Ted Bates Statue

Fair question, glad you asked. A few years ago an individual was linked with the club who had some highly innovative ideas for getting our commercial income on an even footing with more handsomely-funded rivals, and I believe that his consortium's involvement would be key to our chances of improving this aspect of the club's performance. Some of his ideas were leaked and analysed on this very forum and the consensus was broadly positive. Although a deal was not forthcoming at the time, In my opinion, we caught a glimpse of exactly the level of ambition and drive required to take the club to the next level. I personally remain optimistic that one day, Marc Jackson could yet return to the club in some capacity.

That chart is ugly viewing as a Saints supporter. It's one thing blaming the owner but considering we have stayed in the league as long as we have, I think we should be doing better in terms of commercial income.

Don't you think he needs to stay here for a bit longer, for both his sake and that of other interested clubs to show he is capable of not getting thumped by a record scoreline again? I'd give it about two more years needed to rebuild his reputation. And I wouldn't say no to a decent cup run or two either 🙂

If this is what they do when the fans criticise, I wonder what's in store for when their board gets sick of Mourinho's moaning.

Don't get cocky. I still have about an hour to prepare my diatribe.

Mmmm! I also see that Man Utd got lots of yellow cards, which means that they aren't soft as shite pony right? Love to see that spirit of Roy Keane running through them still. In a matter of hours, the Black Box will no doubt identify Ole as a prime target for us. He can shut up shop at 0-5 everyone!

Conversely, Ole got Utd defending much better once Pogba got sent off. According to a few posters here, that's the sign of a decent manager and we should consider him as a candidate to replace Ralph.

I see this post has gone down well. Fair play for sticking your neck out all the same. I remember in early 2018 Fitzhugh Fella posting a very odd rumour of Mark Hughes being on standby while Les Reed sat on the fence re Pellegrino, and you can imagine the reaction on here. I never found the original post but I specifically remember mention of him being on retainer, possibly as of January that year. It was a fair number of weeks before the axe actually fell and he was proved correct. Where I think things are different with our incumbent is that there are signs that we are better than our recent form on paper. Personally I am going to judge him on today and the next four games as to whether I feel he should be replaced, and I have assumed so far that the club felt the same. Two wins from four and he will be safe for the season, although I think the threshold might be as low as four points - keeping heads above water. It's been noticed that Howe has been in attendance at all our home games, and also well known that he would prefer to stay in the south so as long as we stay near the relegation zone, it follows that there will be talk of him joining us. I suspect that's all there is to it, but you never know.

Yes it got pretty bleak to say the least. When I hear about how great it was, there must have been lots of optimists who didn't use the forums back then. Either that or people with short memories. You have to ask yourself if you'd be alright supporting Eastleigh if we went bust, or look at Coventry to see what it would really be like following the embodiment of football purgatory, post-dodgy takeover. At least we don't have to always hear people clamour to play untested youth 'young, hungry and guaranteed to improve' players any more, another cliche that was well and truly dismantled by Poortvliet and Wotte.

How will he sleep at night with something like this hanging over him?

Do Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan still live in Hampshire? If so, they must be high on the shortlist due to pure geography. Get them and Eddie Howe in, all at the same time. It's the only way we can out-Watford Watford.

Looks like the time has come to sound the Graziano Pelle klaxon.

Easy to point fingers at a few members of the public, the newspapers, and I get that it's now a national pastime to give the BBC a kicking simply for reporting news. But I expect that most people do not have the opportunity to spend all day sitting in queues merely to fill up a few millilitres, and that the demand has been caused by those who would normally fill up £10 or so regularly, but are now filling their tanks to the top when they do get around to it. I can't blame them either because if you find a petrol station that is open, it might be the last one you see for a while. I was fortunate enough to have filled up on the evening before the chaos began, but I've had two near misses trying to find a petrol station so that I can get home without running dry. I highly doubt there are very many bathtubs out there laden with fuel or jerry cans stored in the kitchen. Just a hell of a lot of people who are expected to not WFH, while relying on the internal combustion engine for work, living in a country where public transport infrastructure projects result in white elephants such as HS2. I wonder how are we getting on with installing electric charging points everywhere so that petrol becomes obsolete?

We need six points minimum from these fixtures. Not asking much, just two wins before December. Anything less and we are looking at a "Mark Hughes" relegation zombie start to the season, and another manager about to be relieved of his duties. I agree that it would certainly not set the world alight but I think we have to be realistic. We're not going to suddenly average nearly 2 points per game, no matter who the opposition are. If there's anything that I've learned following Saints, it's that we pull out decent performances against top sides but trip up against the lower teams. Where Hasenhuttl has done fairly well in his time with us is that we have tended to get three points in our matches against relegation-threatened teams. He now has five games to do that and save his job. In 2004-2005 what did for us was failing to win all but one of our six pointers with the bottom four sides. With our reduced goal threat my worry is that we might be better than we were last season, but we won't have enough to convert draws to wins. If that happens, then I expect we will have a new manager in December.

It's fascinating seeing how even clubs like Leicester can fall flat on their faces after a certain point. It's like they're a similarly sized club but with a massive case of the Midas touch, they can do no wrong, but then they overreach and troll us by signing our average personnel only to find that actually, Puel, Vest and Bertrand really weren't that great after all. The Vestergaard signing is particularly humorous considering there were rumours about him joining them ever since the first 0-9.

As ever, a great read with a healthy dose of wit to help stomach the dampened expectations.

At first glance I thought that makes him sound pretty good, until I realised that Lampard was actually working for them at the time. On the positive side for us, Hasenhuttl has also made Chelsea look shite on a number of occasions. Hopefully we can take points off them again.

Ah but you forgot Branfoot's win percentage which would make Ralph look like a twat if it got shown in comparison.

Agreed, although contrary to your subsequent post I think Blackmore and Merrington are very good by the standards of local radio, and I cannot fathom how people tolerate the bias and yelping on any other channel. The other South Coast commentary is much lower standard, and that seems to be the case across the board. Case in point - the commentary of Le Tissier chipping Schmeichel in the 6-3 sticks in my mind, "Oooh and he chips... Schmeichel and THAT...! is a sublime piece of skill by one of the most skilful players in the Premiership." Like Alan Partridge on tranquilisers. I assume it was a Skate on commentary that day.

Does he know which side he is playing for? Sounds like he was the opposition's best player. I presume Sheffield United are the side playing in red and white tonight. A debut to rival Alan Bennett (he turned out ok... eventually). Bednarek on, what a relief.

Ask me for the lottery numbers, or when we get taken over.

I know we're only supposed to talk about the calendar year table when we're really shit, but we've just gone unbeaten against the top 3 sides of 2021 - the Manchester Clubs and West Ham(!)... I didn't see this coming but it's interesting to see this side evolving into a team that's hard to beat, for the first time since Puel left.

I can smell their chips on shoulders all the way over here. Imagine if we were in a title fight and our manager asked us to come down and make some noise, I doubt we'd get so upset amid the vertigo. They've obviously changed since the days of filling Maine Road in League One.

Juanmi scored twice against Celtic this evening in Europa. I read an interview with Hugo Scheckter a few months ago about a former Saints player whose Spanish wife settled so poorly in England that the club were forced to let the player leave for a lot less than his market value. No name was given but I presumed he was referring to Juanmi as the only Spanish player to leave in recent years, although I don't keep tabs on the nationality of player's spouses so it could have been someone else. There I was thinking it was that he wasn't really suited to English football.

I had dismissed it as a pre-prepared slow news day story, but the name is a bit too random. Allardyce or Pardew would be a more obvious name for a hack article. Either Crocker thinks that Hasenhuttl is underperforming, considering the newcomers to the squad, or Steve Cooper's agent is touting him for a new job and putting pressure on other clubs to sign him up. I believe that Hasenhuttl will get until the end of October to justify his continued presence and he's doing ok for now, so my guess is that it's the agent.