The9

He may as well, let's face it, I'd spend 900 days in a country where I knew absolutely nothing, couldn't communicate with anyone and didn't like the food or want to be there for £2m a month. In fact I'd probably only go for 6 months.

Pretty much what I was saying - don't forget that all-time clean sheet record.

Yeah, basically I'm him with 20 years of being sociable.

Nope, they just have to lump not knowing which day it's going to be on. Just as anyone going to away matches has the same problem, all of the time.

Nicely done.

Hello? Hello? Hello?

You, as a Saints fan, don't understand why everyone who isn't a big team fan, wants a mid-sized provincial club which keeps upsetting the big boys to win the league instead of the teams with loads more money and a stockpile of good players no-one ever gets to see play? Can't help you then. I wanted Midtjylland to beat Man U last night even though the Danes beat us and Man U losing the tie is bad for our chances of getting into Europe in future seasons.

What exactly are we going to hope to win if we get rid of half of the cups we're usually in? As for the U21 Cup, don't they already have a couple of those for U21 teams. Keep both cups, it's up to clubs if they want to play the reserves or not. Though they should probably asterisk it for when the Skates beat Ipswich reserves and lose to a Bournemouth team with 10 changes just in case they get ideas.

Depends on how wide some of the 2s are. You don't really want to concede the wide areas in front of the full backs unless you're down to 10 men and can't do much about it.

There are a LOT of Vandijkstraats in the Netherlands. Bored now.

Pelle Road in Philadelphia, Pelle Street in Antigua, Pelle Court in New Jersey.

Long Road AND Long Lane in Southampton too.

There's a Mane-tte Street in Soho. and a Dodd Street in Sheffield Jones Lane in Hythe Svensson Heights in Queensland, Australia

People had a right pop after he'd gone for telling players that, without doing many of the things needed to support it - e.g. build the squad depth or get the investment needed from the person who actually paid the bills to keep up a challenge. No-one knew about any of that stuff at the time it was going on. There's nothing wrong with ambition, but don't go around telling people they're going to get to the Champions League when if more than 2 of them are unavailable at one time we're digging into the U21s and Championship-level players.

Hence the parody of the Cult of Cortese.

Hello?

Exactly. An away trip to a place people will have been loads of times isn't going to be any kind of draw for occasional fans. Of course having to put up with morons who get tanked up and try and tell people how they should support their team is quite the disincentive as well. I quite enjoy trips to Merseyside for all kinds of reasons, but I can live without them too.

Quite. This is what they currently have for the Europa League place (after years of the FA Cup runners up getting in). You would have had relegated Wigan qualifying a few years back though - which I why I'm against it. Then again I'd bring back the Cup Winners' Cup anyway.

Not sure how quickly you'd expect a player to come back to full speed, or if "not being close to the level he was at" is fair? Rodriguez scored 3 goals despite only starting 5 matches (he came on in 7 more). In his absence we had bought two players (Long and Tadic) who might be expected to start ahead of him. He was hardly likely to come back flying right away, and there's nothing quite like playing matches. Even so, that's not a bad scoring return - Long only scored 5 for Saints in the same time period despite appearing in one more match. Also, he's got a different injury - that may or may not be related to the knee injury.

I've had no flack whatsoever wearing my Newport County shirt in Hedge End (train station on matchdays when County were away somewhere remote). Mentioned this before on the thread, but I started working in Winchester in 2010 and at that point there was maybe one Skate shirt a fortnight putting in an appearance around the city. I've seen more Saints PLAYERS than Skate shirts in Winchester since they got relegated from the Premier League.

If beating Saints absolutely, completely, guarantees Leicester win the title and they never get close again and their fans don't turn into a bunch of billy big ballses about it, AND it doesn't cost Saints any league positions at the end of the season, I'd be absolutely fine with it. Though I'm not sure Leicester would do much good for the UEFA Coefficient next season, it's not like Saints did their bit either.

I think you just have to accept that most people aren't interested and get over it.

Also not surprised we're not taking the full allocation or allowing sales on the day like last season, when the 200-odd sales made on the day will have caused endless hassle for the ticket office when the allocation for Europa League matches was announced - not buying in advance, despite having proof of a perfectly valid ticket, was the difference between me getting Arnhem tickets on the first day and not.

You don't appear to have read it. It doesn't at any point say it's not achievable, it is clearly just taking the p155 out of people who thought we'd already done more than enough to be guaranteed it.

The other reason for me not buying (another) one is UEFA's bloody annoying ticketing policy and the absolute pile of poop it is to need to have a pile of cash in your account just in case they decide to grant you the tickets you asked for. We've applied TWICE, from two different UEFA nations, and I haven't heard anything from either yet.