Wes Tender

Entitled to your opinion, which you don't back up with anything concrete. Even your phraseology is damning of him. I prefer to look at it as him saving us from relegation and having the ability to choose his loan personnel wisely to greatest effect. One makes one's own luck in life. Although it will not be conclusive as to how he might have fared here, are you at least prepared to accept that if he gets Leicester promoted, that will establish him as an above average manager? If so, we'll have to wait and see whether he can do it. I think that he can, but you obviously don't.

I think that by definition the realists were saying that we ought to wait and see, rather than taking a position that was either optimistic or pessimistic based on hardly any criteria. I agree that even after a couple of near losses and a win, it will be several more weeks before any sort of pattern emerges enabling any realistic view of the potential position we might achieve. The reasoned overview of the situation we find ourselves in at this present time is judged on several factors either current of in the near future that could alter the situation one way of the other and until they have an effect, no conclusive judgement can be made. Granted that we have a young team, used to playing together under a manager who is not afraid to give them their head. They play well together and it is not impossible that they might turn out to be the surprise package in this division and get into the play-offs or better, depending on the other factors which might come into play. Those are that we are short of cover if any of the youngsters or the older stalwarts are injured, suspended or sold. It depends on whether we can keep them all past this transfer window and the January one. It depends on whether we can bring in one or two loan players who can complete the picture too. Whether they can gain and maintain the confidence from winning and keep a positive outlook if they come up against a run of losses will also be a factor. Let's all enjoy the wins as they come along, but also recognise that there are all these other factors in the background too and keep our feet firmly on the ground. That way we avoid disappointment from too high expectations that don't bear fruit.

A very fair and balanced view.

Scabby reminds me of a joke. A man visited the Lunatic Asylum and was strolling around the grounds. He came across a halfwit dangling a fishing rod into a flower border. The halfwit smiled at him and wished him a good day. Having been engaged in conversation, the man thinks to himself, I'd better humour him, so he asks the halfwit how many he'd caught. To which the halfwit replies, "You're the fourth today" The moral of the story as it relates to Scabby, is not to humour the halfwit.

I for one am not going to tolerate this rewriting of history by those who go orgasmic after one victory against the team that now holds the record for the longest run of games without a win. Your assessment of Pearson is the stereotypical ramblings of somebody incapable of assessing the situation he inherited and looking at it objectively. He did a good job of turning around a demoralised squad, making ourselves hard to beat during a run in against the top teams in the division. JP is credited with losing narrowly against two good teams, but Pearson does not get the same credit when the situation he inherited was also a desperate one and against teams of equal calibre to Cardiff and Birmingham. We will never know how Pearson would have performed faced with the same circumstances as JP. Obviously the youngsters have demonstrated ability, so it is only a question of whether Pearson could have extracted the same results from them. You say that he frightened players into performing, but I'd personally prefer to believe that he commanded respect and inspired commitment. If you can show me statements from players saying that they were afraid of Pearson, then your assertion might have credibility, but all it is at the moment is pure conjection based on a probably misguided perception. That wouldn't surprise me one bit going on your opinions.

Targets are a good thing provided that they are realistic. It is good to have a stated ambition and I agree that GB wasn't very forthcoming with much bravado when it came to predicting where we might end up at the end of a season. The important thing is that the players believe that the target is achievable. If they don't, they won't strive to attain them. Positive results are crucial to instill the belief with youngsters. JP probably realises that he has plenty of ready made excuses which hold water if he fails, whereas GB had much higher expectations to live up to.

When we are bought out by somebody with more money than Lowe's 3/6p and he departs to buy 6% of the shares in some lower division team along with his cronies to take a controlling interest in them, will you go and support them instead, Scabby?

If you didn't trust Shearer to spend the money wisely, what could you do about it? What grounds do you have for believing that he could not spend the money wisely? Does he have a reputation of profligacy with his own money? Is there anything to suggest that he is a bad judge of character, does not know what makes a decent footballer and what is a decent amount to pay or him?

It depends how you define unity. It is not the same as a difference of opinion. Any fans' forum where there were no disagreements when it came to opinion would indeed be a very boring place to be. Anyway, on most football fans' forums, it is probably pretty rare that much time is spent arguing about the board and most concentrate their debates on the manager, the players, who they should buy and who to sell, in other words, footballing matters. For a start, there are not many in our position where we are a PLC with shareholders running us with such a small majority of shares giving them power. The potential for EGMs amongst the various egos involved and the disunity that has caused marks us out as a special case. As I say, there have been polls on here showing that most want all of these charlatans to go and there are also deep factional splits favouring one group of shareholders over another. The current incumbents are an alliance of two of the most unpopular people there could possibly be on the basis of their past association with the club. So any assertions that the club is united are without any foundation. We fans can have an opinion and express it, but ultimately we will also have to grin and bear it if we don't like what transpires, or else boycott the club. Wouldn't it be ironic if those who didn't give Pearson a chance, insist that JP should be given a chance and throw their toys out of the pram if Shearer is appointed? Any conjecture about the job that Shearer might do is completely groundless. Nobody knows any more about that than they did about JP before he came here. Most were prepared to give JP a chance, even though there may have been grave doubts. People are entitled to have grave doubts about Shearer's ability to manage us also, but he should be accorded the same chance that JP had if it comes to pass.

Depends how you define the Club, Gorgie. Agreed that the board, players and managers are united to a major extent. But regarding the players, technically you'd have to include those players like Scacel, Rasiak, John, etc, where that argument might not hold water. Ditto, the board might be united, but the shareholders most certainly aren't. And what part of the club are the fans? I'd have said that we were a major part and integral to the onward success of the club. And yet as you say we aren't united at all yet whilst those charlatans remain.

What is it that you do not comprehend? You ask for evidence that there is disunity in the fan base, I point to the disunity on the most subscribed to Saints fan forum as evidence. You can also take the decline of bums on seats and fall in ST numbers as further suggestive evidence that not everybody is united, but no doubt that you will dismiss that too. Let's put it around the other way. YOU point to all the evidence you have in your armoury that everybody is united as one.

You only need to read the thread subjects on this forum as a for instance on this. If you believe that there is unity at the club, then join the ranks of the deluded if you want.

You are deluding yourself if you believe that the club is united. The club is more divided than at any time in its history. Lowe is responsible for more upheaval and destabilisation than anybody, with Wilde doing his level best to gain some notoriety too. And it is far too early to read any signs and make a reasoned judgement. You've obviously got selective memory loss, as I seem to recall a large proportion of the fan base saying that they were happy with Pearson and that Lowe would be a mug if he disposed of his services. That fell on deaf ears when Lowe took over didn't it? Why should anybody else who takes us over not take a leaf out of Lowe's book and do the same?

My views are well documented on the subject of Lowe, Crouch and Wilde. I want all of them gone from the club and that includes all the others who hang on Lowe's coat tails too. Were Dodd and Gorman appointed as manager? I had thought that they were effectively caretakers.

Yes, I did. But that does not mean that I cannot change my mind about him when he proved to be useless. It is because of high hopes of him that I am more bitterly disappointed that he turned out to be no better than Lowe and now the two of them are in charge together.

Well, one option was already in place, but one reason given for disposing of his services was that JP and Wotte cost less combined than Pearson. So were they employed because they were cheap, or because they were the only options deemed to be capable of this football "revolution"? On the basis that Lowe was prepared to disregard stability, if we are taken over and the new people want to install their own manager, I'm quite happy to disregard my former stance that stability is what is best for the club as the current regime have been true to form and been the biggest force for instability and disruption in the club's history. So they shouldn't be too upset if they themselves or their appointees are the victims of change too. Whether any future new manager continues the style of play employed by JP remains to be seen, but then he would be a mug not to play any player on merit and to observe how that player is most effective. The main benefit of new owners ought to be that they have the option of keeping those beneficial elements and addressing any deficiencies and holes in the squad.

You answer the previous question with your reply. There is only one reason for Quisling Wilde's involvment, apart from ego. That is the protection of his shareholdings in a last desperate throw of the dice.

I agree with you. And there were others too who used to play here within the last couple of seasons and who have also done well in the Premiership. There seems to be a lot of rewriting of history going on, but it is a bit juvenile of some believing that everybody was great when they played here and just because they play for somebody else they suddenly deteriorate into a load of crap. As to the Lowe question, I for one will never take my hat off to him regardless of how we do. I think that some people need a reality check. The youngsters are doing a decent job and so is Poortvliet. Lowe did not begin this strategy out of a number of choices; he took the only path that was open to him. Any success achieved now is just redressing the mess that he created originally. At the moment it is bearing some fruit, but it relies for its success on a number of variables. The squad is threadbare and I worry whether the wheels might fall off if we lose some of the players through injury, supension or the best ones being sold. Another worry is that teams get to know how we will play and employ strategies to negate it. Even Derby seemed to know that we like to play the ball out short from defence rather than lobbing it upfield and they played a high line to counteract it. It was a good result against Derby, but anybody who recognises the importance of confidence in the success that we might achieve, will also acknowledge the part that the lack of it played in Derby's failure to get back into the game. Although even the matches lost showed reasons for some optimism and hope, it is still far too early yet to make any reasoned judgements.

Well done the lads. This should give them a much needed boost to their confidence.

Reading wanted this very average player without pace. Nice one Coppell. You're obviously a crap judge of a player, as even some expert posters on here know more than you.

We'll stop making players out to be something they're not when you do. Or did the irony of your statement escape you? It is only your opinion that he is average and anybody who disagrees with you is therefore calling into question your judgement. Unless you can back up your analysis with some experience in professional football, then your opinion has no validity above any other. My opinion FWIW, is that he is a decent player, better than most we could afford to replace him with and that he would do better playing in his best position, which is not left back. If that is making him out to be a player he's not, then tough.

Wrong psychology. It's a well known fact that horses react best to the carrot and stick approach.

Fans songs don't cause opposition strikers to score, they don't cause our strikers to score, they don't encourage the players when they cheer, or discourage them when they boo them, after all the players are all professionals who are so concentrated on what they are doing that they have no distractions either way. We fans serve no useful purpose at all except by the money we pay through the turnstiles. Once we're inside, we might as well keep quiet, as it makes no difference whether we make a noise or not.

I'm really pleased that you added your contribution, as you have also been one of the most vocal advocates of the contribution that we fans can add to the success of the team, not so much in terms of bums on seats, but more especially in relation to the lift that we can give the youngsters by cheering them on. On the other side of the coin, I'm sure that you'd agree that by booing them, they will be discouraged from playing to their full potential because that is human nature. Players who are booed by their own fans either let their heads drop, or the ones who are mentally strong become determined to prove them wrong. We as fans have picked out players from rival teams who we boo because of some prejudice that we have for them, either because they used to play for Pompey, or for some other reason. So when Claridge scored against us having taken a lot of stick, he took great delight in pointing to his name on his shirt back, the equivalent of sticking two fingers up at the Northam. Other players like Robbie Savage, Dennis Wise or Paul ****ov get the same abuse and yet the know it alls say that it doesn't spur them on at all to rub our noses in it. Well, I just don't buy it. If some say that they are professionals, they don't hear it, they are focussed and concentrated, then everything that you have said about getting behind the team, cheering them on to victory, is all meaningless, isn't it? So which side of the fence are you going to sit, as from where I see it , you want to have it both ways. Incidentally, nowhere have I said that Phillips is a poor player, that had nobody been on his back he wouldn't have scored. That is a puerile and childish line of attack. As I already pointed out, it is perfectly possible for a striker to miss when seemingly it is easier to score and no doubt we have seen our strikers do it far too often. We rejected Kevin Phillips as a youngster playing in defence saying he wasn't big enough. He went on to become one of the best strikers. We rejected Scott Macdonald and look at him. Do you not think that there is an element of "I'll show them that they're wrong about me" that inspires them to greater efforts? Obviously not, according to some. I stand by my original statement that of course they'll boo Phillips because they don't realise that such things act as a spur to revenge.

Derby are saying exactly the same thing about us, that it is all about confidence and that if they can score first, their players will take a boost to their confidence, whilst ours might take a knock. I think that they might be wrong in that assumption, as to their credit, the youngsters' confidence doesn't seem that brittle and they do seem to have the mental strength to keep on battling for a result. Derby on the other hand do have a long run of results going against them and if they go behind early on, their heads will drop, I'm sure of it.