Gloucester Saint

About the same financial clout as Dragan. Shows what recruiting the likes of Paul Barber, Graham Potter and De Zerbi can do, allied to the type of data system that is Real Madrid to Rasmus’s Netley Central FC. Maybe Lallana player manager, see how he does, and if it doesn’t work, still have him on the staff and go high profile in the summer, relative to the Championship. But all contingent on Solak pulling his finger out and restructuring SR to get those two halfwits out of it.

I’ve just found Rasmus’s favourite band https://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/why-did-the-klf-burn-a-million-pounds-on-a-scottish-island#:~:text=“It seemed like a failure”&text=“Cauty and Drummond tend to,the money is a purgative.”

Word is that even with a GOP majority in the Senate, Trump is already concerned that he might not be confirmed as his first pick due to the top paragraph above with some significant objections from senior Republicans in the security and defence sphere. Also some stirring in the House and Senate against more tariffs.

Absolutely this, but I’d actually choose to break Derby’s points record if it humiliated first Martin and then Rasmus out of a restructured SR. I’d rather they sold the club full stop but that seems unlikely in the short-term as Ornstein’s comments (he ought to know better as well) fed to him by Rasmus which he won’t challenge, indicate SR are actually enjoying their vanity project. Going by the Martin poll, we certainly are not. Cheltenham Town and Torquay United this season for me and possibly next if there aren’t seismic changes at SFC over the summer which re-engage me and thousands of others.

Rasmus truly is clueless about anything football-related. I bet he fed Ornstein that pile of vacuous shit and went for some random flavoured vape outside afterwards. Those comments are truly the final straw for me. Rasmus has achieved nothing but ride off others’ hard work and float around doing TedTalks. If you want to watch live football folks, pick your local non league team or lower leagues. Cheltenham Town and Gloucester City for me but it could be Sholing, Eastleigh etc. Just don’t give any SR and this buffoon Ankerson any of your hard earned money. He’s a charlatan and Dragan is a total mug. He’ll destroy the club beyond repair. He’s referring to Martin but he’s got himself in mind with his comments too. Failing nonentities both of them but they love themselves. I did the protests with Branfoot and Lowe, time for a new generation to step up to the plate. Protests or boycotting - either is good and exposes what the people of the city I grew up in really think. We’ve all spent too long trying to stop an arrogant club destroying itself multiple times since the early 90s - SFC isn’t Southampton FC as I knew it. I’m far more AFC Wimbledon and SR have turned SFC into MK Dons, plastic franchise stuff. Semmens helped on the way to plasticity by banning all the fans in the Itchen North who had some character.

Decent stuff, it came in a pack of pale ales my missus bought me for my birthday last year. Northern Monk Faith was in there as well, Buxton SPA I think it was too. Tribute is decent stuff but having lived in Devon it is everywhere in the SW, even some of the pubs up here along with Proper Job which can be a class IPA at a medium strength. London Pride I used to really enjoy but for me it’s lost a bit of hop profile since Fullers were bought, that marmalade note has gone. Quite run of the mill now. Butty Bach is the ubiquitous session ale around here, very good beer once warmed up if served cold. HPA pops up frequently as well, good pale when well kept.

Newcastle away - 5-0 and 2-0 down inside 3 minutes live on Sky. Richard Dryden rushed into action despite clearly being miles off match fit. The anti-Branfoot sentiment was different league I agree and Nathan Jones would’ve got there if he’d stayed long enough. Martin could get closer to that status if he stays most of the season and there’s a few spats during matches with fans near the dugout, but not there at the moment. I think most people are just numbed by how dreadful we are, a bit like the equally slow and even more defensive football under Pellegrino. At least we could defend at times that season, albeit with a miles better squad.

I think that’s where Geoff Shreeves called him a ‘wheeler dealer’ and Harry took serious exception culminating in the fuck off/storming off.

‘One of them’ supposedly as well, Toffees stick together etc. They didn’t that day. Football-wise, Lowe made the right call, tough as it was, our form was heading into an abyss after a good start. Jones was a bit riled by Hoddle turning up to our games from autumn onwards IIRC. But they all do it, managers, eyeing the next meal.

Agreed but Dave apparently never wanted it in the first place.

I was only a nipper so didn’t know better or worse, that’s what it was. Depends where in the country you were with that decade. Southampton - good place to be, SE and London, very good. Midlands - depends where, not in the manufacturing areas. North - hmmm, not in steel, coal or other industries.

Has good energy I heard

Agree with your first bit, but the second is being negated by having someone with no top leagues experience as Mr Football. Les Reed lost it at SFC 2016-19 after a very good 2009-16, but nobody could say he didn’t have many years at the sharp end in high level football as a DoF, with the FA and elsewhere. Ankerson has no practical experience, no idea and it’s becoming obvious that Phil Giles did any heavy lifting at Brentford in terms of football operations. All of his transfer software isn’t building a cohesive squad allied to dreadful judgement in selecting managers. As S Clarke said yesterday that’s how we we’ve gone from pressing-direct ball-glacial 70% possession and no shots on target in just over 2 years. What a mess and it can’t help the very many players we have bought. All that leads to is a bloated squad, with lots of players on big contracts out in the cold, relegation and if you we don’t bounce back quickly, serious financial issues as the parachute payments thin out. That’s without considering how to actually make SFC vaguely competitive again in the PL because this year is a football and commercial disaster again with SR. Dragan needs to dissolve it and re-think it with top level football industry experience on board from the top leagues. See if he can attract a top ex-player who has gained some sporting Director experience in a top league who can re-set the course for all three clubs in the group. There’s been plenty of fans from all 3 clubs on here very unhappy.

0-1 to a late flicked header.

Seems he called Klopp a cunt - whoops. PGMOL is toast. Wonder who leaked it?

Similar to Frannie’s Tache, the odd person had a go about Merrington but not the bulk who knew he had a difficult job, one he never wanted in the first place either, which was also quite widely known. Way the club treated him was a disgrace with his wife seriously ill. So sad to see him upset on Meridian. Souness - brought in some really interesting players eg Egil, Claus, Eyal and he was still a big name then. Rangers were the dominant UK club late 80s buying the top English players, Liverpool wrong place wrong time but still won the FA Cup, Galatasaray. Probably why he didn’t get stick for the Stockport game. If you kept us up with a 15,000 stadium and no owner like Bournemouth’s, you done alright. I think Souness came to buy the club with investors from what I heard but the dodgy Secure Retirement reverse takeover happened. Sanderson our shirt sponsors also wanted to buy the club but Askham was up to no good. Jones - very popular in the first season, didn’t use the Davies windfall well and were bottom three until three games from the end, good start 99/00 and then a horror run of form. Fans less sold on him tactically but got fully behind him over those dreadful allegations. I never met a Saints fan who thought they were true. Liverpool, Derby and when he was at Wolves, skates fans sang about it - shame on them.

So have I, RA seems a total charlatan, I get the feeling most of the actual great work at Brentford was done by Phil Giles day to day. But it depends on Dragan’s willingness to restructure SR to buy Rasmus out of it legally. So changing the manager is the option they’ll go for. Personally I wouldn’t let RA anywhere making the replacement but SR’s major investor would have to have smelt the coffee.

I meant them as separate events, have amended the OP accordingly to be clearer on my part. And the Ipswich gate - there were less than the recorded 9k in the ground as well - was a big factor for the board (this I’m ITK on) as were the difficulties in getting shirt sponsorship- Dimplex stepped in the last minute as a favour. They got a big reward in 94/95 post-Branfoot with MLT, Bally and Lawrie. They are separate but pertinent examples of where our fans were prepared to stand up and challenge the club’s leadership to improve massively. But where the protests also included staying away and hitting them in the pockets. Our modern fanbase won’t protest in or around the ground like we did in the early 90s and late 00s - saw it with Pellegrino where the football was as bad as now with a much better squad - but they might stay away given the significantly increased cost for the appalling quality on offer.

It’s very difficult to compare between eras. Public services were definitely better previously - dentists, GPs, local authorities - the country has gone in the wrong direction there. However, our preventative knowledge is much better nowadays showing the value of investing in research and especially mental health, which is much better recognised than it ever was. Neurodiversity is way better recognised but we need to get the waiting lists on diagnosis now. Culturally it’s harder still to compare because of streaming, you don’t have 30m people watching the same programme, not even major Royal events but then the choice is good to have on the other hand. The climate is definitely more unpredictable though - the sun is at its most intense 5-8pm in the summer now and that was never the case. First noticed it in 2018 in the Lake District, road surface melting on Hardknott Pass (that was fun!). More intense spells of rainfall and storms with the costly damage to communities and properties, businesses that entails. Politically - the more things change the more they stay the same. In 1991, the USSR was no more and the end of history was proclaimed. Today, Putin is no different to many of the expansionist Soviet dictators, but America is potentially far less stable. China is recognised as more of threat today politically and on trade since Clinton let them into WTO. Something else - people have changed post-Brexit, which was toxic whichever side you were on, then really visible after the pandemic. More fractious, bad tempered and things flare off quicker. You see it in shops, the roads, sometimes at work. People are quicker to be aggressive and abusive. That said, the decline in customer service doesn’t help. I think society has become too fractionalised into groups, we’ve forgotten how to agree and disagree. People should also be able to mistakes and apologise without being cancelled or humiliated. Seen Duck’s post since and agree with much of that, late 90s-early 00s were probably the best I experienced. Saints were a darn sight better too!

The football itself was better I agree and far more in touch with working communities. However, for balance, the stadiums were awful. We forget this because the Dell was one of the tidiest and safest in that era but many were not - Bradford, Hillsborough, Heysel. There was a lot more trouble as well - on the same day as Bradford, a lad was killed by a falling wall at St Andrews as Brum and Leeds firms battled it out. Chelsea was 80% in the elements, away end at Ewood awful, and as for lower league grounds…compare it to now. If go to Whaddon Rd, only one stand is antiquated, the other three are safe, modern, clean and tidy.

Been there with Branfoot and Lowe already as separate examples. Tried to with Pellegrino as did others at SMS but we didn’t get buy-in until it was almost too late. Difference with Branfoot and Lowe was that the club had a fragmented ownership structure which had many drawbacks around attracting investment but it also meant that the protests would cause embarrassment and friction would build up across the different stakeholders. Even then, it was really the boycott in 08/09 and 9k gate v Ipswich which broke the board’s stubbornness. This time around, Dragan will only take notice that we want firstly Martin and Martinball gone, and then SR restructured with Rasmus and Kraft out of it with swathes of empty seats at SMS on the TV, given why SR bought us in the first place. This season it won’t hit financially, mainly reputationally, but next year when the gate revenue becomes far more of a factor in sustainability, their concerns will multiply.

Wouldn’t have done much better. Martin’s style of play isn’t suited to the PL full stop. 🛑

Lesley is a contender for our worst ever XI. What possessed Chelsea to spend £23m on him is anyone’s guess. Poor touch, lumbering, gives the ball away and a clumsy tackler. Not the Victor type DM we thought we were getting. To balance that a bit, not sure Russell’s training methods or style of play do him any favours either. Lavia would have struggled too and even Downes has this year, and he’s supposed to be Russell’s fulcrum. Cornet is a quality player who badly needed games but again, not suited to the testimonial pace, Burnley and Lyon play much quicker, and started ok at West Ham before that long-term muscle injury. Hard to judge him properly.

I’m long past being bothered this season, didn’t even bother to watch the highlights this weekend, but he needs to go by the festive period just to try and salvage some momentum for next season. Sheff Utd’s little revival under Wilder, although brief, has helped them.

If the internet were a thing in 92-94, you’d still have had a small minority supporting Branfoot. There were people standing on the Milton sneering ‘who are you going to replace him with then?’ even when 90-95% of us were protesting volubly.