Chez

I'm more of the opinion that he got lucky in his first season than he was particulary bad in the second. IMO his all round play is very average indeed. He offers himself well, but when he gets the ball he loses it. I've never seen so many crap flicks, misplaced passes and weak hold up play in my life. This happened constantly, but because he scored goals every week you tended to forgive him very quickly indeed, however last season he scored **** all so all you got to see was him giving the ball away cheaply and then blazing over the bar. What makes me laugh is when people describe him as pacey, hardworking, or good at holding the ball up. He offers none of those things, all he has ever offered is goals and they dried up as his confidence dissappeared. Yes he was messed about by Burley, but he was injured for a long spell and when he returned he was crap. He obviously needed a long run in the side to find his feet, but we didn't have the time and every chance he got he failed to take it. Burley just didn't ever want to give him 4 or 5 games on the trot and Pearson wasn't overly impressed either. I appreciate the other strikers we have are not world beaters, but I suspect Saga is on a hefty wage so that's why he is out the door for now. IMO we shoud never have signed him. We had too many strikers last season and we wasted hundreds of thousands paying them all to warm the bench.

if you park in town you then have to walk past the away end to get to the ticket office so if you hang about outside there is bound to be a ticketless Saints asking the stewards where the ticket office is and you can sell to them.

On that theme of the best 11 disregarding injuries and financial payments then my side would be: Davis Thomas Killer Lancashire Mills Euell Schneiderlin Gillett Surman Lallana John Bart Perry Cork Skacel BWP Far from convinced by Lancashire, but with Killer needs some pace next to him and Perry/Thomas don't offer that. Mills looks decent to me btu his lack of height must be compensated for by Thomas at right back who did a solid job there. Gillett was playing well befire his injury and IMO offers a lot to the side in terms of hussling the opposition. Schneiderlin has also looked good for me and I don't know why he is always subbed. Bit harsh on Cork who has played well but he can come in if either CM don't work out. Euell goes straight in but not in a central role. When NP moved him out wide he wa excellent. I go for Surman ahead of Rudi but only just. Rudi could also replace Lallana in the second striker role. No idea why John does not start. Pekhart, McGoldrick or Robertson have offered little todate.

so are you suggesting supporters do not take the club up on its eary bird offers to teach them a lesson? If you do you end up forking out hundreds more to see the same 23 games...

sorry but with huge debts run up over the previous 12 months every Saints fan should have known this summer that the side would be stripped of every valuable player and replaced with low wages, low quality and youth team players. If you bought a ST thinking it would be anything but that scenario then you were just stupid.

surely no one with half a brain swallowed the bull**** on the OS this summer? The term `revolutionary coaching system' became a running joke on here after about two news items (and the OS continued to use it all summer).

Jackson's Farm would have to be sold off to pay debtors. I can't imagine debtors would allow it to be retained by any incoming buyer.

the question is, what steps were taken to turn an 18th place side into one that got promoted?

we need some `units' like Wayne Brown (available on loan from Hull), some defenders with bite like Chris Biard, some height at fullback like Djimi Traore (kicking his heals down the road) and maybe some talent in Quedrue (Brum) or Ryan Taylor. None of these are financially viable though. But maybe if Skacel and Stern went out on loan...

Delap was and is ****. When they played us last season he was non existant and wouldn't want him back.

Keeping Davies (if he had actually wanted to stay) would have been a no brainer, but Saga was **** last season and does not hold the ball uo well, gives it away far too often and would not be able to play on his own up front. Wages would have crippled us as well.

has he improved since the last time he was here then?

2 pens + McGoldrick clean through one on one. Their first goal was slightly fortunate in that both players went for the header, it hit them both and fell nicely for the Watford player to smash home. The second seemed to be slightly lucky but both came down to the fact we could not win the headers needed. They had the best chance in the second half when Wotton was done and their striker missed when one on one. We lost because we are too small and can't win headers, too bad pens, and missed easy one on ones. You have to make your own luck...

you can't be the better side yet be losing? We were better in that we controlled the game in open play, passed it pretty well, won the midfield battle and looked quite dangerous on the attack. Yes you are right we didn't take our three guilt edge chances and they took theirs, but you can conceded goals and play well you know. I am not sticking my head in the sand, I know you need to defend all types of attack including from headers, but I just wanted non attenders to know that if we could have defended at set peices the half time score would have been different. Second half we were terrible, far worse than the first, yet the score for the half was 0-0. We certainly were not equal to them in that half. They were terrible. We were terrible. Both will struggle. We will go down.

Davies wanted to leave, he had a clause in his contract and we needed the money. I question the price, but if he had it written into his contract that he could go then what the **** could we do?

Mills and James are too small. The same applies to Perry. You have to combine footballing ability with physical presence at the back. We are lightweight. Who is to blame? Who cares. All I care about is changing this fact. Watford signed Ward on loan and last week and today he won absolutely everything at the back today. Why on earth he was not signed in the summer ahead of Perry and Wotton I will never know. I realise we don't have money but what little you have has to be spent right. Look at the loans/signings...Pekhard, Forecast, Pulis, Gasmi, Wotton even Svensson, money or no money I have to question the logic of these signings.

what a powerhouse in the air he is.

for those that didn't attend let me just say that we played pretty well in the first half. Without a doubt we were the better side, but two missed pens and the easiest 1 on 1 missed by McGoldrick combined with some of the most pathetic defending or an arial crossed ball you will see and you have a 0-3 scoreline. Second half was a different story. Far too many players dissapeared and the manager did **** all about it. Why bring on Perkhard with 8 minutes to go? Why drop McGoldrick in centre midfield? Mind you if you are going to bring on Thompson only for him to give the ball away with every single touch of the ball then why bother? I want to single out one player for criticism and that was Ryan Smith. I have never seen such a poor performance in a first half from a saints player in 25 years of watching. Lightweight, slow, poor control, bottler, lazy, casual....he perked up for two runs in the second half but not for long. Normally I like to give players time to settle in but boy what a coward. I said before the start of the season we would go down and nothing has changed. We are lightweight, nieve, small, limited... Davis - 6 - didn't come for much. Might question him for second goal. Decent kicking. James - 5 - I have slated him on here, but he was OK today. His lack of height does not help the defence though. Wotton - 1 crap, slow, crap in the air. Crap. You get the message. Terrible signing and I said so at the time. Sprinted up to take the penalty and grabbed it with such intend that he may as well have had a tattoo on his forehead saying it is going down the middle. Lancashire - 3 done in the air far too often and not strong enough for a CB. He'll get better, he shoulkd be doing so out on loan in league 1. Mills - 5 - again his lack of height does not help the centre backs. Surman 4 decent first half, dissapeared second. Cork - 5 decent first half, dissapeared second. Out muscled far too easy when moed to fullback. Lallana 4 did next to nothing second half. Terrible game by his standards. I keep saying the formation is built around him but if he does not control the game then we effectively are a player doen defensively. McGoldrick 5 - he looked decent after he missed the penalty and was clearlty trying hard to make up for the error. Did nothing second half and is the ****test CM I have ever seen. Robertson - 2 did **** all. One or two decent crosses came in but he was nowhere to be seen. Smith - 1 - room for improvement, but I can see why Millwall were not picking him. Thompson - 0 - appauling. No, thats being too kind. Jan 2 - is clueless. McGoldrick to CM when Gillett is on the bench. **** off. Where the **** is Stern John? No one can tell me Pekhard deserves to be on the bench ahead of Stern.

about 600 Northern based Saints fans go to all the away games up that way, come wind rain or shine as it is the only chance they get to see the side without a 500 mile round trip.

in contrast I went a few seasons back, it rained just before the match and the stadium was empty.

why make a jibe at ST holders?

Not sure how they would do this. Perhaps weekend ST and midweek season ticket could be added as an option next season? Both could be slightly higher per game than a standard ST, but of course lower than individual game prices. By the way you can miss 8 home games when you buy a season ticket and still be better off than buying individually. There are 5 Tuesday games.

who cares about percentages of seats taken? That figure doesn't take into account size of stadium or price of ticket. If we carged £2.50 and had a 10k stadium it would be 99.9% full. Instead we have 32,500 seats and £26 tickets.

no point in him selling his 6% sharehold now. The share price is low, land prices have fallen (*someone please tell me how much the Farm land is really worth) and he has got himself a nice tidy job to tide things over during this rocky period. So long as he can keep the ship (club) above water he knows his investment is safe and gets paid at the same time. What's more when he can see the club is moving forward he is in the perfect position to evaulate whether or not to strengthen his position with cheap shares. If I had £500k tied up in a company I'd want to be as close to it as possible.

is he and will he? I'm far from convinced he is a better player than Lallana and I doubt there is a single supporter that is currently not going to games that will see that he is starting in the next game and thinks `I wasn't going to go, but I will now'. Funny how good these players get when they are out of the side. Give it another few months and we'll be keeping `a MLT' out of the side.