Matthew Le God

It does reduce the cost, you take the price off the amount you paid for the season ticket and it would be easy to sell them to friends/family/work colleagues. As you would sell them for season ticket price divided by 23 games, which gives them a bargain compared to match day prices.

Looks good from what I've seen, in the brief time I've seen him play.

Give the season ticket to friends/family/work colleagues for the evening games and goto the weekend games.

Don't worry Clarky, if Grant Holt can make it, Rickie Lambert can.

Exactly, for example "poor" Pompey have Nugent, Kitson and Lawerence all on huge wages £15k+. I would imagine a number of Saints players had promotion clauses in their contracts that mean they are getting towards(ish) the £15k p/w figure, from the approx £9k p/w in League One. I'd guess Lambert, Fonte and Lallana would be getting near those figures now that Saints are in the Championship.

He is on a plane to Denmark tomorrow for a few weeks of tournament football.

Robbie Keane is a Premier League player for Tottenham (he was on loan at West Ham last season) and most of the others will probably be sold.

I'm not too sure about that, a lot of the season ticket holders around me in the Kingsland struggle to tell the players apart! Of course an awful lot would know who Adkins is through looking at the matchday program or interviews in the media, but I bet you many are unaware of what he looks like.

A lot of Saints fans would probably pass Adkins and Crosby on the street and not realise who they were, let alone the youth scouting team!

Rod Ruddick Chris Welman David Burke All current Saints scouts.

Since the takeover they have announced things like the new head of sales and marketing and other behind the scenes roles.... http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2096187,00.html Plus David Burke's appointment as Scouting & Talent Identification Manager was on the OS... http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2060696,00.html

George Reader refereed the World Cup Final, will Cortese?

Still a Championship player though.

Kelvin should hope Umbro don't take any inspiration from the stationary cupboard at head-office like Reebok do...

Yep, just proposals for the new structure atm. But it is a proposal that suits the Premier League teams, so they will be pushed through very soon. All that may happen is that the Football League clubs may get some of the tweaks to the revised compensation scheme they want as a compromise. The fundamentals will stay the same.

Probably because they have a tattoo.

The club still had a badge even when there wasn't one on the shirt.

So it has, but that doesn't mean you are right to say "shirts come and go the badge is what sticks to a club". 37 seasons out of 125 seasons is not that much to say it sticks and should do indefinitely. Surely if clubs should stick with badges, Saints would still use the one from 1885, and not 1974 like you want?

Saints badge (with slight tweaks to it)... ...has only been in use for 37 years, or roughly 30% of the clubs history. For 70% of Southampton's history has seen the club use a different badge (one of which you dismissed). So your theory that "shirts come and go the badge is what sticks to a club" is nonsense if you use Saints as evidence.

Then why are some of the biggest clubs in the world interested in him, despite Alex never playing a competitive league game higher than the 3rd tier? You don't need to see a winger up against a Premier League left back to determine if he has pace, ball control, a good first touch, passing ability etc etc or not. Put Walcott in Saints League One side and you could see he was a good player even though he is up against Dagenham & Redbridge's left back for exactly the same reason you could determine Chamberlain is a good player up against the same full back. Many footballing skills (but not all) don't require an opponent of any kind let alone a Premier League one, in order to determine if a player is exceptional at them or not.

Are Saints competing for fans with numerous other clubs in the area like Fulham are?

Why do they have 55,000 of them then and not less?

That is a first!

Wigan have a tiny fanbase, it is a rugby town and they are surrounded by lots of other larger clubs in close proximity, even if they sold adult season tickets for £150 they would struggle to sell out.