Ted Bates Statue

To be fair to @saintant the increase seems to reflect our summer transfer window performance. We had a net spend of 75M, Dibling came through to add roughly an extra 20M, and the remainder can probably be attributed to Fernandes as the only genuine bargain for us. And unfortunately our rivals are still worth much more - with the notable exception of the other two promoted clubs. Speaking of our fellow promoted clubs, for some reason Transfermarkt seem very shy about drawing attention to their percentage increase for Ipswich. https://www.transfermarkt.com/premier-league/marktwerteverein/wettbewerb/GB1/plus/?stichtag=2024-01-01 Just to finish with a bit of positivity, my prediction is our squad value will uplift towards the end of season as results improve marginally and VAR eventually stops screwing us over.

I would imagine his due diligence would have been more along the lines of 'can you afford the club and keep running it to a greater extent than the current absentee owner' rather than arguing the toss over whether the likes of Bazunu, Mara and Orsic can cut it in the premier league. For all the faults of Sport Republic, we appear to be better funded now than at any point in our history. The problem is how they choose to spend it.

He would have been able to play yesterday but I can't believe we have a captain who has been unavailable for half our matches played due to his own ill discipline. I suspect he may not feature so much in what remains of this season (and hopefully not due to future red cards). He's ok for backup and in the EFL Championship but not every week in the PL. I wonder what must ABK be thinking while he's been bombed-out of the side.

If he can get us something like 20 points from the fixtures in second half of the season, there would be more than enough encouraging signs that he could crush the Championship and bring some momentum on our return to the PL to give it a proper go next time around, a bit like Marco Silva with Fulham or Benitez at Newcastle.

Sample pages for those who are as intrigued as I was by this book recommendation. It's pretty wild, but not surprising considering the source material https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=703035333043899&set=a.359435304070572

They say it takes one to know one

On this occasion @trousers has completely left you off the hook. First off, you casually mention your dislike of underlining, but the use of different font styles is literally your trademark posting style. Then, you completely fail to address his actual question about paragraphs. My theory is that you draft your posts in something like Notepad with word wrap turned off, so by default all the words appear on a single infinite line. Nice anecdote about how substance is king, btw. All in all, it's a classic response. Never change, David.

Roll With It to replace Rockin' Over The World for the post-match stadium music. Status Quo is fine (music-wise, not in terms of the football club), but especially want Danny Rohl to be our manager now that you've suggested this

I should expect big news to emerge on Friday, as per time-honoured tradition established by Paul Allen.

I imagine what he really did was too awful to comprehend, so I assumed he was dismissed for something like doing a Poyet in the changing room. Heard Cortese did something similar to Benali's pool. Most importantly though, he knows the club

Me: I want Russell Martin out Sports Republic: ok, sure thing but we can't find any takers so it's going to be Simon Rusk. He's our U21 manager btw Me: No not like that

Best I can find for now is this which shows that in October Flynn Downes was top the 'most distance covered' chart https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c0kjykv4z78o Dropped to 5th in mid-November although would have been preferable to see a "km per 90mins" stat. https://www.premierleague.com/news/4171059 Would like to think that if a new coach came in, maybe he could get the rest running a bit more.

"If you build it they will come" #massivecatchmentarea In all seriousness though, there is very little revealed in the above article apart from an intent to explore the redevelopment. It's a first step but I was at least expecting some idea of how many additional seats we were going for. There isn't even a crappy proposed CGI image.

I often find myself agreeing with your posts but while you may be correct here, I think you took my original comment a bit too literally. Sadly it won’t change the fact that many consider our season to be a write-off already, and justifiably so. Ah well, at least we can count on a goal this Sunday.

Oh well that's alright, then! I thought we were shit so I do my level best to forget about what happens in matches this season.

I wasn't going to matches at the time, but even when we were flying under Adkins I don't think we were getting similarly high attendances as we did last season, so I've been a bit surprised at the sizes of our crowds last season and this season. You would think the appetite to see Southampton Nil as a home supporter wouldn't be that great.

https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/charlton-athletic-nathan-jones-making-southampton-mistakes/ "With the greatest of respect, I've played against Man City and they didn't have a shot on target"

Football interviews are not typically going to be Paxman-esque and I'm sure there is a Saints-flavoured version of Mark Goldbridge ready to go viral on the internet if that's what people really want, but you're not going to get that from the sports editor at BBC Solent. It's not his fault we're this shit. Have a good evening everyone

Yes.

I hadn't looked into the circumstances into his departure much, beyond a glance at the table. When I first read the above, my first thought went "what kind of PL tactics could they have been? Kick ball in opposition goal, stop ball from going into own goal" and then it occurred to me that you might be alluding to parallels with our present-day situation that I hadn't yet considered. Some good quotes below this article which support the wikipedia comment: https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/sport/sportlatest/23970537.mark-hughes-breaks-silence-bradford-city-sacking/ "I liked Hughes he is a gent but the way he had us playing nearly sent me to sleep" "Terrible to watch week after week playing with 1 striker up front and the defence playing keep ball passing from one to another in their own half" "The nonsensical change to three at the back, which simply confused virtually every player... meant his sacking was, reluctantly, deserved" ...I think I get it now.

I think you've got a point there, although it's a bit chicken and egg now that we are a yo-yo club. If we could appoint Moyes we would have done so already. The other thing is we had someone since Mark Hughes who was a fairly big name in terms of his CV. it was Ralph Hasenhuttl and he managed to get Vestergaard playing to a level whereby we were able to recover about 75% of his transfer fee. And meanwhile Hughes went sliding down the EFL in an attempt to demonstrate he wasn't completely washed-up. I think it's really damning how Leicester signed some of our rejects in Vestergaard, Bertrand and Puel (harshly treated by us, but that's another conversation) and those defenders in particular were derided as some of their worst ever signings. Should have been a major warning as to how far behind our first XI really was.

From what I've seen on youtube of him, he still sings reasonably well, and as you say he doesn't seem to rely on assisted vocals as much as other artists can. Had a look for tickets at the O2 recently but seems my best chance of catching him live is if he performs at Hyde Park. Think he's done it a few times before so I'm hoping he'll play there again one day. Otherwise, I'll have to console myself with at least having overheard his 'secret' London 2012 soundcheck.

At a glance, one of the few sensible posts on this thread was written weeks ago in October, but Nathan Jones is still being comfortably outshined by his successor Ruben Selles who is operating on a shoestring budget to get Reading into the playoff places. One of these managers will be managing in a higher division than League One sooner or later. Here's a hint: It is not going to be Nathan Fucking Jones. [edit - didn't realise my words would actually come true this afternoon 🤣]

From what I've seen of them, I thought Tortoise Media had a decent reputation for journalism, so what's to be concerned? Far better than some overseas billionaire getting their grubby mitts onto it like Murdoch, Rothermere or Lord Siberia. Oh and I'm onto you btw. It looked innocent enough on the face of it, but you've managed a very good yield so far.

Never mind the injury nonsense. Russell's probably worried that Paul's head is in the clouds after being nominated for the Puskas award. Good to see him being taken down a peg or ten, by being left out of the squad entirely.