CB Fry

I had my heart set on losing a penalty shoot-out in Leicester but there you go, you can't have everything. I can just about stomach a open top bus parade.

"I don't just expect to be promoted this year, I want us to be champions". Car to name the "idiot" who said this in September? I'd daresay that person does not think the current squad is "overperfoming" at all - he'd say we are where he'd expect us to be. The only "idiots" in the forum here are the ones desperately trying to reposition outselves as plucky little overacheiving underdogs where its the taking part that counts and fingers crossed lets scrape tenth wouldn't that be marvellous. We're here to win the league so "in reality" we should be precisely where we are.

I've heard from a source very high up at the club that Cortese doesn't just expect us to be promoted this season, he expects us to go up as champions. So let's not pretend that expectations are being raised purely by our current performances or by the fan base. Its been raised from the top down. Probably doesn't really help Adkins but there we are. The expectation is to deliver promotion in first place this season. The manager, the players and the fans are just going to have to live with it.

Still on more than two points per game, and WHU lost as well. Still well on track for promotion. But a couple of signings in Jan would give us some more options up front which I think is critical is we are going to deliver top-two.

Sunderland won't be interested in Adkins, not enough glamour and no history with the club or the area. And Cortese and Adkins would collectively say no. Adkins is not going to be agitating for a move to the Stadium of Light. Bigger fanbase, but in reality no more chance of winning something, or getting into Europe, than staying at Saints (as long as we go up this season of course). Adkins really won't interest anyone until we get promoted, and then he's going to have to get us top ten for any club of any significant size - your Villa, Newcastle or Everton - to take any interest. And even then he probably wouldn't want to go if he's top ten with us.

No one is arguing we shouldn't plan it. The debate on here is from the self proclaimed "intelligent posters" who want things to happen now now now and disregard sensible measures like - do we have 25,000 season ticket holders and a waiting list for season tickets, is our stadium locked out weeks in advance for most games, have we truly established ourselves as at least a top ten Premier League club, have we maxed out revenue streams from tickets and corporate entertainment meaning the only viable option is additional seats. That's what me and the "thickos" as we are described by Wes Tender and Matthew Le God want to see. Planning, thought, and genuine business need. Plan for ways to grow the business. Absolutely no doubt that is what Nicola Cortese is doing. Us thickos want planning. It's the self proclaimed "intelligent" ones who want to build it because Wolves might do the same, and their plan to fill it is by running discount promos left right and centre to give tickets away to school kids, and selling thousands and thousands of additional tickets to fans of opposing teams whereby gift wrapping the atmosphere of the stadium over to the opposition. It's the self proclaimed "intelligent" ones who want a 44,000 stadium just to make them feel good, regardless of whether it makes us a dime. But what would the rest of us know. The intelligent posters know best.

In a word, yes. Sunderland averaged nealry 30,000 when they were top of the league a few years back. I go back to my original point - where on earth are 20,000 - twenty thousand - extra fans going to come from? Oh, sorry, I remember - you "intelligent posters" have the answer don't you - spend xxx million on the stadium and then fill it by giving tickets away to school children, doing family discounts and kids for a quid nights. Oh, yes, and how can I forget, selling 8,000 tickets to travelling Man U fans to help the atmosphere. Brilliant.

Did you not bother to actually read my post - this is a thread called "expansion to 44,000". To make a move like that anything like viable then we would be needing twenty thousand extra fans than turned up last night for a top of the table clash which marked a record breaking home league run. Your game against Bolton you refer to - was there a lock out - were there 10,000 frustrated Saints fans desperate for tickets - did the game go on general sale or were those oh-so-rare tickets snapped up by the membership with watertight buying records? How many of that crowd were season tickets - was it anything like the 25,000 minimum we'd need to justify sticking 10,000 extra seats in? So, not actually that easy, is it?

Nights like tonight don't convince me we're going to pull twenty thousand extra fans through the door for a game against Bolton on a Monday night on Sky. But as the people who think they are in charge of "intelligent debate" on this forum have said: Turkish said last season we wouldn't get promoted which therefore means we can definitely fill at 44,000 seater stadium or something. Thank god they're here to help us "get the point into our thick skulls".

For the love of god can one of the admins change the title of this thread.

Well, he did get Wolves out of the Championship.

Probably not far wrong. Hoddle and Strachan never bought better than Jones did. Could well have been our Tony Pulis.

Never claimed to be a forum guru. That's for others to say. Being that we won nine of our last ten to secure second place, it's safe to say what I was saying was right. Pretty sure personally I never said we couldn't do it (there's one for you freaking weirdos trawling the threads of 2010) although I did say we would need to go on a phenomenal run and I also said lots of things about Adkins being under huge pressure to deliver promotion that season without fail. I wonder if anyone is going to dredge up the horse sh it threads talking about how we should all leave Adkins alone to "build his own team" and shouldn't be all horrible to him and let him have two or three years to get promoted from League one. Or the gazillion arse-aching bores going on about how there is no such thing as instant success and only immature people believe there is and that managers can't just come in and deliver success straight away blah blah etc etc? Come on weirdos. The forum guru demands it.

Beat me to it. This article is clearly more evidence of evil lying journalist scum and of course the entire media having an anti-Saints agenda. Funnily enough there was a thread on here only a couple of days ago of the usual betwetting divs saying we don't need a Sunday newspaper writing positive stories about us and quite frankly they can all leave us alone. Why don't the Mail leave us alone then - it's a disgrace this has been published, surely?

You're forgetting our gigantic official "catchment area" meaning we've got the likes of Portishead, the Wurzels and XTC in the west and Paul Weller and Suede over to the East. Oh, and Radiohead, Supergrass and Ride because we've got Oxford in the bag as well.

It's more like our appointment of Nigel Pearson than our appointment of Nigel Adkins to be fair. When we appointed Adkins in League one he'd already been promoted from that league twice before. This new guy is clearly someone with potential but completely unproven. Being that they are skint and probably a season away from being relegated the similarities really are spooky.

Thanks for the supportive post. But our man MLG has ruled out an price rise strategy, even though it is a very simple mechanism to deliver cash to the business to spend on players and the squad. His strategy seems to be to not worry about having no season ticket waiting list and no evidence of sustained over-demand, build the xx thousands of seats anyway, and then give those seats away in family and school promotions, and charging less for tickets than now, with the sole requirement of the development, er, "paying for itself". Which is a strategy that at the same time as delivering no extra cash to the business to invest in players or wages it also creates complexity and ties up funds in infrastructure there is no concrete need for. In his head it's a 100% vanity project to build seats just for the sake of it. It really is truly, truly amazing.

So we're now building hotels and leisure complexes are we - this was a debate about seats in the ground, so no idea what you are talking about there. If Cortese wants to stick a Casino on the side of the ground to generate revenue then fine if the numbers work. Never have I stated any objection to anything like that. I talk about season ticket waiting list above. Basically, it's a good, genuine bellwether for demand. True demand. Not demand made up in your head. I notice you didn't actually answer my question about gate prices - it is a far more efficient and immediate way to "increase revenue" (and to evaluate true demand) than spending millions on seats with no clear demand for. Also a far more efficient way to "increase revenue" than building hotels and casinos. You live in a silly little computer game world where the only way to increase revenue is to spend loads of money. Not true. Just drive value from the demand that is already there. After all, there's loads of it according to you. So not "done". You didn't answer the question.

That's funny, because the Leibherr's bought St Mary's for far less than the list price to build the thing, so that development lost a shed load of money. The one thing you "completely overlook" is the high likelihood that if we had a 40,000 seater stadium would probably deflate demand, especially as you're planning to build it with no season ticket waiting list. A massive reason people buy season tickets is to guarantee seats for bigger games. 40,000 seats to chose from makes that a much lower imperative.

1. Have we ever had a waiting list for season tickets in the St Mary's Era? 2. Do you think we should put prices up significantly to maximise revenue from this amazing demand for tickets for a couple of seasons before we spend £40m on infrastructure we could otherwise spend on players? You know, generate some money before just spending it again. Do you think you could answer those two questions to move the discussion on. Thanks.

Hang on, you're the tedius pedantic one on here - Wayman said "it won't be 32k every week". You said rubbish, but it isn't because previously it wasn't, those numbers prove it and it won't be again. Did we have a waiting list for season tickets? No. You don't spent £50m expanding a perfectly good stadium on the off chance of us having lots and lots of better seasons than the Rupert Lowe era, which did see us finish between 12th and eighth up until relegation. And being that Stoke, Fulham, Bolton, et al have had better seasons than we have on smaller gates, a bigger ground than 32,000 is not a pre-requisite for having better seasons than finishing bottom of the Premier League.

Lighthouse's post above prove Charlie Wayman's point. We didn't sell out every week. So, not actually rubbish at all.

Indeed, but we can have an educated stab. Well, really? That time to break even is time and money not spent on wages, which would put our squad and our top flight position in peril and is funnily enough one of the major contributory factors to our going into admin in the first place. Here's a simple case study. 40,000 gates at £40 a ticket - £30m gate reciepts over a 19 game season. Lovely. A whole £6,000,000 more than 32,000 seats at the same price. But at a conservative £5,000 a seat to build those seats, that's a bill of £40,000,000 to cover that. Stick that on a 20 year mortgage and you're going to need to be coughing up something like £2.5-£3m a year, so that's your return down against the old stadium to £3m already. If we stick it on a "that's nothing" 10 year mortgage, well, we're making no money at all, are we? So what's the point? Stick a fiver on average seats, though, and with no outlay your turnover already up by £3m. Stick on another fiver and bingo, another £3m. No outlay, no risk, no mortgage, just £6m worth of juicy turnover straight into the coffers. If we want money to compete then "sweating" our resources is a far more sensible option to exhaust than seat expansion vanity projects. If we are selling 31,000 home to West Brom at an average of £50 per seat, with a season ticket waiting list of at least 5,000 then yes, there is a case for expanding the ground. Until then, there really isn't because it makes very little economic sense.

The usual drivel from the usual suspects, I see. Love these threads. If there is significant over demand for tickets at SMS when we are in the Premier League, then the first thing a sensible business focussed leader should do is not spunk forty odd million quid on a eight thousand more seats, even if the thought of it does make MLG's willy go all funny. The most efficient and effective thing for a business like SMS when faced with this massive over demand that the "believers" are claiming we'll have is to do one thing. Put the price up. Then put the price up again. Then, put the price up again. When faced with significant demand for a product with a finite supply the sensible thing is not to suddenly make more of the product. It's to make as much money as possible from the product you already have. If, like some of the experts claim, we'll have queues round the block for a November home game against Blackburn, then charge £50 a ticket. They want to cram in, they'll pay it. If, like the "look at Wolves look at Wolves LOOK AT WOLVES" idiots think we can fill 50,000 seats on a wet Wednesday versus Fulham, then charge £55 a ticket. We only need 29,000 to pay that much anyway. If, like the "they said you couldn't climb Everest" spanners think we can sell just as many tickets at Liverpool, then charge £60 a ticket. After all, they said man wouldn't walk on the moon and that means everything is possible and everything will definitely happen. Charge more money. That route will make us more money, allow us to sign better players, pay better wages and also won't saddle us with a load of pointless debt, as outlay would be zero. Nothing. It's not as sexy as the dopey little dreamworld of 50,000 stadiums the wallies like to cherish, but it would be a billion times more sensible. And it would definitely work. After all, something about Chelsea in the eighties and Roker Park and Everest and the moon and they all laughed at Christopher Columbus or something so there.

Presumably you are referring to this thread: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?33055-Are-we-afraid-of-success...&highlight=afraid+success+failure Being that the thread you started wasn't actually about whether we would (or could) go up or not this season, not sure where on earth you have drawn the conclusion that you encountered lots of "non believers". No-one on that thread could be called a non believer in the possibility we could get promoted this season. Not one person. But to be honest I don't think anyone had a clue what that thread was about, least of all you. The only non believers on that thread are the ones challenging your misguided belief that Few can doubt that if we are still at the top came January that the Liebherr family wouldn't give the nod to an extra 40-50 million out of their coffee money to give us the edge in the transfer market and seal promotion in obedience to Marcus Liebherr's dying wish to see " his club " get to the top flight Which you soon downgraded to 20-30 million spent in the next transfer window. So if you want to call me a non believer that we will spend between 20 and 30 million in January, then I'm a non believer.