Ted Bates Statue

It's not though, providing they sell £6M worth of players before the end of month, which according to the owner won't be an issue.

Yeah, me. I wasn't expecting him to win the SPL in his first season, and although it was a mighty dip at the end, I think the turnaround after his appointment showed that he is able to get results in a way that Russell Martin couldn't, at least at that level. And he was able to do it mid-season too, unlike Juric. I still think HCDAJFU and being in his mid-30s... young, hungry and guaranteed to improve, as the phrase goes.

McBurnie (wonder what happened to him?) told the media that Ryan Fraser was complaining to him that nobody (Downs) was getting on the end of his crosses. If someone's way below the standard of what's needed, it's inevitable that others will complain. That said, Gerhard Struber managed to get Downs looking like a footballer. If he could do it, maybe his former assistant can work some of his magic and achieve the same feat.

Daily Mail treats him with the utmost suspicion, like he's some sort of conservative party secret agent trying to undermine Farage. They're right in a way, if only about the last bit, but the situation exemplifies why Lyndon B Johnson said, “Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” It doesn't help that Lowe is an abrasive, pompous and charmless bastard which probably was his real undoing, both with us and within Reform. Digging far back enough there are posts on here about his intimidatory behaviour towards Mary Corbett, so it wasn't too much of a surprise when Reform booted him out over similar accusations. And he does love to meddle with social media - it was his antics on Saintsforever which introduced me to the modern meaning of astroturf. A bit like how Stevie Gibson loves a lawyer, maybe we'd have done better if we spent more on quality players rather than PR companies. On the other hand, he didn't sign our death warrant. Those who let the Wilde bunch in did that. At least it wasn't SISU but it goes to show we must be careful what we wish for... He delivered the new stadium (does anyone really rue that we missed out on Stoneham?), upgraded Staplewood, rejuvenated the academy (Just think, all those who came through the ranks in the Liebherr/Gao eras would have joined the club under Lowe / Georges Prost... possibly until Smallbone, which I find quite remarkable considering our financial issues), made us one of the first clubs to sign ProZone, wanted to bring back Hoddle before it was popular for clubs to go back to old managers (despite thinking otherwise at the time, in hindsight the right choice over Redknapp). Also the Clive Woodward/Simon Clifford appointments were actually quite far-sighted and seemingly only failed here because Redknapp's ego couldn't handle it. My only real beef with Lowe in his time with us (apart from letting Nigel Pearson go) is despite the above which I do give him credit for, he kept banging on about trying to secure investment, and absolutely nothing ever materialised. I can only conclude that he wasn't trying very hard, or those who were interested initially must have found him repulsive enough that they moved onto other targets. Either way, he had a vested interest in remaining as one of the top-paid football chairmen in the county.

I was respecting the pragmatism on both sides earlier and I try to avoid counting my chickens before they've hatched ever since Lallana's pantomime act, but now I've had a few hours to stew over Stew, we spent 10M on him in 2024 and in that time we've missed out on automatic promotion twice and got humiliated in the prem. For most of that time, for all his ability he was looking like a player on the verge of retirement due to injury, a genuine passenger in our squad. Yes I know we took the risk and it's not exactly his own fault he got injured. As an interesting comparison, David Connolly who I thought was a similar kind of permanently-injured player achieved nearly 1500 mins in his Championship promotion season, compared with Ross Stewart who barely managed 1000 this season. Tonda was very careful not to overplay him and Ross got rewarded with a call-up to Scotland as a result. I'll always look back at that opening goal against Arsenal with fondness, but if he rocks up at one of our rivals, I will be frothing at the mouth, baying for blood and looking at hiring a hitman on the dark web.

I know the shirt hasn't been officially announced but would I wouldn't expect a player to get unveiled using last season's shirt... or am I getting whooshed here

Yeah, and I'm going to lend @Dman my voodoo doll. I'm sure the Loch Ness Drogba will cope just fine with all our best wishes... too bad we never got that song going for him,

True and I have thought about that. I might be clutching at straws but while he looks premier league class to me, I wonder if teams in the division above might consider that he does need his minutes managing and he tends to only do about 60 minutes per match. As an impact sub rather than starter in the PL, that could impact his value and make it less certain that he departs this summer (particularly in light of Solak's comments this week). I get what you're saying but I suspect the club might agree to say goodbye and get the funds in, sounds like he did alright in Germany this season and on the back of some action in the World Cup he might want to put his experience in Southampton behind him by moving on.

Listening earlier on Talksport, apparently Henry Winter got fucking drenched in the Orlando downpour, too bad there is no god or he would've been struck by lightning too. They were also fawning over all the graffiti in the tunnel saying it was a "sight to behold", and I immediately knew it must be shit The graffiti:

Really not sure what to make of our Spygate situation getting likened to the activities of a sexual predator, and not for the first time on this message board either. I also didn't expect to see this being glossed over as cancel culture. I haven't watched the doc and until recently I knew very little of Sullivan's activities beyond him being dubbed one of the dildo brothers, but I have skim-read the article below and it doesn't look good. Strikes me as a long-term exercise of various groups of people content to sweep it all under the rug. This includes the police, who yet again have turned a blind eye to reports for decades - deja vu, anyone? https://www.patreon.com/posts/david-sullivan-143515737 If someone's good reputation is being trashed, that implies the person had one in the first place, not sure that's the case here. Seems like his activities were an open secret, and that's probably an understatement. Karren Brady certainly knew when it was time to cut and run, and considering she has worked with him for her entire career, I think that probably says it all for me.

I really like this but gotta admit I'd struggle with the first couple of lines, so I'd suggest the English version of the chorus for that bit: When you fall get up, oh oh If you fall get up, eh eh Ties in with our redemption arc as well... oh fuck it we're all just going to do "Na nana nana oh oh" twice aren't we

No one likes us, no one likes us No one likes us, we don't care We're Southampton, from the South Coast Fuck the EFL, fuck the rest

You've reminded me, the first sign that we weren't going to sack Tonda came from Alex Crook

I know Will Salt is only a kid of 27 years of age, but he really managed to drop us in it here, didn't he?

Good day to bury bad news by releasing our embarrassing Whatsapp messages, on the same day as HM Government publishing their own Whatsapps that are somehow more embarrassing than ours. Although if we're making parallels with political events, it's too bad even Russia managed to get sanctions lifted in the week we were hit with ours. So many wet blanket comments online, but it's going to happen with a sensationalist media and a brigade of other teams' bitter supporters who don't realise we're all living in the "peace prize" cesspit era of football corruption. Crabs in a bucket mentality at its finest. The Saints page on Reddit got mentioned the other day. One of the first comments in the wake of Hull's playoff final victory was, of all things, a Leeds supporter slating us, but when you clicked his profile you could see that one of his most recent comments elsewhere was that he would hypothetically cheat on his partner if offered significant money "like a shot". Most people on there are savvy enough to hide their post history but you get the idea, most of these internet idiots are virtue-signalling hypocrites who make the lunatics on here look normal. Their opinion should be taken with a very generous pinch of salt, if not ignored altogether. If keeping Eckert upsets those sorts of people, that can only be a good thing.