The9

That is fckin hilarious. What a sad loser geek. Also, when did A-N-A-L L-L-A-M-A start playing for us ?

The scary thing about that table is that only the teams in the bottom 3 and 3rd and 7th have gone up in the meantime. Which makes us in 2011 the equivalent of Colchester in 2009... (though the analogy might work better if we could see the Championship from then instead).

I have to say I knew, but it always seemed like a bit of a contrivance, it is lucky for them that Crawley have come along.

The evidence says not : Here's the original comment : Here's what he got when Saints tootled down to Withdean : The Official Match Programme ran "Can You Keep Up" on the front page for that match, and the pre-match music was an attempt at humour at best. Somewhere along the line "not bothered" doesn't come into the mix. On the bright side, you gave us all the chance to feel like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqn9ESKdASA&feature=related

Well, someone went round the keeper at 2-3...

As you said they should have scored early on before we even had a shot, and we then scored with pretty much every chance we created in the first half. Leeds gave up about 60 minutes in, but until that point the play on the pitch was fairly even and we weren't making much in the way of chances just as they weren't, we just finished better. We were nowhere near the level we were against Barnsley, that's for sure. It seems everyone is now invoking hindsight to "remember" that we were much better than Leeds. We weren't. We deserved to win, and looked reasonably comfortable with the cushion of the goals, but we in no way dominated the way we have in the league games since.

I'd actually left the room for some reason, and when returning to hear the commentator say "he's rounding the keeper" I had no idea which team was about to score. Given that it was 3-2 to Saints at the time, I was papping it until I heard the faint roar of the away fans, as opposed to the louder home fans.

I think that's the crux of it, and all signs point to the goal being that we CAN match it, and as the stated intent is for a "Southampton Way" fielding Saints-raised players, keeping Lallana has to be essential to that. On the bright side, the long deal he already has, and the new deals offered to various others, are in line with that policy.

My cynical head says unsustainability will go a long way with £2.5bn to waste, but I doubt that's the plan. I agree that we're probably in investment deficit right now, and it seems obvious that only the Prem will pay the club the money to make that feasible in the longer term - I wonder if we have some global marketing experts lined up in the event of promotion, seeing as you can only currently buy the kit in one shop outside Southampton ? However, if nothing else the UEFA Fair Play rules mean we'll have to get our losses below £80m p/a by 2013 (or something similar, I read it yesterday and my recall may be flawed) or we won't be able to play in the Champions' League. .

There's an interesting bit in WSC this month (or online, can't remember) about the bottom falling out of the footballer autobiography market around the time of Ashley Cole's well-pulped book - I'm glad "inane books for the hard-of-reading" is a market they're not able to exploit any more, at least. I have TWO utterly unread copies of "Beckham" in hardback. Thanks, thoughtful family Christmas presents.

He's hardly likely to release a warts 'n' all biography slating people at his age when he's won nothing, seems like a nice chap and has about 10 years of his career left, is he ? Even the excerpt I saw in the paper when getting my MOT done the other day which lightly hinted at Capello being a complete ar5e referred to him as "Mr Capello" all the way through and ended by saying how much better it was now.

Ah, so you're one of those that believes that. My opinion is that Cortese wants the fans to believe we are a sustainable club so he can charge extra for things and raise funds from stuff like the ticket tax and car parking without disaffecting too many people, but the practicalities of the situation are that until we get into the Premier League there are no possible revenue streams which will raise the amount of money we need to be able to pay the wages of the players that will get us there, and there is no possible way we are covering our wage costs on crowds of 25,000. So there is significant investment in the "invisible to fans" stuff like player wages, which is almost certainly coming out of the Markus Pot. This is in order to try and get us into the Premier League, where the tv money alone comfortably outstrips the income from fans, and might possibly allow the club at that point to become sustainable - if that's actually what the goal is - which admittedly it might be due to UEFA Fair Play. As it is, the plan only sees us established in the Prem, and what happens then no-one knows - it might be Cortese's remit to sell, or it might have been agreed to make us the Greatest Club in Footballing History for all we know. As for "£10k a week isn't slave labour", ask Cristiano Ronaldo what he thinks.

I think that's a little naive. Fortunately we seem to be in a position to reward players appropriately.

You'd have to think so. I wouldn't be surprised if we announced another new deal in the next couple of weeks either.

I have to say I thought based on pre-season against West Brom (reserves) that Lallana would struggle to cope with the pace needed in the Championship. Instead of that he seems to be taking advantage of it by selling more dummies to the players who are running more quickly to close him down, giving himself the time to get past them as they go zooming past. Three Cruyff turns in the build up to Connolly's goal for starters.

Worth noting that the Leeds side we beat won 4-1 last night against Hull (albeit with one new signing, and at home). I didn't think there was all that much in it when we beat Leeds, we weren't in the same class as at Barnsley - and evidently we continued the Barnsley performance in Ipswich.

I should think Chamberlain's agent/dad is trying to get him a move to the rapid up-and-coming side with the multi-millions of backing who play on the south coast not far from his home by now.

Aw, thanks.

...and 11 players to do it with.

I suspect you have missed the point - the previous post was referring to it costing Lallana potential Prem wages, not the club. Who knows what we're paying him ?

He's English, so multiply all suggestions by at least 3... I'd say it would take circa £25m to get us to part with him at the moment, (and yes that is based on the Chamberlain figure plus our desire to sell) but if we did that it might cost us twice that in lost Prem tv money, so selling would be a false economy. I've also noted that this season is the first one for calculations under UEFA Fair Play rules, but the allowable losses are much higher than they will be by 2013 - which explains why we're spending so much money signing Prem-possible players to longer contracts now. That and not being in any danger of qualifying for Europe this season... (Carling Cup aside ).

The latter for as long as Connolly is fit.

Minty doesn't have opinions. HTH.

Always has been for some people.

I said this around June time, and someone I hope is ITK mentioned that the club was planning on a retro release in October.