The9

You are right, we still have 5 (assuming Jemal doesn't sign) and 19, which based on some of the other number allocations above 11 (Bart and Forecast x1, Dickson x3, Seaborne x5, Forte x7), would be planned for a striker.

I defy you to find me a YouTube video of any attacking midfielder's "10 Greatest Tackles" - the video focuses on his attacking play because, you know, that's the interesting stuff ?

I, erm, uploaded a photo of the sign saying which sizes they didn't have on the new kit thread yesterday lunchtime, took the pic on Thursday evening at the West Quay store. Here it is again, cos I'm helpful, like :

I am going to delete that question about his squad number in a minute.

Do other businesses in Southampton have a significant fan base that might be interested ?

I'd rather do neither, which was an option for a year.

Cheers, was wondering.

How do you know this ?

I'm pretty sure it was just his knee and desire to be in South America...

I am not in control of these expectations. Anyone want to post a YouTube video of any of our current players to remind me how they can increase the players' ability via editing ?

So, is De Ridder our new number 19... or our new number 11 ? The OS is remarkably vague about fee, shirt number AND availability for tomorrow. I'm guessing they're waiting until the Ticket Office closes for today to imply that one or both new players might be playing tomorrow, but you can now only get year tickets on the day for £2 more...

A posting made on my Facebook wall just now suggests not. There were apparently 2 medicals today, there might be a minor speed bump with the second one. As far as Tunisian centre backs go, I'm pretty sure we've shown we're not risk averse...

Feel my expectation rise... June, 11th. Signed Cork : 8th. Signed De Ridder : I now think we will be challenging for the Play-Offs. If Jemal signs I'm going for 4th place.

I liked the look of the nippy short bloke.

Bloody hell, I've always been cynical about YouTube videos, but he's got pace, can beat people, has a couple of tricks, chops a ball back across the outside of his foot with a sharp change of direction, looks good as a right winger AND cutting in Lallana-style from the left, can deliver the kind of crosses Lambert would love, and also has a lovely little disguised through ball which I can't see anyone other than Forte running onto. Based on this I'd be inclined to think Chamberlain is leaving, but it could be the Puncheon replacement. He's more of an out and out winger Chambo-style though, and he is right footed. Anyway, based on the one YouTube video, well chuffed.

The Editorial direction has been noted

I'm not complaining about the salary per se, I'm complaining about the salary in the context of the various stealth costs to supporting the club and the expectation that the fan base will fund "running as a business" via the means of petty charges and inconvenient policies, when there may be a significant saving and contribution to the cause to be made right there.

I'm not arguing against a free market, I'm suggesting that the additional costs and failure to engage fans as customers whose opinions are valued are short termist and will result in disenchantment. With the current economic climate customer service is one of the things people should be expecting as the competition for the limited money fans have available. I'm more than aware that the demand for people attending their specific football club is inelastic, but as I've said, once people stop, they generally stop forever. The rising average age of football fans has been of note to the football money men for some time, and it's because fewer young people are starting, and those who are fans have generally been fans for a long time. It's a lot easier to keep people who want to keep coming happy than it is to entice new people to come along. Saints, when surveyed in the Prem had one of the very oldest fanbases, so the problem is even more relevant to us. Of course, Cortese seems has his own approach to reducing the average age regarding the 60-64s.

Americans don't complain about tax because they understand they have federal and state taxes and the logistics of calculating them to pay the right amounts to the right people are best addressed at point of sale, as far as I'm aware. RE: Saints charges, I think it's the fact fans have to pay them at all - compared to previous years, and the way it's been implemented (certainly with the car park) as a stealth tax. The transparency of the match day tax and the online fees, etc. don't necessarily mean that people are happy in the way this has been done - as I've said, getting the online booking right is almost certainly more cost effective for the club than staffing the TO is.

Not really. I can take that figure and see what else we could be doing with it and decide it's too much on the scale that Saints are on without any frame of reference at all, if I wished. Amusingly the first result on Google links to Storrie's £1.2m for taking then Premier League Portsmouth down the pan, so I'm happy to say within THAT frame of reference that Storrie's wages were also too much, especially considering the job he did. Here are a few more, though the timescales are unconfirmed Cook hasn't been at City for more than 3 years and I believe Parry moved on a fair time ago : http://www.trophy4toon.co.uk/salaries.html Rick Parry Liverpool £1.5 million Garry Cook Manchester City £1.8 million David Gill Manchester United £1.73 million Those 3 are at or near the very top level of club football internationally, in the most money-making League in the world, for clubs with some of the biggest incomes and an absolutely GLOBAL merchandising operation. We were paying about half of that as a third tier side, which has one store outside the city in which it's based and relies on postal sales beyond that. In addition, there's an article here about 2003 salaries in which Peter Kenyon was the highest paid CEO with £700k (Andrew Cowen was the lowest). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-footie-index-how-club-bosses-netted-premier-league-salaries-537914.html

If I want to watch professional football in the southern Hampshire area, I have the choice of watching Saints, who I have been following for 20 years, or, um... so are you saying it's the "same thing" to me to go and watch Portsmouth ? If not, the "somewhere else" doesn't get me the product I'm after. If I'm misunderstanding your point, and what you're actually saying is that "the club should exploit people as much as possible until it gets to the point where they just leave", then I hope you enjoy seeing it happen. But that is not the way to secure a long term fan base, and as many of my friends have shown as we dropped down the leagues, once you stop going, you don't come back. Do we REALLY have to go through the reasons that trying to keep your supporters happy as a good business model ? It's not like the club is a budget airline when you expect to be exploited over every add-on in exchange for their low costs - or if it is operating on that model, then the prices weren't low enough to begin with.

I don't think there have been many complaints about cost other than from people who are suddenly recategorised. I think MOST people think our prices are reasonable enough. The problem is the whole charade of adding extra costs for transport and parking, insisting on attendance at the TO to avoid extra charges - or changing extra for booking online and by phone, which are more cost-effective than TO attendance and should be promoted. Add to that the short ST periods, the poor marketing, moving the goalposts for certain fan groups so they end up paying 72% more by taking them out of a concessionary group are ALL getting people's backs up for the sake of, on an individual basis, a few quid here or there (more than that for the 61-64s)... but it is all the time, and for everything, and you can see why people are getting fed up. For me it's not so much the cost, it's the way the charges are being implemented. None of it is in line with a Chief Exec getting that kind of salary.

Yep, so I'm off to support Vauxhall, or Peugeot; or Reading, or Fulham, or Arsenal. Because there's absolutely no difference in the two analogies. Can you imagine Ford charging customers who are spending a thousand quid on a service for car parking ? They'd just go somewhere else !

Yet people are still referring to "if things start to sour".

Well, this just about covers it for me. And for the record I've already clarified what my reason for posting it was. Re: "minimum", there was some mention earlier in the thread that the £600k was not necessarily for the full year, that's what I was referring to. I'm not really sure how anyone can look at our squad and think the same degree of generosity has been afforded to the fans in as has been afforded to Cortese's salary. Maybe we'll have to see what his 2010/11 take home was in line with Saints' reduced expenditure on players and all these additional fees and inconvenient processes. Some of that money might have helped keep David Luker at the TO, so we avoided the disaster that is the ST ticket postage, which could potentially cost the club tens of thousands in match day revenue if not handled correctly ? Not that Luker wasn't already sidelined out of TO operations, of course...