Ted Bates Statue

Guessing the 😐 face is down to you getting paid to work at a certain club down the road 🤣 I'll probably make a beeline for safe standing as my back hurts if I sit down in stadium seats but I'm also curious if it will be priced competitively or are they going to charge more for the privilege of leaning against a bit of aluminium.

Funny how nobody thinks to scrap the endless pre-season friendly matches held in far-flung continents. It would never happen, but my preferred rule-change is if the higher-ranked club can't beat a lower division side over 90 minutes or AET, then they should forfeit the match in favour of the lower-ranked side progressing.

What you're saying makes sense although someone on here said that we were looking for a winger and a midfielder back in December before the transfer window opened, so it looks like it was a deliberate strategy

Good choice to play I'm Still Standing at the end, bonus that it would have pissed off the Watford fans.

The forum has declared already that he will not recover from his injury or his transfer fee, much less score a goal for us, so I will have to question whether RM knows what he's talking about.

Sky have had an app available on Oculus Quest for a few years now which lets viewers see the action from different parts of the stadium. It looks very cool but they don't really promote it, and I've never bothered to actually shell out and try the live experience. Edit - it's been discontinued as of this January.

Aha, what with all the excitement about the privilege of once again facing a local and traditionally lower-division side, I was wondering if there was a major trophy to be won. I'm with you on the perspective of 2012. Even though we drew with them last time, we were comfortably gliding towards promotion so it didn't exactly feel like a tragedy to give them a big nudge into the league below.

Before I take a generous helping of schadenfreude, can I double check that we aren't at risk of getting slapped with something similar in the not-too-distant future?

I think it might not be the worst thing to allow Saints to consolidate in this division. Reading were the most recent team to get relegated from the WSL and they were way off the pace, as are Bristol City this season. Until the worst team in the WSL can get closer to the rest of their peers, I can see the argument for not expanding the promotion/relegation slots just yet.

Every now and then I get a hint that such internet figures were compiled by a friend of a friend of Donald Trump's accountant. It's not like you can obtain them with a FOI request.

Well done saints, almost thought we might win there but you managed to get the joke done in the end.

We went up to the premier league on Nigel Adkin's magic bus, so I'm all about getting on board Russell Martin's rocket ship to get us over the line. Unfortunately it's April Fool's day and experience tells me that our team will once again generate the punchlines. Good luck to all of you travelling today.

Thanks for that. I never saw any of his playing career but it brought a smile to my face knowing that this genius played for us. He should stick to football, it's what he was good at, after all. I've never seen before the clip of the cheeky chip over the keeper at 21s - if that's not peak outrageousness, then I don't know what is.

but their support is amazing and they have won so many trophies, as some of our own supporters remind us with great enthusiasm

Playoff finals are typically considered to be poor entertainment due to the extremely high stakes nature, aren't they? If we end up in the playoffs again it would be a case of having failed to achieve promotion in 2 years. I'd rather not think about it right now, thanks.

Couple of wins and we would be three points off top. We have an inferior GD, but winning a couple of our six-pointers would take care of that issue. It's possible, but realistically most don't expect us to even achieve the two wins we need to get within touching distance of the leaders. Fingers crossed I'll be proved otherwise.

no worries, it's not your fault someone sat on the keyboard when they were filling out the lad's birth certificate. His surname is literally a countdown conundrum

I understand they wanted to leave and we wouldn't stand in their way, but I do wonder how we would be doing if we had kept JWP and Tella. Given our September slump after their departures, it's not outrageous to say we would have taken a few more wins. ah well, our fate is still in our hands (to throw it all away in the next ten games)

I clicked just to check whether Mordaunt would be at the top of the list and was relieved to see she is. Even if they get wiped out at the election, the tories need at minimum a safe pair of hands in the medium-term and I think she will be one of the more sensible ones left. I imagine Ben Wallace would have been up there too, had he shown an interest in staying on. I wonder what his plans are. Both parties seem hell-bent on demonstrating that their members are incapable of seeing the wood for the trees. You still get large numbers of labour voters who think Corbyn was a winner, and the tories spent ages mucking about with Hague and IDS when Hague should have held back from the leadership for about a decade.

Seeing as we now have no games for ages, felt it would be a good time to check in on Minsk's old thread, with a brief comparison to see how we are shaping up against the promotion league table of 2011-12. Back then with ten games to go, we just beat Barnsley 2-0 having drawn 1-1 with Ipswich in the previous game. With 20 wins, 9 draws and 7 defeats that leaves us with 69 points at the same stage we are now. Having won 22, drawn 7 and lost 7 this season on 73 points, we are 4 points better off today, but we are in 4th place as opposed to being the division leaders, which maybe explains why it felt a bit more enjoyable back then. I'm reasonably certain there was less moaning on the forum. Back in 2012 we had Millwall up next with Rickie Lambert snatching two late goals in London. I would settle for getting our next 3 points done and dusted a bit earlier in our next game against Boro, and hopefully we can keep the pressure on the division leaders.

Sholing have won loads in the last ten years, but it doesn't mean people are going to get envious over their trophy cabinet.

for those of you gullible enough to check, they haven't really

Any excuse to post this again. Sorry for the facebook link but the other media available seem to either be sullied by a shit soundtrack or the picture quality similar to that of a potato. https://www.facebook.com/southamptonfc/videos/osvaldo-nets-a-stunner-against-man-city/1529447253735156/

WTF does the city of Southampton have to do with all this?!

Given the amount of people on here who seem to regard it as a chore to watch Saints, we should be more grateful to be given three weeks' respite. I wish we could have international friendlies all the time. The icing on the cake is that Saints often make the most of these quiet periods. Think of the glorious metamorphosis we all got to enjoy as the side transformed from Ralph's lowly caterpillars to become butterflies soaring up the table under Nathan Jones. There was some kickabout in Qatar but the real excitement was taking place at Staplewood, and I'm sure something similar will be afoot right now.