Roman

I'm predicting a defeat in the vain hope that I'm always wrong...

Not close enough, Weston, although I assume you know that. The Sheff Wed 'case' is well-known, and was an action to force the disclosure of identities of certain posters. No libel case against those posters was ever pursued, as far as I know. It seemed to me at least that this was an instance where the law was being invoked as a means of intimidation, rather than a serious pursuit of a defamation case.

I've asked the question now every time this comes up. Can anyone actually quote a single libel case that has come to court between a club or its officials and a supporters' forum? Just one will do...

One of the great myths about Lowe is that he’s ‘decisive’. He isn’t. He has a history of dithering. One of the most recent examples of that was the decision, such as it was, to let Pearson go and bring in the Dutch. Both pro- and anti-Lowes seem to accept as axiomatic that Lowe had it in mind all along to bring JP and Wotte in, and that Pearson’s days were numbered the minute Wilde became a human carpet for Lowe to walk over. But that just wasn’t the case. The indecision about who was to manage – or ‘coach’ – the club went on for weeks. Pearson had several meetings with His Lordship, and was even under the impression he’d got the gig. I don’t know this, of course, but I would expect that part of Pearson’s pitch to Lowe was that in his short time at the club, he’d changed the way the football side was managed. He’d integrated the coaching and improved the communication between the first team, the reserves and the Under-18s. Lowe clearly liked the idea, because he presented changes Pearson had already made as his own ‘revolution’. So what the hell happened? If, as seems to be common knowledge, Lowe had it in mind to bring in the Dutch duo all along, why the agonising and damaging delay? And why the need to dress up Pearson’s removal with some nonsense about his salary being x times greater than the combined incomes of Wotte and JP. And then why the farce about hiring a coach who, it turned out, was already under contract? After that, the claim that JP would buy himself out? Etc, etc. It all smacks of desperation and indecision. The on-off sale of Rudi appears at least from the outside to be a tale of Lowe thinking he’s good at brinkmanship and losing. He needed to get Rudi off the books, by some accounts because there was a whacking great stage payment due to Hearts coming up. But with Rudi ready to go and Ipswich ready to sign him, there had to be one last catch... The loan out of all three experienced strikers, as opposed to one or two, and bringing in (at SOME cost!) a group of second-string players like Peckart, Forecast, Pulis, Gasmi, Smith, Wotton and Robertson, all tells me at least that here is a man without a plan. Not to mention the failure to bring in solid journeyman full backs. Going back over the years, the decision, not to appoint Hoddle due supposedly to fan power, the baffling decisions with regard to Luggy, Wigley, Gray, the sheer panic implied by the appointment of Redknapp – a manager whose whole philosophy was completely at odds with Lowe – all point to the same conclusion: Lowe can’t see the wood for the trees, and resorts to a shoot-and-hope form of non-decision-making. At a time when we need real leadership, with flair and imagination, we’re stuck with someone who represents, to me at least, the exact opposite of those qualities.

Wes, I don't think the team is as terminal as you describe. There are problems in defence and attack which a four-year-old could spot. With the return of Rasiak or John, and a loan deal for a couple of effective full backs, we could do something about those problems. Aside from that - and it's a pretty big 'that' - the team plays some pretty good football, at least for about 45 minutes a match. And I don't believe the players are unused to the formation, since many of them seem to have played a similar system under Prost. Is it JP's fault? His inflexibility, or his naivety? His refusal to play Euell earlier? His decision to play Lancashire ahead of Perry? His decision not to bring in full backs? His decision to loan out not one but all three experienced strikers? His decision to play one upfront with a player who's clearly better running at the defence and playing off a target man? The short answer, I think, is we don't know. Being naive is one explanation. It's not the only one, unfortunately. What's so frustrating though is that there's a really good team just very slightly out of reach, that blends youth with a spine of steely experience and is managed with tactical flexibility. Maybe JP is incapable of seeing it. I'd be stunned if someone were THAT blinkered. Maybe there's more to it than that - and the 'revolution' trundles on...

Time for 'ennui' to make its debut on Saintsweb. And 'discombobulated'. That's a good sort of anti-Lowe word.

LS, please give the 'us gals' a rest. It resembles too closely the nudge/wink misdirection of some of the more notorious ITKs, a faulty batch of humanity with which you really don't want to be associated.

That's Lowe's job, surely.

And interesting that it never is. JP deserves credit for getting out there and talking to people. He seems to enjoy it by all accounts.

What are you're trying to say? Anyway, I think it's part of a masterplan, exporting our non-goalscoring goalscorers to our relegation rivals. DMG to Norwich?

'It's because you're a muppet!' You're welcome.

With some consistent, balanced coaching decisions and some boardroom resistance to a fire sale in January, we don't have to go there.

Wayne Bridge - let me be the first to be unoriginal.

The good Lord himself.

You think? Combine the overdrafts of the two clubs and you'd have the credit crunch all over again (once this one is over, that is). And then just think of the arguments on here - or SaintPompWeb - about who should be chairman.

Good point.

Jealous?

Just popped out of sub-editing retirement to do you a favour, Sundance. This is the gist, I think. As I say, it all amounts to TINA. But what your post fails to address is what happens when it all goes t1ts up finance-wise, and overdraft-wise - as, depressingly, it shortly will by all accounts. That's what the club will have to plan for - not stumbling on as we are. And no amount of saying 'get behind the club' will do the trick because the rot is much deeper than that.

Oh, okay, thanks - nothing to with why Long Shot is suddenly a 'she' then.

Can someone give me a clue as to what this thread is about please?

I too think it's an excellent idea. The policing and transport problems will only be temporary, as Pompey fans will quickly realise on their regular journeys from their favelas to our gold-paved streets that they're much better off being into Saints supporters.

A much better model might be Hull City, as described in the Guardian this morning. The parallels and differences are for you to draw. Interesting, nonetheless. In February 2001, Hull city went into administration, with an unpopular (and this time actually criminal) owner. The debts of the club were small by our standards - £1.8m. Adam Pearson (no relation!) , the commercial director at Leeds United, spotted an opportunity, and bought the club out of admin for £360,000. With the backing of a local internet millionaire, he saw ‘massive latent potential’ in the club. The council, which had just had a windfall from the sale of its own communications company, decided to build the KC stadium, at its expense, for the football and rugby league clubs. Their first game against Hartlepool in League 2, attracted 22,000. The club, under Peter Taylor, won promotion in 2004 and 2005, but faltered in the CCC, because, as Pearson says, the ‘economics of the division are awful.’ So they attracted a new consortium of three businessmen, which bought the club for £13m. They then decided to invest £6m over three years into the team to try and win a place in the Prem. That, together with a bit of luck and forward-thinking in appointing Phil Brown as manager, was what got them there. Right now, Hull are debt-free. Possibly the ONLY club in the Prem that can claim that. What better position to be in than that in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression? The lesson to be learned from this? Leadership. Visionary, clear-headed, committed leadership. (oh, and with a bit of luck and a friendly council.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/nov/19/premierleague-hullcity

Why has Sundance gone all corporate? And how long will it last? Very disappointing. But really, however 'measured' the language, it's the same old guff about TINA (There Is No Alternative, © M Thatcher). It's all a bit like refusing to take the plane off auto-pilot as it flies towards a mountain.

And you must have a lot of time on yours. Anyway, you missed one.

If it were that simple, why have we suffered more than any other former Prem club in the CCC - and by quite a distance. Been to Carrow Road recently, for example? I think the relationship between fans and Lowe is more complex than you imagine, and is part of a wider, longer lasting and profound disillusionment that set in with the failure and subsequent ejection of Wilde, the executives' coup, the brief Crouch interregnum and the Lowe/Wilde counter coup. The sheer bitterness of the various boardroom wars have been conducted for the most part in a way that suggests that the antagonists actually think their mind-bogglingly petty, peevish, utterly stupid rows are in any way important. Now we've reached the nadir - where the two incumbents, on the evidence so far, are either too idiotic or too inward-looking, or both, to act on the catastrophic decline in attendances. I can think of a lot of clubs where chairmen are unpopular. I can't think of a single other club that has been cursed in the way we have by such a motley collection of chancers, office politicians, and two-faced creeps. HTH.