years later and took us into "terminal decline" from the very second he walked in the door.

LOL. You do realise Leicester City are in League one, don't you. I love all these threads making out Leicester fans are in paradise and why oh why can't we be like them. Keep them coming, they make me **** myself. I doubt very much our relegation in May will be greeted with the same level of celebration that you lot have transmitted onto Leicester City fans, who in your eyes seem to be dancing in the streets at the prospect of playing Cheltenham Town and Yeovil. I'd rather poke my own eyes out that see Saints play a single match in that joke league. "Never had it so good". Priceless.

The original post was about look how many staff we've got through and some people genuinely believe that our situation vis-a-vis staff ins and outs is somehow unique. And the original poster is including the boardroom bods as well, so if you are going to let Sunderland off the hook as some model club because they had Peter Reid for so long, or whatever, then maybe you should look at two (three?) senior members of the SFC/SLH management team that were there from 1997 to 2006!!I'd like to see the boardroom movements in all those listed clubs in the comparable time. How's that for "stability"! Thought not.

Quite, but the point is we are not uniquely hard done by as some Saints fans genuinely believe. The fact that St Jason threw out the question about "name one other club that has got through staff like Saints have" like he thought it was a really hard question to answer says it all. Lowe has a lot to answer for, especially this season, and you know I want him gone. But plenty of other clubs are currently fu ck ed and have done it very well (badly) thank you without the help of Rupert Lowe in the last ten years. The arse end of last season's (and this season's) CCC table will show you that. We're never going to move on until people accept that, because whoever comes in next may not be a saviour purely because he isn't Lowe. Whoever it is could be a right plank.

Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County, Leicester City, Bradford City, Portsmouth, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers, Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United, AFC Sunderland, Manchester City, Wimbledon, Leeds United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Coventry City.

Yes. There is no way the current regime are going to stop us going down. The only thing that will keep us in this division this season is Forest and Doncaster continuing to be worse than us, and another club going into administration and losing ten (or more) points. Frankly I am sick of "keep the faith" and sick of "we're playing brilliant stuff". I am not the most regular match goer, I make no claim to be (you'll notice, unlike Alpine, I keep my mouth shut about matches I haven't seen) but I have seen us live three times and on TV three times and all six times we flatter to decieve. Even when we're at our "best" we're ineffective - lots of pretty tappy triangles, but no finishing, and often not even a final ball. And I went to our best game at Derby, where, granted, we were really good for one half of football, but we were pretty bloody average in the first half, and being that we kepp getting told how we are going to "build on" things, that good half of football was in August and we have yet to better it from what I have seen, heard and read since. So I am sick of "we're going to build on" the occasional good results we've had. Because we've done nothing of the sort, and we're winning the number of games that a relegation team would win in this division by law of averages. I'm going to Reading, and I am expecting us to get tonked. So yes, sacking the manager is not an unreasonable thing to ask. There are actually some experienced managers around that might just turn our season around if they start now.

Er, and you said that before Lowe turned up no-one talked about the chairman, which is true. But it is also true that in the last ten years the awareness of "who your chairman is" has reverberated around the football world. ie everyone at clubs all over the country know about their chairman (and probably don't like them). ie Rupert Lowe did not single handedly invent the idea of the high profile chairman. Coventry fans all knew who their chairman was when they got relegated. But then, of course, people like you have absolutely no interest in concepts like "context" or heaven forbid, the "wider world".

Boo hoo Mr Scargill. Unless you're a member of the British Communist Party, I advise you to get over the fact that capitalism has been with us for some time now and isn't actually going anywhere soon. You can whine about those figures, but frankly they are piffling amounts - most of them would be about the same as the annual salary of one player in each year mentioned. Of course we could have remained a family club and resisted all attempts by anyone to modernise us in 1997, which would have left us where, exactly? My guess is playing Brentford on a regular basis from about 1999 onwards. Don't ever celebrate if we get taken over by a billionaire, will you, because that's not very family club, is it? But I bet my arse you would celebrate.

Yeah, because Southampton Football Club are the only football club on the planet that know who their chairman is and dislike him. I think you'll find almost all other league clubs who, in the last ten years have had their fans despise their chairman/figurehead/owner at some point. Plenty of other clubs have been fu cked over a hell of a lot more by owners/chairmen/false messiahs than we have. Lowe going will be brilliant for all of us, but some people are deluded to the point of lunacy that his very disappearance will turn us into world beaters living in fluffy duffy georgeous land forever more. There's plenty of footballl clubs bigger or as big as us that didn't need Rupert Lowe's help to flush themselves down the toilet.

This is far too sensible for this forum. 100% correct. And actually too sensible for Lowe who ignored this sensible advise and employed managers like Redknapp (who just doesn't buy into the concept of building a team from young players) and Gray/Wigley (who weren't strong enough, or experienced enough to fuse a team together within that remit). Jones, Hoddle and Strachan could and did do that. The perfect blend of getting the best out of what you have, and being able to stand up to the chairman - the three of them had the gravitas to face down Lowe, who respected them for it. And, lest we forget - it bloody worked. Forest, Sheff Weds, Derby, Leicester and the rest all went down and we got better and better. Burley should have been able to, but actually was given too much money and ended up being distracted by his new shiny thing at expense of his last shiny thing (Saga displacing Rasiak, John displacing Saga etc). Burley now in the current set up would probably have been okay, forcing him back to his early Ipswich ways. It's just a crying shame we didn't employ Gary Johnson or similar the day we went down. Or Dowie, or Boothroyd. In fact any of those three now would be handy. A real manager with experience of building teams, that will face down Lowe is what we need. But I don't think we're going to get him.

Of course he does. Having a team featuring homegrown young players is undeniably a good thing. In the period Arry and Arry were here, you couldn't move for people on this forum's predecessor demanding that so and so young player should play. Over and over again, people would leap on reports from Stapleford or the reserves and work up players into overlooked world beaters. And now you still get plaintive whining about oh why did we ever let Scott McDonald go, he's like the best player ever, oh why did we let Matthew Mills go he would have been brilliant just like he has been for, well, err... Okay, what about Brian Howard then. Now it seems that the very idea of playing young players is an absolute disgrace and why oh why should anyone ever suggest a thing. Lowe sticking his beak in is wrong, he shouldn't be interfering in the team, his Dutch project is wrong, playing all the kids is wrong, Lowe, JP both need to go and go now. 100% agree with all that. But for things to hang Lowe about, a belief in our young players and a belief that they could and should be our future show that his heart is in the right place. Wanting Saints to be a crucible of home grown young talent is not actually the most evil plan in the world, as some bitter people would have you believe. He's wrong, and he's an idiot, fine. Don't disagree. I want him out. But if AN Other figurehead came on and esposed the same beliefs in young players (say, a Nick Holmes, or a Gavyn Davies), I think he'd be called a breath of fresh air and a terrace hero.

Why is this even new news to anyone? The entire subtext of Lowe going on about the kids and Arry resisting it was blown apart when Arry played a team full of kids in the League Cup (against, remind me, Mansfield?) and they got gubbed. And Arry's post match was basically "I told you they weren't good enough" which sounded odd at the time, but of course revealed pretty clearly what was happening, and why Arry had only spent the £90k that summer. The good (ish) news is we are now reaching endgame on this stupid chairman and his arrogant ideas. In a couple of weeks time we will be stone, rock bottom, and he'll have nowhere left to go, because finally it'll be proved that his dopey notion is not going to work. Let's just hope someone, anyone saves the day before the Ajax of Hampshire find themselves in League One.

Hang on a minute - you're the one who got mortally offended and asked me to name 10 charities more important than the Legion. Glad to see you've come round to my way of thinking. The British Legion, although a fine organisation, is not the be all and end all of charities, which was my bloody point in the first place. But the legion does get pheonomenal annual exposure, more than any other charity I can think of, and more than pretty much any other charity of equal size and equal worth. I'm adult enough to appreciate that fact, whereas you seem to think its an offensive thing to say and come back with snippy remarks about cats (WTF?). Anyway, this is barely about football, let alone Saints, so lets draw a line.

I've never read this thread before. The death of this forum is not much to do with the performances on/off the pitch - in the old days defeats brought the forum into meltdown more than victories did. There is plenty to moan about, and the default position for football forums is moaning. It's the five pound charge, and the three post rule. My experience was I decided to hang back when it was brought in, see how it panned out. Then, I realised the three post rule was brilliant in controlling the amount of time I spent on here. So I stuck with it, with the three posts serving as daily addiction prevention. And now I spend less time arguing about the same old sh it. And so does the vast majority of other users, leaving a tiny hardcore of regular posters creating an incredibly dull forum of the same old, same old. Can't see too many £5s next year, because the current full members are fed up and the potential members really aren't missing anything. Oh well.

What a ridiculous response. Lets hope you or no-one in your family suffers the slow devastation of losing someone from cancer, or heart disease. Let's hope no-one you love dies of lung disease, or kidney failure. Let's hope that all your children and grandchildren are born 100% healthy and go on to live a life free from disability, leukaemia, blindness, deafness, celebral palsy. Lets hope no-one you know disappears from view through alzheimer's, or Parkinson's disease or any other dihabilitating disease. Let's hope no-one you know is killed in a road accident and you're left to pick up the pieces you were never expecting. Let's hope your house or workplace catches fire. But, hey, fu ck all the do-gooders wasting their time working with those organisations that might help people, and give every single spare penny to the British Legion. Silly boy. Well, as expected, more "I care more about the war than you do" **** measurement. Well done. I'll happily bet I know more about the first and second world wars, cause, effect and legacy than you ever will. Seriously, the Poppy Appeal is not marginalised, its bloody everywhere. And so it should be. Some of us are clever enough to be proud, wear our poppies, remember and be thankful. You should try it, because the tripe you're writing suggests all you want is another bloody war. And finally, it has been proved that SFC have, over recent years, done more for the Legion than any other club in the country. And still you moan. Seriously, get over yourself.

Sorry, what is this simple fact? We're in the financial poo, but so are huge numbers of other clubs, many of which are worse off than we are. Some Saints fans need to get over the "simple fact" that we are not unique. I'd like to see you telling, say, a Luton fan how our "truly catastrophic situation" (I mean pur-lease) is so much worse than theirs. I love this forum.

It's worth making the point Pearson didn't actually keep us up though. We stayed up because Leicester couldn't score against Stoke. Relegation was out of our hands on the last day of the season. I wanted Pearson to stay but fuc k me I can't believe the way people talk about him on here as some kind of mangerial messiah. He achieved bare, bare minumum in his time here. Nice bloke, probably be a decent enough Leicester boss, but enough bloody hero worship please.

So what was the minutes silence at every single sodding football ground in the country all about this weekend then? You've got a funny interpretation of being "overlooked" Poppy day and the legion get blanket coverage everywhere for a fortnight every year, year in, year out, in every newspaper, television station across the land. Rightly so, but no other charity on earth gets the same amount of exposure. And there are plenty of charities that have just as much worth as the Legion and get nothing like the exposure they get. And don't bother giving me a "they died for us..." lecture either, I know, and I don't need an overexcited dullard like you telling us like you're the only one who "cares". Get over yourself you wally.

I do hope you're not one of those fans who whined and grizzled like a ***** about how horrid Derby were under billy davies? I take it they never ever shook hands with anyone.