PokingFun

Alpine, I don't see how on earth that article can be construed as Lowe based spin. You know, this is a report of an incident that happened to involve a loaned Saints player, I can see no spin in it whatsoever. Some of you guys really need to lose this obsession with Lowe influencing anything in the world written that has a connection with Saints.

You need to understand that the exact seriousness of any accident does not always become apparent to everyone until very much later on in proceedings after police have done their investigating. I work for an insurance company and our claims department are often not aware of the seriousness of an RTA until they receive a police report or some other means of describing an incident which leads them to believe it is in fact very serious. This happens more often than you may think. It is highly likely that this is just the OS reporting what they were told by someone else immediately after the accident and therefore I think you are being extremely harsh on the person who has written the article. Agree totally that condolences and thoughts go to the family of the man who has died.

My mate phoned earlier and said he has got a couple of tickets because his lad wanted to go and watch Man United. I will bet there are a significant number of people doing just that for that game. The nippers want to watch Rooney et al these days, not Jordan Robertson (who?) etc etc. Harsh reality of life where we are I am afraid.

He's on a realistic one assuming no new investment becomes available in those two years. Its where Saints are at right now!!

I am not sure that I agree with you here. Billy Davies had a big target man up front and it is fair to say that they played fairly direct football, but they also had a couple of wingers with pace (Barnes & Teale (?)) who could get behind teams and deliver quality into the box. Added to that was some steel through the spine of the side with Oakley pulling strings in the middle of the park who on his day was a quality CCC player. They played football when needed and knew when to go direct. he built his foundation on being solid, not conceding and making the most of the team's strengths. That is very good management even if you don't like the style of football. For all our nice neat approach play in the first two thirds of the pitch, we are woeful in the last third and do not get behind teams, on the rare occasions we do then the final ball is poor and when the final ball is good we cannot find the net as we have no clinical strikers. Steve Howard might have been a big lump but I am sure he still knew where the net was and knew how to hold the ball up to bring others into the game. Thats not hoofball!! The reason everyone at St Marys thinks Derby played hoofball is probably because Billy Davies said to his team 'these lot have a soft centre when dealing with a direct ball down the middle' and asked his team to play accordingly. Thats good tactics, not hoofball!!

The logic is that getting a new manager per se does not make the difference it is actually the quality of the new manager that counts. E.g. Redknapp at Spurs when he can be arsed. There is much statistical evidence that suggests the overall effect is neutral and that on average a team does as well as it did before without an influx of better quality players. I guess this is where a good manager earns his corn in identifying better quality than a side already has while operating within the financial constraints he is placed under. Personally, I think Poortvliet is out of his depth and certainly does not have the contacts in the English game to bring in anyone of the desired quality to get us out of this mess!

From what I have seen of Lallana, he is definitely no winger, not quick enough for a start and likes to drift in. It should be Lallana playing in the hole, not DMG. I don't really see the attraction of DMG as a forward or midfielder TBH.

:-) to be a glory hunter, surely there has to be glory?!?!? Can't see it myself ;-)

If he has this attitude (and its a big IF) then maybe he is ****ed off at the consistent instability and bull**** going on at the club right now! That in itself might be a reason to want to leave! Professional sportsmen are usually very driven people by nature and therefore sentiment rarely comes into making decisions about their careers.

No he won't because he will be sold to a CCC side at the very least!! HTH. :-)

I do not think you can blame any player for wanting to better themselves at all, but the comments Drew has made merely point out that he feels he is ready for a step up, which is not actually saying he wants to leave at all, unless it might further his career. We have all had ambition in our lives, just some more than others so if Drew decides to leave for a bigger club, or one with genuine opportunity to get into the PL then good luck to him. He has served us well so far for 100 odd games and has not moaned as far as I am aware when played out of position at left back and is currently doing a good job. If Saints had any chance of making it to the PL then i am sure he would want to play there for us and not someone else, but there is no great chance of that for the foreseeable future so you cannot blame the guy if he considers any offers the club is willing to take come January. I hope he stays, but if not, good luck Drew.

Thought Robertson was willing enough, just not good enough really. Poor touch, gave ball away often and not even really a physical presence. McG should never be playing either wide or in the hole as he is an out and out striker and an average one at that who may improve but equally may disappear over the next couple of seasons. Other managers have been slated for playing people out of position and from what I saw last night there were many players out of position: Skacel - would rather see him at LM even if it means Mills having to learn behind him. James - a midfielder all day long, decent enough going forward but poor defensively. BWP - never a LM, maybe could do RM, but in my eyes he is a forward. McG - never a midfielder in a million years and not even that great a striker. Lallana - can only play in the hole IMO, when he plays out wide he is completely wasted, needs to be deployed off a big target man to pick up the loose ends and be allowed to create in the final third of the pitch. Last night was not good, we did not get behind the Palace backline hardly at all and when we did our lack of composure was telling. Nearly all efforts on goal were Surman shots from outside the box.

And Burley even more so I recall..

Does he refuse to pass the ball backwards and sidewards and not move in behind the opposition backline then? ;-)

Lowe cannot sell if the player does not want to go.....if the player wants to go then that would be a different matter.

Personally, I don't consider what goes on at Saints as particularly big news other than whta happens on the pitch. I really don't worry too much about things I cannot influence myself. I guess only the echo and the club know the truth but I respect your opinion on journalists generally if you are from that trade. My view was simply that some people prefer to report (or do any work) that their boss tells them to preserve their job.

Given up the ghost in what respect? All I am stating is that if an individual doing a job accepts that his role in life as an employee is to do as he is told then that is surely his prerogative if he feels that is the best way to secure his and his family's income. Thats nothing to do with being a journalist. Adam Leitch is a sports journalist, not an investigative journalist trying to dig up as much dirt as he can so that he can offer sensationalist headlines. He reports primarily on the goings on that happen on the pitch and from what I have seen he relates these back realistically enough. The off field stuff and politics he probably has no concrete access to and bar stating his own opinion on goings on there is little else he can report on matters. Why would Adam Leitch want to run the risk of losing some important contacts on the football side or ending up gagged by a court when he is a sports journalist? I just think some of our fans expectations of the echo and Adam Leitch are unrealistic. You all have a choice to buy the echo or not. If you think the information is puppeteering for the club then don't buy it, simple as that really. And no I don't work for the echo or in journalism!?!? :-)

Its not my argument at all, just a point being made thats all. I have no season ticket myself but know many that have and they will not feel happy that they are getting a worse deal for a game than any supporter that can walk up on the day. FWIW, the club should make all ticket prices cheaper based on the entertainment being shown each week to the supporters, but that doesn't mean ST holders will be happy to have effectively paid over the odds if that were to become the case.

This wont go down well with season ticket holders....unless of course the club plan to refund the difference between the per game ST amount paid and the lower price...

This guy is trying to do a job. Do you really reckon if he asks searching questions of Lowe that he would get a response? Get in the real world. The guy probably has a mortgage to pay like everyone else and therefore prefers not being controversial if that is what his bosses want from him. Its called self preservation and I am sure Saints do not represent his or societies only interest locally either.

It probably was the plan all along to try to integrate the youngsters to reduce our cost base because even with the parachute payments it would appear that our income was not enough to cover the outgoings and we should never have spent the sort of money we did when the new board knew non promotion would be a disaster. At the end of the day, Redknapp is not really one for bringing through youngsters anyway unless they are exceptional (e.g. Theo) and before anyone points to West Ham, he really did have exceptional talent there and would have been mad not to play Cole, Rio, Lampard etc. The ethos of bringing youngsters through at St Marys is not a problem, but it's the sheer number we are trying to bring through that is the problem. There are so many that are simply not ready to be involved on more than an occasional basis and it is hurting us big time.

There is no such thing as a 'new manager effect' - as many that improve for a new manager is equalled by at least as many that don't improve.

This post is absolutely spot on. You simply cannot continue to erode product quality and at the same time expect people to continue to buy. Life just isn't like that in the real world and it is the same with football. Only those fans that associate the attending of a game as an essential part of their life will go along regardless. The rest will make a choice based on whether the product they are supporting offers them value for money and compared to many other pastimes the football on offer now at St Marys clearly offers little value to the majority of Southampton supporters.

Thing is though, like Warnock or not, he is an experienced manager and blended a couple of the best young players they had in with his experienced performers. They also still had strikers capable of hitting the net. We are a completely different story now. We do not have an exerienced manager, goalscoring forwards and have integrated too many kids!

Navyred, I think your posts are great when you give us the progress report on the youngsters, but from what I have seen the only youngsters who are up to playing in this league here and now are Lallana and Scneiderlin and the rest are going to need careful introduction. What Saints are actually going to end up doing is destroy those players who may have the natural ability because pitching them in in such big numbers against seasoned league campaigners is absolute madness. At the end of the day, unless there is a new Wayne Rooney or similar waiting in the wings then we are not going to score anything like enough goals to keep us up this season. It seems to me that Lowe and Wilde have given up on this season and are accepting the inevitable relegation that will follow when you get rid of three forwards and leave yourself with a group of kids that do not have the know how to compete and win at this level. We have left these kids woefully exposed and they will not benefit from this experience.