The9

It's not actually true though, we were 18th when he took over, as Brentford, Hartlepool and Tranmere all overtook us with results the same day of Adkins' first match as Saints manager. Adkins may have had nothing to do with the lame duck side which lost against MK Dons, but he actually took us down into 22nd in his first match... we weren't 22nd when he took over as manager.

So 8 weren't. In 20 months. That's quite some turnover really... Your fall guys being : Seaborne (literally), Connolly, and subs Dickson, Jaidi, Mills, Wotton and Holmes. Plus Chamberlain, who we can't really say has "fallen". Harding and Puncheon were on the bench rather than the team, so you could argue they're another 2 on their way out.

What are you counting for Schneiderlin ? France U-21s or playing 4 matches for a side that was relegated from Ligue 1 losing 11 consecutive matches ?

I still don't get all the love for the Leeds game. We were decent, but we've played better than that probably 10 times this season. I think it's just that it was unexpected.

To be fair, we couldn't have done that much better in 20 ridiculous months - but there were plenty who didn't want a name for a name's sake as well.

Shocked I didn't have something to say about this the first time around, so can someone bump one of the other threads where I was concerned that he won't be able to attract players who haven't played for him already by the time we get to the Prem ? I'm a little less worried about it now, but it's still a little bit of a worry.

Wondering about Luke Shaw (as I've never actually seen him play) and Jack Stephens (as we're not really responsible for him and he scored a mental goal v Man U's kids from right back earlier in the season). Ward-Prowse might grow into it too, or at worst get a loan to someone like Peterborough or Swindon.

We had blue shorts for about 50 years... but I suspect not.

There was a significant difference between it being called the "Friends Provident Stadium" and the "Friends Provident St Mary's Stadium" when the place first opened, and I'm glad Saints fans made enough noise to get it changed. Without it there was no guarantee Saints fans would have called it St Mary's at all, even though it was a preferred term by some. Newcastle United fans will also point to the significant difference between the three recent names of their ground : St James' Park, sportsdirect.com@St James' Park, and The Sportsdirect.com Arena. Frankly when the sponsorship is annoying to the fans, you have to wonder how wise it is to go ahead with it at all. FP had a sensible view of it, Mike Ashley doesn't.

As I said at the time, I thought we were marginally better than them over the 90 minutes but significantly better at finishing. We played much, MUCH better than that in pretty much every match until we played Burnley away and then Cardiff away and struggled for most of the game in both.

I can, and have.

I didn't go to Ipswich away which I'd expect people to say we were good in, but we were pretty good at home to Middlesbrough and Hull, and excellent at Barnsley until Chaplow got sent off.

It seems "strange" that the club would want to verify that some of the data on their massive fan database might be correct before they start mass marketing to everyone to try and shift more STs than last year, when they also have a new ticketing system that will have to migrate that data into ? Er, ok, seems perfectly reasonable to me. It's definitely not spam, btw, and the same information was on the OS a few days ago before the link above as well. FWIW my address was wrong, and I'm an ST holder, so good job they asked.

Is it just me that thinks what Nige meant was that he'd like 50% of the squad to be home grown (which could be achieved next season), rather than getting 50% of the academy into the squad, which seems like an unrealistic goal?

I always take mine on holiday but I only ever wear it for a few photos in random locations, never actually "wear" it.

Varsity was absolutely mental, quite frankly. Aside from me drinking champagne and shots which came from God knows where, we were outsinging the loudly pumped up football music (annoying) regularly and people were dancing on the tables at one point. So one other bit of complete balls in an article that sounds like its full of them. I'm not even giving him the satisfaction of the hits.

No idea.

That's happened ONCE, and we don't have a Ted Bates Trophy match any more.

There was a thread in mid-Feb where I flagged up how many changes Swansea and Norwich had made to their STARTING sides, it's pretty much been the basis for me moving from saying "3 or 4 new players" each transfer window to "5 players this summer" - Adkins saying on the OS that he wants to avoid the "rigmarole" of the January window says to me we might be looking at 5 or 6 even. Purely speculation though, the last bit based on us only wanting to get maybe 2 or 3 more in in January. The interesting thing to me is to see how many of the foreigners Swansea signed that just haven't featured for them. They wasted LOADS, and mostly found the solution on their own doorstep (aside from Vorm and Sigurdsson).

The ones on Facebook claiming how much they love Saints who I know for a fact haven't been to more than 3 matches in the last 7 years despite going all the time in the Prem are the ones getting on my wick. I have no problem with casual supporters who just aren't all that bothered, just the Great Pretenders who've spent the last 7 years flower picking in the New Forest on Saturday afternoons, or going to the bleeding zoo.

Works both ways.

Where did you hear that (aka "source")...? Also, how is that quick when Saints fans used to be able to buy from March, and the kit's been on sale before the end of the season previously?

I think acorns may have got on Villa's shirts for significantly less a few seasons ago. Clubs don't tend to charge children's hospices much. http://www.acorns.org.uk/aston-villa-acorns-in-partnership

Yes. http://www.aap3.com/2011/07/04/today-aap3-start-their-three-year-association-with-southampton-fc-as-the-main-club-sponsor/

Quiet presumably because no-one else is expecting him to say anything. Announcements about new kit and season tickets might be nice though, we never seem particularly good at capitalising on the short-term feel-good factors to sell more routine products under Cortese, which seems strange as he's usually quite keen on identifying and exploiting new revenue streams. Even then Cortese doesn't have to be fronting it.