madsent

Dowie is not an established Championship manager. If he were, he'd be in a job now. As I said before, there must be something that owners don't like about him since he's been sacked by his last three employers without making it through a year in the job.

Getting Palace into the play-offs and promoted was a great achievement considering his lack of experience and how far they behind they were when he took over. However, they were pretty clueless in the Premier League and he was fired by Charlton, Coventry and QPR without going a year in any of the jobs so there must be something that isn't right with his managerial style.

They got 5 points (draws against Stoke and Pompey, win against Middlesbrough) and would have stayed up with 6. HTH.

You asked who the "family" is and supplied a list of wealthy individuals. It's more likely to be a family that owns a successful business than a family of rich people, including a billionaire, that own separate businesses. It's a moot topic for at least 21 days anyway.

Actually, the big problem was the number of games that the opposition scored the same number of goals as us. We actually lost the same number of games this season as we did last season.

Surely the first team squad is limited to 16 already - 11 starters and 5 subs. What happens is one or more get injured, especially if the 16 contains someone like Richard Wright who holds some kind of record for warm-up injuries ?

Typical Echo mistake. We'd be 2nd if the top 41 teams were kicked out of the league. Norwich would be champions.

There's very little chance Davis will be with us next season regardless of what his wife wants. He's at the age where goalkeepers are deemed to be at their peak and could command a decent contract at a number of Championship clubs. We can't afford to even offer him a contract at the moment and he'll get plenty of offers before we're in a position to do so.

He's just being anal.

I'm pretty certain he's retiring and was going to leave Reading whether they were promoted or not. There's no chance of him joining us.

The idea that our first-team squad was made up of 44 players is patently laughable. The list of 44 players was basically all of our players who were eligible to play regardless of age and experience. The distinctions between youth, reserve and first team squads were supposedly removed with the continental-style coaching arrangement leaving us with one squad that trained together and from which the teams were picked, age permitting.

Signing-on fees don't count to someone's weekly wage. If you believe the figures that were leaked to the Echo, the £200k was paid in the summer and is not affecting the current outgoings for the club. Even if you were to pro-rate the signing-on fee over the course of his contract, it would add £4k/week to his wages assuming we're obliged to pay him until July. That would put him on approximately £14k/week.

They should be grateful they have a contract that allows them to change employers whenever they want so long as it's with the permission of the current employer and in the correct month of the year. I'm sure some of them are very happy they can only play for 2 clubs in one calendar year and that Michel Platini is actively trying to change it so they cannot play for 2 clubs in the same league in the same season. If only I had such freedom of employment.

I don't get what you mean. The bank holds the trading account so it must have been bouncing the cheques that SLH was writing. It would have been nice if they'd started bouncing the cheques a week earlier.

There is absolutely no way a new club would be created in the Blue Square Premier or even the Blue Square South. People have jumped on that bandwagon because someone at the Echo asked whether it would be possible. The response was never published, which is a very good indicator that the response was in the negative. The idea that Eastleigh would be happy to ground share with a new team that is admitted into a league above them is a joke, especially after their debacle in the playoffs this week.

You'd have liked them a lot more if they'd called in the overdraft in February after we increased the cost base rather than lowering it. The plan agreed in the summer cannot have allowed for no sales in January and for the club to be saddled with the salaries and bonuses of Skacel, Saganowski and Euell. Forcing SLH into administration in February would have been much better for both parties.

Stockport are in desperate trouble (but not relegated) and there is a very distinct possibility that they will disappear forever. As a Stockport fan said on the radio, it's ludicrous that Manchester City run buses to take fans from Stockport to the City of Manchester Stadium thus making a small pool of potential fans even smaller. They have to compete against all the other teams in the Manchester conurbation and there isn't much of a pool of fans to pick from in Cheshire. I hope they survive but it won't be easy. If they do survive then I guess they'll have a head coach instead of a manager and maybe a director of football since the manager's position has been made redundant. It sounds bizarre to make that position redundant but it was probably the only way to terminate his contract without too much cost. I'm sure Jim Gannon won't try to get blood out of a stone by claiming constructive dismissal.

Hoddle was a far better coach than Dave Jones but he was very lucky to have Dave Jones's signings. No manager had such a consistently bad transfer record as Hoddle.

You're right. Tessem barely made an impact on the pitch at Bournemouth. That said, he must have been a great influence in the dressing room since Bournemouth won 12 and drew 2 of the 22 games he was there for.

Why does his goal output matter ? He's a defensive central midfielder. Besides, it's not like any of our central midfielders contributed. Gillett, Schneiderlin and Wotton got 0 goals between them. We haven't had a proper goal-scoring central midfielder since the days of Magilton and Ekelund. Our failure this season was the lack of goals from attacking players such as Smith, Dyer, Euell, Pekhart, Robertson, Lallana and Saganowski.

We're not even the only teams in our own division with that record. From the top down, I can see : Chelsea have 10 home and 12 away wins. Everton have 7 home and 8 away wins. Aston Villa have 5 home and 10 away wins. Bristol City have 7 home and 8 away wins. Blackpool have 5 home and 8 away wins. We have 4 home and 6 away wins. Leicester have 13 home and 14 away wins. MK Dons have 12 home and 14 away wins. Colchester have 7 home and 11 away wins. Leyton Orient have 6 home and 9 away wins. Brighton have 6 home and 7 away wins. Lincoln have 6 home wins and 8 away wins. Port Vale have 6 home wins and 7 away wins.

Hard to see why you've lumped Dalglish in with the others. He was very successful in a very competitive league. Liverpool haven't won a title since he left. He won 3 titles and lost one in that classic game against Arsenal. That included the double in 85-86. No-one can dispute that Souness was appalling at Liverpool. He inherited Dalglish's squad in 91, allowing great players like Peter Beardsley to leave while signing crap like Torben Piechnik. He was Liverpool's version of Ian Branfoot.

Bournemouth effectively got docked 27 points and Luton got docked 40 points because both were relegated by 10 point deductions last season. How much more punishment do you want for those teams ?

It's the last game of the season which is usually a big day for every club. Our game at Forest is equally meaningless but is a 30,000 sell-out. Roy Keane's arrival may have had some impact as along with their 3-0 win at Cardiff but I'm surprised it's not a sell-out assuming that the missing 1000 fans isn't Coventry fans not travelling.

Actually, he's quite a poor finisher who had a purple patch for a few games under Burley (when we utilised the attacking threat of Bale, Skacel and Jones) and a run of 3 games under Wotte. People blame Leon Best for our failure against Derby in the playoffs but I thought Saga's inability to hit the target in those two games despite plenty of chances (I seem to remember him hitting the woodwork at least twice) cost us. Those people who say he didn't play much last season should remember that he went over 1000 minutes (approx 11 whole games) without a goal before scoring against Sheffield Utd. I admit that Burley messed him about but he had to be dropped after going 3 months without a goal despite having a decent amount of playing time. In all his goal drought covered 21 games in which he started 11 times and was sub 10. If you then factor in his lack of goals since the Preston game this season then I think it's right for him to go. He has never come close to replicating his initial run of goals with us.