The9

You know what ? With the way he's going about it, he's going to have to invent new tournaments for us to win to justify it. Long and short of it is that I'll keep going no matter what anyway, so I guess I'm as much of an enabler as you lot.

Fristly, it's a statement of arrogance way beyond anything Lowe ever did. As I said, self-promotion - a combination of "who's in charge of the success you want?" and "look at memememememememe" ! I can see that some want to lie down and just let Cortese get his way over everything, and I can understand that if Saints end up in the Champions League winning everything in sight it'll be a difficult argument against it, but he has done little of that so far and implemented a number of policies which suggest things are only going to get worse for fans who want to see that come to fruition. I just find it unfathomable that anyone thinks he deserves a pose on the front of the programme for it - it's exactly the sort of thing a satirist would do to mock the man, but there it is, in glorious technicolor - the Chairman, brooding, on the cover of the programme. You want to celebrate our ON-FIELD success to this point ? Have the shot of the team, the manager and the Chairman together from the end of last season. You want to promote the Chairman's Notes ? Run a splash in the corner of the front page. Just stick to putting the players (as the manager was on the last one of last season, I think) on the cover, because they're the ones that make me go to matches, and they're what I want to see. If we run out of front page stars because we've only signed two newcomers, go through them all again - I'm sure Bart's been on a few already without any complaints. It's just... Cortesemania, and God forbid anyone who wants to point out there's a better way.

Oh yeah, because it's perfectly reasonable for the owner of a club to put himself on the cover, as opposed to, you know, any of the players, especially the new signings. And it's not at ALL hypocritical to play this down when a certain previous Chairman got no end of stick just for having a training kit with his initials on it. This is seeing the line, knowing there's a line, and saying "you know what, f\/ck the line". At the point when we achieve something other than being in a League below the one I'm used to Saints being in, then, and ONLY then might someone be able to do this without getting a shedload of flak for it. Until then, it's just dickish self-promotion, self-congratulation, and all-round undeserved back-slapping. Yes, he saved the club. And now look what it's turning into.

Along with this lot : http://ridiculousfootball.blogspot.com/

There's nothing actually showing that cover on the OS, or the "online programme" link... EDIT : Ah, there it is, if you click on "online programme" and then "individual match". http://www.saintsonlineprogramme.co.uk/Subscriptions.aspx For F\/CK'S SAKE!

Out. Of. Control.

And the rest. I think I'm going to get 10,000 "I ****ing love Cortese me" t-shirts printed up and sell them for £30 each outside the ground. Or something.

Beat you to it by about 30 seconds on the "Lowe v Cortese clothing" thread.

I'm just starting to kick off about it... I'm absolutely stunned at the man's ego, to be honest.

You are kidding me ? Please tell me you're joking ? Can you imagine the reaction there would have been on here if Lowe had ever done anything like this ?

Quite. I'd have probably even gone along with the idea between 2006-2010... but not now, no.

Please tell me that's not the cover of the Programme ?

Just the one, and hopefully I'll be able to watch it on the box. And no, you can't have my voucher - there should be a few hundred freebies floating around anyway. As it happens, I basically got paid to go on this holiday.

Even if we missed out on both there's a huge role to be played by the Premier League's 25-man squad limit and with loans and loan-to-buy players yet to come. Though I have to say I'd rather we signed someone who will improve our squad on a permanent deal than one who might come along on a short term basis, at least at this stage of the (pre-)season.

I have one for a boss in Winchester, weirdly. Can't see any reason at all why we'd want to sign Arca.

I always take one, just for the token "Saints shirt in random location" shot, but I never wear it on holiday other than that. I suppose I might if I was taking in a football match, like I may do in Granada in September.

No, it was hugely annoying on all fronts, from setting my alarm on my phone to go off at 13 minutes to them not managing to have everything in stock they're meant to be selling, to the general lack of people in there actually buying anything, to the overpowering sense of wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible, all the way through the staff's general inattentiveness and unnecessary time-wasting, through the completely out of date "signing a paper receipt" card transaction, right up until the moment where I saw the barrier lift and gleefully escaped without paying a Cortese Stealth Tax again. God forbid we'd wanted a name or number on the shirt. In fact every aspect of the whole experience makes me less likely to go back there again, and as we can all tell, I'm one of the ones who usually buys this crap.

I was wondering that too.

I watched numerous World Cup matches in the bowling alley's bar on the big screen - whether you'd want to be in there on a Friday evening I don't know.

I've seen that report somewhere else already, and I don't read SkySports.com... anyone able to pinpoint where it was ?

Incidentally, anyone recognise the Bilbao home shirt ?

Having had a nice close look at the shirt (and the shorts, which at £20 are staying in the shop) I can safely say that I like the yellow panels which correspond to those on the Rangers home shirt : ...but I think the kit generally would look significantly better if they'd made them blue, or even red.

There's quite a range of customer experiences between the pushy sales assistants Saints have never had, and my experience of standing at the till for 2 minutes before any of the staff even notices you might want serving, and even then you have to go and ask - and even then the guy took about 30 seconds to scan each thing. Maybe next time I'll do the old "set off the alarms" stunt and see how quickly I get their attention then.

You sound like you're making it up as you go along. He's got a contract with YB, he has decided he wants to leave (widely reported in the French language media), was discussing signing for someone else (both Brest and Saints reports from French and Tunisian media and a Stoke rumour prior to them signing Woodgate), apparently it isn't going to happen (ITKer on here), but where's the "compensation" to be had ? That part is absolute nonsense. I also don't know why you can believe all of the rumours up to the point where the deal failed, but not the ones after that ? That doesn't make any sense either, other than feeding nicely into the "people only want to hear good news" theory that underpins human nature and manifests itself on here every time there's anything other than blind positivity. I'll believe the "refusal to pay a percentage to Esperance" rumour is wrong or the situation changed if he actually signs for us, at which point I'll be pleased to point out that all of the stuff about medicals and staying in Southampton and training with the club were probably correct too. If he doesn't sign, we can't be sure of any of it - though personally I'd take the word of the two people I know who have provided some ITKness on here.

Oh, and they don't have any away socks either.