franniesTache

Preach Lucy! Our idiot dissident element cannot ever comprehend the abilities of our great leader and the vanguard. They are guilty of doublethink for questioning the endless passing and lack of shooting, and should be sent to the fanzone gulag archipelago's to be re-educated on the Newspeak of xP (passing) and retention. Only then will they realise that the ONLY way is the Martin WAY (tm) and settle back with a nice drink of Kool Aid and a soothing chant of OOOOOOOM to honour our great god, overlord and innovative footballing leader. ALL HEIL MARTIN, MARTIN IS OUR KING. ONWARDS! FOR MARTIN, PASSING AND STATSTICS!

If we win on Saturday we'll still be behind Derby's worst ever points total season (11) and Sunderland's second worst ever points total season (15) since both of them had 5 points by the 9th game of the season. Also relegation is going to be a financial disaster for saints, i don't think people realised how close to the sun we were flying last season, and how important it was to come back up first time round. As for Martin staying if we do go down with him in charge, and make no mistake if we do it'll be on the worst points total ever, I think season ticket sales will drop off a cliff. People are really underestimating just how much most saints fans are putting up with Martin based on him banking favours from last season. The majority i know (young, old and middle aged) find his style of football boring as fuck and his stubbornness and arrogance annoying. The small cult on here and social media who seemingly idolise him are absolutely in the minority, and keeping him on if we go down will see a hell of a reaction, both against him and the owners.

Alan Ball had the perfect style of play for what we had at the time... Get. The. Ball. To. Le Tiss. And it worked a fucking treat too.

The new five pledges 1. We pass, therefore we are 2. If stats did not exist there would be a need to invent them 3. All that is necessary for the triumph of passing is that good players don't shoot 4. Attacking is counterrevolutionary 5. Let us ban all applause, the Northam is everywhere!

Interesting injury for Smallbone 😳

It's manchester, a city that basically has some of the best pubs in the country. Around picadilly, print works, the northern quarter, and oxford road you've got a ton of brilliant pubs. Our fans will ignore these though and end up in a 'Spoons where they can sing songs at minimum wage staff who are wishing they hadn't swapped their shift with their mate

Saints will turn up and look like a completely different team, the pointless passing will be replaced by sharp incisive forward movement, we'll start with two strikers and put pressure on city from the front, whipping in crosses to tall paul to create chaos and defend with our backs to the wall, clearing the lines long up the pitch and using the pace of archer to give us an outlet. We will sneak it 1-0 in the end with an amazing performance that harks back to the best relegation battles of the past. Actually who the fuck am i kidding with that? What will actually happen is that for the first 5-10mins will have looked pretty good but created no real chances. Somewhere around the 11th or 12th minute we will give the ball to Halaand who will score. Around the 15th minute we'll give away a stupid free kick as one of our players tries to make up for a wayward pass in the direction of our goal and Halaand will score his second from the free kick. The players heads will drop. Shortly after, around the 18th or 20th minute mark City will score their third. Our more sensible supporters will leave for the pub at about the 25minute mark. They will reach the pub about the same time the half time whistle goes. Saints will be 3-0 down. Saints will then come out after the second half and continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our striker will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. This won't look terrible for the first 10mins of the second half and some hope will creep in. City will score their 4th about midway through the second half after Martin makes four bizarre changes that completely changes the shape of the team. We will continue to plod on, creating little to no chances until they get their 5th and 6th in stoppage time. For some utterly bizarre reason, like prisoners overcome with Stockholm syndrome, those remaining fans will clap the players off in an almost masochistic display of celebrating failure. Martin will come out after the game, say that he's hurt but we played some good stuff, he will go on to blame the players, himself, the tea lady, the fella from the echo who looks like his about to carry out a bombing raid on germany, Sammy Saint and Buddha himself. Everyone will expect him to be sacked as he's clearly not good enough, but Sport Republic will instead announce a contract extension and ban any fans who dare question Martin's regime. They will also announce the sale of Kool Aid in the Northam End with a flagship advertising campaign fronted by Charles Manson

You've got to admire Sport Republic for the arrogance of a ten year plan, even Uncle Joe only had five year plans. Perhaps the end goal is the collectivisation of St Mary's? I mean we've already got the re-education rooms where Martin teaches people why they're wrong about football, plus the club added extra gulags to kick people out too if they failed re-education. Plus we have banners celebrating The Red Army, and are told "We March On", and the pattern is becoming clear to see. All we need are THE FIVE PLEDGES to finally be published and we will transcend our status as a provincial football club and become philosophy that takes over half of europe and kills off all descent along the way.

The two that stand out for me are Kevin Friend who basically cheated in the game against liverpool and (to give him his full name) Roger Fucking Milford. Also for deciding a game went on wasn't there a ref for a cup game against Reading at a frozen pitch at Elm Park who decided the pitch was safe to play on as long as the players didn't play at 100%, can't remember his name but do remember the shitshow of a game (and the home fans lobbing bits of concrete that had broken off their terrace at us from the other side of the fence)

Who could've predicted we don't have 7k supporters who want to create a fierce wall of noise like a german team who we have nothing in common with. Who apart from everyone? This is the problem in a nutshell though, as i've mentioned many, many times, the club got it wrong because they didn't understand the culture/s. Not everyone who stands and sings wants to stand and sing next to the same people. The club however thought that if they lumped disparate groups together then it would somehow be loud. Instead you get groups who have no interest in joining in with stuff the other group likes - the million songs about the skates, and the coke fuelled seal clapping being prime examples - so those people who would've sung just don't (and i'm one of those people, i'd rather stand in silence than sing about pompey). The club should've instead given a couple of areas of safe standing, keep "the wall" nonsense for those that wanted it, but offered another option somewhere else too (for example the back five rows of the chapel. I do know one thing for sure though, i'm not staying in the northam wall next season, it's just a case of where i move to, because it's really, really shit. Not just quieter than where i was before, but more noddy too

I find it kind of amazing people can miss a joke so badly but i guess football is a serious business 🤣

Tbf we made a meal of it last season too, in fact if there's one consistent with Martin's teams through his whole career, it's that winning isn't the primary objective. Possession is.

The club already regularly monitors social media, why do you think the "influencers" got free puma shirts? Also they've banned people in the past for things said on social media.

Yup this is a massive problem, you only need to look at social media to see it's the same people every time who stick up message saying that they suddenly "can't make a game" Personally i think a lot of this could be fixed if the club made a few simple changes, first change is to the criteria. It should be: Season ticket holders with X aways Members ticket holders with X aways Season ticket holders with X -1 aways Members ticket holders with X -1 aways Down to season ticket holders, then members, then general. Second thing to do is monitor socials and ban regular re-sellers, they're pretty easy to identify and just banning a handful will bleed out and discourage. I don't think you can ban re-sellers completely because there is always a valid case, but you've got to make a stand against people doing it regularly. Course it's easy for me to say that because "i'm alright jack" and actually qualify for most, if not all games, pretty easily. But it does feel the system is broken

No no no, that's not how you play football! You don't win the possession battle by getting it forward quickly or passing through the channels. Jesus it sounds like you need to go to one of Martin's Re-Education Camps so you can learn why you're wrong, and why the right answer is to pass backwards and sideways giving the opposition the most possible time to reset their defence.

Must win game and we have to be attacking and threatening, so I assume that means Martin will drop all of our strikers to the bench for it. I think we will start well, lots of passes around the midfield and defence but nothing really threatening leicester, and somewhere around the 30th minute we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. The players heads will drop. The half time whistle will go with Saints 1-0 down Due to the queues at the bars at half time we will still be drinking our pints when the game restarts, we will not have made it up to our seats when Leicester's second goes in. Saints will then continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. Leicester will score their 3rd about midway through the second half after Martin makes four bizarre changes that completely changes the shape of the team. For some utterly bizarre reason, like prisoners overcome with Stockholm syndrome, those remaining fans will clap the players off in an almost masochistic display of celebrating failure. The board will fail to sack Martin, people on here and on social media will talk about how much they "like him" despite him having the worst start of any Saints manager in living memory, and claim they believe he will turn it around and is learning, despite absolutely no proof of that happening. WE MARCH DOWN!

Cracking ground, one of the noisiest in the league and proper old school support instead of noddy shit. Saying that the away end is proper shit, the city is a dump, there's nowhere decent to drink and the subways are sketchy as fuck.

having been in the Northam Wall this season that lounge actually sounds pretty attractive to me, at the very least you'd be sure of the fact you'd not be surrounded by people in replica shirts singing songs about pompey at a hundred miles an hour.

Original sale to Gao - on paper - was actually a really good deal. Gao had a lot of money to invest, both in the club and the city of Southampton, and early doors put a lot of money into expanding business interests and setting up football related businesses in China that would've tied revenue back to both the club and the university. Had the long term plan worked it would've pumped a huge amount of money into the club and local area, but the leaders of China at the time effectively pulled the plug on money leaving China and going into foreign sports, and football in particular. Kat herself plugged the gap that was left with her own money on more than one occasion, and a huge amount of the reason for that gap needing funding was the financial problems we'd been left in due to mismanagement and overspending before. Of course none of these facts fit the narrative a lot of our fans have about the mad midget being a genius who was good for the club, and the Kat and Gao were the devil incarnate ruining her dads legacy. It actually annoys me way more than it should when people attack Kat, her entire philosophy was about protecting what her dad loved, all her decisions were made with the best interest of the club and city at heart, and her nipper is a proper Saints fan. She should be held in the same regard as her father, but instead dinlows idolise someone who's ego was more important than the long term future of our club.

The fact people credit the mad midget with business acumen is beyond me, it shows how little most know about what goes on behind the scenes at the club. I know people like @Turkish know the real story about that time period but lets just say the dismantling of the squad and a lot of the long term problems we still see now came from him running the club well beyond our means or ability (and him using it as his own personal fiefdom is well documented). I always find it ironic too that the same people who talk up the mad one are the same that slander Kat who arguably did as vital a job in saving the future of our club as her dad (she just didn't do it in public or ask for any limelight)

Hold on that can't be true, we've been told for years we need to expand the stadium and that our "catchment area" takes in the enterity of Aampshire plus most of the English Channel, when you factor in the dynamic pricing model for tickets and the long planned ground breaking aquarium stand (so our Agnatha, Chondrichthyes, and Osteichthyes friends can watch the game) we will be without a doubt the BIGGEST club in world football, and Cortese will give up his price job at AC milan; Inter Milan; Juventus to lead us to a new era of domination, the likes of which this sport has never before seen.

No place for Sammy Saint in that line up? Disgraceful if true

My prediction (there may be a pattern forming in these). My group will badly misjudge the amount of time it takes to make it from the pub to the ground and arrive 5-10mins late during that time saints will have looked pretty good but created no real chances. Somewhere around the 11th or 12th minute we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. Around the 15th minute we'll give away a stupid free kick as one of our players tries to make up for a wayward pass in the direction of our goal and Arsenal will score their second from the free kick. The players heads will drop. Shortly after, around the 18th or 20th minute mark Arsenal will score their third. We will leave for the pub at about the 25minute mark. We will reach the pub about the same time the half time whistle goes. Saints will be 3-0 down. Saints will then come out after the second half and continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. This won't look terrible for the first 10mins of the second half and some hope will creep in. Arsenal will score their 4th about midway through the second half after Martin makes four bizarre changes that completely changes the shape of the team. We will continue to plod on, creating little to no chances until they get their 5th in stoppage time. For some utterly bizarre reason, like prisoners overcome with Stockholm syndrome, those remaining fans will clap the players off in an almost masochistic display of celebrating failure. Martin will come out after the game, say that he's hurt but we played some good stuff, he will go on to blame the players, himself, the tea lady, the fella from the echo who looks like his about to carry out a bombing raid on germany, Sammy Saint and Buddha himself. Everyone will expect him to be sacked as he's clearly not good enough, Rasmus instead will give him a spot on his next Ted Tour to talk about how Stats are more important than results in modern sport. Inspired by the Ted Talk and convinced Martin is some unique genius the social media "influencers" will double down on the fact that they "like" Martin by staging a sit in vigil in the Northam Fanzone. Burning candles and incense and chanting Martin's name to the Buddhist "OHM". Martin will turn up with a vat of poisoned Kool Aid and as Saint Rob and his ilk draw their final desperate, wheezing, breathes, finally realising that they believed a marketing lie and it's too late now. And as their eyes slowly close forever, the last thing they'll see is Martin's pre-prepared powerpoint on why his tactics are right and it's the rest of football that's wrong. We will continue to March Down

I've started calling it JFK football. Back, and to the left.

Can anyone explain why so many people say they like Martin? Seriously all i see is people saying "i like Martin but..." followed by a list of his failings. The bloke struggled to get us promoted, and arguably only did so because he changed his style of play which was the thing that held us back. He has then started the season with a nigh on suicidal system that has seen us ship goals and create nothing, then blamed the players/himself and ignored what needs to be fixed (which is obvious to everyone). He's also shown complete arrogance in refusing to adapt, and changes his team every week so there's no consistency. So what the hell is it people like? Because at this point in time i'm starting to thing the only thing it can be is "the idea of his football", as there's pretty much nothing else there to enjoy than some conceptual philosophy.