Hey guys, I think this thread will get mixed answers, but would you have taken our position right now, near the end of that 2004/2005 season? Knowing a few wins would keep us in the Prem. Personally, I would have taken our position now as we are very well equipped and have great financial backing. So, what do you think?
That is difficult to answer in all honesty. We would not have had the stability we have now....also we would still have had Lowe at the helm. The truth is at the time we would have taken the wins to stay up at a guess not knowing then what we know now. We would have obviously wanted to stay in the Premier as the future could not have been predicted.....
Difficult one. It was very painful coming out of the PL and then struggling in the Championship. We had a decent side which should have done better in the PL and should have gone straight back up or so we thought! Life is certainly more interesting since being taken over by Markus and Nicola and much more fun. So perhaps we had to fall in order to rise again. Love where we are.
I enjoy liking the people incharge of the club now, the gaffer inspires confidence & the players, well we've already got some hero's in the making. I'm glad it all panned out like this. I don't hate Rupes, other owners have proven he wasn't that bad, he lost out big time by not investing when he had the chance so thats his grudge to bare, & the rest is history. Amen.
Brilliant question, just brilliant. In all honestly, I guess we can only really answer this with hindsight, having experienced this whole journey first hand rather than simply have it explained to us. But with that caveat, I would say absoloutely yes. If the other option was mid-table Premiership football year on year on year, I'd take this journey every time. For years I wondered how Boro or Newcastle fans could enjoy their football, and the same applies to the likes of Stoke and Fulham now. Their season's are basically over come late Feb/early March each year, and they don't exactly more drastically forward compared to the previous season. But even putting that to one side, I loved our time in L1, I loved winning the JPT, I loved getting into the Championship play-offs, I'm loving life with Adkins, Cortese, Lambert and Lallana, and I'm loving our current battle to get automatic promotion. And whilst two relegations and one last-day survival aren't exactly at the top of everyone's wishlish, it's only by experiencing the bad times that you can really enjoy and appreciate the good times. Fans of United and Chelsea etc don't realise how good they've got it, and I doubt they ever will.
As st_brendy says, it is a brilliant question, and believe you me, it's one I've sometimes asked myself. As st_b also suggests, it is one that can only be answered in hindsight, unless we suspend our knowledge, and that's practically impossible. Besides, how can you answer fairly when you see what the set up is like now..? You just can't cast out the recent history as if it wasn't there, because then you'd be saying, for better or for worse, you'd take the mediocrity of the previous regime in charge. Although Lowe & Co were so poor, in the end, that for me, it was nip & tuck whether I wanted to see a Southampton FC existing with the boardroom that went from bad to worse, at the time. But by then we were down in lower depths of the Championship. I guess where I really thought Saints had committed suicide was when Paul Sturrock was sacked and Steve Wigley was appointed, because after his first post match interview, all I could see was a yawning chasm of failure in front of the club. Seriously, I was that disillusioned. It was that regime where I stopped going to matches fairly regularly because one, my work commitments made it difficult, but two, I didn't want to care anymore, so I didn't make room for Saints, in my life. Nowadays, work commitments make it really difficult and besides, all my friends and family don't like football. I'm the only one who does, but I'm completely out of the habit, and any money I have is committed elsewhere, so Saints have lost me for some time. I sometimes fear it might be the case for other formerly active fans too. But I digress. Surely it's a no-brainer. I'd take this owner, this chairman, this manager, this ambition, this setup, over any other scenario bar Champions League status [and that would never have happened], from previous regimes. I have no doubt this present Southampton FC will eventually bring me back to St Marys on a fairly regular basis. I'll find a way, but it might be a couple of years off. The mortgage will be paid up by then.
The past is the past. I loved Wembley and the JPT; i loved promotion and that day v wallsall. I'm loving the now.
It's easy to love the now but I think it would have been too difficult to comprehend way back then. So I would have to say no, as happy as I am now.
Yeah I'd have taken it. The future didn't look particularly bright back then, but it sure as hell does now.
For all the years we were in the Prem, I can`t remember any of them as being as enjoyable as last year in League 1. And this year is even better. IF we make it back to the Prem next year, then we`ll enjoy and appreciate it all the more for because of our recent history.
Not sure how you can use this analogy with Newcastle considering they've finished in the Premier League 2nd twice, 3rd once and 4th twice since the Premier League began. They've played in the Champions League twice, once reaching the 2nd group stage featuring a group of Barcelona, Inter Milan and Bayer Leverkusen and only missed out on qualifying from that group by a point. I'm pretty sure they still remain the only team in Champions League history to lose their first 3 games and still qualify for the 2nd stage as well. They've reached 2 FA Cup finals since the Premier League began, 2 more FA Cup Semi-Finals (one at Wembley, one at Cardiff) and the semi finals of the UEFA Cup. Call me old fashioned but I would happily have us achieve all this in the next 10 years. EDIT - I replied to the wrong post. Sorry about that.
