InvictaSaint

And as Pearson passes us by on his way to being tested next season, I will wager, 19C, that he will glance at us as he whizzes by and will not only wonder how JP, MW, Gorre and Kim the agent all worked out cheaper than him ( we were after all cutting costs weren't we...?) but will also issue a more than reasonable "**** you" to Saints and to Rupert for treating him so appallingly. And you know what? He will have EVERY right to feel smug. I for one wish the bloke every ounce of luck in the CCC next season.

Quick, see if it's an anagram of Fat Barry.... :-)

19C, you make some eminently sensible points and then blow it all out of the water with this nonsense. I have been warming to your views on the current situation and I am more convinced now than ever that you have the club's best interests at heart. I looked up your name recently and was intrigued to find it is an old Scots expression meaning "a long or undetermined amount of time ago". I can only assume therefore that you are of the silver surfer generation and that your mind has somewhat addled over time in order to come out with this sort of statement. :-) Firstly, it is disingenuous in the extreme to blame fans who chose not to turn up in the Lowe era (part two). Having been referred to as "customers" for some time by Mr. Lowe, our former Chairman then found out how customers, in even the most fiercely loyalty driven industry around, react when treated as imbeciles, when given a fifth-rate manager in JP and kids just out of nappies for a team (only to then back-track on the whole mental experiment when it became apparent even to Lowe that it had done tits up). There are only so many insults and kicks in the teeth even the most ardent of Saints supporters will take before these "customers" decide they have had enough. Furthermore you have the manic overspending of Lowe's recent turncoat partner Michael Wilde during the two years Lowe was away. Too many overpaid players on silly wages for a club in the CCC, and our future was gambled away by Wilde, Crouch et al when they gave Burley (a Lowe appointment) the job of getting us promoted; a job he ultimately failed to do successfully. Lowe then returns and you have the ultimate recipe for alienating the fans - three years of nearly but not quite followed by Lowe's return, massive (necessary) cutbacks, redundancies, player sales and desperately poor decision making on the football front. Had the fans returned in their droves it may well have staved off the current situation for a while, but you cannot expect supporters to keep on stumping up cash to see a team which, the previous year, they could have got to see for free! Lowe may well have done what needed to be done, but he did so without any thought or consideration for the fact that in such situations a club needs to be united, and supporters have to be able to see that all efforts are being made to support the footballing side of the club to at least hold its own. Had he done so, I feel he would have had a greater chance of succeeding, but we all know it's not his MO don't we? In essence, many people are indeed to blame for the current situation, but to blame long-suffering, often hard up supporters is shoddy in the extreme. However.....the debate you bring is improving with every post, so keep it up old fella. :-)

"Like riding down a very steep hill on a Penny Farthing, with no brakes; it's only going to end one way."

...that when the hurting and the pain are gone, I will be strong. (TFF 1985)

Did I say that? Please point out where I state that explicitly and I am happy to stand corrected. The point you flagrantly miss - quite apart from the fact that it was Michael Wilde, Lowe's partner in crime, who wrote in the Blackpool (home) programme that [sic] "the play-offs should be our aim" - is that there is a huge amount of revisionism going on with certain posters on this board. I am not excusing Crouch either because he is a fan or because he has not yet done what he once said he would do. However, to excuse Lowe for achieving the square root of f**k all to get investment secured in his 12 odd years in charge is equally unjust.

Such a shame that Rupert - a man who, after all, made a tidy profit from his time with Saints, whether through wages drawn or severance packages after the first blood letting ij 2006 - did not also find some way of contributing financially to Saints during his two tenures. With his many city contacts and his well-connected backers you would have thought it would be child's play for him to find investment from one source or another over the course of what - 12 years? - , if not from his own pockets. But it's easier to have a pop at Leon isn't it?

And, if the Derby (away) winner is included, one which is actually Lallana's.

He is probably the laziest, slowest, least motivated player I have seen in a Saints shirt for many a year. He doesn't read the game well, doesn't know how to make space for others or pull other players out of the game. He does occasionally spark into life, but flickers all too briefly. Strange first post. A more cynical person might think you were....oh, I don't know - his Chairman........

I'll say it again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, but draws - home draws at that - are not going to do the job at the business end of the season. "This form", as you put it, is not going to get us a 50% win ratio in the next 8 games - the very record others are stating we need to stay up.

But the point is we are not WINNING our home games! What happened in 2005? We failed to win our home games and we went down, and this is history repeating itself; one defeat in 6 means nothing if we aren't winning the other 5 games. You can take all the 'positives' you like from another 2 points dropped at home against a below-average QPR team, but the lack of fire in our bellies and one goal (an OG at that) in three does not augur well I'm afraid.

Forest get tonked 5-0 at Burnley....Barnsley lose at home to Blackpool....all set up for us to get 3 points against a QPR side with no wins in 8 and to move out of the bottom three....and still we can't come up with the goods. Getting desperate.

His family loves him

Mods - thought the Twitter experiment worked quite well, although the tweating noise whenever I refreshed my ipod Touch caused great consternation to my wife :-(

...

Au contraire, I feel honoured. :-)

Twitterlicious. I'm in. :-)

I think your arguments work to a point, and clearly the wishes of Barclays have had a major impact on who has been available to play / used. However, it would be naive to believe that the stamp of Rupert Lowe was not all over what we became at the beginning of the season. Other, more well-informed posters have made reference to Lowe's arrogance in pre-season; the idea, in his warped mind, that our kids would "take the league by storm". My belief is that that the financial constraints worked to a point, but were also a convenient rationale to allow Lowe to do something that we ALL know he had been planning for over two years; that is, show everybody else that he knows football better than the experts by making the mad Dutch experiment work. If the restrictions placed on us by the bank were that severe, players would be gone by now. Contracts would have been cancelled by mutual consent, higher earners allowed the freedom to sign on somewhere else. And even if this logic is slightly flawed - and I concede that it may be - why are we now using the very personnel we were so desperate - and under pressure, apparently - to get rid of? Has our financial position improved since last September?

Given what he has already allowed us to see his of personality, I can well imagine Wotte telling Rupert to feck off!

Given what Mark Wotte appears to be doing in rejuvenating, reuniting and reigniting the team - he wasn't my first choice, but credit now where credit is [thus far] due - am I the only one now looking at the seven months of Jan Poortvliet's reign with utter incredulity? Why was the club, and Lowe in particular, making such catastrophic decisions? The ultimate net effect of this lunacy could still be felt should MW not achieve his aim of keeping us up - like every other sane Saints fan I hope he does - and there is going to have to be some SERIOUS soul-searching by Messrs Lowe et al if it all goes belly up and we start next season in League 1. I just cannot believe, particularly given the evidence of the last two games, that we were ever steered down this route in the first place. Madness, sheer madness.

All part of the grand plan, my firend. All part of the grand plan.... :-)

I'll say what I said to you last week JFP - just after you rushed to your keyboard as you started a very similar "I told you so" thread 3 nano seconds after the end of the game: I am glad we are winning and that we have given ourselves a chance of salvation, whether Pearson, Wotte or Salman Rushdie is at the helm. However, to come on here and be so smug is arrogant and foolish in the extreme. You are setting yourself up for one hell of an eggy face if Wotte doesn't manage to do what "The best manager ever in the world" did and keep us up. Come back in May, be smug and we'll all sing along with you; until then, a few words to the wise: grow up and shut up.

Why on earth do we need an unknown (and probably expensive) Dutch consultant to tell us which players are lurking in the reserve teams of clubs in our own country and our own league? Do PSV and FC Twente employ English consultants to tell them who they should be looking at in the Dutch lower leagues? You couldn't make it up.

125 miles there.....124 miles back (that's the vagueries of our motorway network for you)

Why are you so hung up on this? If you are angry at the "anti-Wotte" brigade's way of treating a defeat, why are you following suit by behaving similarly when we have won? Tonight, I don't care who is in charge. We have WON for only the second time at home ALL SEASON. Isn't that reason to put petty differences aside and savour the moment? Why waste energy on being aggro? I just don't understand. We're all Saints fans, we have won a game (a rare enough event this season). Let's just be happy for once.