Nordic Saint

Saints' support is greater than the confines of St Mary' or the Dell ever allowed and the modesty of our fans means that potential will probably never be realized. 30,000 + average home gates in every top flight season at St Mary's would probably be similar to Everton's 36,000-38,000 in a bigger capacity stadium. The Club price the tickets to just flll the stadium and that's what they do. Cue one of the 'ever so umble' lot telling me that we are a really, really small club. (with the 11th biggest home gates in the Premier League in spite of our small capacity)

Like most English people I'm not very interested in ice hockey but I decided to look up the Montreal Canadiens. They have won the Stanley cup 34 times, more than any other team in North America, making them the ice hockey equivalent of Real Madrid. The Ottawa Senators have never won the Stanley Cup, making them the ice hockey equivalent of Saints.

Our North American friends who never go to games seem to believe that we get 'hysterical'. You can certainly tell they've never been to St Mary's

Quite the reverse. Old Les is going to wait until we are past caring before appointing someone totally underwhelming. We'll all just shrug our shoulders and get on with it. Saints fans are no more difficult to satisfy than any other set of football fans. In fact, many of our fans have very low expectations, considering we get the 11th biggest gates in the Premier League. Avoiding relegation or even getting relegated and finishing in the top 8 of the Championship would satisfy them.

He really is a very unpleasant old man. No wonder everybody leaves.

A fair summary of the situation. The main criterion for the new manager is going to be that he is prepared to do as someone who was once voted the worst manager in the history of the Premier League tells him. So, that rules out the best candidates.

Puel wasn't an ogre. He just found out Clasie wasn't very good. If he had been, we'd have sold him by now.

His apologists say we need to give him more time because he missed pre-season training in 2015. But, nearly all of our new players miss pre-season training because we leave it to the last minute to sign them, and to compound the problem, they are often injured when they arrive.

Saints' average Premier League home gates iat St Mary's: 2016/17 30,936 2015/16 30,751 2014/15 30,741 2013/14 30,212 2012/13 30,874 2004/05 30,610 2003/04 31,699 2002/03 30,680 2001/02 30,633 Imagine how much more the demand would be if we ever won a trophy.

Except the man Rogers fell out with was Old Les. The rift started back when Rogers opposed the premature sale of Mane to Liverpool. Krueger seems to be opposing the sale of players too and it looks like he is beginning to assert some authority at the Club.

Yes, good luck to him. Barnsley is a good club and I hope he does well there.

Mane would have stayed for another year, which is why Gareth Rogers fell out with Les over selling him to Liverpool so soon. Koeman would also have stayed for another year. I'm not sure that the sacking of Dodd and Williams from the Academy coaching staff was a good idea. I take your point but we could hang on to players and staff a bit longer than we do. Unitl now, we seem to have sold most of them as soon as we got an offer. But, to be fair, it appears Ralph is trying to stop that.

Old Les again? Interpersonal skillls really don't seem to be his forte, do they?

Dael Fry would be a good signing, well within our price range. I see he's on the subs bench for England in the U20 World Cup Final. Centre back is a position where youngsters take time to develop and at 19 he's very much 'one for the future'.

1. Last season we had the 2nd highest average home gate in our entire history. 2. Our fans were magnificent again at Wembley. 3. We had our 4th consecutive top 8 finish. I don't care about the points total. Where the league table is concerned, it's only the position that counts. 5. It sounds like Ralph Krueger is starting to assert his authority as chairman and attempting to stop the sale of our best players. Ralph comes across as a man of principle and it will be good to see him take more control.

Fonte seems to have been a lot more 'professional' than van Dijk. Fonte has just played his 23rd game for the European Champions, Portugal, and they kept yet another clean sheet. The only negative rumours we heard about Fonte were the usual ones Les Reed's PR team put out about nearly every player and manager who's being sold. We could have kept both Koeman and Fonte for another year if we'd really wanted to. And if Les, your 'old mate', is choosing the new striker, he'll probably be overpriced, injury-prone and not very good. Paul Mitchell was the man who found the good players and managers.

He was spotted by our head of recruitment, Paul Mitchell, who'd been monitoring an Espanyol player and was impressed by the style of football Pochettino's team played. Most of our best players and managers were spotted by Mitchell. Since he left, we have been fairly rudderless in the transfer market. Les Reed is just a 'figurehead' and self publicist, who some posters on here seem to worship and credit for other people's work - people who have now either been fired by Reed or have left the Club of their own accord.

Another week of campaigning from Theresa May and Labour would have won. She comes across as a cold fish who can't empathise with ordinary people.

I wonder just how big the remain majority would be if the EU referendum were held now? Remainers would certainly win. The Brexit vote was largely just a protest against immigration after the electorate were bombarded with news about immigrants coming in from Calais. As soon as the media barons got the result they wanted, those news bulletins stopped. Anyway, we are sleepwalking towards Brexit even though most people don't want it now.

Our chairman, Ralph Krueger, actually, who does seem to be a man of principle, unlike Cockney wide boy, Les Reed, who fell out with Gareth Rogers, when he advised him not to sell Mane to Liverpool. He can't sack Krueger though.

Les Reed.

The man who found all our best players and managers, before like everyone else, falling out with Les Reed and going to Spurs - our former head of recruitment, Paul Black Box Mitchell. Since he left our recruitment has gone downhill. At 35, he's got a future unlike 65-year-old Les Reed.

which probably explains why they all left.

How do Chelsea and Man City's finances work then? If they work the same way as ours do, they must have absolutely massive loans to pay back to their owners or do they just regard them as investments?

I don't think she'll allow that to happen until she sells the club. You do wonder though where all these hundreds of millions of PL prize money, TV money and transfer fees are going when a relatively small loan is never paid off.