CB Fry

Look, this is Alpine we're talking about. We need enough centre backs to stop him moaning about lack of centre backs, but as soon as we hit that number he'll start moaning about why we aren't playing so and so and moaning about what a "bloated squad" we have and why have we got so many players not playing, we can't afford this Lowe hasn't got a clue etc etc etc Alpine will just bleat, whinge and moan, whatever happens.

That one is quite good, actually, and is in the style that might work for us. Simple shape, one or maximum two key images/symbols, name of club, year. Nice, clean and contemporary but not horribly "modern" like Swindon or Bournemouth. And no mention of boys clubs.

Sorry MLG, I don't like your design at all. If there is a case for changing it then the last thing you would keep from the current badge would be the bloody scarf and ball. Your design takes thr worst bit from the old badge and adds in something "traditional" that doesn't actually mean anything to anyone apart from a couple of octogenerians who remember the boys club. SFC is not a boys club. SFC "tradition" started, like most football clubs, from the sixties onwards and only really got going under Ted. Boy's clubs from hundreds of years ago just do not feature as our "tradition" whether you like it or not. A new Southampton badge, if we need one at all, needs to look different otherwise what's the point. Your design is just the same badge but with a slightly different (and worse) middle bit. Of the current badge, the new forest tree, southampton water and city rose are probably the best bits and would be the elements to keep. Sorry, back to the drawing board.

We didn't have any fu cking choice in the matter. End of.

30,000 week in, week out? When was this then? Derby over the five seasons before they got promoted averaged between a low of 22,199 to a high of 25,944 each season (yes, that's 25,944 the season they were top of the league until Feb and got promoted). They got 30k plus in the Prem, but so would (did) we Someone give those Derby fans a cigar, they really are so super duper what with their average attendences in this division being exactly the same as ours.

Hang on a minute - don't you bleat on and on at every opportunity about how we never got "investment" while we were in the Prem? By investment, I believed you were referring to MONEY which in turn you wanted to help pay the "ridiculous astronomical salaries" etc etc you are moaning about above. So what exactly do you want, or do you just want to whinge about everything?

Funnily enough, I am starting to think that England should starting taking a leaf out of our book. Why don't we just play the younger players, the non-champs league players. After all, Croatia qualified and did pretty well without a single CL player in their squad (Eduardo horror tackle notwithstanding). I can't help thinking a team of Bullards, Ashtons, Agbonlayors, Ashley Youngs and Andrew Surmans () might show a bit more drive, interest and, crucially, teamwork to actually get us to the world cup. Let's face it, despite what any of them say, Frank Lampard and John Terry don't give a flying about playing for England. They all pull the shirt on with the excuses and whines about how it isn't their fault already forming in their minds, and their focus on their next club match. Get the kids on - at very least it might make the fans empathise with England once again.

Oooh, threatened by some dribbler on the internet. Keep taking the tablets, sweetheart.

Oooh, threatened by some dribbler on the internet. Keep taking the tablets, sweetheart.

Okay, can you name one player that Lowe has "actively tried to sell", then? I've given you a summary of how and why all those other players were sold, not once have you given anything to suggest any of them were "actively sold". So what is your reasoning, apart from Rupert is, like, evil and stuff? So, Just one player in those ten years, with a brief summary of how Lowe "actively tried to sell". And then explain how he will "actively sell" Lallana, which is the pant wettingly hilarious "new" angle that you lot are desperately now weaving now your old stand-by "he will sell anything and everything that isn't nailed down as soon as bid comes in" has been blown out of the water. Only on this forum could a refusal of a bid for a player be instantly interpreted by half the fan base as evidence of the club chairman "actively trying to sell" said player. Turning down bids for players, eh? What a wa n k er.

Errr, what you were comparing was the decision of one manager to pick Paul Moody over our greatest ever player in his prime with the decision of another manager to pick one nondescript midfielder over another nondescript midfielder. I don't recall exactly when Jhon Viafara became an indespensible, undroppable Southampton Football Club legend that the notion of not playing him is comparable, in your eyes to Branfoot's exclusion of Matthew Le Tissier. But of course that's just typical you. Zero perspective, zero logical thought, zero grasp of anything apart from petty outbursts and f uc kheaded overreaction. No perspective, no insight, no clue. Rant, rant, rant, rant, rant. Yeah, not selecting Viafara is comparable to dropping Matthew Le Tissier. Get a life. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Bit of both, he says. Richards was dragged out of SMS kicking and screaming was he? No, he handed in a transfer request. Bridge? Handed in a transfer request. Beattie - don't know about you, but I thought we held off Villa and Everton who both came in with bids during the Luggy summer and he didn't go (although, of course, Lowe sells everything that isn't nailed down ). He went when it probably made sense and to free up cash for our "saviour" that saggy faced c @ nt. Walcott? Probably in the top ten transfer deals for the selling club of all time. Bale? Very, very similar. Have a look at what Palace have got for some of their starlets recently. So there's my side. Please enlighten with one shred of insight into how any one of those transfers were nasty evil old Rupert was cashing in on players that bled red and white and were desperate to stay for the sake of the great fans in the Northam? If you've got nothing, then it's not a "bit of both", is it?

I will assume from that comment that you are twenty years old or younger. Branfoot easily the worst manager we have ever had. And, by the way, as this is my last post of the day, I am quiety ****ing myself at Alpine comparing Jhon Viafara (John. Viafara.) to Matthew Le Tissier. There's not enough of these in the world to respond to that garbage. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

It's a perfectly reasonable question. If we don't win any of our next, say, ten games then the pressure will be immense. And precisely the same people that bleat on about "ten managers in ten years" and all the rest of it will be calling for the immediate removal of our current manager. I'm not saying they'd be wrong to, but that is what will happen. However, as long as we keep performing at the excellent level we are performing at - the commitment, energy, spirit and style of football really cannot be faulted (let's write off Blackpool) - and we pick up enough points (say, enough to keep us fourteenth-ish) then IMO he definitely won't be sacked. Despite what some say, Lowe kept a hell of a lot of faith in Dave Jones when frankly, we were dull and rubbish under him in his second and third seasons. JP will get the same treatment.

That's just silly. We could have got relegated any time between 1986 and 1997 and came incredibly close in many, many, many of those seasons, and were it not for one (Le) genius we would have. Being relegated in any of those seasons would have been "the absolute worst time" as well. We only had one brush with relegation in 1999 after that, and funnily enough that season finished Le Tissier's significant contributions (Dell last day cameo notwithstanding). If we had been relegated in those many seasons of mid table super safety, then they would have been the "absolute worst time" as well. And say if Luggy hadn't been sacked, or even if he had, the chances are we still would have been relegated between then and now. It was always, always going to happen someday. And you can blame "not investing in the team" or whatever but if doing exactly that didn't relegate Leeds, Blackburn, Coventry, Ipswich, Bradford, Forest and Leicester you'd have a point. But it relegated all of them. And lots of those clubs got through loads of managers too. Lowe didn't invent changing managers like some seem to think. Finally I tell you now, you won't find any Coventry, Forest, Leeds, Bradford, Leicester or Wolves fans dancing round the room saying "thank god we didn't get relegated from the Prem that season Southampton did that was the absolute worst time to get relegated, we're much better off now". We had season after season after season after season after season after season after season to die for. Brilliant, brilliant seasons for a club our size. But people thinking we had some divine right to stay up for ever are just kidding themselves. ########################################## Back on topic - LGSC - great thread starting post. Love the romance of your thoughts, especially as it's a hell of a long way from the heated debates we once had......(you were still right about Tevez at WHU though..) Got to say, the Man City thing really makes me think that the Prem is just a joke, and will soon by twelve mega clubs breaking away to form their own super league. And we won't be part of it, not even if we get promoted this season. And I say good. There is a "People's League" ready to emerge from this farce where the people of Southampton, Nottingham, Leeds, Leicester, Norwich, Ipswich, Sunderland, Wolverhampton, Bolton, Blackburn, Sheffield put clubs out to play each other in a competitive league where any one of ten clubs could win it in August. Proper teams from proper cities with quotas of locally produced talent, and a wage cap (by club, not by player) to keep stupid wages down. And two matches a week on BBC One so the whole country can see it, and get involved.

I'm starting to think that you and Scooby are actually the same person. Just garbage trolling on the same sh i t e every other day just with a slightly different object of masterbation.

I would like to venture it wouldn't take very long for me to name an English manager or coach with that natural born "experience of the English leagues and therefore having the tactical knowledge to counter changes by the opposition and substitutions" that you wouldn't want anywhere near this football club. I believe Harry Bassett is currently out of work, and he's English through and through. John Gregory, anyone? Bryan Robson? Les Reed? Bobby Gould?

But this wasn't the problem in this game. As Phil has said above, and others who were there have said, the problem is we were rubbish. We couldn't execute our own game. It wasn't so much we were "counteracted" by Blackpool. Blackpool just played better and we played poorly. All I could see were the wide players coming in far too tight and teeny tiny intricate passing moves going nowhere. I think that was less to do with anything Blackpool specifically did, and much more to us having a collective off day. Whether these off days are the exception or the rule is the million dollar question of the season, and we'll know the answer by the end of October, I think.

Certain posters on this forum were starting threads titled "what's our plan B" after(and correct me if I'm wrong, Alpine) two games. But don't you just think if we had activated a plan "B" after two games, can you imagine the reaction of our favourite forum contributer? Would it be trebles all round, and well done chaps for being so decisive? Or, would it be "what are these idiots doing, it's a disgrace, they are spineless, clueless etc etc etc rant rant rant rant rant rant rant". No prizes for that one. We got spanked today, although we were okay in the first half. In contrast, having been at Derby last week, we weren't actually that good in the first half but we really turned it on in the second. The challenge really is conviction. I've seen three games this season, two live (Brum defeat) and one on the telly, and it is conviction we've lacked when we've struggled. Conviction to take chances, conviction to fashion real threatening chances. The problem this season is that clubs at our level can cope (or quickly learn to cope) with tip tappy pretty football. The opposition is going to think: You want to pass it about between the two penalty boxes? Fill your boots, chaps. We need that harder edge to convert possession into goals and wins. Funnily enough it looks like JP has seen this and lets hope he addresses it. LGSC - your observation on the match thread about this is the first game the team were expecting to win I thought was bang on. Suddenly the challenge of "come on, lets prove them all wrong" that has driven them through their first few games has turned into "they think we're going to win this". When you discover you can do something really well, remembering how you did it and doing it again is just as much of a challenge. Over these first six games, we have made a brilliant start. Brilliant. And I say that as someone that spat blood on the day JP was appointed. Let's see where this adventure is going to take us next, and cut the whining....

I, and lots and lots of other people, thought Crouch was a brilliant signing at the time. It was only really a few dinlows who decided he was a "skate" - after all of one season or so at Pompey. Agree about Marsden - it was at the time an incredibly uninspiring, unambitious signing - he was just a lower league clogger as far as I was concerned. But he did at least have a track record of playing regularly. 24 and not broken through at a club where your dad is the manager is not inspiring. But I doubt any of us have ever seen him play, so lets see.

What a pointless, scattergun paragraph. In the Prem days (and actually, even today) Lowe was slated for spending money on "facilities" - ie the stadium, the training ground, the academy, etc etc. You'll often get the line "if we'd never wasted money on SMS we'd still be in the Prem" churned out on here. If there is one thing Lowe did spend money on it was bloody "facilities". He was crowned "Mr Facilities 2002" I believe. And once again, you show yourself off as one of those people that really believes we could have bought nine or ten world class players with the gazillions we spent on setting up a licensing deal on the SFC branded credit card. All of those silly little things were set up to try and bring money into the club, ie into the team. They didn't really work, but it is just nonsense to suggest boatloads of salt-of-the-earth fans money was wasted bringing them about. I bet the cost of the whole lot of them wouldn't have covered Beattie's Prem wages for six months. And, err, as for the "conveyor belt of youth we'd never get to see play"....well, words fail me. Have you been living in a cave for the last two months? And the "constant journeymen" all arrived under the previous regime and led us to near relegation, but at least you were happy You can be consistently relied upon to come out with a right load of old steaming horses plop time and again. This time, you've surpassed yourself. Well done. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh behave. Last week (versus Brum) we were the main game on the Championship, and we've got two live games in a row on Sky coming up. I don't know if you've ever actually watched The Championship, but every single club apart from the first game and the "filmed feature" second game gets 15 seconds every single week.

Jimmy Case comparing Lallana with Le Tiss! Heady days indeed.

Simple - Paul Jewell is a "golf course" manager - good laugh and lots of chums on the ex-player/pundit/old boys network chummery curcuit. So he gets the easiest rides of any manager I've ever known. If he got sacked tomorrow, you won't be able to move for the old chums lining up to say he didn't have enough time to turn it round. I mean, it's so unreasonable to expect a manager to win one game in thirty-odd league games, isn't it? What do these fickle fans want? Blood?!! Billy Davies (games Derby have won since he was sacked - zero. Players signed since he was sacked - 39 (or so) ) must have a bit more than a wry old smile on his face...

To be fair, Derby's problems are "the story". In the wider world Southampton winning one game is not quite earth shattering news, despite how well we played yesterday. Derby's, and Jewell's, woes, are hilarious, though. Being low profile is a good thing. Let's keep everything nice and quiet and stealthly establish ourselves in the top eight before anyone starts cottoning on to the revolution