Nordic Saint

He certainly must be glad to be back with his old goalkeeping coach, Stevie Woods.

Pompey fans didn't start calling Saints 'Scum' until the 1970s. I know as I was with Saints fans in the Fratton End when we beat them 5-2 in 1966, and the words scum and scummer were never uttered once by any of their fans. Millwall were the first fans to used the word scum as an insult for other fans in the 60s but most fans were using it in the 70s, including Saints. It had originally been used as slang in Borstals. Pompey fans were the first football fans, however, to add the -mer to scum. also in the 1970s. But, they didn't invent the word. If you consult the Oxford Dictionary, you'll find that the first written record of the word scummer was in 1585. It referred to one who scours the sea, a rover or a pirate. For many years it was a nickname for pirates or buccaneers.

Yes, I was in Fareham and my uncle who'd just heard the news on the radio, told me. Saints fans there were elated, almost like we'd just won the cup final, while Pompey fans were stunned. Everyone found the news incredible. We had a friendly coming up at Fratton Park and I remember the Pompey fans being worried that if Keegan made his debut in it, we'd take over Fratton Park. But, he didn't.

Incidentally, the Portsmyth about SCUM and the dock strike was started as a spoof article in a Pompey fanzine, called Frattonise, as recently as the 1990s. Now, it's become part of their mythical history. It sounds like the same thing is happening with OWTS and Spurs fans but it's even more recent as I don't think they were even singing it in the 1990s as their song, although fans of most clubs sang it occasionally by then. In the 2000s Spurs fans started their slow version and that then became their new song, replacing Glory, Glory Hallelujah.

Spurs fans were, in fact, the last fans to start singing any song. They considered singing ungentlemanly. I went to our first game there of the modern era, in 1966. Our fans completely filled the Park Lane End and 10,000 of us sang OWTS. From the Spurs fans there was absolutely no singing at all. I was also there when we played in 1967, which was the first year they had a singing section, and they sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic (Glory Glory Hallelujah), which was recognised as their song but never OWTS. The singing of OWTS by Spurs fans is quite a new thing. It sounds like this new Spursmyth about it being their song is a bit like the Portsmyth about the mythical dock strike.

It looks like 30k+ already.

Ex-Saints in the Champions League this week In starting lineups: Gazzaniga Lovren van Dijk Fonte Tadic Oxlade-Chamberlain Mané Unused sub: Lallana

The thing I've noticed about Vestergaard is that his forward passes are random. There is about a 50/50 chance that they will find one of our players. His sidewards and backwards passes, however, are clearly aimed at his team mates. This gives him an overall pass success rate of more than 50%. When I played football myself, at a much lower level, I was big and useless too but my random forward passes from the back would occasionally lead to a goal. People would say, well done or good pass, but I the truth was had no idea how I'd found one of my own men and, as far as I can see, neither does Vestergaard.

We certainly had a very strong squad then. We took 4 points from Liverpool that season and finished above them in the league.

That's how I saw it at the time too.

3 ex-Saints, Tadic, van Dijk & Mané, nominated for this year's Ballon d'Or.

Our black box used to have the resource available, and so did Spurs after that. His name was Paul Mitchell. Man United have been trying hard to get him but Red Bull have fended them off by promoting him to overall director of their football operations with a commensurate salary increase.

Without it, we'd have lost 3-1 yesterday. However, if it were used even more effectively to overturn penalty decisions, we might even have won 1-0. How much we benefit from it already shows the extent to which referees gave dubious decisions against less fashionable clubs like ours and how much results were affected by those unfair decisions. Manchester United, on the other hand, are going to suffer very badly from the fairness of it all. I wonder what might have been in our history in both league and cup if there had been VAR in the past, especially in our best seasons. We might well have picked up a couple of trophies in the 80s. There would certainly have been more trophies won by less fashionable clubs like ours.

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.