Nordic Saint

This is very true. A stadium the size of St Mary's would have had a capacity of at least 50,000 in the 1970s. The old grounds had terracing at both ends as well as the lower tiers at the sides. There was seating for the middle class season ticket holders in the upper tiers at the sides only and the smaller of the ends was usually left uncovered for the away fans to feel the full impact of the weather in.

Somewhere there must still be photos of those late 70s plans. It would be interesting to see them. Am I right in thinking those plans were going through the planning permission stage in the early 80s?

This ties in with what I recall. I've found that Echo article online and they seem to have got their dates, capacities and locations mixed up. It doesn't appear to have been very carefully researched. Thank you (and thanks to everyone who's replied).

I didn't see the game. Was Danso at fault for any of the 5 goals?

Now that they are redeveloping the derelict Toys R US site, I wondered if anyone here had any photos or articles about Saints' proposed new stadium in that area in the 1980s? As I recall, it was going to have a 45,000 capacity and John Deacon, the Pompey chairman at the time, was on the Southampton City Council which turned down planning permission for it. This was one of the main reasons McMenemy left Saints for Sunderland as he was the driving force behind the new stadium and said he had taken the club as far as he could in a ground as small as the Dell.

He wasn't a great success at Reading: https://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/26-the-strange-case-of/1719-qbobbyq-mihailov

The black box is a room full of videos. Presumably somebody must have watched videos of Vestergaard before we signed him. And anyone who watched him play in a match for us when he first arrived would have noticed how slow and unathletic he was so it's surprising that if we had an actual scout watching him play before we parted with so much money for him, he didn't notice Vestergaard's obvious deficiencies. At the time we signed him I had a look at a few videos of him and my conclusion was "From what I've seen of him on videos, his lack of pace is a real cause for concern. Also, perhaps because he is so tall, and doesn't need to, he's not very good at jumping." I'm not saying I'm a particularly talented scout because anyone who watched him play, even on videos, would have noticed the same deficiencies that we all have now that we've seen him play. The signing of such players as Carrillo and Vestergaard indicates there was something seriously amiss in the club's current recruitment setup.

You are probably closer to the truth there than the rest of us.

Rangnick resigned his job as RB Leipzig's head coach this year and is now their sporting director. He is a very good coach but at 61 would he be prepared to move here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralf_Rangnick

Rangnick's work is confined to Leipzig. Mitchell is the overall director of all Red Bull football operations and is his boss.

Not a bad idea. I think the Red Bull clubs are using Mitchell's 'black box'. Remember the days when we had it here? I don't know what relations are like between the club and Mitchell nowadays but they have probably improved considerably since we got rid of Reed. We're not going to get Mitchell himself back but perhaps he could recommend someone. I doubt he'd be happy to let Christopher Vivell, his HOR at Salzburg, go though.

Post of the day

In retrospect, yes, van Dijk was the better of the two. It's an interesting thought that if Mitchell had stayed here, we might have had them both. We were also strongly linked with Trippier before Mitchell left. What might have been.

Van Dijk was the last off the Paul Mitchell conveyor belt. We were strongly linked with him before Mitchell left. But, Mitchell opted to take Alderweireld to Spurs instead so we still managed to get van Dijk.

Her boss again: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/paul-mitchell-4ba4b267

She has been a performance analyst at St Mary's for 8 years. Paul Mitchell, who is now overall technical director of all of the Red Bull football clubs, has recruited her.

It's nice that all England fans, not just the ones from Southampton and Charlton, are getting the chance to appreciate him now.

He's probably given them the same coaching manuals he gave to Pellegrino and Hughes.

"Les Reed has been appointed as our new technical director. Reed will return to The FA to take up his new role at St. George’s Park in February 2019, and will be responsible for all elite England men’s sides from development teams through to the seniors." Old Les is starting to have an effect.

To be fair we shouldn't blame little Englanders for Brexit propaganda like this as most of it emanates from Russia. Even Dominic Cummings with his 'Take Back Control' propaganda came here after his formative years living in Moscow in the 1990s.

We finished 6th as recently as 2016, above both Liverpool and Chelsea. A similar sized club to ours, Leicester, won the league then and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League the following season and they have a good chance of getting into the Champions League again. I don't buy this, let's give up because it's too hard line. Teams rise and fall. It wasn't that long ago that Fulham and Middlesborough reached European finals while Man City were in the third tier just 20 years ago.

That is just where we rank in terms of number of fans and it's a hell of a lot better than not even being in the top 20. It gives us the spring base from which to get into Europe, which we have done in 10 of those 43 seasons and a better chance to get into cup finals and actually win a major trophy (yes, I know what we did in '76 and I was there but the vast majority of cup finalists are top flight teams). Our best finish in the top flight? 2nd. Our best finish in the 2nd tier? 2nd. We have had 13 top 8 finishes in the top flight and 17 in the 2nd tier. There is no evidence that we are any more likely to win things in the 2nd tier than we are in the 1st.

You mean like the 5.5 million British people currently living abroad who weren't allowed to vote in a referendum which will affect their lives much more than it will ours? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/british-expats-lose-legal-battle-right-to-vote-eu-referendum

Dominic Cummings' latest strategy appears to be to prepare people for the No Leave Brexit by getting government ministers to increase the number of times they repeat 17.4 million people voted for it. Michael Gove has just said it 6 times. Why doesn't somebody on the opposition bench, just once at least, point out that means 50.2 million people in this country did not vote for it? Also, sadly, as a disproportionate number of those leave voters were very old people, about a million of them have died since 2016 and been replaced by new young voters who are very much in favour of remaining in the EU.

One season in the Championship, and only one, would be worth it if we won it, and came straight back up again with a trophy. One thing we are short of is silverware. but, realistically, the chances of it working out that well are slim. We are perennial runners-up (6 times in the league and 5 times in cups). Stoke, the club our last manager, Hughes, came here from, currently sit bottom of the table and who's to say that wouldn't happen to us too?