CB Fry

The exact same memories. Hard to believe these days there wasn't even commentary for every match, just having to listen to Solents music choices while worrying about the goal jingle coming on. Eventually they moved on to second half commentary but wouldn't announce what game of the three they were going to do until five past three (I can now announce...), to make sure attendance wasn't affected. A different world. Kids these days etc etc.

Dalek playing blinder as usual. Sorry chaps. He is never, ever going to stop. He genuinely thinks he is hilarious.

No, you're getting worked up. I'm taking the pi ss. My new favourite bit: you asking Pap to back you up. Well done.

Who is paying which journalists to do this? It ain't happening, son.

Maybe all the clubs we've knocked out of the League Cup have been paid to lose to us as a way of destabilising our attempt to get in the Champions League. Sheffield United probably have been paid to make sure it goes for 120 minutes and penalties.

No he doesn't. Journalists taking money from club X (which club, BTW? ) to write stories to "destabilise" Southampton's tilt at the Champions League is not really an issue "ethically", it would be an issue because it would be an utterly futile exhibition of utter bloody pointlessness. Why the buggering hell would anyone bother with that? Pointless. Utterly pointless. Southampton really isn't the centre of the universe you know.

Just because you think it happens doesn't mean it happens. Secondly, it doesn't happen.

Aston Villa to score six goals all season. Okay then.

Could be an excellent question in a GCSE History exam. Discuss.

The only response to that is LOL.

Just had a quick look at the poppies at the Tower (in the pi ss ing down rain so couldn't stop long). Beautiful and moving. Great stuff.

What journalist has a "vested interest" in our failure, or indeed the success of any club? How does that even work? Just paranoid babbling nonsense. It wasn't journalists saying we were going to appoint a terrible manager in the summer. It was you.

I think you are failing to understand that there is no attempt to destabilise us. If there is a collective "media" viewpoint (which there isn't) then it is the absolute joy that something new is happening.

I've watched MOTD every week, most weeks the Saints bit twice and read, open mouthed, the paranoid comments on here straight after. "They can't wait for us to fail!!" Err, what? MOTD are loving us. Anyway, right back atcha.

Why would there be negative stories about Chelsea right now? Chelsea between Jose leaving and Jose coming back copped it plenty. If rumours about key people leaving is "destabilisation" then Liverpool (who were doing very well) were being destabilised all season last year re Suarez departure. If we are in the CL next season, there will still be more stories about Man U and Liverpool, even if they're not. The stories will still run, the clickbait will still be there.

Man U will still receive far more coverage than we do, even if we finish third and they finish eighth - and so they should, they are tons bigger than we are with far more fans, far more interest. Same for Spurs and Liverpool. Liverpool in crisis is clickbait gold. Basically that's how it should be - Saints are a provincial club with a local fanbase, the others are national clubs with huge global fanbases. And it will also be true that BT Sport, as a business, will not want Saints in the Champions League - they've spent a fortune for next season and have got subs and advertising to sell - they would clearly want Liverpool in there, not us. Again, that's fine. If I was the BT Sport marketing director, so would I. But that isn't the same as saying "the media" are trying to "destabilise us" so we don't finish top four, and it isn't true that the big clubs just get fawned over. Basically the Saints fans on here seem to want us to be treated the same as big clubs, but ignore the fact that in general the big clubs get far more shi t from the media than any other clubs ever get. How many negative stories have you seen about Burnley this season? And how many about Liverpool?

About what?

Okay, what "will happen when we start losing a few"? Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal and Man City have been "losing a few" all season and have copped no end of sh it from "the media". It's really only nutcases on this forum that think the media "fawn over" the "beloved" big clubs. Just goes to show the delicate flowers on this forum cannot actually cope with Saints being a top 4 club. The big clubs day in, day out are on the receiving end relentless barrage of criticism, rumour, counter-rumour, conflicting agendas from agents, players, brokers, ex-players, ex-managers and anyone else with an opinion. Man United have has to put up with that crap for decades, as have Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and all the others. Week in, week out, season in, season out, for decades. 10, 20, 100 times more than Saints have ever, ever had to deal with. We get a little story about one of our backroom staff possibly leaving to go to another club and we are being "de-stabilised". What a fu cking joke. Man up.

We're doing not bad for a team with a Steve Wigley level manager anyway, Alpine.

And Pelligrini. Oh, he has been so "beloved" by the media this season. And Man U. They haven't put a foot wrong according to the media reporting on them all season. So "beloved" they are. Alpine chats sh it shocker.

Villa away - D City home - W Arsenal away L Utd home - D I would like to make it absolutely clear the above, while it looks like a prediction, as it is on a prediction thread, and looks much like all other predictions on prediction threads in history, it isn't. Its a hypothetical set of results demonstrating detailed analysis or something but bears no relation to what I think will happen, although when challenged I will say it is what I could think might or could happen and it's all based on thorough analysis but I don't think it will happen or not, although hypothetically I do. Or don't.

Even if we lose next Monday we can be massively smug. We lose a match in mid - November and we're still second in the league. Smug on a plate right there.

Nice little bit of analysis ruined by this line. There aren't any pundits predicting our "comeuppance" and there certainly aren't any that have said we deserve a comeuppance because we haven't done anything wrong and, again, no pundits have said we have. A real unnecessary recurring theme on this forum that "the media" want us to fail, when there is no evidence of that whatsoever. Not sure why people can't accept that the coverage of us has been very positive.

Meh. Jay Rod. We've got a squad to burn. Nothing can go wrong now.

The media have no interest in "dancing around" a Southampton related bonfire. Well, no more than they'd dance around a West Brom or Villa bonfire. They go where the story is. Given a choice they'd much rather see a crisis at Liverpool, Spurs or Arsenal. Seriously, they couldn't give less of a sh it about us beyond being story fuel. That said, "the media"(if we pretend it is one homogeneous thing) would love it if we finished in the CL places, they'd absolutely love it. What a story.