Ted Bates Statue

When a manager gets off to a bad start with Saints - sadly, more often than not in recent years - this quote from The Thick of It often springs to mind: “The PM is not going to sack you after a week. Sacked after 12 months - looks like you've fucked up. Sacked after a week - looks like he's fucked up.” Accordingly, they'll wait until the concept of promotion is a distant ship on the horizon, and any better, proven managers have grasped opportunities elsewhere, before cutting loose.

I mostly take the piss about Cortese on here, but I was struck by a post recently which said something like after Cortese's departure, staff felt they didn't need to walk on eggshells any more and things went too far the other way in becoming a free-for-all. Not saying I would have liked to work for him, but for all his faults, he had a vision of driving us to European qualification with everyone relentlessly pushing towards that, and we got there in part thanks to the rocket he put under this club. Whether the post is completely accurate or not, a change in attitude has been obvious to most of us for quite some time. For me it was when Krueger thought it was a good idea to inform us that we were just a small club. For others, maybe it was slightly earlier when Les Reed claimed that Pellegrino would bring us exciting, attacking football, when those who knew better warned that we would most likely only see that from the opposition. Compare and contrast with Cortese ruthlessly dispensing with far better managers for the betterment of the club. I feel like there can often be a lot of luck involved in this sport and things can change very quickly, but this club hasn't been in the business of making it for quite some time. It was glaringly obvious last season, and it's still reflected in our league position today.

That's a nice looking red and white kit, seems a bit different on screen though... oh that's Woking. Okunola having a nightmare.

In Kingsland North it was fine but I got the sense it was the Northam doing the heavy lifting, and generally the people who want to stand and sing the most will gravitate towards the top of the stands. Back of the Chapel was decent last time I was there a couple of years ago, with a decent group of people demonstrating that it was ok to sing there. Curious to know what block you were in, so I can avoid ending up being in your situation. Guessing it was south of the halfway line?

I'm still too preoccupied with the massive irony of a gun rights supporter being shot to death to contribute much to the discussion, but on the news yesterday it was suggested the only way of preventing this is to have politicians both sides of the divide unite in condemning this kind of violence. I believe this is how UK politicians dealt with the deaths of Jo Cox and David Amess, and most of them would do well to bear in mind that extremism tends not to discriminate too much before putting their foot in mouth (I can't speak for those at Local Government level though - there's always one or two). The trouble is over the pond, it's taboo to admit that guns are the common factor in countless pointless deaths so they have to come up with other excuses, like democrats, or RFK blaming video games, drugs and social media earlier in the week. Anything to avoid the elephant in the room.

Think I might have managed to buy the last remaining pair of tickets yesterday. Thank you for the heads up.

That is so Pompey... #NotTheOnion Interested to note that he actually said 'texted' in the grammatically correct past tense, so my respect for him has increased marginally.

Empathy is a made-up, new age term

Sounds like he's not worthy of his new nationality any more. He's just plain old Ben Brereton again.

It's deeply unpleasant to see political differences playing out in this manner, but I'm still surprised this doesn't happen more often over there. Charlie Kirk has been well known for shrugging off gun deaths in America, although he might struggle on this occasion. The only other vaguely similar instance I can think of was when someone apologised for having the nerve to get shot by Dick Cheney.

Sure, but only one party seems to have had its lunatics take over their asylum. They are not on the same level by any stretch of the imagination.

Be careful what you wish for. He was fine with Nathan Jones. Worse than a stopped clock.

If it is Walcott or Romeu returning 2 coach I'll be very disappointed that a more entertaining clue wasn't used like a wall and a cot or an oriel window. These are the important things that matter so much to me right now while we wait to see how many of our signings are actually any good and I find out whether it's worth bothering to learn the names of the ones I never heard of until they signed for us.

In the ocean of despair, I will cling to your analysis like it's the floating door at the end of Titanic

Think you've summed him up nicely. I get the impression he's like Nicola Cortese with less composure

Having checked, you are absolutely right, but I only remember him contributing to our promotion season. Corrected it now 😅

Jos Hooiveld and Steve De Ridder Iago Falque in 2012 👍

I know this won't be the important bit to most, but I need to know which station Spors said this at. "London" is not sufficiently specific, as far as I'm concerned

I guess Spielberg will do, seeing as the film looks like it was AI generated

ChatGPT weighing in with an opinion on Saintsweb posters... Not sure whether to be mildly impressed or mildly concerned. Probably both. I'll know everyone's a bot when the quality of posting increases sufficiently along with the decrease in bickering. Only been trained on data up until 2021 so that makes sense.

Because Delap changed his technique after he left us. In the interview that you're probably referring to, Pulis describes learning of him throwing it like a bullet, launched low and fast. That was key to their successful use and not what he did with us, or with Sunderland. Perhaps he decided on his own that it was better to sacrifice a little extra distance for pace.

He always had a long throw but they were slow and looping when he was with us and it was mostly seen as a bit of a novelty. It did work for us occasionally, such as in the 2-2 draw against Everton in 2005. At Stoke he had the idea (or someone coached him - not Pulis) to launch them fast and flat with backspin. That's when they became iconic.

He's had a couple of seasons to do just that, hopefully it'll be out of his system if he can swallow his pride and decides to re-join us.