TopGun

All I can say is that if it is true, then unlucky and get well etc. But I too veer towards the "cry wolf" publicity angle. Things coming home to roost perhaps.

Using the programme to find out the scores at h/t from the other games which were listed as A,B,C etc on the old manual scoreboard. Evening games in the winter when everything seemed wondrous.

Hiley's successors at work no doubt. Be interesting to see if the Birmingham programme is also littered with spelling errors.

lol

You won't believe it but I edited it down by chopping out all the stuff that Lowe was asked about Sven. Clearly Saints were getting a good amount of newsprint coverage that day. Anyway I warned you!

Rasiak is near enough gone, so John is possibly back in the fold for the moment. They were both items for sale. It's less likely John is the next to be offloaded now. Given that BWP wasn't involved at all at Exeter (so no cup-tied stuff) I'd assume he is the next forward to be offloaded now by choice.

Have times altered Rupert? Or is he is the same beast? Here's an interesting interview he gave to the Independent in March 2005. (Don't go on at me for the length of it BTW) Rupert Lowe: 'Public schoolboys and ****neys get along fine ... we're as thick as each other' By Brian Viner Monday, 21 March 2005 Let me begin at the end, if that's not too much of a conundrum. My interview with the Southampton FC chairman, Rupert Lowe, has finished, and he is leading The Independent's photographer, Robert Hallam, and me through a maze of corridors inside St Mary's stadium. He's sorry about rushing us, he says, but he has an important meeting to attend. Then he pauses before a pair of swing doors. "Would either of you like the loo before you go," he asks, with the impeccable solicitude of the upper middle classes. It is hard to think of anyone else in football who would have expressed such concern for our bladders; hard, indeed, to think of anyone else in football called Rupert (as Graeme Souness pointedly observed). And this is significant because a lot of the media interest in Lowe concerns his poshness, even to the extent of trying to make him seem posher than he is. "It has been widely reported that I'm an Old Etonian," he says. "I'm not. I'm an Old Radleian." Also widely reported is that he is a hockey-playing toff who wasn't the slightest bit interested in football until he joined the Southampton board. "They still say that I went to a football match for the first time six months before I joined Southampton," he says. "Incorrect. I used to go with friends regularly to watch Ipswich Town, although as a boy I supported West Ham. I played football at the Dragon School in Oxford. And I remember being very keen on my Soccer Stars album. When you bought stuff from the school tuck shop you got the stickers." That Lowe should cite the Dragon School tuck shop in his counterblast to those who dismiss him as a toff with no pedigree as a football lover seems to me rather sweet. But I wouldn't want to patronise him with inverted snobbery. Besides, far from his public-school background being a handicap, his experience of loneliness and petty cruelties has probably helped him cope. "I remember being at The Dell one evening when we lost 2-0 to Leeds United. We had one point after 10 games, and the whole stadium was chanting 'Rupert Lowe's a ******!' That's not nice. I did wake up one night and say to my wife, 'What am I doing this for?' But I am not someone who backs away from a situation." His stoicism may be tested over the next weeks and months. Southampton's Premiership status is in greater peril than it has been for years, and however much starch there is publicly in Lowe's upper lip, privately he must be fretting terribly over the implications of relegation. He denies it, of course. "If the worst happens, we have managed it so the club will financially survive. We have a fairly sound formula in place which will serve us well. The key if we do go down is to maintain our squad. But I should add that we have no intention of going down, and I don't think we will, because under Harry Redknapp we have a new-found confidence. "Things are on the mend. Earlier this season people doubted Peter Crouch; now I hear him being talked about as a possible England player. And our youth set-up is one of the best in the League. However, the truth is that as a club we have outboxed our weight for a long time. When I sat down for my Christmas turkey just over a year ago we were in fourth place. That raised expectations, and when expectations are raised they have further to fall." Which is indubitably true, but so is the fact that since Lowe became chairman in 1995, the Saints have had nine managers. As a point of comparison, if you go nine managers back at yesterday's opponents, Middlesbrough, you reach John Neal in 1977. So Lowe's tenure has hardly been a model of continuity. On the other hand, he very bullishly hands me the club's annual report to prove that with him at the head of the boardroom table the club has prospered mightily. And sure enough, the report shows that annual turnover, boosted by the move from The Dell to St Mary's, has climbed from £5m to £50m. Moreover, he says, the circumstances that led to most of the managers leaving were beyond his control. This is fair enough: it is hard, for example, to see what else he could have done in the case of Dave Jones, wrongly accused of child abuse, other than suspend him on full pay while he fought to prove his innocence. And Gordon Strachan left for "family" reasons. On the other hand, it could be argued that replacing Paul Sturrock (main handicap: no managerial experience at Premiership level) with Steve Wigley (main handicap: no managerial experience at any level) was, at best, naïve. Not that it's an argument Lowe will countenance. "I make no apology for giving people a go," he says. "If you don't give people a go then you end up with an ageing pool of managers, and nobody gaining the experience to take English football forward." Laudable words, I say, but Southampton aren't a charity. Surely it's not his board's policy to appoint managers for the greater good of English football? "No, but I believe that Steve Wigley - who is back, incidentally, as director of youth football - could have done it if people, the board and the supporters, had had a greater degree of belief in him." All the same, Wigley went, whereupon Lowe was all for reappointing Glenn Hoddle, despite Hoddle's "betrayal" of the club when Tottenham Hotspur came calling in 2001. "Yes, he walked out on the club, but I think he realises now that he might have been better staying here than going to Spurs. Everyone makes mistakes; the art is to learn from them. And I have a very high regard for Glenn's coaching. I worked with him for 15 months and found him extremely well-organised. I would have been quite comfortable having him back, but not everyone on the board agreed, and it is better to have a club with togetherness." So Harry Redknapp was appointed, not that there was togetherness among the fans, some of whom resented a former Portsmouth manager taking charge. That they have embraced Redknapp is perhaps due not least to the faintly absurd name-calling that persists between him and the Pompey owner, Milan Mandaric. On the very morning I visit Lowe, in fact, the sports pages are full of a fresh set of mutual insults. The chairman is beginning to find it all pretty wearisome. "It's one of those things," he says, with a sigh. "It's obviously important to both of them and they find it difficult to put it behind them. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that both clubs are in the Premier League is a good thing, and there is quite enough historical rivalry without fanning the flame." This is clearly an implied criticism of his manager, and I have heard that Lowe and Redknapp do not see eye to eye. After all, when did chalk ever look cheese in the eye? But Lowe insists that they get along fine. "Public schoolboys and ****neys have always got along pretty well," he says. "On the whole they're just about as thick as each other." I laugh, dutifully. "I work well with Harry and I can see what a big contribution he, and his son Jamie, make to people's self-belief. Also, he's very highly regarded by the media. So instead of negative media every day, which unfortunately was the case under Paul Sturrock, it's mostly positive. That's important, because if enough negative things are written about a football club, they start to be accepted as correct." I ask him whether Redknapp is likely to be manager next season? After all, there have been suggestions that Lowe has offered Sir Clive Woodward a role in the running of Southampton next season, and I would guess, just to take a wild stab in the dark, that Woodward's arrival might not sit too comfortably with Redknapp and his assistant, Jim Smith. "Harry's made it quite clear that if we remain in the Premier League, he's keen to stay. He is less keen to stay here if we don't." Which would open the door, I venture, for Lowe's dream ticket of Glenn Hoddle and Woodward? I wait for a furious rebuttal. Instead, I get a faint smile. "Clive sat next to me at a football match, the next thing I hear is that he's our new manager. But it's public knowledge that he would like to get into football, so who knows what will happen after the Lions tour?" Maybe you do, I say. Another smile, although laced with irritation. "Clive is not qualified to be a football manager. But I have no doubt that he has skills that we as a club can learn from. It is not very often England win a World Cup in any sport, beating nations we previously never believed we could beat. Team games are about creating a team ethic, and clearly there are skill sets which will cross over from rugby to football. And vice versa; the reason I got to know Clive was because he came to see how our academy worked. "Unfortunately, we have this media which puts football on a pedestal, but to say that you cannot transfer skills from rugby or hockey to football is rubbish, as any thinking person knows. If Clive can make a contribution here then I will encourage that. I think he's a great leader and I like him very much. But I'm not prepared to talk about conversations we may have had or not had." "Look, the key management problem in football is to maintain the same outlook when you're fourth in the table as when you're 18th, 19th or 20th. Otherwise, when you're fourth you make bullish, stupid decisions, and when you're bottom you make panic-related, bad decisions. "We won't do that, nor will we make the mistake, as some clubs have, of loading all investment on short-term measures. If I spend all our money on this generation of players, how are we going to pay the next generation?" Now there's a question for me to mull over in the loo.

I'm glad that Scooby has made the link between his Lord Lowe and the peasantry that is represented by Manchester's WH Ireland and the northern flat caps. It is through the efforts of Lord Lowe and his dynamic company that the flat caps of the north are beavering away in factories and mills ensuring SFC a glorious future. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRX6_Txpaw

Especially for Scott and S13 SFC http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw26DHIs4o4 Isn't Rolf a hero? More hits by Rolf you should know. Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_D-LmRNdQiQ&feature=related Jake the Peg - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-OfE7NBviTc&feature=related Bring it on for Rolf!

Why not just become a bookie like D1cko (that's funny of the filter) and then position your formulae from the other side of the fence? Obviously all those employed mathematicians and punsters are just geeks with glasses who don't know the real thing so you could help Ladbrokes etc clean up Kipper. Or you could even be an independent for real profits!

That's fair enough tom. You've managed 151 posts in 13 months. That's about three a day. You're either not addicted or not a fan! Stu is gripping the arms of his chair right now.

You and I are agreeing far too much recently S13! If you want a tasty welsh MILF though it has to be Cerys Matthews. Excellent rendition of "Baby It's Cold Outside" with Welsh boyo Tom Jones here. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4klyIX4RIWA

She was hot 20 years ago though. I'd have been whisked away.

Ex-ac-erly. Whine and whinge as much as you like Essruu, SRS etc. Stick to your principles as long as you like. It's a fiver FFS that allows you to participate and interact with others for a whole year... Essruu, I haven't noticed the traffic on b-anter increasing particularly... that's more to do with the non-modding policy I guess though that puts many people off. I ain't knocking b-anter but it isn't most people's cuppa tea cos of its positioning... The other sites run by nutters like SF76 and Cushty are never gonna get traffic either. You takes your choice peeps!

Someone just emailed me earlier and said "wotcha" as a hello. It got me thinking a bit. When I was a kid in junior school in Soton in the 1970s (blimey) we didn't say "wotcha", but said "atcha"... I really don't know whether that was meant to be "wotcha" and we somehow got it wrong... did other people also say "atcha" then? Is "atcha" a 1970s Soton term like "mush"? What do posters recall from their schooldays and what do you say now both face to face and on emails etc to say hello?

1p out also as I had one the other day.

I'm a top pedant on this, if not CDO. Numbers under 10 should be written as words, numbers of 10 and above are wrtten as numerals. Unless the number starts a sentence, in which case it is always a word (I'm sure somebody will now say how do you write 13,245,367,741 as a word at the start of a sentence).

Alpine Saint (as against Alpine_Saint). I could have real fun.

Upstairs bedroom windows cannot be on more than the second hole on the latch. However, as this potentially stops the cats falling out when they jump up on to the ledge, it probably doesn't classify as a true OCD.

Yawn. How many infractions you on at the moment Scooby? Hurry up and get to 12 please.

Good stuff!

Maybe he snuck aboard the flight incognito...

He's vehemently insisting that he will not line the pockets of Baj and Granty but we know Stu has the ability to do shameless volte faces and justify them with a straight face too! I am guessing that he will succumb on Monday 18/8. Make your own predictions here. The winner gets a box of blue smarties.

Very good.

I fail to see where that insinuation has been made really. To me it's just a debate about whether Lowe or other directors should be present at games. I'm happy to stand corrected of course.