Bothroyd lost his place last season to Fabrizio Ravanelli !!!!

Says it all....

(get a grip Souness)

Says: You've never seen the guy play, and you know virtually nothing about Italian football.

Souness out! Souness out!

Ahh, I give up.

Prozac, anybody?

The only people to ruin the signing will be Rovers themselves, with their dithering and meanness.

It says everything when the biggest and longest-running topic on here was the classic, always entertaining, 'Souness Must Go'. Perhaps we can keep this one alive until the end of the season too. Are fans of all clubs as optimistic as us lot?

Well, if some of the defeatist "fans" around here do get their way and force Souness out on a wave of negative energy, one of the headlines in today's Grundian is "Saints to sack Sturrock"...

Remind me who rated Sturrock so highly?

At £4 million a year the FA are obviously wondering if they are getting value for money from a man of limited ability who will never be able to deliver the success that the country craves and who clearly has so much spare time on his hands that he is chasing every bit of skirt around the office desks.

Eriksson should be consigned to the scrapheap now, following Keegan, Hoddle, Venables, Taylor, Robson, Greenwood and Revie in the Hall of Dishonour for England Managers Who Weren't Up To The Job.

Utter rubbish. If they had any doubts then they shouldn't have used the media to force a new contract on him just a few months ago. Now they're using the same media to embarrass him out of a job.

I honestly believe that the skill required in being a good manager is very minimal. It is the great coaches, motivators and organisers that get my respect. Managers simply get the job because they are either:

1) Good at any one (or more) of the above

2) A previous player at a half decent level.

What can Sven offer in terms of tactics that someone like yourself, myself or any other member of this board can't??? Football supporters are often blind to this fact. At the end of the day, if you have decent football players around, and you know a thing or two about tactics, surely it is all down to players on the day? Club football management is different however because it is down to you to sign the players, who are more than likely to sign for you depending on solely the reputation of you or the club.

Like I said before, how hard is it to pick the best 23 English players? Not very. Other than that 'major' task, what else is there to do?

o) Sven does not have to coach the players because they get this day in day out at their clubs

o) Sven does not have to motivate the players because surely the fact that you are playing for your country and on say £30k a week should motivate you enough

o) Sven does not have to explain to the players where he wants them tactic-wise on the pitch because it is well-documented on how Sven is NOT a coach and leaves this aspect to his Coaches (namely Steve McClaren or Peter Taylor both of whom, incidentally, I would rather see in Sven's position

I don't think it's that easy - and neither does the FA or the vast majority of club sides, judging by the lack of 'Joe Publics' in management at the moment.

Being an ex-player earns you a foot on the ladder, but very few even get that far let alone make a success of it. There are 92 professional managers in this country, and probably less than 10 in the entire world that would be on the shortlist of the FA or a top club. Sven was pursued for ages by the FA and is always one of the first names mentioned when a job like Chelsea, Man U or Real comes up. If all he does is hand a list to Steve McClaren and let the players get on with it, why is he the world's most sought-after manager?

Like him or not (and I do think he's a creepy, money-grabbing git), losing him now would be a step backwards. Anyway, can you really get sacked for knocking off the secretary? Maybe if she was only 14 or something...

There's nothing wrong with him as a manager - any top team would love to have him.  Assuming he goes, as soon as the next manager's honeymoon period is over we'll have people looking back on the Euro 2004 team as being a 'great' England side, and saying 'If only the FA had let him finish what he started'.

Robson... Venables... Even Hoddle to a certain extent. Don't you wish they had stayed now? One of the papers that was instrumental in forcing Robson out is even championing him to step in as caretaker!

And as for anyone who suggests the average bloke in the pub could do a better job... GET A GRIP!!!

Ok MK so what does Errikson do that is actually close to warranting £4MILLION a YEAR?!? The previous poster was correct when saying that anybody with the faintest of football knowledge could pick the team - and most would probably come out with roughly the same crop of players!

So all he has to do is go to the likes of Highbury, Old Trafford and Anfield twice a month, have a pint with Tord and talk a bit of footie, go home and ###### the missus (chosen at random of course), and then come out every three months and announce a squad that has practically already been picked for you in the national press! Maybe throw a couple of surprises in there to make you look like you have actually done something that someone else couldn't and there you go. Four million pounds please Mr Palios.

Now this would be bad enough if it was an Englishman. But a Swede. Come on now let's please get a grip. Steve McClaren, Steve Bruce, Alan Curbishley, Glen Hoddle to name but a few - I don't think ALL of these candidates are top class but at least they are English, they have at least the same talent as Sven, would all surely be interested, AND MOST OF ALL THEY KEEP THEIR MINDS ON THE JOB INSTEAD OF SHOWING THE PLAYERS A BAD EXAMPLE.

Sack the foreign, money-grabbing waste of space.

So basically it's because he's foreign. Unlike the majority of players and coaches in the Prem, right?

No matter what any fan says, and we all like to dream that we could do a better job than Souey, Woy, Sven or whoever, the fact is: We can't. Not a hope. Never, no way, it ain't gonna happen.

If you or anyone else had the talent to be a football manager then that's what you'd be doing. You wouldn't be sitting in a pub yelling, 'Go to 4-5-1 to neutralise their wingers' or anything else you heard Mark Lawrenson spout, as if you knew what it really meant. By the armchair fan's logic, being an ER fan qualifies you to perform an emergency tracheotomy.

As for the huge salary, that's entirely the FA's fault - and to watch them try to claw their way out of the PR grave they dug before Euro2004 is pretty damn hilarious, as far as I'm concerned.

I hope Sven takes them for every penny they've got.

There's nothing wrong with him as a manager - any top team would love to have him. Assuming he goes, as soon as the next manager's honeymoon period is over we'll have people looking back on the Euro 2004 team as being a 'great' England side, and saying 'If only the FA had let him finish what he started'.

Robson... Venables... Even Hoddle to a certain extent. Don't you wish they had stayed now? One of the papers that was instrumental in forcing Robson out is even championing him to step in as caretaker!

And as for anyone who suggests the average bloke in the pub could do a better job... GET A GRIP!!!

It doesnt seem worth the extra security for a few pointless matches.

All football matches are pointless. I know I'd rather see Burnley as the opposition in a pointless knockout tourney than Portsmouth, Charlton, Tottenham or whoever for a pointless mid-table Prem place.