The9

I would imagine Radio Solent having no away whatsoever over the club and its ownership, and the club's policy on responding to speculation (I wish I knew what it was... ) might possibly have had a somewhat detrimental effect on the ARSFF. "Welcome to the fans' forum, with us today to answer your questions as official representatives of Southampton FC we have Myrtle, who cleans the offices at St Mary's, and the kid who does the numbers in the Megastore".

That stevegrant bloke would know feck all if it wasn't for his Turkish Debrief. I'll leave you all with that mental image.

This has been said already, but no harm in adding to the numbers of people who actually get it, I guess.

I think the capitalisation of "Club Policy" makes it clear that it is an extremely important document, worthy of reverence, as opposed to an intangible concept which they ignore when it suits them. It is "The Club Policy", not "a club policy". Although it's not a proper noun as such, they have used some artistic license to confer some kind of Special Status on it, hence their, and my, caps. I will agree that numerous other club releases appear to have been written by a non-infinite number of monkeys with access to Word though.

Having not been on here much in the past week or so due to being busy, I can also vouch for not having a clue what this spoon thing is about.

Makes sense to me.

Although some mentals STILL want to read "Adkins is doomed" into it. Isn't it sad that some people have so little in their lives that they have to conjure up drama from everything ?

Um, this story has absolutely nothing to do with the manager. It's the club stating their long-standing policy which was always sensible, but became another Cortese Vendetta as a result of Cortese going mental about the paper phoning Mali staff about Liebherr's death. It has been issued to draw attention to the fact that the club doesn't EVER comment on speculation, precisely to illustrate that there is nothing unusual about the "wall of silence" and it should no way be assumed to be related to any story the paper is running. Orrrr, you can ignore this, and start screaming about it like your head was on fire.

No, that is incorrect. The shorts colour is not a factor in the kit clash equation. Examples everywhere, including this weekend's Tyne-Tees derby, where both sides wore black shorts. If we wanted to play in all white at West Ham we could have done.

No he hasn't. Just so you know, this will be my only post on this subject.

Is it worth noting that significant numbers of people will be avoiding this forum so they don't have to read a load of cobblers about Adkins being crap, and therefore the sample is skewed...?

I think you may find this was coincidence. I was hardly glowing about most of our services and managed to get all the way through...

Surely the fact it's "only" a low-profile U21 match is all the reason UEFA need to make an example of them ? No major stars affected... I agree with your benchmarks for what it's worth. I'd still be surprised if England get anything resembling a punishment and very surprised if Serbia aren't either banned from competing in the next U-21 tournament or made to play a few games behind closed doors.

And then searched again. It isn't obvious unless you already know what it's called... but yeah, it's there.

That's good, cos I looked and didn't see it.

What's "predictable" is that they would charge both sides in a fracas where both sides acted inappropriately - some much more so than others. If what you believe will happen DOES happen, then fair enough. But what *I* expect to happen are sanctions which barely acknowledge England's involvement (other than possibly Steve Wigley), and are far more severe on Serbia. How severe is of course up for question - but Serbia's punishment will certainly dwarf England's.

Have your say, or basically stop moaning ! I just did it, a few opportunities to rate the club's communication, rate the club on prices and decide how important the various aspects of matchdays are to you... http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/premier-league-national-fan-survey-12-13-433759.aspx

I wrote to Jim'll Fix It to get to meet Guly. I think he misread the letter.

Everyone gets stuffed by Bolivia in La Paz though, due to the altitude. And losing to Argentina's not exactly a massive big deal - he also played in a 4-0 thrashing by Colombia before his injury. The only strange thing here is that it's taken the media almost a fortnight to work out that our record signing, who was completely absent from the last match day squad for a live televised match, is injured - this thread notes that he'd be out for 6 weeks on the 8th, which is 10 days ago. The last match was on the 7th, so it was at least a day before that he got injured, getting on for 12 days ago. It's hardly like there's been much football news with the international break too...

It wasn't a second yellow, it was a straight red for violent conduct (or whatever they've renamed it). And yes, the ref was completely useless in doing that whilst ignoring everything else. I thought the England players were pretty restrained, considering. Danny Rose's sarcastic thumbs up after his brief monkey gesture summed up his feelings quite nicely. As for Wigley, I read somewhere that he got punched in the face but I think that clip only showed the aftermath (i.e. him going mental). I was actually watching this at the time and the whole thing sounds a lot worse in print than it looked at the time - because the cameras basically missed EVERYTHING - including what Rose kicked and where - but then I did also have the volume turned down. I wish you lot would get over your English paranoia though, England have never been treated any differently by UEFA or FIFA than anyone else, they're both equally incompetent on all sides.

The better we get, the tougher it is. Also with the new regulations on youth development it's much more likely we'll start hoovering up players from elsewhere.

Two things here, firstly neither is eligible for England and never have been (although the rules have since changed so Giggs [and Michael Owen] would have been eligible for either England or Wales based on their schooling had they not already been capped), and secondly Bale withdrew from the GB Olympic squad for a tournament with matches in his HOME TOWN with an injury so severe he was scoring for Spurs before the competition even began, so I don't think featuring at major sporting events are that high on his list. As an aside, it's Qatar and Equatorial Guinea you want to keep your eye on for dubious naturalised nationals over the next few years, they're already at it.

Wales have used Sam Ricketts, Danny Collins, Lewin Nyatanga, Neil Taylor and Ben Davies behind Bale so far (and probably a few others). They also played Bale at LB in his first few matches, including against Ronaldinho and Brazil when he was still a teenager, and he looked pretty decent - I remember thinking at the time that would probably be the highlight of his career ! Bale never played a single game for Saints' FIRST TEAM anywhere other than as left back, and was absolutely fine defensively. He was phenomenal going forward in the Championship though and frequently bypassed entire opposition teams (thanks in part to Skacel at left mid dragging players away and always offering a viable option). He also scored or hit the post with his first 4 free-kicks for Saints. Not a bad start. Luke Shaw for me so far (I got a good look at Stevenage) has shown some similar type of ability going forward, but nothing like as much defensive solidity. After his original run of never playing in a winning Spurs side lasted nearly a year, Bale got fairly seriously injured, put on a ton of muscle during his big injury - most of it seemed to be on his shoulders (hence looking like a chimp sat on a fridge) - and when he came back into the Spurs side they had the not always in favour Assou-Ekotto at left back and tried them both ways around early on, before eventually using Bale as left midfield once he'd started running matches against Inter and suchlike the way he had for Saints in the Championship in the first few months.

Funny that, as Bale didn't actually have any impact on the score until he started playing more centrally and Fox was nowhere near to blame for either of the goals. It was Bale+10 v Scotland though. Very similar to Giggs' role for most of the 90s, except with a few more friendlies.

I'm sure we could have managed it in the Championship as well, seeing as that's the level of 1980s Div 1 football now a layer of international talent has been grafted onto the top of English football. Actually, we did it in the Championship didn't we ? Got relegated. Seriously though, the chances of getting enough players through AND keeping all of the ones we produce who are good enough over a number of years makes this a bit of a pipe dream. The Academy players will always need to be better than the ones you already have, and that's a tough challenge, especially if they're coming through the same process.