The9

Much of this is going to depend on whether the articles were written 6 weeks ago or yesterday - Birmingham's case has plummetted in the last week for a start.

Me too, and I actually like some of his music.

Yeah, that makes more sense, I think I'd have remembered a 17th place prediction !

I only need to look at the previous sides we've had in the Championship and where they finished and compare them to the current lot to know more or less where we're likely to finish. This lot are worlds better than the 2008/9 kiddie club relegation side, comfortably better than the relegation-dodging team Pearson somehow dragged from the mire the season before, and better than Burley's end of season mob the year after Prem relegation (the one appearance from Gareth Bale aside) who STILL pitched up mid-table after the January-March dip when we'd sold 15 players and barely won a game for months having got shot of the Prem players who'd had us around 6th-8th for a while. Ergo, top half, as we're slightly better than that. Of course, if we lose Fonte, Lallana, Chamberlain, De Ridder and Cork to injuries in August we might have a few things to worry about.

My tone was argumentative because you made a stupid post about Saints not being responsible for the error in sending out incorrect Saints STs. If they didn't check wrongly printed tickets before they sent them out it was STILL the club's fault. Stop being such an apologist.

Nah but you only have to analyse the highlights of the 2 goals by West Brom, Seaborne wasn't where he should have been on either occasion, if he'd have been adequate for the first goal the cross wouldn't have come in, true Bart shouldn't have let is go though. Second goal you can clearly see Fonte bolliking Seaborne for his laxism.How some find him adequate I just can't see. A CB like a GK has to be perfect for 90+ minutes, one slip is all that some of the hotshots we'll soon be facing need. The first West Brom goal is purely Bart's error, and Seaborne would have had to have been in completely the WRONG place for what would happen 95% of the time in order to do anything about it. The second one was Martin's fault for being too central, as the size of the gap from CB to LB only matters when the ball goes straight down the middle. Not Seaborne's fault either, and he may have had a runner to track - not aided by both of them having only just got into those positions due to the substitutions. Prior to that Seaborne had looked assured and comfortable at CB (except the time Miller sprung the offside, when he got back to cover).

This is the kind of stuff that should get threads stickied. I think we should add a "better" central defender but I still can't see us finishing in the bottom half with what we've got. And what are the (amazing) De Ridder and proven Prem/Championship quality Jack Cork if not significant and strengthening ? Add to that we haven't lost Chamberlain (yet) or anyone else who featured significantly last season, and the only real concerns are Jaidi and Connolly's injury likelihood (and slow recoveries) and Barnard's court case.

That is kind of how the Championship table is viewed though, everyone down to about 15th is either "battling to win the League" "chasing automatic promotion" or "pushing for the Playoffs", only a few of the fans of the 15th placed team tend to notice they're 6 points ahead of 22nd as well as around 10 points off 6th.

I think I read that too - did they really go for 17th ? Their Championship reporter wants shooting. "Fragility of defence at times" describes plenty of clubs which aren't Saints last season.

Good luck getting the bloody modulator box on the back to still work with the tv aerial !

I still haven't taken Saints Row 2 out of the packaging yet...

Sunday Express I had a flick through in the pub yesterday had something like Saints 12th, Brighton 10th and Skate Cheats FC 9th. I nearly spat out my beer.

Hm, let's see. So you're suggesting that the club has nothing to do with the distribution of their own Season Tickets ? Including, presumably, making the decision to employ any third party to post them out, which is still a decision made by someone at the club ? The club is entirely responsible. What planet are you on ? Do you think there are Season Ticket Pixies doing it or something ? They don't magically turn cash into tickets via Fairy Dust Magic, Saints have, via whatever method, employed staff to do that, and the business process has been completely sharted up by someone the club has employed to do it. What's worse, is that their solutions are all operating in the blind faith that no-one is going to want to use all of the spare voucher tickets they've been given to want to get in - because of course the club has been harbouring SO MUCH goodwill recently with their fan-friendly definitely-not-money-grasping policies that no-one could possibly want to take advantage of their enormous screw-up in response. This of course, is where good customer service could have saved the club a fortune. Let's hope the Safety Certificate doesn't get withheld based on the flawed ticketing, that would be really embarrassing.

I somehow don't think "letting in anyone with a ticket for other matches" covers the safety requirement for matches to have limited attendances covered by ticketing. And "they won't accept the voucher on it's own" has already been debunked as a complete myth, loads of people have got in with just the voucher, and if they were remotely worried about it, the voucher book stashed in a different year's ST wallet would almost certainly pass any basic check anyway.

Not to mention that there are now absolutely hundreds of spare, FREE, unallocated tickets floating around for the matches 9-23, with the first one being against Brighton. That match is going to be absolute chaos and the club has completely failed in its duty of care towards supporters, months before the match.

I feel sorry for the people who have naively assumed competence on the part of the Ticket Office for something that costs in the vicinity of £500, yes. I wonder what ridiculous new ST policy we'll have to put up with next season due to this particular club f'ck up and the consequences ?

The last two times, it was the "recommended by police" train which was the one with the massive delays. The trains arrived at Fratton in plenty of time nearly an hour before kick-off, but the first year the police spent about an hour battling object-lobbing Skates and surrounding our lot for our own protection (I was one of the first 5 into the ground when they broke the cordon near the away end, and I missed the first 25 minutes of the match. The incredible thing was the 2000-odd Skates still outside the ground, half of them in replica shirts, who chose to stand there and taunt us rather than see the match which was live on tv and also taking place 20 yards away. I mean, it either matters or it doesn't..? The second time I got there just as the penalty was conceded, so about 15 mins ? (I don't plan on checking). Again, the train had arrived in plenty of time but the police ringfenced us and went verrrry slowly to the ground, though much quicker than the other time.

I'm keen for us to buy a better CB because although Fonte is good at this level, Seaborne / Martin are unproven and Jaidi can't be expected to play 46 matches and we need a fast and strong player to complement Fonte. Even Fonte struggled a little against West Brom's reserve striker Miller in the air, who is probably Championship standard. As far as the fullbacks go, Richardson, Butterfield and Harding all have Championship experience, and only Butterfield's age is getting questionable, which I think has been offset by Richardson's greater fitness and agility pre-season compared to the cumbersome ox that pitched up last year. Dickson gives us an option going forward, and who knows whether Jack Stephens might be an option at right back ? Harding has looked comfortable in the 4 halves of pre-season I've seen, so I'm reasonably happy with him at the moment. Seaborne has been pretty decent at CB, but he and Martin got taken to pieces within seconds when he moved to left back against WBA for their second goal. It remains to be seen how we cope against quicker, more mobile players who are also strong in the air, as opposed to the mostly one-trick ponies in League One, but I feel we're a little susceptible to tricky, pacy players at the moment.

They will be released, but given that Umbro haven't even managed to deliver the replica socks and the away kit isn't available yet, I'm sure they're not rushing the training kit launch at the same time. The team wore new training kit in Switzerland, so it will be available. Oh, and the 10/11 DVD was in the Megastore the day the home kit arrived, I took a photo, it's white with a red sash !

If there was any doubt, click on his previous postings, they go back a LONG way.

Not since about September last year.

He was actually talking about changing the kit to a sash on alternate years rather than just changing the kit... which I think is short-termist randomism. Though I mostly agree that changing it every year is unnecessary, all it means to me is that I'm going to think a bit harder about whether I pay full price for one.

I'm pretty sure that we didn't have more at Orient than Orient did last season. http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/MatchReport/0,,10280~52335,00.html Yup, 7714 and we had 3209 of them, that's not even close to half. There may have been some Saints in the home end, but how are you going to prove how many, and nearly 800 of them ?

No, just like it wasn't the flybe St Mary's Stadium.

As there were only 7,000 ish at the match I'd be inclined to think there might be more, rather than less, online.