sadoldgit

We have proved we can be dire in both divsions! Surely the point is that you support your team ,where ever they are. I started supporting Saints in the old 2nd divison and have enjoyed seasons in both divsions and not enjoyed season in both divisions. When you are pants your pants and when you are good you are good, whichever division you are in. Frankly I would rather support a team like SFC where you are happy if you win the odd back to back matches than ManU where you are expected to win something big every year, year in year out. Look at Arsenal in our final, no joy at all for their fans yet our lot were delirious, and we lost!!! We might miss our Premiership status, but for many seasons we were rubbish and fans were slating the team as much as they do now, it is just the the numbers were swollen by the good time fans who only pitched up because we were a Prem club.

It didn't take long did it? Maybe if things were still like this at Christmas I could understand it, but the knives are out after only a few games. What is also odd is that the same people sing Pearson's praises and he only managed to win three games? Give the bloke a chance, he needs support and it is only September.

The fact that he hasn't seen them or us doesn't stop him making his profound judgements.

There was a very good article in The Times the other day which laid into the Newcastle United supporters and ripped to shreads the myth that Newcastle are a "big club" and any more deserving of success than anyone else. We are no different. We are not a big club and do not deserve anything handed on a plate. If wasn't for a certain MLT we would probably have been here years ago. For all the bleating about Lowe, Burley etc. we have no right to be higher than we are and it seems like many fans are unable to adjust their expectations accordingly. Of couse we all want to be up there playing the best and winning things, but we are SFC not Manchester United and these days when money is king we have to cut our cloth. If people want to bail out that is there choice, but football clubs, like dogs, are for life, not just Christmas. I hope that the present set up are given time, and by that I don't just mean a few months, but I fear that if things don't improve win wise very soon the witch hunt brigade will be out again in force.

Assuming your description of our former manager is accurate, at least when he wakes up the next day he is sober, unlike some posters who are still the same abusive negative doom-mongers they were the night before.

How long to you stand by anybody. You are rigyt, our most successful managers held their posts through thick and thin and were given a chance over a long period of time. Burely has been written off as a failure after one full season? It is all instant success or the sack nowdays. I am not saying it is right or wrong, just interesting that our most successful managers were given support even if they had a poor season or two. There is precious little time now to develop a team, if you don't do it in the summer transfer window and get it right you are pretty much stuffed for the season. Managers are constantly waiting to be replaced, even after a handful of games. Who can blame them for not uprooting their families and moving them across country when they could be out of a job any time. Yes I do hark but to old days, that is because I think those days were better and more condusive to building something. It is well know that both Ferguson and Howard Kendall were on the verge of the sack before both taking their clubs to great success. It goes to show that things can be turned around, even if us fans think otherwise. At what point do you give up and try something new? It might be just at the point when that particular manager starts to get it right. It is like on here, some posters think, if you actually try and get some balance going, that you have a love affair with these people??? I don't think that Lowe or Burely were the "disasters" that some people would have us believe and somehow I am having a love affair with them, LOL. I point out that Redknapp and Branfoot were far more deserving of the scorn rather than Lowe and Burley but a certain poster completely misses the point and starts with the name calling (very mature Steve). There are no guarantees in football. Chelsea have spent a fortune in order to win the European Championship and have failed so far. Who'd have thought England would turn on a performance like that against Croatia after recent performances? Things can chaneg in a moment yet some fans throw their toys out of the prame if we don't become world beaters overnight? George Burley is written of as a failure when, in one full season, he achieved his target (and I get accussed of loving him when I poin this out). One minute our young inexperienced team are hailed as the new Holland, the next failures because they lost to Blackpool. It is funny, but the ones who come on and slag others off most often are the ones who have ended up with egg on their faces (still think the Wilde Bunch were worthy of your unqualified support Steve?).

Clough was an alcholic, Ferguson drinks, I am sure a lot of managers do. There is still no hard evidence to back up the third party claims made against Burley. I see Um Pahars has woken up. My point about Redknapp and Branfoot is that I think they did more damage to the club than Burley is supposed to have done but to read some of the stuff on here you would not think so. I fail to see how reaching the play offs in his only full season is seen as a failure? I am not obseesed with Burely, not do I think he was our best manager ever, but he was certainly far from the worst - again, something you would find hard to believe if you follow some posters on here. I don't know how old you are UP, but your constant use of those stupid little smiley things make sme wonder. You and Alpine make a good team. You both miss the point by miles and turn things round in order to try and make your own points more substantial. As you are so keen to dissect every word that people you don't like say, feel free to go back through all of my posts and find where is says that I think Burely was the best manager and Lowe the best Chairman/CEO. Off you go now and I shall be waiting. My points has always been that these people have pluses and minusses but neither were, or are, as bad as some of you like to make out. You might not like the stats, but they speak for themselves. Burley might have failled to take us up, but it took LM several seasons and he had the likes of Channon and Osgood to call on in the second division. Ted Bates had the likes of Martin Chivers and Terry Paine. If want to compair like with like let's do it. None of the players that Burley had to pick from came close to that calibre. All any manager can do is win the games he has with the players he has at his disposal. The simple facts are that George Burley did that more successfully than any one else here. If you feel that makes him useless or a failure, fine. Guess what, I don't cry over the Lowe and Burley debate, although I fail to understand why some people need to have to blame one individual for everything when there are 11 players out there each week who are actually responsible for our success or failure. The only time I have over cried over football was when West Germany knocked us out of the 1970 World Cup. So then Steve and Geoff, off you go and come back with some hard evidence to back up your claims. What you are looking for are posts where I say that Rupert Lowe was the best ever Chairman/CEO and Burely the best ever manager.

Burely had a better record than Strachan. I didn't say he was a better manager. Although I think that after Christmas Starchan was on the wane.

Of course there are posters who have never played football and never managed a football club who know better than Saga.... Despite the fact that he has the best record of any Saints manager in my lieftime, he will be villified by many who need to blame someone because we have not got promoted yet. One full season, aim the play offs, made the play offs. Any reason to take every opportunity to slag the bloke off? There are others, such as Redknapp and Branfoot, far more deserving of scorn for the way they approached the job here. But we have to have our pantomine villians don't we, and Lowe and Burley fit the bill. Burely had a tough job when he first arrived but did turn things round. Okay, last season he failed to find any consistancy, but if you lose players of the quality of Jones, Bale and Baird you are always going to be on the back foot - not helped by that ridiculous press release by Hone which virtually said that we had given up on promotion. Where is the splenn directed at him eh? Burley did a job and failed to get us back up. Hanging offence? Apparently so to many despite the fact that there are lots of good managers who fail to achieve anything of note each year. He did a great job at Ipswich and Hearts, gave us a season to remember the year before last and is now managing his national team...does that make him a failure or a useless manager? Apparenty so....go figure.

Why? I said "alleged". It was alleged that Hall left the club because Strachan wanted him out (along with two others) due to substance abuse. That is very different to dragging up the tired old cliche used to denigrate Burley at every opportunity. And back to my main point. If Hall was such a loss why has his career not taken off after he left us?

What he did to us? Take us to the play offs? What a b*stard eh?

Here we go again, the unfailing crystal ball. It was sorted by Hone and Crouch so why not vent your not inconsiderable spleen on them? It had nothing to do with Lowe, who sorted the deal out in the first place and got a lot more out of Arsenal than were willing to pay.

No Scotland does not mean anything to us...but some posters (you know who I mean) seem to take great pleasure in seeing someone fail. Still, most of us realise that one competitive game does not make a career and our former manager should be judged when he ends his stint up north. What is it about some of our supporters eh? Ok, so we didn't get promoted, but the manager than some people vilify had a points per game record with us of 1.54 per game against McMenemy's 1.52, Hoddle's 1.50, Bate's 1.42 and Strachan's measly 1.35. Yet he was rubbish. doesn't say much for the rest does it? I bet Alpine prays that Scotland loss every game so he can come on here and tell us all what a failure Burley is (as he did after ONE game). Really, how sad is that? Are people's lives so pathetic that they have to take crumbs of comfort in seeing other people fail? The bloke did what he could and it wasn't good enough. So what? It is not as if we have been overwhelmed by success every year is it?

We are all doomed, doomed I tell you. Tell me again Alpine about the brilliant career that Fitz Hall had when he left us (as part of the gang of alleged druggies as I recall anyway). And how did Scotland get on last night? Black, black, everything is black....you are only truly happy when things are not going well, so I guess you are even more miserable tha usual as we have so far won three out of six competitive games. Still, lets hope it all goes pear shaped soon eh?

Mistreated how? By getting the most win ratio since the war? By getting us into the play offs. Bastard! Get some perspective, you can't tell me he did worse by this club than Redknapp or Branfoot. Of course he made mistakes, every manager we ever had did. Perhaps he should have walked when his best players were sold from underneath him? At the end of the day we have had two successful managers in goodness knows how many years...perhaps you should slag off the other slackers too?

Why are we talking about the Scottish football manager's first competitive match on here? If we are going to talk about international football why not talk about the rubbish England served up with a so called top manager at the helm? So what if he fails at the Scottish job? He had one full season here in which he fulfilled the target of the play offs, and but for some individual errors which were not down to him, might have made the play offs. He has moved on and so have we. For goodness sakes get over it.

How can you have pride in your local team when it is populated by the best money can by from all round the world? It just becomes a game of monopoly. Far better to see players that have been nutured coming through and doing well. Yes, a few years ago I would have said A, but not any more. It is all about who has the biggest cheque book now. Who cares? Let the super rich go and form their own super league and let the rest of us get on with it.

We are still waiting Alpine.................................

They would get guidance in points of law from the Clerk of the Court, but at the end of the day the bench, three ordinary people, will make a decision in the Magistrate's court. The CPS give pre charge advice to the police and recommend charges based on the evidence and the likelyhood of conviction. The police can, and do, bring their own charges without using or taking CPS advice. The CPS cannot second guess what a Magistrate's bench, a judge or a jury will conclude, hence a number of "failed" prosecutions. I don't know the facts in this case and even if I did, am not allow to divulge them, but I have seen the CCTV footage like everyone else. There doesn't seem to be any direct evidence that BWP went through people's bags and stole anything, but he was standing in the doorway whilst it was going on and I guess you could argure that he might have been part of the robbery in that he could have been acting as a lookout? There are bound to be black spots (no pun intended) in the film, perhaps he did do something that was not recorded but suggested? Who really knows apart from BWP and his friends? The Barry George case was very different. Again it was obviously decided that there was enough evidence to bring a prosecution and it was successful in that he was found guilty. That in itself should tell you that there was a case to answer. The fact that he was cleared on appeal is another matter, but his actions since still cast doubts over his behaviour. We shall probably never know the truth, but as far as the law is concerned, his name has now been cleared so that is that. Maybe he was innocent? Plenty of guilty people have walked free on points of law. Some innocent people do get convicted. No legal system is perfect but our system is vigorous and in any failed prosecution there is a thorough case review. Bringing prosecutions is a long winded and costly process and they are not brought lightly. Like anything, in hindsight different decisions might be made, but as I have said, the CPS cannot possibly be certain that every prosecution will be successful, but do not proceed unless it is believed that there is a strong case to answer. It is up to others in the criminal justice system to make the final decisions. What is certain is that both Dyer and BWP behaved very badly that night. These are not street thugs, these are very well paid young professionals who have let their profession, their club, their families and their fans down big time.

I work for the CPS. They would not have brought the prosecution if they did not think that there was enough evidence to convict. If the bench thought otherwise that is down to them (and they are not legally trained remember).

Alpine in negative post shock! As if we have never bought another club's promising youngster. He will stay or he will go, but guess what, life will go on.

You don't hear him complaining about the money he has been given which enabled him to finally get some success in football do you? When he was with us an actually had to use his skill and wits to manage cos there was not any cash, guess what, he failed big time.

Pessimistic camp I would say. It is still way too early to make a call either way, but the signs are postive and that is good enough to me. We have won three competative matches remember, and are making good progress in the cup. This team can win football matches, something we stryuggled to do at the tail end of last season. There is a long way to go, but three wins out of six should not mean that the wrist slitters should be sharpening their knives already.

Yep, worst player on the field all season. If you feel that way about Lowe, how do you feel about Bates/McMenemy when we went down the first time?

We have an Olympic team who have done their best for 100 years and Woodward is a part of that set up, therefore a part of the success.