Saint-Fred

It's my understanding that Sky have to pay each team for 10 appearances. If they choose not to show them that many times they still have to cough up for 10 but they are not bound by contract to show them the 10 times.

Maybe that's why them northam guys keep shouting Pork?

Urgh!

Urgh!

What do you expect in a hamburger?

Don't trust burgers yet you eat Doner Kebabs?

but isn't that what makes footy so great that you can dream your club will be in a cup final or higher in the league challenging for titles? Personally I think we have to catch 1 or 2 of the teams above us to be sure of staying up as those below will have a few results go for them and we could be in serious trouble.... Positives...Versus first half of the season we are up on points gained from the teams we have played twice. negatives...We still need to get past 40 points and that means getting 3 points sometimes

I think you should have a sign warning visitors about this

You are right..one game at a time and all that.... I don't know if we will stay up that's in the balance right now but for the first time in a long long time we are a club seemingly on the up. I would like to think that relegation may be a set back but would not change the long term plans for the club.

But if we stay up and win the league we will! we can all do hypothetical!!!

You can't run a business like that? You need to have a plan to move forward, it may include different scenarios for staying up or going down but you need to look longer term than waiting until May to see what divsion we are in?

Ok Cheers we are on the same page but I don't believe waiting for a couple of seasons to see the demand is a great idea. You have to have faith in what you are doing and plan for the expansion now to exploit any success. Stadium expansion will not be a two minute job so planning needs to start now. If the plan was to spend £15m on a training ground with no obvious and definate return on that expenditure, spending the same or more on the stadium expansion with an almost guarenteed return is a no brainer surely? (obviously staying in the premier league is crucial to that though!)

Ok so you do think expansion is an option just not 58k?

If he adds 6000 seats at £20m and the average rises by only 3000 that equates to a return at £35 of an extra £2m in gate receipts?

Average attendance is 30,318 and 92.7% of capacity. This is in our first season back in the division with little expectation of anything other than a relegation scrap. If we were top half it is not unreasonable to expect greater demand. however with very little capacity to satisfy that demand. I can't see how you cannot see that if our chairman honestly believes we will be more successful in the future then there is the support to allow expansion?

Sorry how do you know the demand isn't there? I am not suggesting we could fill a stadium of the size mentioned but do you know for certain that if we expanded to say 35k the Average attendance over the season would stay the same? Due to filling it at the high demand games (whether with Saints fans, Neutrals or away fans) the average would rise. Therefore there is no need to drop prices to make the average rise. However my point is that as you increase access to the high profile games you will naturally capture some of those people for other games too. At the moment a casual fan who only wants to go for Man U, Arsenal etc maybe can't get tickets as so doesn't bother. if it was easier they may attend, enjoy and then go again at a less glamourous game. Why the obsession with filling the ground? The requirement for a payback is more people attending over the season at the same price?

Good point, At Highbury they had 20k season tickets and a 20k waiting list. However that, in my mind, still makes a £400m stadium a very long term pay back? Now by the way they have 40k season ticket holders plus a waiting list of another 40k. Where have they all come from? Perhaps sometimes you need the investment to drive the demand?

For all those business brains out there Can you please explain how Arsenals business plan was so sound when they spent 13 times (£400m) the cost of St Mary's on the Emirates? Surely they were better off staying where they were and charging an extra couple of quid?

??? Ask Arsenal, Man Utd,Sunderland ,Man City, Newcastle, MK Dons, Saints, Bolton,Wigan,Darlington! etc....all have bigger grounds than when I first started watching the saints. So practical? Must be or they wouldn't have done it! (I am not saying they fill them but they do have bigger grounds) Could we have the money to expand the stadium? Looks like it or we have a chairman that lives in a dream land? Could we fill it? depending on the size........probably not at this time.However We hear all the stories about us outgrowing the dell but actually it was never really hard to get tickets yet we then almost doubled support overnight moving to St Mary's? All I am saying is we appear to have someone in charge who believes we can and it would seem it is on the agenda to expand at some point. At the end of the day for all the "WE WON'T DO IT.....FACT" or "WE WON'T EVER FILL IT" statements on here, they are irrelevant...only one person's opinion matters and if he has his mind set on expansion then it is likely to happen whether people on here have a coronary about it or not! Why can't people just have a debate about it without getting so worked up? Why are people ridiculed for expressing their opinion that they think we could expand? and why do some people on here feel the desperate need to force their opinions on others? (There is a world of difference between expressing an opinion and what we see on these threads!)

Given the DVD, the rumours and the tour guide etc it is obvious there is some plan to expand at some time in the future. So why do so many people get so worked up about this not being practical every time expansion is raised?

Can't understand your logic? If they were carrying it they were intending to set it off so why wouldn't they get the same sentence? (Unless people are all carrying smoke bombs around with them as they make them look cool or something these days?)

I do get it but I don't think fans of other teams will. Singing it at a pompey game I could understand (Not that that is likely to happen again) but personally think it's a bit lame...but then again any noise is better than none!

But the chant was not "Scummer Army"

Explains their substitutions on Saturday!

The QPR fans could clearly be heard chanting "we beat the scum 1-0" on sky on Saturday...a clear reference to beating a local rival. Anyone who thinks scum is only used for Saints fans probably also thinks that them seeing a magpie will also influence the result of the game that day.