franniesTache

except the same people who claim it's unfair or impossible to get away tickets for games like Brentford or Bournemouth won't go to Cardiff midweek because it's inconvenient, and then moan others are ahead of them

I can only imagine he'll be on the clubs panel given his status and the way he represents us as The Voice Of The Fans. Honestly i don't know how us plebs ever operated without our public school boy messiah telling us what to think, do and say, we are so unbelievably lucky to have someone with no connection to the city condescend us so often so we don't lose sight of our place in the world. Right i'm off to practice my curtsey and hat doff in case i see him in public

We have some genuinely very, very strange fans in our ranks. On social media this week some where saying Martin should quit now because he's not being backed and deserves better than that. It seems there's a weird cult forming around him the same way we had a weird cult that formed around Ralph. It's almost like some of our fans don't really support southampton, instead they support managers.

Hopefully someone asks Russell Martin what his top three biscuits are, when we are expanding the stadium and adding an aquarium end so we can take advantage of our marine catchment area, and if we're still planning on getting champions league when one of the big clubs slip up. Also looking forward to our social media "influencers" claiming to speak on my behalf again, that was great when they did that, and not at all arrogant and weird Edit to say i almost forgot the most important question: When are the Five Pledges(tm) coming? Honestly i'm sure all of our woes in recent years must be down to the fact we have never published the five pledges

Sounds about right to me, similar sized allocation to brentford but with one game more played. Good news is it looks like non of our aways have been moved for TV in October https://www.premierleague.com/news/4076999?s=09

Newcastle went to general sale didn't it? I'd also imagine, United (midweek), Wolves, West Ham, Leicester at least will all go under 5 aways. Plus there's bound to be the odd one or two moved to midweek/friday/sunday etc. which will make it easier to get tickets. Yes the popular london games will be hard to get tickets for, and the last away of the season, but it's relatively easy to build numbers up if you put in the miles on the crap games, especially if you target the early ones before it resets in January In fact looking at the fixture list (and assuming people got newcastle on general) you could get to be close to front of the queue pretty easily by the reset by just doing Newcastle Man City Wolves Villa Plus there's bound to be a league cup game in there somewhere too, and if we get someone like say Palace in the league cup you'll pick a ticket up easily.

Wolves and West Ham will probably be unpopular as well as both of the away ends are shit (and Wolves is a shit place to go generally). Wouldn't be surprised too if United sells slowly as it's a midweek I think.

It's not really "negative" or "doom", we haven't really improved from the side that finished 4th in the league below last season and haven't exactly looked great in the pre-season friendlies. I think it's fair to say everyone knows that we need a new keeper, we're lacking in center mid and on the wing, and we have at best an untested striker, a strikers that proved they can't score at this level, and a striker who's been pretty much permanently injured since we signed him. Also given we're most likely losing our best player in KWP it's not completely unfair to think that it's going to be a long season. But Saints being Saints we'll probably get a shock win or two but also get absolutely destroyed on a few occasions. In my opinion we need to treat this season as a mini league, we really shouldn't care too much about 10th and above, it's all about beating those sides around us and nothing else if we have any chance of staying up

4th bottom will be an excellent season in my opinion, so far we've not really improved the squad much beyond the team that came 4th in the championship and added to that we don't have a striker who can score more than 10 goals in the premier league, a selection of keepers that i'd argue are our worst choices since the 90s plus a manager who's stubbornness to change a style that sees us lose position at the back far too often leads to us shipping a lot of goals (imagine how that will go against City or Liverpool!) I think realistically if this is the squad for season we'll be 2nd bottom if Leicester gets a points deduction, 3rd bottom if that happens and Everton implode, and if neither of those happen bottom.

That's a hell of an angry rant about a made up compliant, made even funnier by the fact you yourself say you know it's not what i was talking about 😳 🤣 All i was saying is it's a bit hypocritical calling out out of town united, liverpool etc. if you're not from southampton, absolutely nothing to do with your bizarre rant at all, but if you're that insecure you do you

Kind of see where you're coming from but the flip side is lets say you're from East Wiltshire, to watch Saints you need to travel past, Swindon, Yeovil, Bournemouth (all league teams), and have Salsibury as a decent non league team. Then the other side you have both Bristol teams who are hardly small teams. So that would seem to me like you're choosing a "bigger" or "more successful" side, because historically that's what we've been, In which case there really is very little difference, other than you're a bit strange, because if you're going to choose a team who's slightly more successful than the ones close to you why not just go the whole hog and choose one that actually wins?

Wasn't that after promotion? Really strange behaviour that I'm not judging anyone, just pointing out it's basically the same thing. I'm sure most big club fans not from there will have some sort of story about why they have a connection. So surely if you're ok with one you're ok with the other right?

Didn't say you were i was just asking what the difference was. Because personally i've always seen it as a bit hypocritical for people to have a go at people supporting the big clubs when they're not from there, but celebrating not from Southampton supporting saints.

Always chuckle at the irony/hypocrisy of people from places with their own teams but support smaller teams like us moaning about fans from elsewhere supporting big clubs like united or liverpool. I mean how is it any different if you support Saints when you're from Salisbury than it is if you support Man U but are from Cornwall?

David Armstrong was my first saints hero (from the same team obviously) but Moran was still the one you'd pretend to be on the playground. Makes me feel fucking old now though thinking how long ago that all was, and how much football has changed

Hope he recovers soon, that '84 team was the first team I saw play live and his goal against the skates is second only to Stokes at Wembley for being our most iconic goal.

Talking of stewards the newcastle stewards have to be the most over the top heavy handed bunch i've come across in the ground, we had a woman near us who was on some sort of insane power trip and doing her best to cause trouble, the police actually had to remove her from the away section due to the problems she was causing. As much as i love newcastle for the piss up the actual experience in the ground is terrible (and the less said about our ability to get anything there the better)

It's a brilliant view of the city and you can pretend you're playing sensible soccer with the view of the pitch

Two fat ladies and a.... no surely not 😳

The whole Skates/Scummers things is fairly recent, think it was the pompey fanzine named after the game in 88 that did the original story (stolen from millwall originally) about the made up dock strike and the bullshit name of Scum/Scummer. Then the Ugly Inside (when it was a paper fanzine) responded with choosing the name Skate for them based on the fact it's what they called matlows and would annoy them. Somehow it's got a bit lost in recent years and a lot of our own social media nippers seem to want to share the made up crap about the dock strike (despite the fact that it was us who had a strike and them that broke it)

Funny to think these debate have been going on for decades now, i found this from an old copy of On The March on just this topic, turns out everything new is old Also interesting side note when i was looking the Ugly Inside fanzine had suggested new songs, this one from the 90s shows we used to call pompey scummers too

Always love this part of the season, everyone screams and shouts about how much they hate the kit and how bad it is, then in a few weeks time everyone buys it and wears it to games 🤣

I reckon the club should make this the banner instead

A shoal of fish to represent our catchment in the solent? And a tracksuit and tinny to represent basingrad? Maybe a bus replacement service or two? If you really do want to go typographic then why not spell out southampton using the names of the places of the city? Hinkler, Thornhill, Millbrook, Swaythling, Portswood, Flower roads etc. To be honest though i think what has the most impact is stuff that references the city itself, keep us grounded in what Southampton football club is about, the city of Southampton, instead of some marketing slogan or something close to a banner with tourettes who's suddenly seen a stand in the ground.

Said this on the ugly, Generally speaking in design less is more, personally i'd drop off a lot of the crap wording and go with something incredibly simplistic. It's always a good rule that if you've got words on a flag or banner remove them, because nearly every single time that's what's making it look shit (and the more you add the worse it looks) A line drawing of the cities major landmarks would be so much better than most of this stuff, or something similar to this,