Pat from Poole

Anderton was a decent player for England TBF, much though it pains me to say it. I was at the Argentina game in St. Etienne in 98 and he was immense that nght.

Barry Hearn is a cooont, as Stu might say.

Stu, you really don't want to go to BournemouthWHO??? away. It'll be dreadful with no atmosphere and we're bound to lose to those idiots. I could easily get a ticket in the home end, but would rather listen to Merrington's drivel on Solent, which I have strangely found rather endearing in recent months.

He wasn't as good as Twist and Pulse.

Charlie Austin, McLean at Peterboro and Lee Hughes will be giving Rickie some competition. I'll be interested to see how many Pitman scores at BournemouthWHO???

I quite liked Chaplow when he played for us, not least as he reminded me of CMFG, but I do doubt that he is any better than what we already have.

BTW, don't park at the BIC, it can take an age to get out of there; there's an uncovered car park on Exeter Road which I'd suggest is a better bet, just by the BIC turn towards the Winter Gardens, rarely gets full despite being in a good location.

I'd get there by 10.00 if I were you, there's obviously been a lot of talk of it being a hot day tomorrow, can see a lot of people trying to get down there early, thinking it will rain for the rest of the summer.

Beaches in Poole are far better. HTH.

Puncheon's salary was regularly quoted on here just after he signed for Saints. I'm led to believe the fact we're not a PLC makes no difference to the requirement to disclose a salary of an individual player on the assumption he isn't a director of the company, which would be a circumstance I have never heard of before.

I completely agree, but then you could say the same about Puncheon, rejected by Plymouth but being paid about £6K a week by us. Yes, he is talented, but he will go missing in a lot of away games next season.

Hilarious. Take Millwall's right-back tonight (Smith?), released by Swindon last season and signed on a free by Millwall. More than adequate for Div 3. With Calderon, we'd probably be looking at a 3-year contract on silly money. Bit like Puncheon, sporadically a pretty good player, but is he really worth £1 million in wages over the duration of his contract at Saints? People know we have money and will hold out for top wedge. Doesn't make them good players.

who???????? Ffs.

I fear it would be foolish to ignore Hoofroyd.

I don't think I'll be too bothered if we miss out on signing this bloke; he seems your typical mercenary money-grabbing arse. There's plenty of other decent English players who we could get on a Bosman whose wages would be a lot less then this guy, and who would probably show more loyalty to us.

Fighting Fit by Gene is a great song, as is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica and Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy as others have said. My choice would be Cult of Personality by Living Colour.

To be honest, if he did go there, you'd have to say that a strike force of Rickie and Maynard would be a good bet to get them promotion to the Prem. The CCC is going to be a really weak league next season, wouldn't be at all surprised if Leeds finish in the top 2, and if the Skates do start on -17, I think they'd still stay up.

Agreed. It will be a huge game for them, but just another game for us, no more important than Yeovil or Brighton.

Leeds fans pretty much took over half of Dorset that Bank Holiday weekend. I was working at Tesco at Tower Park in Poole on the day of the Bournemouth v Leeds game and there were OB in force there that night, worried there would be trouble. All the B & B's in Bournemouth and Poole were full of Leeds. Leeds fans are such a bunch of idiots, they've ruined the concept of a decent Bank Holiday weekend away game beer-up for a weekend for ever. Apart from the play-offs I guess.

The goal difference is because when we're good, we're very good. The standard of performances against Huddersfield at home and Bristol Rovers away is unlikely to have been matched by any other team in the division. The problem is, you don't need to be "very good" to get in the top 2, you just need to be consistently good, and able to scrape spawny 1-0's and 2-1's in tight games. Yeovil away was one of the few times we've done that this season. Teams who get promoted do it regularly.

Yup, pretty much how I see it.

Inclined to agree. You just can't predict with certainty that we'll be in the top 2, as we need to develop a ruthless streak which will see us win a lot more away games on crummy pitches. Southampton FC have not had this for almost 30 years. We also don't know what players we will lose and who our manager will be. It's over 4 months until the end of the August transfer window; that's the sensible time to bet.

Most people realised that the game was up when Huddersfield beat Millwall on Friday night. I didn't go, but thought 18k was a decent crowd in the circumstances. Anybody expecting 30,000 tonight was daft.

Ultimately not quite good enough. Congratulations to the top 6 sides, who have all been very good all season and deserving of a play-off place. We have not been consistent enough over the season.

Not Saints related, but my favourite bit of action from the last few days was from Preston's game with Scunny at the weekend. Scunny's first goal was hilarious. The Preston centre-half St. Ledger played a backpass to his keeper, turned round to berate a colleague for something or other, not himself realising that his backpass to the keeper was woefully short and allowed a Scunny player to run on and score. One of those that you have to see to appreciate; very funny though.