The Kraken

Crouch never played for Saints after we were relegated. Edit; scratch that, I think I just missed the point....

Unfortunately, in this case Alpine's been proven right so far. We were all banging on about how important it was for us to come steaming out of the blockes from the very first game, and that hasn't happened yet. Yes, of course there's plenty of time left in the season and the transfer window is still open. But for the squad not to have been strengthened in two such vital areas (CM and RM) does point questions at the manager. I think Alpine was wrong when criticising AP in June and July for the lack of signings by then, but we're now in late August and seemingly no closer to getting the players AP said he needs. I still think we'll sign the players we're missing, and of course I think our fortunes will turn around. But it's no good re-writing history and pretending now that a slow start doesn't matter; it does. We're the "team to beat" in this division and the longer we stumble along the more difficult it will become to turn losses and draws consistently into wins.

If you think this is bad, wait until the Olympics is right on the radar; you'll have every two-bit union from here to kingdom come threatening mass walkouts, the country will come to complete standstill.

Very much agree with this, and with CB Saint's assessment of it. I saw one poster on the main board say it was "the most upset I've ever been for a death outside the family". Fair enough if it is, and maybe he/she has been sheltered from losing close friends, but the amount of grief is a bit excessive for how I feel. I'm very sad that Markus is gone, he was a perfect owner in so many respects, but I just don't feel the grief that others claim to do.

Tough to tell exactly, but as I understand it Les Reed has a slightly different role to DoF. His role seems to be dominated by looking after the coaching setup for the whole club, at all age levels. A DoF, in my eyes anyway, seems to be more closely associated with the first team and is a bridge between the manager, the chairman, the technical director (Les Reed in this case), the scouts, agents etc. Although previously Cortese had said he wanted a DoF by the end of the season, so maybe that's changed. Edit; just read his job descriptions, so perhaps you're right. However, that role would seem to have him reporting to AP, whereas a typical DoF role would have AP reporting to him.

This is a large part of it, for sure. Rather than just ignoring the club, The Sun in particular with their "South Coast Club" nonsense are trying to escalate the row and make it into a big story, presumably for printing when they have less news to fill the back pages. However, it doesn't stop them being right in principle. It's just yet another small step from the club in trying to manipulate and control all editorial content and news coming out of St Mary's, which is quite a worrying approach in my view. What next; a ban on selected national journos in the ground? We've already seen an Echo ban, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I'm going to go all Alpine here for a second, and I hope this is just a slip of the tongue as AP's trying to award some platitudes, but I'm a bit concerned if its apparently so easy for us to get bamboozled at home by the likes of Bournemouth.

Sky Sports News seem to be completely ignoring our game, not been mentioned once yet.

I honestly don't see the problem. Why should the club provide free inner-city parking? Anyway, surely if you use the travel club it negates the need for a car?

Would fit in perfectly for the departed Antonio; would love this one to come off in the next few days. Wonder if he needs more of a pre-season after being away with the U19s.

I have absolutely no faith in our judicial system when a company is allowed to rack up £130M of debts, continues to trade while ignoring all credit responsibilities, and this is deemed lawful and correct. Farce.

I'm not at all surprised about the outcome, I knew they'd get away with it. Joke decision. So now its ok to rack up over £130M of debt with horrific management and get away with it. Good call.

That's a complete manipulation of the truth. Again.

Alpine, you criticise Turkish in this thread for not reading everything you wrote, then you choose to ignore parts of my post in your response. I said believe that IF we start badly then AP will be given the boot. I'll quote the part of my message you clearly missed from then on. There is no contradiction. You see, the difference is that you believe we WILL start badly; in fact one of your previous, more ridiculous, posts suggested that our start will be even worse than last year. I believe that you are wrong in that belief. But, I guess by then end of August, we'll know one way or the other how we've started the campaign.

Firstly I disagree that AP is a weak link, and think its a cheap shot. But I do agree that, unless we're off and running and in the top 2 or 3 right from the start, AP will be under massive pressure and if, after only 4 or 5 games we've stuttered out of the blocks and are down around mid-table, then Cortese will wield the axe. I've always said that I would start to get concerned come August if we haven't made all (or at least most) of our signings; I can understand the reasons that we haven't to date, but AP won't be able to use it as an excuse to his boss if the current squad can't produce results. For the record, I think we'll be ok, that the squad we currently have will be enough to get us where we want to be, and that we will strengthen with further players this month; it just would have been much nicer to have the full squad by now. But whatever happens, its going to be an interesting season and going to games is going to be enormous fun again.

Off to Majorca on the 14th for a week. It maybe wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I got stuck there....

I guess we can demand what we like. Whether we get it or not is an entirely different matter.

I think the tribunal figure was quite fair actually. Brentford were reportedly hoping for £300K from the deal, being as they will more than likely make £250K from it they won't be too disappointed. It was typical tribunal negotiations; we offered £100K, they demanded £500K, the actual figure was somewhere in between.

He wouldn't leave on a free. He's under 24 and has been developed through the youth system; therefore in exactly the same manner as we've experienced with Dickson we will be due a development fee from any new club, which will either be pre-agreed between us and the new club or will go to tribunal.

It's not ideal, I grant. And I fully agree that 3 more players should be brought in. I'm just trying to put into context that the team and options we have at the moment aren't entirely as bad as is being made out. Wotton isn't the answer, and I didn't suggest he is; merely that for a down the order central midfielder there are many worse we could look to (point in case Lloyd James against Oldham, where AP clearly decided its better to have anyone else filling in that poor old Lloyd). You say it shows the current weakness of the squad, which is a term I disagree with. It certainly highlights where the squad could be stronger, but I wouldn't use the term weak to describe what we have.

Lowe's mantra was that we wouldn't invest money that we didn't have. If you think that alone got us relegated, so be it. I would argue his ridculous managerial appointments and over-involvement with team affairs were more to blame. In any case, it's been done to death and I have no desire to revisit that particular argument.

But how different is it to last year? The problems are just being exacerbated by the extent of the injury list right now. At our last game we missed more than half a team of potential first choice players through injury (Lambert, Puncheon, Lallana, Scheiderlin, Richardson, Seaborne). Unless you're Man City, injuries to that many key players at any one time cannot be fully legislated for and will affect any side. Take Liverpool for instance; remove Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Javier Macherano, Joe Cole, Glen Johnsonand Martin Skrtel from their team and they look very weak on paper. Even with all of our players removed we still have (for this level anyway) a really good number of options there. Plus the assertion of the manager to bring in the extra 2 or 3 players than he wants. I think you do our midfield a slight dis-service. Wotton is clearly a backup CM and no more; but lets not forget that he started (and finished) the JPT final and didn't look out of place there. For a current third choice and hopefully soon 4th choice CM I think it's a good backup to have. Also Mills got quite a few good reviews from his game on Saturday playing RM, so we're not completely bereft of options. It's making do, I'm thoroughly aware of that, I just don't believe its quite as bad as some people make out.

So do you completely disregard Cortese's assertions that the club has to be run as a viable business? Or are you saying you just want us to lump a load of money at the problem, and be damned with whether we make a profit or loss? Rupert Lowe received a lot of justified criticism but his decision to not allow the club to run at a loss was proven correct; under the reckless stewardship of the club after he was ousted we found out first hand what "paying the price" really delivers.

That's the thing though, we won't see on Saturday. A Saints win 4-0 won't prove you wrong in exactly the same way as a defeat won't prove you right. The season is over 46 games, and as you yourself have admitted we already have a very good team to kick off the season with. Would we be better served with added reinforcements? Of course. But they're not here now so we put faith in the very good team we have. Antonio missed a lot of games last season through injury but we did ok in those, so why not this season? I really don't get it. Actions of all 46 games will speak louder than words, but I'm glad my upcoming holidays mean that I'll be avoiding the b1tch fest that will ensue one way or the other on here in the next 3 or 4 weeks.