CB Fry

As I am officially no longer narrow minded, and I now truly believe that next season we will average 30,000 no problem at all. I have the imagination because I am no longer blinkered by the club's history of mediocrity which until now I foolishly interpreted as the cold hard facts of how many people are prepared to pay money to watch Southampton Football Club, including our waiting list of absolute zero for season tickets at any point in our history, ever. I have seen the light. 30,000 average next season, easy. Are you with me?

Amen to this. I think the only thing I would add is this: Some clubs in the Prem currently on 40,000 plus average attendances that have recently been in the championship: Sunderland averaged betwwen 27 - 31k in their 3 recent seasons. Newcastle managed 43k in the CCC Manchester City 33k. Our best performance in the second tier is 23k with an average 17.8k in the dim and distant past of two seasons ago. So, let's stop starting our hypothesis from "when we are an established top 6 prem club". Let's start today. In the real world. No club in the modern Prem club has ever added 20,000 regular fans following promotion. If you think we can average 40,000 in the Premier League then we must average 30,000 fans in the Championship. After all, we have the population and the passion and the catchment area and all the rest of the ******** spouted out on this thread for the last couple of days. It's filling the ground for the crap games the proves we need more seats. So Wes Tender and Mathew Le God and the rest of the airheads, see you next season. 30,000 week in, week out in the second tier. Just like Newcastle. And Sunderland. And Man City. 30,000 week in week out. Easy. Why? Our population is bigger. Cortese is investing. We're on the up. Chelsea didn't sell many seats in 1983. Spurs want a new ground. Bolton have lots of clubs nearby. Oh, and Fulham have lots of clubs nearby. Something about our catchment area. We sold 30,000 against Southend once. They said people couldn't climb Everest. All these reasons mean we can easily sell 30,000 week in, week out in the Championship. 30,000 week in, week out next season. Just like Sunderland and Man City. And don't try and make excuses as to why we can't hit 30,000 next season because, after all, some people said they couldn't climb Everest. Start counting those ticket stubs chaps. Bring it on.

Apologies, small error. Sunderland's attendance in their first season back in the second tier was 34k, not 38k. Point still stands. Population figures are an utter irrelevence when Sunderland frankly have more fans going to games than we do.

It's difficult to find an exact comparison, but when Sunderland were in the CCC and got to the play offs in 2004 (and lost) their avg attendance was 27k. When Saints were in the CCC and got to the play offs and lost in 2007 our average was 23.5k, despite getting 30k odd against Southend and everything. Our first season after relegation was also 23k or so. Sunderlands first season in the CCC in 2005 was 28k and in 1999 when they went down it was 38k. With our gigantic population we will, of course, have absolutely no problem blowing Sunderland's second tier attendance numbers clean out of the water next season. Sunderland have a bigger base fanbase than we do where it matters. Let's stop living in Premier League fantasy land and lets see how the second tier reality plays out next season.

"No doubt 32k is too small" is an equally straw man argument. I know lots of people are living in this fantasy land that we are on an unstoppable charge to year-in year-out fourth places but sorry, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't happened for any club our size and you people need to calm down a bit. Even if we do a Bolton or a Stoke and hit 8th - 13th regularly, that in itself is not going to result in exponential growth in attendance. That level of achievement will become the norm. It doesn't bring in thousands and thousands of new fans through the door every season. What has happened to Stoke's attendance year after year of Premier League excitement? Ummm. Nothing. It hasn't moved up a jot since promotion. What has happened to Fulham's attendance year after year of Premier League excitement? Ummm. Nothing. It hasn't moved up a jot since promotion. There's a lot of talk about our stadium being maxed out and too small, but I don't remember any kind of waiting list for season tickets while we were in the Prem. That's the only real indicator of potential additional attendance. Beyond the likely possibility that we could probably sell 35,000 or so tickets for the odd game against Man U there is nothing to suggest we are in any desperate need to have more fans. This is fantasy land. You have to pay to build the seats, and the whole point of more seats is to make revenue. You don't do that by driving the cost per seat down so you end up with no more revenue than you had before. This is my favourite quote. If we had 45,000 seater stadium, how many fans would need to buy a season ticket to avoid the "scrabble"? None. You'd sell season tickets to those who want to go every match of course. But those that buy them to "guarantee seats" for the games they really want (scrabble avoiders, and there are a few of them) would have no reason to buy any more. So fewer season tickets sold and a far less solid guaranteed weekly attendance. These "friends" will go to Man United games, or games when they are back visiting home (like I do), but "friends" will never go to Blackburn on a Tuesday night whether we have a 30,000 seater or a 90,000 seater stadium. When supply begins to massively outstrip demand, the value of the commodity goes down and the need to own a season ticket becomes far less essential. Let's get promoted, and earn ourselves a waiting list before we commit financial suicide through plastic seat vanity.

Ummm, can I put on record that I really, really couldn't give a flying frig what Peterborough United are planning. The mighty Posh are expanding eh? Excuse me while I plop plop in my poo-pants. I'd happily call Cortese a nutjob. We will never regularly fill a 50,000 seater stadium and we'd be saddling ourselves with debts which could be better spent on the team. If he wants numbers, Cortese can look at the spreadsheet that points to our original financial meltdown being massively related to the relatively conservative mortgage we had on our current stadium. Many clubs already survive in the middling area of the Premier League on far smaller gates than ours, by spending money on player wages rather than vanity seating. As we already have a perfectly adequate stadium, spending spare revenue on players seems are far more effective strategy that tying finance up in pointless expansion we won't ever fill, or have to fill with Spurs and Liverpool fans on awaydays. As for plucking numbers out of the air, the idea that there is another 10,000 fans desperate to join the 10,000 that disappeared the day we were relegated is pie in the flipping sky. A Craven Cottage full of Saints fans currently washing the car that are suddenly going to be queing round the block for Blackburn at home. Pie in the sky. If he wants to see "potential demand", just look at clubs similar sized to us in the Premier League now and evaluate their attendances. Wolves have dropped a 50,000 ambition into their PR press release but the detail is clearly about phases. 50,000 is a nice little headline but I bet it won't happen. They have a fine history but they aint going to fill 50,000 seats any time soon. This is where you continually fall down. You pontificate cluelessly about how terribly wrong the evil newspapers are but treat official club press releases as the holiest of holy gospel truth as if no agenda, lie, exaggeration or untruth could ever eminate from a football club official. This is are direct result of a life wasted on your little computer game - you have no perspective or grasp of the nuance and realities of live as it is lived. For the love of god, get some fresh air and a piece of fruit. There's a lovely world out there.

So we're expanding the ground to let more away fans in. Brilliant. You are a freaking nutjob. We'll never expand the ground to that size and thank fu ck we won't because we never have and never will have that kind of fanbase. We're not going to be challenging for the champion's league. Even Villa have given up on that, and we'll see whether Blackburn ever sign Ronaldinho. This, once again, is why real life is a teeeeny bit different to your fantasy world of computer games. Stick to that sunshine because screw me you can't handle reality.

Correct me if I'm wrong but we didn't even sell out for our play off semi final. How is that a "downward spiral" exactly? 32,000 is perfectly adequate in the championship and in the Premier League no problem. As the sensible contributors have already saifd, everything else is pie in the sky.

You can guarantee that if Saints spend the majority of the season in mid or lower half, Nicola Cortese will be throwing his toys out of the pram, and maybe even questioning Adkins future. You can guarantee that if Saints spend the majortiy of the season in mid or lower half, Nigel Adkins will be throwing his toys out of the pram, and maybe even calling his own ability into question. Nicola Cortese is going to expect us to at least be properly established in the second tier this season, solid mid table minimum. So is Nigel Adkins. It's called Ambition. That giant of world football with their mega-resources Millwall finished ninth in their first season back in the second tier, so asking Saints to finish mid table is not some unreasonable pipedream. Leeds finished 7th, Norwich 2nd. Leicester hit the play offs in season one under Pearson the seaosn before. Snivelling about in the bottom five is basically what Adkins achieved when he took Scunny up a couple of seasons ago, and Adkins took the Saints job to progress on from that. It's called ambition. I think it's disgusting that Saints fans set their sights so pathetically low. Mid table, at least, is completely realistic and completely reasonable. Thank god that Adkins and Cortese are far more ambitious than you are.

He had the resources to do a moyes-esque job at birmingham, but didn't.

George Reader saw us promoted to the top flight. Will Cortese? Lots of people have decided it is a simple inevitability that we are definitely going up to the Prem under Cortese and therefore he is an all-time Saints legend. It hasn't actually happened yet. Promotion from League One for a club like Southampton is not that much of an acheivement. Making out it is just makes us look like a two-bit small time Noddy club.

Just to confirm, he has not been linked to Fulham. Some Pompey div posting on a forum as a wind-up is not Nigel Adkins being linked to Fulham. Zero chance of Fulham being even slightly interested.

Eh? I was talking about the top six of the championship. Have a word with yourself. Don't try and pretend I'm one of those that expects us to be challenging for the Champion's League any time soon. Cortese/Adkins (and Pardew) has got us to a level just below our par (our par is the range between bottom half prem and top half championship). If we're challenging for promotion next season, as Millwall, Leeds and Norwich were this season, then we're really in business. Getting promoted from the third tier is only just the start, as Nicola Cortese would no doubt agree.

Amen. I think a few too many are getting carried away with promotion from the third tier of English Football. While undoubtedly a good thing, hardly the achievement of the millenium. This breathtaking feat has been achieved by such leading lights as Colchester, S****horpe, Millwall and Southend United in recent years. Everything is all good and the club is going in the right direction, and we have the right people in charge. Let's see how we're doing in the thick swamp of a Championship season come mid-November or February. If we're challenging the top six at that point, then I'll get excited. Other than that, well done on yet another blatant wind-up thread Turkish.

Nice try, but you hit the woodwork as usual. My post was aimed at those suggesting Osman was making the ultimate self sacrifice turning down lucrative gigs left right and centre to help out little old Saints. He wasn't. Wilde's Saints were dopey enough to give him regular paid work and he hovered up the opportunity and the easy money like we all did. Fine. I'm a Saints fan but if the opportunity came for me to sponge a few quid out them for doing half an hours **** easy work I'd fill my boots right up. I'd probably stand around in the pub lying about all the work I'd turned down to take the job on to make myself look better too. Just lets not here people droning out misty eyed bull-shi te about how Mike was putting himself out to help us. Saints chucked money at him, he lapped it up.

Very. It's perfectly possible. All three of the promoted teams from the Championship this season were managers in their first full season at their clubs. All three of the promoted teams from the Championship last season were manager in their first full season at their clubs. All three of the promoted teams from League One this season were managers in their first season at their clubs, with Adkins and Ferguson not even full-season appointments. One day people will realise that this idea that "stability" and sticking with a manager to let them bed in and all that guff is just patent rubbish. Swansea have got through four managers in five years, similar turnover to West Ham who were the latest example of the "oh isn't it terrible chop and changing no stability I remember Lawrie Mac got relegated in his first blah blah Sir Alex blah blah". People like to pretend that "there is no such thing as instant success" and that success only comes from letting managers "bed in" and have season after season of failure before they magic into Sir Alex in season five. It's utter, utter garbage. Managers can and do deliver success within a season. Over and over again, at clubs up and down the country. Instant success. By the form of recent seasons, a new man at Cardiff in season one is far more likely to take them up than poor old Dave Jones in season seven.

Err, i think the argument is not that he should have worked for free, just that we didn't need his 'work' at all, especially as he was apparently turning down all this lucrative work elsewhere to provide absolutely essential half time 'entertainment'. He milked saints for all he could get. How did the team get on this season without the help of mike flaming osman?

I think you're missing the point that this thread is a wind-up. There is no point 'trying' to do something that is an aimless pipedream. There is plenty to aspire to here on planet earth, like a top ten finish in the prem in the next five years, without people being mongs about it. We will never, ever, ever, be the next barcelona. Saying we need to 'try' to do that is a conversation straight off the special needs bus.

Boll ocks. The old system was ' broke'. Too many meaningless games for too many teams every season. The Play offs are brilliant. It's churlish and childish to call it 'money grabbing'. Torquay v stevenage? That's a right money spinner ain't it? The Play offs are brilliant for english football. Get over it.

Great days.

Say what you like about the Leibherr takeover, but it was flipping dreadful marketing campaign for their fridges. It's almost like that wasn't actually the original intention.

Sorry, you fell at the first hurdle. It's frankly not true to say "nothing has been proved either way". There is no "either way". Those who say there is no god have nothing, whatsoever, to prove. Nothing. The God/No God arguments are not of equal merit. Evidence of people dying for their religion, or of missionaries does not prove anything by the way, it just proves believers. The people that blew up the tubes and buses in London were believers too. Not actually prove of anything. As for the illogical parts of life, the scientists are working on it. The priesthood had their go for a couple of thousand years but world has moved on.

That is spectacular. At the end of the day knowing is knowing. You can't say people are ignorant because they don't believe in something that you yourself admit that it is likely that mankind might never know. That's not ignorance, that's just a ridiculous argument. I think there's a hell of a lot more ignorance on the side of the believers than elsewhere. Spectacular, wrong headed, narrow minded, bigoted, hateful, unforgiving ignorance. If you want ignorance, I suggest you look there.

Dave Jones. Some div came a bit later and bought Mark Draper and Tahar El Kalej, and tried to sell our best striker to Crystal Palace.

Quite right. Nigel Pearson was let go far too soon.