John Boy Saint

"The longest 7 minutes of my life" I was only 11 at the time and it is still mine too!

The Family tree on my Grandmothers side (Father) dates back to Fife in 1140 but named folks start in 1348 again in Scotland and meanders along to include a few landed Scallywags who were fined substantial amounts of Scottish Marks for naughtiness. There are branches that just run dry which coincide with the land rights and large scale emigration to the New World. My Dad picked up a trail recently which led him into the New Forest and a long established link there, being born under the British Raj in India living from the age of nine in Lancashire then work bringing him to Southampton where he met my Mum, he thought that was amazing that there was "family" not that far away. My Mum's side would be interesting to explore as my Great Grandfather sailed regularity out of Southampton to Cape Town, where he met a South African lady of German descent who he married and brought back to Southampton. Both World wars were interesting for my Great Grandmother living down in Freemantle as she had a German accent. All interesting stuff, it would be nice to have the time to poke about properly.

Stats like that always make me think of the Lee Evans skit where he talks about the money players are on:

I wonder how different things would have been if he had slotted that chance home against Arsenal that night. As for the growth spurt stuff, I seem to recall Steven Gerrard had a similar issue at a similar age, and possibly Gareth Bale slightly younger, but both when they were young first team players and it resulted in a very disjointed season for them as the growth spurt however small makes the internal gyroscope go a bit wobbly and eye-boot co-ordination with it.

Thanks Billy/Glen as always spot on, Happy New Year to you Sir.

Lee Clark was on Soccer AM yesterday morning, he said that Pavel had his heart failure while out running but was not found for a while. So sadly the Golden Hour had elapsed. Very sad as 47 is no age these days.

Last one of them worked a treat after they got Luggy out the door, then got man with hands in pockets, followed by twitchy.

I liked the story linked at the bottom about the bloke who put on a £1 for Cucu to score first and Saints to win 4-0, smashing Boxing Day for him.

Peter Reid when he had his brief spell with us in the twilight of his career knew his mobility and pace was also in its twilight, made no secret of the fact that he used Neil Maddison as his legs by passing the ball to Neil moving into position via the shortest route to receive the ball back for him then to repeat the process.

Think we need to cut him a little bit of slack, like all the players he put a shift in on Saturday, scored an absolute belter of a goal resulting in every man jack wanting a piece of him. So you have a lad who comes from a small island has been sitting on the bench or waiting his turn in the side, suddenly he is propelled as fast as the ball hit the back of the net into the limelight, as well as the physicality of Saturday's game that attention has to have taken an emotional toll too. You could see he knew he had played duff balls when he did yesterday, but there is no point beating the bloke up over it..... Give him a chance. The way our right backs get slated on here we may as well play with a back 3 ........... Cos that really works a treat. (45 hours might have been nothing to the old players saying get on with it but Premier league football is much more demanding today than it was 5 years ago)

They installed them for TV as if I remember correctly give off a better colour for HD and 4K and are the new standard requirement. Trouble is they don't flood as well as Halides or Halogen hence there being so many additional banks of them, the electric bill probably went down too.

Well what a smashing surprise Christmas present that was from the lads. That was a bit like last season pre Christmas replace Sheffield Utd with Spurs and us looking poor then replace Everton who most folks thought would batter us with Arsenal. Absolute cracker of a goal to settle us down and another poor performance from the ref in the first half to really get our dander up and away we went. I spent most of Boxing Day pretty hacked off at the kick off time buggering up the day a bit, but got home a very happy Saturday Saints fan. if you have BT sport the game gets a re run at 11am this morning

I'm having a rather fine Cornish Pasty actually:D Merry Christmas Turkish........ Good to see you still have it!

Feliz Navidad from Old Basing. Enjoy national Sprouts day one and all.

Mrs JBS grabbed a couple of packets of those to use at home (oi less of that smut) to get our lazy 20 something daughters out of bed after being told for the umpteenth time to GET UP!!!

He actually did his Jimmy Hill 'eulogy' on the BBC news, from the TV commentary position at the back of the Kingsland.

Midfield has the consistency of Candy Floss, that's what needs to change. and as RK has said we are too nice we just accept the refs decisions instead of getting in his ear like most other teams, yesterday Dembele, I think was constantly chirping at Friend. (Tadic waving the invisible card around is too far the other way though). ............ Or is our current demise a plan to get us to spent some proper money in January.

I hope not. He ain't that great.

It's nothing new, Lawrie McMenemy said "Hampshire folk are gentile folk, the team need to get them going, once they do they are as passionate and raucous as any fans in the land".

I have to say the SSN coverage last night when Mrs JBS flicked up through the channels was cringeworthy....... "we believe the person in the black coat walking out of the Cobham training ground is Mourinho" as they showed a shot from the Sky "sack-cam" Helicopter.

Bloody Hell first the kick off for Arsenal gets put back to bloody TV sod the fans o'clock. Then we get appointed Moss a ref who if I recall the stat right we have only won one game under his watchful eye in the whole of his officiating career. ........... oops sorry Corky just seen we have stated the same.

I have to say second half he was right in front of me, and he certainly was talking to them and handing it out when they were just letting players go...... And especially to VVD when he passed it back to him rather heavily and away from him sending the ball trundling worryingly towards an unguarded net.

We just look lethargic, the amount of times we gave away the 2nd and 3rd ball was amazing. Although instead of keeping it simple we are possibly over thinking everything instead of keeping it simple, we seem to always want to play the clever ball but get slowed down thinking about it. Good to see Gazza having a great game, on the train to the ground all the phones were Pinging with the team line ups, lots of discussion about the squad most of it centred on Gazza with much moaning. I like the bloke I think there is a cracking goalie lurking in there, just needs a good run, I said it elsewhere, if Stek had been in goal today he wouldn't have saved some of shots Gazza did. Finally if anyone feels that they want to moan about the prices at SMS don't waste your breath, when you see the view I had for £40 I could not see a triangle from the centre line to the left hand goal post at the end where the Palace Ultras live, at least at SMS you can see the whole pitch from anywhere in the bowl.

I think if Stek had been in goal they would have scored more. excellent display maybe we saw THE goalkeeper today. When you look at Jack Butland when we were sniffing around him as a youngster for £6m he was touted as the best thing ever between the sticks across all football, he had a bumpy few years, now he is a bit older and wiser and looking good at Stoke. Goalkeepers mature with age hopefully Gazza is ripening................ He must have something to have still been here.

Bury just for a day out with the cousins. if not them why not our fishy friends - that'll get us the Monday night slot.