Neil

To be honest it's another pathetic start to the season, to add to the vast back catalogue of pathetic Saints starts to seasons. This one seems to be even more unforgiveable than most of the other ones. I'd take Keegan yesterday, just to wake up the city again and cause a bit of a stir. OK he may not be here for long, but which Saints manager ever is these days? All is not lost yet, but I'm utterly fed up with ****ing up games in August and September every year, and leaving ourselves so much to do. We need a manager tomorrow, even an average manager should be able to get promotion from this league.

I can't put my finger on why we've had 20+ years of ****e starts to the season, but I sure as hell am bloody sick to death of it! In the past some of the pre-season preparation and friendlies have undoubtedly been substandard, but this season I'm not sure. I'm bored of the "We Should Have Won", "Barnard Was Unlucky", "We're Feeling The Pressure", "They had 11 men behind the ball and made it hard for us" guff that we're hearing already, and we've only had two games! I'd like to see the team step up and win some games like they're paid too, no more excuses please!

One of the all-time Saints legends, a very big impact in a a sadly very short space of time. I'm just sorry that I cannot attend today and I'm missing Saturday's game. I will be singing the Liebherr name at other games this season and raising a glass to Markus this evening.

"This summer, Southampton have further augmented the squad with established Championship players, such as Frazer Richardson and Danny Butterfield." Doesn't mention that this is offset by not having Waigo/Antonio, who I would suggest are more likely match winners than the two coming in despite their obvious quality. The Telegraph article is written by a Saints fan (and author of Saints Cult Heroes book) isn't it?

A hugely disappointing figure, but entirely predictable. This probably just means that a couple of thousand people who were going last season anyway will now not need to buy in advance. Can't see much difference in actual attendances at the start of the season, which given starting on zero and favourites for the title is pretty bad. Should have been looking at 15-18k STs, and that was entirely achievable given the right price/structure.

As Saints are now making decisions 'in the interest of everyone's enjoyment', are we (the lifeblood of the club) able to make further suggestions for things that would improve the match-day experience? 'Everyone' is a big claim, but some sort of democracy may be happening! There's been plenty of improvements listed on here before, surely some will be taken into account...

Agree entirely, that's the sort of figure for STs I was looking for and I think it was achievable. The momentum and goodwill from the fanbase has slowed somewhat and I just hope that doesn't impact on the start to the season...

Presumably, first thing tomorrow morning the OS will excitedly tell us that all existing STs have renewed. And that there's long queues of fans at the Box Office waiting to get their hands on the hottest ticket in town. Or perhaps they won't...

Saints winning football matches...

46 easy games. 138 points. We will walk this league...

The point is that with 32,689 seats you have major flexibility (elasticity I think some may call it) with pricing in League One. Ok, Sheffield Wednesday may have 40k seats but I couldn't really care less about them - in fact their match deals look better than ours. This is why I'm particularly annoyed about Cortese's approach - which will backfire on him and probably is already. The thought of so many empty seats again is depressing, when we should really have an excellent team by these standards.

Wednesday had sold 10,460 STs as at 1st June (when their deadline for discounted STs expired). Will be interesting to see how we match up with them. Brighton could use the argument that their ground is limited capacity-wise and full up at the moment (c7k), so prices are artificially high. Of course, whether they actually reduce the prices when they move to Falmer is a different matter.

Out of interest how many season ticket sales do you think are required to prove Cortese right? My fear/expectation is that the sales will prove Cortese to be wrong. Of course if we then sell out St Mary's every week as a top-of-the-table goal machine team we will ultimately get more income anyway. But even if we do produce a table-topping team I think too many fans will already be out of the habit of going, although obviously crowds will pick up. Bearing mind the figure (inc. half STs) of c12,500 last season, I would have expected something upwards of 15k season tickets for the coming season. Anything less than that would be a major disappointment in my opinion.

All personal decisions (perhaps not the kids sometimes though!), and ones that you can plan for in advance financially? Similar to getting a Season Ticket? Sacrifices are required, that's life. When we get a garage bill that's a bit worse than expected, do we pay in installments?

No-one was seriously expecting £125 season tickets were they? The prices are ball-park of what was expected to be honest. As mentioned, one of the biggest problems is people not getting their ST, saying I'll still got to X number of games, the reality is usually that they end up at quite a few less than they originally envisaged. Cortese requires a very fast start to the season from the team (we're overdue one!), and even that may not be good enough to rescue his misguided policy...

Another cunning as a fox plan from our Marketing boys to tap into the "got £75+VAT spare to watch a WC game with a meal and some drinks" mass market in Southampton and surrounding districts. Even more cunning as there's probably no other venue in town showing the games...

Is it cool to wear Abercrombie/Hollister/Fenchurch t-shirts with big logos? (not me honestly...)

If they still take cheques they will undoubtedly be a pain in the arse to administer, so will hit them in the pocket. But they'll probably soon withdraw that option...

I will probably renew, but not now getting the 125 kit, as that will be my 'small' protest against the season ticket debacle. Shame, as I was looking forward to getting it (need a new Saints kit).

So if you go to every away game next season you're paying the thick end of £70 extra?! (maybe an idea to book a couple of away games at the same time etc, but not always possible given the demand for some of the games, plus the ridiculous timescales they give for getting them!) Suggestion for the club - as you're now taking all the fans to the cleaners, could you endeavour to get the away tickets a bit earlier, one month+ would be nice? How long before games do we send to the away team?

Potential for another Leyton Orient style takeover of the ground, but we may only get 1,200 seats behind the goal. (according to internet football grounds) If D&R aren't gonna sell out - which looks likely given their average crowds - they may be advised to give us another side of the ground! District Line takes an age to get there by the look of it, so may look for a pub in the area.

The 7/2 went yesterday and the 100/30 has now gone today! Top price now 3/1 with 10 bookies having shown their hand.

Blue Square prices with 23 teams: (1/4 odds paid on 4 places) http://www.bluesq.com/bet?action=go_events&type_id=4384 We're 7/2 favourites (Sky Bet are 3/1).

As far as I can tell, Cortese has been pretty good with his decision making so far. He's been true to his word, and has done even more than expected (Staplewood etc). His only two obvious mistakes have been: 1) Setting ST prices too high last season, thus restricting the amount sold 2) Delaying the ST release now (albeit other stuff going on like Halo etc) Hopefully no. 2 will be rectified this week, and given the right pricing structure we could be looking at some great crowds next season.

We owe Swindon one next season (in fact we owe them two), can't wait to wipe the smiles off those smug carrot-crunching chavs!