CB Fry

Errr, except the Sunday Sun is a North East regional title with no connection to Murdoch, the daily Sun or the NOTW. So quite a lot of change really.

I don't seem to remember many people defending Burley while he was here, the season where we dribbled into sixth despite spending a kings ransom on an entire squad hand picked by him, there were plenty of dissenters. And rightly so, his reign was at best a dispicable waste of resourses. Arrived when we were 12, scuttled off to the Jocks after 2 years and several gazillion pis sed up the wall with us in 13th. Absolute waste of space.

We're not going to sign David Beckham so do save yourself the bother of getting all huffed up at people that wouldn't even want him here. We are not going to sign David Beckham. Save your energy

Sorry, I meant significant proportion of the players we sign will arrive mid or end of August. I don't think we will sign a significant number of players. But I do think we will sign a handful of significant players - ie 3 really good ones rather than eight squad fillers. Can't believe I can't even edit frigging posts without paying £5.

Agree with pretty much all of this except the AOC bit. His departure this window is an inevitability as far as I am concerned. It hasn't happened yet for the same reasons you outline above as to why we haven't signed anyone either. Everyone is playing the waiting game to get a better deal. We'll sign a few decent players to improve the squad. The chances are though that a significant number may not actually arrive until the middle or end of August.

Experts from where exactly? American experts going home to their American wives and kids keeping their mouths firmly shut about the single most audacious and pointless genocide in american history. And perpetrated on their own people. Not one of these experts has even considered speaking out on this mass murder they committed in the decade following. Experts with their mouths firmly shut indeed....utterly ****ing delusional.

Quite right. There is absolutely no justification for the public sector to be utterly immune from the realities of the age we are living in. It is grossly unfair for public sector workers to cream off disproportionate pensions to those working in the private sector. No idea why hardworking plumbers, bus drivers, checkout staff, administrators, call centre staff and the like should be crippled by taxes to keep the public sector in disproportionate pensions and cushy retirement ages. Loving the hilarious that the sub-Wolfie Smith rantings of Scargill-wannabes like TheCholulaKid, who has the nerve to chuck the term "reactionary" at anyone he doesn't agree with. His attitudes come straight out of the stone age. This isn't the glory days of sweetheart Arthur from 1984. This aint the miners strike and the public sympathy is nowhere to be seen. The government will crush this uprising into the dust. Teachers, you want a bit more for your retirement? Start saving up. That's what the rest of us evil private sector people are doing. By the way, just to confirm, I had no more to do with the banking crisis that the apparent saints of the health records department, so lord knows why I should pay to plump up their pensions while I'm trying to save for my own.

It's unlikely Nigel Adkins would get three attempts at it, unless his second attempt is a Huddersfield clear third place/play off heartbreak type season. Nicola Cortese, as far as I can tell, is not "allowing" for 3 seasons in the second tier. And why should he, all I can see is someone very impatient to be in the top flight. And let's avoid any bo ll ocks about spending a couple of seasons "getting ready" to be promoted. Tell that to Cardiff. Or Forest. Or Coventry. who would trade in their billions of seasons "getting ready" for a sniff of what Blackpool and Norwich have done out of nowhere.

This is incorrect. If Millwall can be in and around the play offs in their first season back up with minimal investment, and Leeds can finish seventh then it is not "very unlikely" for us to get promoted. It's much more like a possibility. It's perfectly possible for us to finish top six, but just outside that would be the most likely outcome. I think this is closer: What I don't want to hear next season if we are bumming around in 20th position that "staying up would be a massive achievement, haven't we done well, first season back blah blah blah". If Nigel Adkins wanted to bum around the bottom end of the championship he would have stayed at S****horpe. He's here to take us into the top six and he's starting next season. 14th or below would be a huge disappointment to him and Cortese, I have no doubt. With that in mind can the happy clappy bedwetters on this forum avoid pretending that 18th-would-be-an-amazing-achievement-all-we-can-hope-for-and-you-kids-today-are-so-impatient-and-unrealistic-blah-blah Pretty sure the expectation is solid, solid, solid top half. Not from me, but from the manager and the chairman.

I'd say it was because we don't have a core fanbase bigger than, say, sheffield united whose average was better than ours in our relegation season. Those thousands of boycotters returning have not taken our averages back up to even wilde levels. Boycotters flood back, championship-only fans stay home. That must be why we can't even beat norwich for crowds in the third tier.

Probably not, but so what? The strike means it fu cking up the working days and weeks of everybody elses time to cover for childcare. This is actually how wealth is created and taxes are paid. And the striking teachers aren't striking on an education based issue either, just for the right to cream off a bit of extra bunce the rest of the country's work force won't have a chance of getting. So what's your moral high ground point here? Typical public sector attitude.

Ah yes. The Lowe boycott. Of course. Average attendance in Lowe's final season first time round - 23,614. Average attendance in the Wilde season, Lowe gone and boycott over, and we finished sixth and got in the play offs - 23,556. I'm sure you'll come back and say well he still had shares and all those fans had a crystal ball knowing he's come back again and were still boycotting just in case. We'll see how many billion fans pack the stadium for the Doncaster and Barnsley games next season with those 10,000 boycotters back in the game.

Same as you lamely mocking the entire british press for 'unfounded rumours and speculation' about pardew's future at saints. We were both pathetically, pathetically wrong. But i care about blackpool as much as i care about peterboro expanding their ground. Not at all.

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.