Chap in the Chapel

James Beattie - am I correct in thinking he only played for England while at Saints? His big move to Everton was a dismal failure. Kevin Davies (first time around) - Went to Blackburn and did... what precisely? Chris Baird - Maybe a bit harsh, but he's only made 20 starts in the League in two seasons.

Fair point about the youth policy, but I still think that Wotte has got more out of the side than Poortvliet did. His team selections have been more consistent, we've scored more goals per game with him in charge and he's made more logical substitutions (who can forget Perry's reaction to being subbed against Doncaster?), but broadly speaking he is also responsible for this terrible season. I won't shed any tears when he's gone and, like Poortvliet, is back in Low Countries obscurity.

Wotte is a better manager than Poortvliet. That's the best thing you can say about him. He's not up to the job and new owners should give him the boot and appoint someone like Boothroyd, Ince or Dowie i.e. men with proven track records of doing well in the Football League. The line has to be drawn under Lowe and Wilde's utter failure of a season.

Agree entirely. I remember you were one of the people who, in the pre-season poll on whether we would do better or worse than 2007/8, said 'worse'. I didn't vote because I genuinely didn't know what to expect - or so I tried to tell myself. In hindsight, I just couldn't bring myself to do likewise. Right now, I'm more confident than I was at the start of the week about there being a club next season, and I get the feeling that we may have hit the bottom of the curve. Lowe and Wilde have gone, the PLC has gone and we have a chance to draw a line in the sand and start again. There is a real chance of unity and a fresh start. When can I buy my season ticket?

My thesaurus is exhausted. I've now run out of words for how clueless our managers have been this season. When you're away from home to the team that's top of the league you are going to come under pressure, and you need a big man up front to hold the ball and relieve pressure. So why was Saga playing instead of Euell? Schneiderlin looks like the most criminal waste of money too. What exactly has he contributed this season? He hasn't scored, he hasn't created any goals, games like today seem to just pass him by. He has been almost as pointless a signing as Pulis. Why is he playing? At least Wotton gets up and down and makes a few tackles. I've noticed that Smith got a few credits today - for a player with supposedly 'world-class' abilities he's incredibly one-footed. That's another fault of Wotte's though - why play him on the right? The biggest positive from today's game is that Wotte now has only four games left in charge of Southampton Football Club. If there are to be new owners, then they need to have a root and branch reform of the coaching team - all of Lowe's appointments since Strachan have been unmitigated failures (except for perhaps Burley). We need a fresh start so badly, regardless of which league it is in.

Magnificent effort. Brings a tear to the eye. It shows what the football club means to the city and its people.

I remember Henry Winter's article in the Daily Telegraph about Lowe the day after Sturrock left by mutual consent. It began with the headline 'Southampton Chairman Ruthless and Clueless.'

'The best interests of the club at heart'. This phrase is the one on which the success of this proposed project rests. What will happen if the first action of the parliament, representing a broad range of supporter interests, is to declare that they have no faith in those running the club? What if they think that the club is run not in the best interests of the thousands of supporters (who are effectively the heart and soul of Southampton FC) but the small number of major shareholders at the moment? Will the parliament be able to provoke a reaction from the club to this or will it simply be ignored? If this type of discussion is ruled out of bounds from the off or is rejected as being divisive, even if a majority of the parliament want it, then it will become an elephant in the room and the parliament will be derided as a talking shop where people show up to debate about the price of club pencil sharpeners. It is perhaps a good sign, however, that the club is planning for something a few seasons down the line, obviously thinking that SFC will still be in existence then. The flip side to that is that it may mean that Mr Wilde et al are still expecting to be in charge then, perhaps even more so, and that this is a token bone tossed to those want them out of the club in the hope that the promise of a fans' say will appease them in the event of a post-admin Lowe/Wilde takeover. Actually, in the event of admin, Lowe et al may not even need Wilde anymore...

Great post. I would suggest, however, that green shoots on the field will eventually lead to green shoots in the purse - ultimately the bottom line is that people are more likely to turn up on matchdays and buy merchandise, beer etc if they are watching a winning team, or at least one that they feel has a chance of winning. The question is time - have we got enough of it to generate enough good feeling through winning matches to persuade our creditors to stick with us? A view that, long-term, we have now bottomed out and are on the up again must be maintained. This must happen, first and foremost, by crowds rising again because the team is doing well. We can do some cost-cutting in the summer by losing Gasmi, perhaps selling Dyer and loaning out some of the younger players when the season starts - they will benefit from playing League 1/2. The key players (i.e. Euell, Davis) who are out of contract must be offered new ones as well, as losing them having (hopefully) ended the season on a high runs the risk of developing a situation like the early eighties, when fans bought season tickets on the back of some good finishes only to have Kevin Keegan subsequently sold - not good PR. No more experimenting - let the current bedrock of experienced players stay together and base the team around them, rather than trying to return to the system that gave us this season's 28-league game spell of near-total insanity.

Who would have thought that a team loaded with experienced players with a genuine goalscorer up front would be competitive? Not Rupert anyway... Enough sarcasm. We were very good in the first half and Preston were absolutely dreadful, and they paid the price for it. Their tactics were one-dimensional and easily dealt with by Saejis and Gillett, the latter being my MOTM - probably the best game I've seen him have for Saints. Saga's goals - terrific. But this has to be built on, something we've been left saying on half a dozen occasions previously this season. Bring on the Bluebirds!

Very poor comments from Mark Wotte. The fans have been mostly right behind the team when inside the stadium, and in return for what? It's a bit of a cheek complaining about the ones who are still showing up and paying their money, regardless of whether they're protesting outside against the incompetence of the board, when there are so many fans staying away as a result of the team's abysmal home form, something that Wotte has had an integral part in. The fans will still be coming to games and supporting Saints long after Wotte has been sacked and skulked back into obscurity in the Low Countries.

Lowe's biggest mistake: returning to the club last year. When he was ousted in June 2006, it was his utter failure to prove that he was capable of running a football club successfully without the Sky wealth that was one of the key factors (viz. the 'didn't know where the next penny was coming from' comment, the lack of any impact on the division after pledging that we were 'just visiting' the Championship). Now, through returning, he's demonstrated that he is an unsafe pair of hands in two ways: a) Gambling with the preposterous Dutch experiment, the impact of which will bite him in a big way if (when?) we are relegated, the season ticket renewal forms come back with 'no chance pal' written on them and the boycotts and protests get more inventive and popular. b) The failure of his return makes him look ridiculous in the eyes of football at large and in the wider business community. As far as the former is concerned, since 2005, Lowe has a proven track record of failure in running a football club - if he's forced out of Saints, would any other club would give him a position of responsibility after this latest fiasco? As far as the latter goes, as he returned to protect the value of his investment and presumably those of his supporters too, and the value has subsequently slumped (although wider issues have had an effect too), with the customer base dwindling and openly expressing its disgust at the way the business is being run, how does this affect his own personal reputation? By returning to Saints full of hubris about mandates and long-term planning (I seriously doubt that League 1 was part of the 'three-year plan' to return to the top flight) and making matters worse both on the pitch and off it, Lowe has damaged himself badly. He could have stayed well out of it and dealt with W.H. Ireland, a business that I have little doubt he is well suited to. That he hasn't stayed away is his biggest mistake - it shows that he doesn't learn from them.

Very true - I hope. It's the timescale of any recovery that's the question. One thing is certain - we will continue to sink as long as Lowe is making the main decisions. I can honestly see a full-scale boycott of both matches and season ticket renewals taking place this year. And all the while, in the face of the club's destruction, not a word from the man in the bunker...

Without arbitrary debate this forum would be less busy than it is...

No - I don't know the stats for either. I'm throwing the debate open out of my own intrigue: which do people think influences the other more - the Echo or this forum? I suppose the fact that we're discussing an Echo piece on here now indicates one thing, but it's their change of stance to match what is largely said on here that has provoked it.

There is no surprise in this. During last Friday's webchat, Adam Leitch got tremendous flak about the Echo's coverage of Saints and this will not have gone unnoticed by his bosses. All newspapers pander to their readers' opinions and as they're now on pretty safe ground saying that the 'revolutionary' brand of football is an utter, utter failure they can hop on the bandwagon. I'd be interested to know how much influence this website has on the Echo's stance on Saints as the forum is a fairly representative cross-section of old and young fans and the decent debate is articulate and strongly reasoned on both sides, although it's clear what the broad consensus on most things is. Discuss: This forum is more of an agenda-setter than the Echo, which tends to reflect it - Simon Carter's piece today proves it.

'I won't panic buy' is probably another way of saying 'Don't expect anyone to be bought in permanently this weekend as there isn't any money.'

I had a flashback to 2006 today, the third week in January, as we folded to an ordinary Ipswich team. That day, the fans decided that enough was enough and vented their fury at Rupert Lowe. Three years later almost to the day, it's exactly the same again. I thought about every major decision that Lowe has made for this club since 2004 as I was walking back across the Itchen Bridge tonight, and arrived at the conclusion (albeit with the benefit of hindsight) that he's got every single one of them wrong. Sturrock, Wigley, Redknapp, Burley, returning to the club, Pearson and Poortvliet. All crucial for our success. All WRONG. He must be forced out again somehow, and this time it MUST be with no prospect of a return. I honestly hope he's banned from the stadium for what he's done to this club, today being the final straw. That was so far from acceptable it's untrue. A poor coach sending out a team with an attack blunted by having players on the wrong side. The so-called 'world's top 50 young players' forward deciding that with two goals in two league games he doesn't have to try any more. A switched-off defence at the start of the second half. Panic substitutions and a formation change to try and rectify things. Our fans have strong emotions aroused by this club. But fighting with each other has got to be the lowest point and is indicative of how badly Lowe and Wilde have fouled up. They'll be donning tin hats, huddling down in the bunker and digging deep into their own pockets for some website PR plants, no doubt. It's got to the stage where they could bring some unity to the fans by simply resigning, selling their shares and walking away. If, however, fan protests it has to be, then the message should be clear: LOWE AND WILDE OUT - THIS TIME FOR GOOD.

It sounds so simple and obvious, doesn't it? I remember Rupert Lowe's half-yearly report from the relegation season ending with the statement that 'sporting success is an art not a science'. It strikes me that the 'science' part of sporting success in our case is the balancing of the books, while the 'art' is creating the right circumstances for our team to get results - I would include having the maximum number of fans behind them in that. Towards the end of last season I think we were getting the 'art' side right, with a popular manager who knew what was required of him and made sure the players knew what was required of them. I think that we have now swung back too far towards the 'science' approach. Does anyone honestly think that appointing a cheap coach from the Netherlands' backwaters and ploughing loads of teenagers into the firing line Somme-style is creating the circumstances for a thriving team, especially when you add in the fact that this scheme's poor ongoing results are pushing fans away? The posters who SOG cites as worthwhile are certainly focused on stressing the financial necessity of the 'scientific' approach, particularly the excellent Frank's Cousin, and at this time and in these circumstances there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. What Duncan Holley's thread does bring up, however, is how important the 'art' aspect is, particularly to fans. If you reduce the point of a football club's existence to a share price or some black or red numbers at the bottom of a balance sheet you're missing the potential of the role it plays/could play in a community. I think that, ultimately, is what Lowe doesn't quite get. He will always be the 'scientist'. He has had some success with this approach but, upon being given the chance to introduce some 'art', he's always refused the opportunity. He's quite right that 'sporting success is an art not a science', but his refusal to pay this any more than lip service is, I think, one of the reasons why so many fans are apathetic at the moment.

Absolutely vital win against the run of play, by the sound of it, but very pleasing. Now - it MUST be built on next week.

Certainly over Gillett. With Surman or Schneiderlin (depending on whether one is sold this month) I still think he could have a part to play in the 'holding' positions. Lallana should play further forward off a big striker as he's wasted out wide. Whether or not he can last 90 minutes, the situation that Saints are in requires scrappers - Wotton is the only real 'foot-in' midfielder we've got presently. Additionally, he's a lot more aware of what's required on the pitch than Poortvliet is, although he seems to have been frozen out for making this clear.

A common-sense signing for once. Now we just need another big centre-back to play alongside him, a proper right-back, Wotton back in the team, McGoldrick out of the team and a big centre forward to hold up the ball and we might have a serviceable Championship-level side...

Very true. For 'chequebook manager' read 'Sky-cash chairman'. It's nice to hold the purse tightly when there's lots of money in it, but hold it too tightly and the purse will burst and all the money will drop out. It was the third weekend in January 2006 that we lost 2-0 to Ipswich and the first Lowe out protests really began. Three years on and Doncaster on the 17th is corresponding fixture. Lose to Donny and history may well repeat itself.

I didn't spot this post at first but can't really let it go without offering my own comment. I've never met Richard Chorley and, for the record, think SISA is presently a bit too politically motivated to be a group that supporters who are broadly ill-disposed towards Rupert Lowe et al can unite behind. I don't think that symbolic gestures are as helpful as reasoned debate either. Therefore, while Richard Chorley and I would probably agree that we don't think that Rupert Lowe and Michael Wilde are the right people to be taking SFC forward, I wouldn't say that I align myself directly to SISA or Richard Chorley or approve of provocative gestures such as the coin incident. Richard Chorley's time would have been better spent asking tough questions from the floor rather than getting himself ejected. He's evidently a clever bloke and capable, I think, of giving the board a tough examination. Sorry for putting this on the main board as it is probably better suited to being a PM, but I can't do that in this instance.

I think that this news would cause a steep climb in the share price...