The9

That is absolutely fantastic news (even though contracts in football aren't worth the paper blah blah). Shows intent AND financial clout.

Absolutely coincidence, fans don't make the blindest bit of difference 90% of the time - it may have an impact on young players the first few times or on inexperienced players if the crowd is bigger than normal, but beyond that, it's just same old same old for players and background noise. Any more evidence required than the way (Premier League) Saints played at (Championship) Watford in 2004/5 in the League Cup when 4 goals behind and with most of the extremely peed off travelling supporters tangibly cheering Watford, as Saints actually started to play for 20 minutes and got a couple of goals back (though as soon as we scored the 1st they got their 5th). Also, the few times I've played in front of crowds of more than about 10 I've never noticed them at all.

Indeed, I was posting stuff on here about ticketing knowing full well that we'd be almost certainly playing Blackpool's reserves : http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?26699-At-home-to-BLACKPOOL&p=903063#post903063 For the lazy of clicking it said : I'll be going provided its no more than £25, but it'll be a weird world in which Blackpool are regarded as an attraction for plastic floating fans. I think we'll get about 19,000 if it's £25 and 25,000 if it's £18-ish. I wouldn't be surprised if the prices are ridiculous though, the justification being that they're a Prem side. We'll get fewer than for Cheltenham if tickets are £35, especially as I expect them to field nigh-on a reserve side.

They'd be playing Oldham in the league as originally scheduled. And then they'd be able to have a rest on Tuesday.

I just checked, he didn't play in either the first or second round for Saints. v Shrewsbury : Davis, Richardson, Jaidi, Harding, Seaborne, Hammond, Chaplow, Lallana, Oxlade-Chamberlain (Lambert, 66 ) , Do Prado (Holmes, 88 ) , Barnard (Connolly, 89 ) Subs not used: Dickson,Bialkowski,Wotton,Martin. v Cheltenham : Bialkowski, Richardson (Butterfield, 42 ) , Jaidi, Dickson, Fonte, Hammond, Holmes (Oxlade-Chamberlain, 26 ) , Do Prado, Lallana, Gobern, Lambert (Harding, 46 ) Subs not used: Davis,Martin,Reeves,Doble. Saints announced he'd joined Millwall on 16th November, http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2222518,00.html but as it says in the article, the loan expired on Jan 3rd. His last game for Saints was at Notts County on 30th October, so he'd been omitted from 3 matches before he left : Football League One Southampton 4-0 Dag & Red 02-11-2010 English FA Cup Southampton 2-0 Shrewsbury 06-11-2010 Football League One Carlisle 3-2 Southampton 13-11-2010

"Like Charlie Adams" indeed. But one letter different.

Yeah, but a permanent deal would transfer his registration to the new club and override the loan. It does sound like a load of made-up guff though.

The very fact someone from Plymouth has bothered to update Wikipedia with that information shows he's well thought of down there.

I would pee myself with mirth if they signed Wotton - I like the bloke, committed pro, but creaking, can't change direction any more and not long left in him. Can we get them to take Poolis too, I'm sure his dad would put in a good word for him and he's been into doing Cheats FC favours with all the loans and selling them Lawrence?

I went to both, missed both kick-offs due to the policing of the "recommended" Saints train (and umpteen skate numpties in the streets fighting the police and setting fire to things before and during the first match) and barely got in in time for their penalty in The Match Of Which We Do Not Speak. Bloody hailstones as well... and a huge crush outside in 2003/4 due to the long delays in letting us out of the cordon. Still, "you're not singing any more" and "you're supposed to be at home" when locked in at the empty ground an hour after the game ended and "ooh Teddy Teddy" at the irate old bloke in the flat outside made the day about 1% more bearable.

Unbelievably that "certain song" was being played at St Mary's before the kick-off at the Brentford game as part of the pre-match entertainment. Hopefully someone has had a word.

I had a look at the Kellow's site the other day, I think apart from the innovative look to the site (which makes it slightly weird to use), and the video show which somehow gets exclusive interviews with Tisdale (and has one with Adkins) the rest of it is annoyingly-designed, lacking in recent content and basically a bit gash.

With the exception of the numerous times when he has, and the notable improvement that could be seen in his game when Adkins first arrived. Puncheon will probably have some ideas on why it worked for him at Millwall and I don't think Adkins is the kind of manager who will ignore the opportunity to get the best out of someone.

It would be difficult for an established player OR a young, promising pro who was at the club in the Prem not to outperform Saints when we managed to drop two divisions in 4 seasons. Most of the non-Prem standard players like Dyer, Blackstock and McGoldrick are hanging around near enough the level they were playing for Saints with their new clubs. Best has barely had a look in for Newcastle and prior to that had 3 years doing nothing of note at Coventry. He was a top-half Championship squad player in 2007 and he was third choice behind Ameobi and Carroll even last season, it's not like there have been any massive improvement in them. Fuller was a lower half Prem player when we bought him, he still is. Stats show Delap has had more throws than passes in some matches for Stoke and like Higginbotham, they're pretty much at the same level now as they were with Saints and Derby before we relegated them.

Having seen the three goals, he fouled the jumping defender to get the space to be in on goal for the first, was (just) offside for the third, and the second was a half-decent left foot strike from about 6 yards from broken play following a corner. One decent goal, three decent finishes but pretty lucky two of them stood. On other occasions the West Ham defence did appear to be attempting to mimick the Red Sea.

I thought Seabourne was pretty decent at the end of last season and haven't seen all that much improvement under Adkins actually as he was doing reasonably well anyway, though obviously gaining more experience will help over time. I think Adkins has been pretty smart with Fonte's partners, he's usually used Seabourne against the nippier strikers (eg Exeter) and Jaidi in matches like Dag & Red where pace isn't so important but strength in competing for headers is. He even managed to get two games in 3 days out of Jaidi earlier in the season, though he was near spontaneous combustion in the last 10 minutes of the second match and was a total liability for that time. I can't see us losing Seabourne OR him particularly wanting to go, unless we sign another Championship CB in the next few weeks.

Still waiting for confirmation from the BBC, though Sky Sports are claiming he's been "sacked" (their use of quotations, presumably for legal reasons).

Like I say every time this thread comes around, I went to my first game aged 1 week (and got in the local paper because of it). Bloody 0-0 draw in the 4th Division between two sides currently in the Conference it was, as well... Then again my dad was still moaning at me during the Mercantile Credit Football League Centenary Classic at Wembley for reading the programme and I was 14 by then. But it WAS a pointless match, even if I did get to see 1-Dasayev, 2-Josimar, 3-Celso, 4-Alberto, 5-Hysen, 6-Bagni, 7-Berthold, 8-Lineker, 9-Platini, 10-Maradona, 11-Futre, 12-Detari, 13-Belanov, 14-Larsson, 15-Elkjaer, 16-Zavarov, 17-Stojkovic, and 18-Zubizarreta play. Okay, maybe Glenn Hysen was pushing it a bit on the "World" front. Didn't go to my first Saints match until I was 18 though (unless they happened to be playing Newport County at Somerton Park on a Saturday between Jan 1973 and May 1988 - which they didn't, as the last meeting was in the FA Cup in 1968 and I wasn't born then). As I'm on a tangent, weirdly Newport beat Saints 5-1 in their last league meeting (it was 1960 though, in Division 3).

I think it's more a matter of "if they didn't have a free alternative would they choose to spend their money on CDs/DVDs instead" ?

I'm all in favour of removing the swear filter as well, I suspect it's a legal thing due to the 13+ nature of the site. That and Baj being a fudging kent. I have at least 13 and three quarter years to wait before I'd have to worry about teenagers swearing, so I'm staying out of that one.

Which leads nicely into the fact there's a recession on and a LOT more people will be taking the cheap option.

That was what I was looking for the last time I was in there, last January. I had one bought for me, but they did get a couple of £3 books out of me.

It's interesting, but everywhere Hodgson's been he's taken somewhere between 6-12 months to get the personnel playing the way he wants them to, and he has a specific way of coaching, which was hugely successful in getting Fulham to the level they were at. Basically his problem is that Liverpool fans think they should be doing better than Fulham did last season, when actually they're probably much worse than that at the moment (and were last season judging by Europa League performances). Also, success for Fulham isn't success for Liverpool - but I think Hodgson would be happy matching last season's Fulham finish at the moment even without the european stuff. I can't see the Spanish legacy Benitez left matching up to the style he wants so that'll take some time. Maybe he needs Hangeland in. Bizarrely I can see similarities between Zamora and Torres, at least in terms of workrate and trickiness, if not build or ability to drag balls out of the sky. The other simple fact is that with the exception of Arsenal, teams are getting increasingly direct again (note Man City's launch and support style, and Man U's use of the quick ball to Berbatov or Rooney and getting the wingers up in support), so Reina's distribution is not really that anomalous.

Surely the massive elephant in the room here is that pretty much everything HMV tries to sell (at their inflated prices) can be torrented and shared online - it's the thin edge of the wedge for the entertainment industry generally. I have no idea how they're still going other than peoples' grans buying Christmas presents in there because they don't know any better. My sister-in-law had £50 HMV vouchers for Christmas 2009 and only got around to "wasting" them in November. Amusingly she has now been given £60 more. I don't think I've bought anything in there that wasn't a £3 book for about 6 years.

Or, as last season, we can hoover up a couple of decent players from Championship sides or League One rivals who are desperate for cash, this time with the added bonus of being able to offer them a decent chance of Championship football next season rather than the mere possibility it was last season, with that being partially dependent on them signing.