Pat from Poole

Completely agree.

They used to have a good pool team in that boozer when I used to play a lot of pool back in the day.

Another problem with the Prem. Our away fans would get more grief from stewards and OB at home grounds for standing up.

Really interesting. Common theme seems to be that whilst everybody wants the best for Saints as a club, a lot of us are pretty anxious about the reality of being in the Prem, mainly in terms of enjoying the day at the football. I have to say that I largely echo these concerns. Though from a personal perspective, family reasons mean that I've only been to about 10 games this season, and in the Prem every game will be available on the Internet, so if we go up I'll probably go a lot less than I have this season. And this could be Cortese's dilemma when it comes to ticket prices, as a lot of people may get alienated by the sanitised plasticness of the Prem. That said, I'll be really gutted if Saints don't go up this season.

Maple Leaff open from mid-day apparently; that's a bit late, so the Red Lion looks a more likely bet.

Lost at Cardiff with him playing, I'm sure of it.

Yeah, or before 6.45pm tonight, I was told this yesterday on the phone when trying to swap my Block 40 tickets for the Cheats game which I had ordered on Sunday for tickets in blocks 1-3, which they wouldn't let me do; even though the woman on Sunday on the phone line cocked up by telling me that blocks 1-3 weren't on sale for the Cheats game, when she should have said for Doncaster.

Maybe they were only on sale to people who went to the ticket office in person, I couldn't get them on the phone and had to settle for Northam block 40 instead.

Just rung up. Annoying that the Itchen Corner blocks are not being made available yet.

Think it was just his total lack of pace that did for him sadly. You could say that right-backs like Jason Dodd weren't that quick, but in terms of positional sense and nous, Dodd was a great right-back.

I was wondering about this. Does anybody know the answer on this?

I thought he looked very promising. Good movement, first touch, bit of pace. Better than I was expecting actually.

Oh OK, sorry, I didn't realised he had played for them. Apologies. To go back to your first point, who can predict? If our top players are coming back into a side which is low on confidence, then they may themselves may well not be so effective when they return. I just get the feeling that it needs something else to kick-start the season, a fresh face to really make a difference, Puncheon could qualify for this, but the bloke just seems so unpredictable I'd hate to have to be his boss.

With respect and all, this is utter hogwash. Relying on Puncheon and a Japanese striker and Spanish midfielder who have never played in England before to pull us out of our declining form is at best a very risky strategy.

I've seen many worse keepers than the Cheats keeper Henderson. Pretty solid from what I've seen of him.

De Ridder really isn't very good at all. If he is our brightest hope, then we are clearly heading downwards.

Yup. Agreed. I would expect it would be worth the best part of £1 million saved for Celtic if they don't have to pay Hooper loyalty bonuses due to him handing in a transfer request. Which he isn't going to do.

I love these translations. Superb comedy value.

Oh heck, not another 45 pages of gossip about Charlie Austin to look forward to.... In all seriousness, I've never liked the way he always seems to take great delight in scoring against Saints, he also seems to have put weight on from his Swindon days if I'm not mistaken. It also pains me to think we could be spending over £2 million on a player we could have got for £25,000 from Poole Town. That said, on balance, I have to agree with you about Charlie Austin. He's a talented player.

I thought that Rodriguez wanted to stay up north though? Also, all this talk of Rodriguez or Sordell being reserve options if (or rather when) the Hooper move falls through. I can't see that if I were Rodriguez or Sordell, I'd be particularly inclined to want to join Saints if I were only a back-up option. I really hope that we will not regret on signing Jutkiewicz, but as each day of the window passes, I fear that will look like a big-time mistake. For what he would have cost (£2m) we would still have had plenty of cash for other reinforcements.

Agreed. The only person I see gaining out of all this is Hooper himself, with a probable re-negotiated contract with Celtic. Without having any insider info at all, I'm convinced it's a smokescreen and that Saints have been working on getting a different (cheaper) striker in, and it's a boost to Cortese's ego if people are going to believe that he is sanctioning £6 million-plus bids for players. To be honest, even though he is clearly a class act, I'm not sure Hooper would be a good signing for Saints. Big-money signings have rarely worked out for us over the years, thinking particularly from 2001 - 2005 and then the clown Burley's purchases.

Is it safe to download the vShare plugin on that site?

This is showing Spurs v Wolves.

Agree with all of this. I think we've goofed big-time here. Jutkiewicz is clearly a fast-improving player who would have scored plenty of goals for us in the second-half of the season.

One of my favourite phrases of Uncle Dave is at the start of a sentence, when as if to add emphasis or extra importance, he says "Just for the listeners....". It is almost as if he thinks he is providing a dual commentary for people at the game who can see what is going on.