saint1977

Yes because he was doing a good job and most fans acknowledged that TDD. Remember, he is CEO, NOT an owner and his track-record since 2004 is going to read 2 relegations by May 2009. Therefore, his style is totally inappropriate and he is the one that should buy more shares and put up or shut up if he wants to "rule" in such in an arbitary way. Therefore, as Chairman, if he is doing a poor job which one home win all season tells you is and no-one bar a few brainwashed zealots - I know that's not you TDD and I'm not having a pop at you mate - can tell us otherwise and he has to go.

Most of that post is to the usual excellent FC standard but the last 2 paragraphs are just plain inaccurate and wrong. True fans do not like being talked down to when they (as "Doubting Thomases" to use one of RL's phrases) can see the CEO has made an incompetent mess YET again, even if the muppet of a major shareholder can't see it. We are quite entitled to vote with our shares, our voices and our feet if we see consistently poor management and an unwillingness to listen and learn from basic mistakes.

Agree to an extent, the last 4 years have been awful but Lowe should never have been allowed to run a club on 6% shareholding and that was Askham taking the pee on the reverse takeover. Lawrie Mac didn't come out of it too well either. Just sick of the lot of them really, they are all discredited and not worthy of the fans trust or confidence in any way, shape of form.

That's clearly wrong TDD, many in the City had a problem with the deal at the time with allegations of "Skullduggery" and have always had a problem with him hoovering up shares (allegedly) from the vulnerable on the ultra-cheap. Sorry, but he's done nowt for SFC, taken a lot out and put nowt in (even Secure Retirement put £3m in due to Askham's mismangement) and most Saints fans feel the same way. Ted Bates he ain't. I usually like your posts TDD but you are well off the pace on this one.

I just think they are all a waste of time but I think Askham is the one who deserves a kicking. This is his mess and the "guy" should be shot. The whole thing sounds like an inbred family having a slanging match with Guy as the dribbling old fart in the corner that started it all many years ago. Makes you proud to be a Saints fan doesn't it?

Not impressed either but what have any of the main participants ever done anything for SFC in the last 20 years? The Reverse Takeover was all about the fans wasn't it? ****ing Guy Askham should be getting the kicking though, Rupert deserves some of it due to his stupid and reckless gamble in the summer and of course Mike Wilde hid altogether. This is Askham's mess and the club (ie the fans and long-suffering staff) are the ones to suffer. Ted Bates must be turning in his grave. Sack the Board.

Ultimately that is right but given the amount of sniping Lowe did via his PR minion Charles Sale, Rupert is reaping what he has sown. Sadly, the club suffers as ever and the fans are at the back of the queue. SFC can only recover and rebuild when all the main "players" in that room are gone lock,stock and barrel from SFC. Time to turn up the heat at the Reading game.

Bet Askham is doing a frightened dribble into his rocking chair, "blasted young hooligans". Evil old barsteward, I wouldn't give a penny for that particular guy but I'd certainly stick him on top of the bonfire. In fact folks, we have a song for the Reading game.... Build a Bonfire, Build a Bonfire Put Rupert at the top Mikey Wilde in the middle And We'll Burn the Effing Lot.

On the contrary, WGS and Hoddle were superb appointments and for where the club was at the time, Dave Jones was a handy appointment too. Not the best tactically but Jones has always bought shrewdly whereever he's been - look at the Cardiff side he's built and watch them murder us at SMS. That said, Rupert was correct to replace him with Hoddle as Dave had other things on his mind and you can't blame him really. Sturrock was an odd one, never understood what went on there. With Wigley and Gray though, I'm sorry but does anyone REALLY think those were sensible options? Name a club (bar Adkins at S****horpe who already had a good side built by Laws) where the cheap internal option has worked? Answer me this - if Stuart Gray was so hot, why did Rupert take FOUR months to appoint him? Answer, because Moyes and McClaren and the other candidates knew the likes of Gibson and Kenwright wouldn't be poking their inexpert noses in every 2 minutes. As soon as we appointed Wigley, I knew we were down, even in August. When the CEO makes the same basic mistake twice and it reduce the company's income to a fraction, that should be a dismissable offence.

The thought of drinking a pint of Coke is flipping awful - all that sugar and caffine. Diet Coke has all sorts of nasty sweetners in it. I drink mineral water as designated driver, boring but a lot less sugar!

I noticed that as well. I was driving so I couldn't have had a beer but FFS, does ANYONE at the club have a clue about running a business?

Same here, I've been at quite a few away games and had to keep quiet. That said, their plastics are just that bit more obnoxious and I'm glad I didn't see any in 04/05 otherwise I would have been forced into something I might have regretted later (well, the consequences anyway). If you can't keep quiet in the home end and you get a slap you can hardly moan can you? I know a lad that had a ticket in the away end for the Derby home game in the first season @ SMS, Oakley scored a peach of goal and he forgot where he was. He soon remembered again and looked like he'd done 15 rounds with Joe Calzaghe.

Totally agree Adrian, he's a lazy cvnt. I can cope with limited players trying their best because we've had a few over the years but seriously, this guy is Keith Cassels with a worse attitude and even less ability. He couldn't score a solitary goal in Leagues 1 & 2 on loan, what eijit decided to give him a 3 year deal FFS?

I'm really beginning to see that on this site we are agreeing that the 3 amigos need to go and go now. I'm not sure that we neccessarily need an alternative at this stage, we won't know what's genuinely out there as Lordswood Saint hit the nail on the head on another thread - the 3 Amigos do not want to sell and with their chums and proxy muppets, they own an awful lot of the club. After all, potential investors will want to spend their money on the club and not bail out the failures of the last 4 years mismanagement and incompetence which ALL THREE of the main shareholders have been responsible for. Rupert Lowe is killing the club though with his appalling choice in managers - JP, Gray, Wigley, Sturrock - I'll excuse him Burley and Redknapp as those appointments had a fair bit of fan support. It's also fine to create a top-class academy but you have to be able to fund it and the quality of product has dried up, meaning that he can't effectively substitute academy expenditure for first team budgets but still needs to pay the mortgage on the stadium. SCW would have been a cracking, innovative idea in the Premier League but we couldn't afford the additional overhead in the CCC.

I can't believe Um that until recently, people that claim to be going regularly have been telling us about the "great football" we've been playing. I like the idea but not the reality on no proper first team players. My summary would be: Genuine excellent home games: Brum Carling Cup, Norwich after Robertson scored although they pummelled us before that and Sibierski should have scored twice Good in patches, poor in places but lacking a bit of experience to close the game out or to make that extra stride: Cov 1st half & Sheff Wed, Brum 1st half, Ipswich, Wolves 2nd half Solid but no creativity: Plymouth Dreadful and deserved a hammering: Bristol City, Blackpool, Notts Forest (the first two games would have been 5 or 6-0 but for Kelvin's heroics).

I'd go with that, specialists in their proper positions instead of round pegs in square holes trying to fit a system that is clearly failing. Redknob is no genius but has got the best out of his players at Spurs by playing them where they feel comfortable whereas Ramos was a bit of expensive JP.

I don't agree with what Alpine is saying and administration is not a fix of any sort, 99% of us agree on that. However, it is also highly simplistic to say that we wouldn't be on the verge of it with 26k gates. Rupert said himself that the Man U revenue is a drop in the ocean so gate reciepts aren't as big an issue as the club's overheads. The stadium is one issue but the academy is very costly to run and costs £ms a year which it is hard to sustain without leaking a lot of money unless you have external investment.

I'm not either, this season has been bad enough without having to watch plastic Mancs jumping up and down as one of Man U's reserve strikers completes a hat-trick. I'd rather see Reading at home and that's the honest truth.

Most fans, yourself included Derry, could see that by September. James would do far better at RM, what we should be doing is getting a specialist RB as one of the loans rather than a hareem of loan strikers that aren't getting a game and wasting money. Didn't Lowe learn anything about stockpiling poor players from first time around? Even if they improve, we don't get the benefits anyway and he can only justify it if they were having the impact DeSkate had at Bournemouth or Kenwyne at Sheff Wed.

Very true but as with any business (and politics), if the customers and stakeholders want the leader gone, he will be gone. We need a concerted and intense campaign similar to that which removed Branfoot. If Lowe and Askham's matchday experience is made highly uncomfortable they are more likely to bail out. If you take SMS attitudes and those posted on here, 90% want him and his minions gone so instead of squabbling or saying "there's no alternative", let's home in on Lordswood's point, remember that we are all Saints fans and turn on these people. Moreover, the swollen gate numbers might actually say to any non-tyre kickers that we do have potential given some direction, moderate investment and people that know what they are doing.

Earlier in the season Holmes got some pretty tasty crosses in IMO but there was no-one to head them in which is what the delivery deserved. We need to get some height and pace in up front and if that means selling Surman that's what we have to do. Know how you feel because even in the circumstances the team management and selections are wacky and inconsistent and I have little sympathy for the players either - if you don't want pressure, play for a non-league side and get a job like the rest of us with a mortgage and committments. I don't expect miracles at present but bottling challenges like Forest's second goal (twice as well) is disgraceful and deserved the abuse it rightly got from the people sitting around me.

Sadly your last statement is all too true, they don't want to relinquish the train set, they just want to use the club as an excuse to make headlines in the Echo arguing and in Lowe's case his pet PR flunky Charles Sale. They are all pathetic, including Crouch, and the club will be dead in 18 months. Pity the bank can't force a sale really. Rupert even sank as badly as to put plants on this site's forerunners and I'm fairly sure he's done the same again recently. The only way to remove them for good is prolonged demos and making their life so awful on a matchday that they are hounded out. Nothing illegal or violent, just keeping them on their toes with a hostile atmosphere. I'm just advocating some Lowe/Wilde out posters on their windscreens and chanting from all of us at the games. At the Ipswich game in 05/06, the whole ground was singing "Stand up if you want Lowe out" and that was very powerful. If you see them in the Itchen stand, tell them you want them gone. Sadly, our fanbase is so divided and some people so brainwashed by the spin and so many others have just had enough and have lost the fight.

What they did to us in 2004/5 was bad enough - 4-0 and it could have been 10 but for Smith. Anders & Oakley got bullied by Roy Keane running on a knackered hip and no knee cartlidge. Bearing in mind that even a post-cruciate Oakley and fading Anders are light years ahead of anything we have now, it doesn't bear thinking about. I agree that some of the lads weren't trying on Saturday. Surman needs to be dropped as he's mentally already elsewhere and his pathetic bottling of that challenge was directly to blame for the 2nd goal, albeit beautifully finished by Garner. Shame, as he's looked better until the last month or so when the window has been looming. Lallana is struggling in this side, he needs a monster alongside him to help him win the ball and some space. Morgan S is a good long-term prospect but not for the present situation. McGoldrick wouldn't get a game in the Conference - honestly, he's that bad. Did Rupert really think when offering the prat a 3 year deal that a ratio of 0 goals in 19 appearancesor Port Vale was going to cut the mustard? He couldn't even score returning to Notts Co on loan when they were at the bottom of the entire Football League! Rupert has made too many mistakes since returning, his judgement is appalling, if the club was run professionally he'd be getting removed at the AGM but Askham and pals have made so much money out of him the muppets won't vote against him and King Muppet Wilde loves having Rupert as a fans' scapegoat, which is the only reason Lowe is there. It certainly isn't for his talent, leadership or decision-making!

Good post and having a stake in large companies and banks will mean that the public simply will not tolerate the asset stripping, creaming off millions and dreadful standard of UK Senior Management that has become the norm in the last 25 years. Good rewards for good, hard work should be the national ethos. Going back to the original point of the thread, I assume that Brown is trying to fend off the Tories on the "sponger" territory which is fertile territory and trying to combat the Mail and other Neo-Con papers like the Express. Trouble is, I agree that it is an appalling proposal and doesn't do Brown any favours.

Trouble is ESB, when Thatcher said in 1997 as Blair was taking office that she deemed him her successor/protege, you can see from the above examples that she really meant it (and sadly was right). I'm either a One Nation Tory or on the Right of the Labour Party and I see nothing now that would make me vote for either party. I'll vote Green at the next election. My advice to people is to take a lot less notice of the press - the Mail is way to the right of even the Tory party and the Telegraph has printed some real junk recently. Dinosaurs like Kelvin McKenzie are popping up again in the Red Tops which is alarming.