The9

As it stands I'm "probably" going (and probably Hull too), if they knocked off a few quid from the ticket price or arranged some kind of deal with SW and/or East Coast Trains (they have one with bluestar buses, after all) that would also confirm my attendance. I might even put up with a bloody organised coach if it was cheap enough.

We'd be top now with Adkins. Prove me wrong.

Only would have been a yellow card, though it has inspired me to say "Fabrice Fernandes driving straight for goal on a quick breakaway and definitely not making crop circles on the half way line".

England Matt Le Tissier Scotland Gordon Strachan Wales Gareth Bale N Ireland Chris Baird Rep of Ireland are not a Home Nation, but my favourite Irish ex-Saint is... um... nope. Ecuador Agustin Delgado Cape Verde Pedro Pele for those pointing out that Strachan didn't play for the Saints, I say I'm rewriting football terminology in the same way as Saints fans have for Pochettino's "signing" in our version of This Is How It Feels.

Yes. Especially to the Irish.

Sacking them at their peak would be accepted wisdom. Sacking them when they had no opportunity of proving themselves at a higher level wouldn't be.

Maybe not in that case, but the bigger picture is that we haven't had the opportunity to fill many larger allocations as the club generally just doesn't take them up.

The benefit is that they don't need to spend their own money on doing something they needed to pay for anyway in the away end, thus saving £200k, and don't give a monkey's what anyone else says about them, plus few people are openly critical for as long as we're winning matches - see Turkish's tongue in cheek "no-one shall criticise, we didn't have a club 4 years ago" response. Previous examples of doing things contrary to accepted wisdom have included settling court cases at the last minute out of court, the photographer ban, the local paper ban, sticking the chairman on the programme cover, ignoring the need to print the Customer Charter on the website, two publicised cases of refusing people with valid tickets entry on very spurious grounds, the ongoing war of words with various popular ex-players, and one that actually seems to have worked out - Cortese's narky attitude to transfer dealings and agents). Do Saints sound like a club that's bothered what people think where there's money to be made?

I see the club propaganda is getting to some. We'd fill 3000 at Chelsea easily.

Duplo.

I don't need to judge it in hindsight, every other club so far has spent the money, as intended, on reducing the cost of going to one or more away matches for their own fans. Saints have chosen to upgrade a part of their own stadium which can't even be used by Saints fans with the money. It is clearly not an appropriate use of the funds, and also, as usual, they are the only club to ignore the accepted wisdom and spirit of something in pursuit of the quick buck. What's there to wait for to judge it in hindsight?

Because that would necessitate the club 1) doing something to benefit its own fans and 2) lead them to have to spend time and effort selling 1500 more tickets than they would if they just took the lowest allocation possible, which now seems to be an actual policy on the club's part given the consistently low allocations taken and refusal to publish allocations. It does sound like a typical Cortese "what's directly in it for us in the short term?" response to a situation.

Sounds remarkably like the "it'll be stripes next season" argument...

I'd quite like the discussion to develop further, as winning the League Cup would put us into the Europa League, which I'd say we are pretty keen to avoid, if our goal is CL football. If we made the Europa League it could set back our Prem chances significantly due to not attracting good enough players for the CL, and necessitating rotation which would impact our league campaign.

My favourite bit about that is that all of the clubs listed (including Wimbledon) have been promoted since so all have bounced back to some degree. Doesn't bode well for the Skates' perennial failure though...

Like us last season then. Albeit we paid £53 with booking fee and it was on the box - but first match back in the Prem for 7 yeard and we didn't come close to selling out the allocation.

I'd always taken "mercurial" in football terms to refer to flashes of greatness and soaring above the abilities of mortals, in the sense that he was a God but a volatile one.

Think the last time I went to an away game without a ticket for a match which was all-ticket was against Luton in the Championship in 2005/6. Having arrived early and tried the Luton ticket office, I hung around the Saints fans' coaches and after a quick chat with one of the organisers was able to procure a "spare" from the leftover allocation which came off the coach when people didn't turn up. I had to wait for them to hand it over to the Luton Ticket Office first, but that wasn't too much of a problem. Was in the Watford section for the FA Cup semi though, and once paid £80 (in 1993) for a ticket in the Romania section for the Wales v Romania game when they very nearly qualified for the World Cup.

This was very clear.

I'll say it again, Clyne will have done his England case absolutely no good whatsoever by being utterly terrible for the U21s in the summer. He was the worst player in the starting eleven in the opening match by some distance, had an utter nightmare and got dropped after that. Lallana's got to be in with a shout if he keeps up his form prior to Saturday for a bit longer, but Rodriguez really hasn't done much to make him worth a call up yet - he's not going to offer anything England don't already have a ton of if people are claiming he'd get in for pace and running with the ball. Even Townsend has done more, and I don't think he's been all that great this season either - one lucky hit for England after not scoring with 10 of the same this season for Spurs and rarely actually gets past his man.

We have the same bed frame as I used to have in my batchelor pad in Newport, but that's literally all that's left of it. The wife utterly refuses to use any of my numerous tasteful quilt covers from my "pre-her" days. Talk about touchy, I mean, I replaced the mattress and everything. Well, maybe not some of the sheets. Anyway, she has bought a mainly white floral "Cath Kidston"-style duvet cover, which is pink with white spots on the other side, and insists on using this cover where possible even though it clashes hideously with the beigey-brown colourscheme she chose for the rest of the room. I prefer the pink/white spotted side to the white-with-flowers, does this make me a SaintsWeb Ghey?

Don't fancy trying to actually win something then?

Can't see Targett making it unless he busts a gut in the next year or so. On the bright side, time on his side and he's in the best place to make that improvement.

Give it another 12 months, the Swansea Effect is probably only just kicking in in Thailand.

We'd have to be nuts to sell him in the next 18 months. If Uruguay don't make the World Cup then he'll have a full pre-season with us next season, which he hasn't had so far. If Uruguay do make the World Cup he'll be busting a gut to play as much as possible and almost no matter what happens at the World Cup his value will go up compared to whatever he's worth prior to the World Cup and he'll be higher profile.