Ted Bates Statue

Too bad you didn't want to talk about this during our FA Cup run and unbeaten run in the league last season

I recall complaints that OWTS was sung so fast by default that it would end up falling apart after half a minute, and if only we could sing it a bit slower we might be able to keep it going a bit longer. Endurance over speed and all that.

Adam Clery has done some digging and has found at least one receipt: And here's another shocking refereeing performance that also came up on my feed: What's really tragic is I'm not certain he's corrupt; maybe he is merely shit. Good riddance though and it really shows up PGMOL as a farcical old boy's club, and that's being polite. As you might expect, Keith Hackett has defended his own position and the robustness of referreeing assessments over the years, but the above clips fly in the face of that. A good start would be getting Dean off our screens. He caused enough problems while he was in the job. I know a lot of ex-footballers make up stories about what they supposedly did on the pitch (MLT and his throw-ins) as there is money in chatting shit but when referees start mucking about like this it does nothing to promote trust in officiating. Today's crop is useless even with the help of VAR so maybe the doors should be opened for bringing in the top talent around the world. We do it with the players, so why not the refs. A bit of competition might weed out the worst showboaters, egotists and narcissists who should have no place refereeing professional football.

Any chance of a full match replay anywhere online? Evening ruined when I returned home to find I'd managed to record the Cherries' radio commentary

In that case you need to re-read my post and watch the goals again

I get what you're saying. I heard that he actually approached the skates prior to enquiring about a return to us but they said no because he'd played for us for too long. That's why whenever you see a picture of him now, he's frowning even when it looks like he's pretending to smile. Even in the derby you can see how uncomfortable he looked playing for us and in some instances he even celebrates the goals in front of their supporters instead of ours. He really is a disgrace

It's been a while since we talked about how our defenders could do a job for us in midfield... perhaps Jack Stephens could provide cover for us there if he's no longer going to be first choice in defence? I seem to remember that theory was floated a couple of times on here.

Good luck bringing that in. On Saturday on my way in, I was informed by the steward that all bags will be banned in a few weeks unless you have a medical exemption certificate (and I assume drinks containers would be included, as they are usually the thing these environments latch onto first). The irony with all this is that they can't ban pockets, so there's still plenty of opportunity to find a workaround, but with zero water points inside it's a bit much to expect us to have to smuggle in tea or water with a hip flask. I'm not sure if the chap was severely misinformed, as this is incredibly draconian even by standards of places like Wembley or Spurs, and official policy on Southampton's website still states that an A4 bag is acceptable.

You're an absolute genius if this works on the Saints website. I understand why they do it, but it has put me off in the past

That's too bad, there's a ready-made song for him right here. If we just stick to the first couple of lines it should be easy enough to learn the lyrics, although it remains to be seen whether the Northam can handle the octaves.

Saw this yesterday and immediately thought we have a rival to the Crumps' compo face pictures. I hope this isn't considered too far off-topic, bearing in mind the amount of shit we've had to deal with this decade

Anyone else want to predict the attendance? Charging £25 as they have done, it will be a struggle to sell more than 15k tickets, or they could have priced tickets around £15 and got around 25k bums on seats. Either way, takings would be about the same, but the bigger stadium crowd would make for a far more positive experience... assuming the result doesn't upset the fans even further. I don't begrudge the club on trying to maximise revenue but everyone knows this competition doesn't matter this season and the crowds aren't going to be up for this one with ticket prices that high.

When the FA decide to finally punish Tonda with a hefty fine, perhaps they could put the proceeds towards funding futsal programmes again after they decided to cut it around Covid, if I remember correctly.

When he said that I didn't anticipate it being more like "stand up if you want Sports Republic out" with the entire ground spitting feathers as we edge closer in our metamorphosis of becoming Stoke