John Boy Saint

Hot knife and butter springs to mind

Back on the other side Mané on the bench went for a warm up just sat down and had a strap put on his knee, think he felt the heavy rain and thought "sod that why did I miss that penalty".

Don't be daft it'll be PEH and Reed

In other news Sideshow Bob has just smashed an absolute Exocet past the bin dippers!

Oops

Be interesting if he comes back and Liverpool get going again, how many if the fatter cats than Liverpool will come sniffing around for him this summer

Good for him, given what we have frittered money away on as a back up to Fraser, I was a bit disappointed that we shipped him out, the last full game he played for us was against Palace on a nasty swirly wet and windy day, the goal he let in even if we had 2 Gordon Banks on the line it would have gone in, the rest of the game he was spot on and Palace were knocking quite loudly on the door!

Either I was numbed in to apathy watching that training pitch game that my hearing was affected, but I don't think anyone in the stadium was bothered at the final whistle as I didn't hear any boo's

He has a talent but he doesn't do what a player like Romeu is doing endlessly, taking mental photographs of who is where on the pitch, PEH invariably picks up the ball with his head down then ploughs into trouble, fair play to him though invariably when he has dropped a clanger he cleans up his own mess.

That was a carpy goal

Maybe there has been a plan all along, with Leicester being the fluke last season Saints knew in all honesty we weren't going to challenge for the top spot, so a solid run in the cups delivers the prize goal if we win one: another European tour. I believe I saw somewhere that Puel knows that the season is won and lost in the final 3rd, and his previous teams have had a surge in the latter part of the season. So he rotates the squad and gets as many players as possible running at match fitness as possible without doing too much overall damage to the cause. Then you get into the situation we find ourselves in now where in 4 weeks time we will be playing in a Cup Final. Unlike Leicester who rolled out the usual suspects just about every week last season we have a squad of 20+ players who have all been involved, all ticking over "in the pits", who now all want to be in the starting 11 in a cup final and also a further 7 players if they don't get the nod, to be waiting on the subs bench. Now with all the rotation we have potential headache looming for the manager as now he has to start thinking about his starting 11, but the pot of players to pick from is bigger than the available spaces and all of that pot is pretty much match ready, so with the exception of the odd 1-2-3-4 players they know that Claude is going to rotate players in and out: the result being that everyone ups their game to be in the Cup Final Squad, no one is going to hang back to avoid a possible knock because they know they are replaceable so they have to remain on top of their game to be in with a chance of playing in a cup final. Resulting in the whole team performance stepping up. If we fail in winning the League Cup the better performances in the games leading up to the final potentially see the 6th round of the FA Cup to redress the disappointment, and so the process remains until the last day of the season. Yes what I have written above might well be complete hogwash, in the first leg of the Semi at home v Liverpool we saw a very tidy performance. Burnley game they are battlers and everyone who turns up at Turf Moor is going to walk away having been in a hard scrap: we get done by a quirk of fate. Norwich we put out a rag tag team that on paper should have seen the job done, but end up bringing 2 players on who put the impetus in to win through. The Champions turn up Sunday, and despite the Tinkerman having a brainfart, we have enough about us to identify and exploit the pickle they are in with style. Then Wednesday night we step out onto one of the hardest grounds in the land, but where against Norwich we played like strangers, we worked as a disciplined team, no one was pointing fingers at anyone like we have seen, everyone got on and did a job in snuffing out the opposition, then punching them in the guts at the end. Claude will likely have a little tinker on Saturday evening, but I bet whoever he picks will be pretty damn keen to be in the reckoning for that starting 11 on the 26th February.............. Could be fun.

I was thinking of the nipper who sadly passed away just before the Liverpool game, who we had a minutes applause for but rather remarkably also the minute we scored our 1st goal in.

15 notes on an Arsenal ticket punts you up the pile?

I think the rules might have been relaxed after a whole load of them royally had their pants royally yanked down when tickets were being divvied up for a champions league final and they ran a ballot some folks got 6 tickets on 2 Wembley season tickets and others got chuff all!! Some more goal posts were moved for some other things reducing the benefit and as they were already forking out a hefty sum of money felt the FA were getting too greedy and decided to shaft them back by not renewing their membership. I have a mate who was one of them and one of the originals when the stadium opened, he sorted out superb JPT tickets for the 4 of us. Funnily enough I sent him a photo of my 1979 final ticket priced at a massive £2.50 and tongue in cheek asked if he thought tickets would have gone up much since then, he replied "probably not that much as they are having trouble selling the Season Tickets these days!".

Blooming glad half of the clowns who pontificate on here are not managers in football, blimey the Saints team would have an average age of about 32 if the team was selected on experience. This nipper isn't ready yet" "not ready for the Premier League, needs to go out on loan" "a seasoning loan in a lower league team will do him some good". Even the commentators were prattling on at Jacks inexperience. Anyone who pays attention to Saints will know that Jack Stephens has been out on loan the last few seasons and been deemed good enough to start over 60 first team games. Yes they have been with lower league clubs (which is where many proclaimers say any nipper should be going after their first appearance from the academy). Anyone with half a brain knows that in this country when it comes to football any team from any of the 4 divisions can spread the nose across the face of any of the multi million pound fat cat teams on their day. (Bradford -Chelsea) So young Jack isn't some wet behind the ears total novice, he has been getting experience where the muck is dirtier and the bullets are harder, and through my eyes when he stepped in on Sunday lunchtime he had an air of confidence in knowing what he had to do straight away, and last night once more he did not look one bit out of place on that pitch, his positioning and poise showed a lad who knows his way round a football pitch.

Better add in the 12,000 who didn't say "oh no! not Crystal ****ing Palace again, I can't be ****d to go to and watch watch that ***t"................ If only to create an atmosphere at half time with queues for a beer and the toilets! better add in the poor sods who witnessed an absolute dog turd of a game in Prague too!

Nope one of them referred to other posters as gentlemans parts by a few various terms. And just like the sermon on the mount scene out of Monty Pythons Life of Brian "if you call me big nose one more time I am going come over there and knock you F'ing block off". One of the Mods decided enough was enough and made sure they went through the door without it banging on their @r$e on the way out.

I got my tickets for the 1979 League Cup final from Lawrie McMenemy! I was 14 at the time living as far north in Hampshire as you could get from Southampton, I had no way of getting to Southampton when the tickets would be on sale, so having written to Lawrie a few times, and got replies (I still have them somewhere). I decided to write to him again and explain my predicament, my Mum wrote a cheque for the necessary £5 (I needed a ticket for my Dad to take me there too) and posted the letter for me. I got home from school on the Thursday and my Mum says there's a letter on the side for you with a Southampton postmark. I eagerly opened it and there inside was my letter, oh, with a note written in the corner: "Mrs Gardiner my secretary reminded me that you write quite often, please find enclosed the 2 tickets you requested". Wow what a sudden rush of excitement, cheering, crying, bouncing round the house, not knowing who to tell first......... probably stopped me from wetting myself!

Oh nearly Forgot Congratulatons also to Mr & Mrs Monk and their new arrival.

At half time I had to go outside as the girls had switched over to see a bit of drivel on ITV. Pacing about I thought I have felt like this before, in 1979 Saints 1-0 up and having to listen on a faint Solent signal in my bedroom. You would think being in my 50s I would have grown out of the fidgety cold sweats, but I guess being able to see all the action as it happens before your eyes in full colour doesn't help at all.......... when Fraser pawed that ball away I dared to think for a moment "oh hello?". When Shane Scored my Wife and Daughter were out of their seats I was slightly delayed as I couldn't believe it had gone in. I guess the ticket price might have increased slightly from the £2.50 my ticket cost for the 1979 final.

Nice bit of rope-a-dope............. get them to work on exploiting the nipper at centre back, not that he is a green behind the ears defender, he has made 71 first team appearances in his career so far most of that playing in more rough and ready leagues. Then wheel out the the big Dutch bloke at 6;45 firing on all cylinders. Either way I think we will be up for this.

Funny that. We were discussing going to Boro away the a couple of games back, and being a bit older a bit more consideration given to the designated driver is given, so a trip over the famous Transporter bridge was added to the agenda; sounds like a trainspotters day out!! Going to Milan we flew into Geneva and drove to Milan via the Mont Blanc tunnel, driving down the Aosta (sp?) Valley out eyes were over flowing, my mate and I said driving away to a Saints game at home now is going to be pretty dull now.

Good job the minority of the fan base post on here, some of the comments are amusing. What is interesting is when it finishes there has always been hearty applause that has become louder.................... and it's not "thank goodness it's over!!".

You assume correctly.

Found out why Prowsey had such a good game when I bumped into his old boss and prospective future boss outside the ground. Much better all over the pitch, anyone would think we were playing with Romeu's ball in the first few minutes as he snuffed out everything, Norwich aside we seem to have reverted back to our old style at the beginning of games where we let the oppos have a run around for 20 minutes, then we turn up and start playing more. JWP has shown flashes of today's game from him this season where he has been getting stuck in more, think he has benefitted from playing more often. Just like Maya who once more had a great game, seemed to relish having the armband and having to keep eye on young Jack who, I also thought did well when he came on: but then he shouldn't have felt too much heat seeing as he has been playing well out on loan for the last few seasons, in a league where the strikers are monsters. More of the same please