sandwichsaint

TBF we haven't seen much of Harding at this level so no guarantee he could step straight into last year's form anyway. I seriously doubt Saints have paid big money for a dud. The player would have been thoroughly scouted and the club aware of his strengths and weaknesses, obviously they decided he was the right fit for what we are trying to achieve in the long run and that NA could improve his game. Of the two players which could you see playing in the PL, now? In a years time? In five years time? That's gotta be Fox all the way, in a nutshell he has more potential than DH who was prob playing somewhere near his max in L1. At the moment I'm happy for Fox to continue but I'm sure NA isn't blind to his positional weaknesses and is working hard to overcome these in training. I think DH had been a great servant over the last few seasons but realistically I don't see us benching a 2m pound full back!!! any time soon.

nob

Is this Saints related? I thought this football club only started in 2010? Terry Paine is just some old geezer who played for a team that used to be called Southampton; nothing to see here.

Behave! Granted they are a similar type of player but CMS is twice the player LB will ever be. Check out their goals-per-game, I haven't but you can.

Let's wave a magic stick - Saints to get promoted this year, and to spend the money necesary to start next season in the Premier League with a competetive squad - what level of pricing would give 'weekly gates at full capacity?' I don't think we would 'sell out weekly' at prices above £35; I don't think the club will offer us Prem Lge football at less than £35 a pop. QED we won't be 'selling out' every game we play in the Prem?

brilliant!!!!

Good thread, and in the way that 'do you want promotion?' is a bit of a paradox I'd also say that being relegated to the third division was one of the best things that ever happened to this club! Many fans of Saints only ever knew top-flight football, unsurprisingly being that we were in the top flight for 28(?) continuous years. Going down, then down some more, has re-attached the fans with 'proper' football, and the subsequent successes (JPT, winning runs, records broken, promo, flying start this time) has allowed us to regenerate a fantastic team spirit and buzz about the whole club. As to whether we want to go up? How can you realistically stop that? For those that can afford to go now, but will be able to afford to go less often in the Premier, and there will be literally thousands in that demographic, what is the alternative? Only cheer until we have got enough points to stay up this year? Maybe boycott the last 6 home games if we look in danger of going up? Obviously that won't happen and people want to see their team win as many games as possible and their team doing as well as possible. Do people really want to stop players like Lallana and Lambert getting into the Prem and doing really well in a Saints shirt? How good would it be to see Adam Lallana (Eng) printed on the back of a Saints programme? My hope would be that the club would bring in a much more tiered pricing system, match tickets at Borussia Dortmund currently range between E65 and E12 with about 7 different price points in between; tickets at SMS currently range from 35(?) - 25(?) with three(?) different price points. It should be perfectly feasible to bring in tickets at say, 50, 40, 30 , 20 and arrange the various availabilities to maximise their revenue while still making a limited number of 'affordable' tickets available for each game. Or as an equally good alternative they could set aside an area of the stadium (one of the Chapel corners say) and set up an Airline-type pricing model whereby tkts for all games were put out online at the start of the season with different starting prices for different oppo available from Day 1, tkts for Bolton home on a Tuesday evening in Feb could be put out in August at £10 and tks for Liverpool on a Saturday could be put on at a starting price of £45, all the games would then float up and down according to demand/sales, right up until the day before kick off. Of course the club won't do either of these alternatives - why invest some time and energy in producing a model that will enable the most number of fans to share in the team's success? The reality, based on the experience of the last two seasons is that the club will half-heartedly offer relatively expensive STs (say 550 to 750-plus), and follow this up with matchday prices 50-plus, 45, 35-38. And all the supporters who stayed with the club on the way down and on the way back up can go hang; pay up or shut up will be the order of the day. The reality is that the club will always choose the perceived higher revenue/smaller crowd model, over the bigger crowd/smaller revenue+more periphals model (up to a point they are right to do this, but it would nice to see them being more creative with their pricing and experimenting in that middle ground). What is so refreshing is so that so many people on here can see it coming and are so relaxed about it! We haven't even started on the effect of away prices/numbers/atmosphere yet in comparison between the lower leagues and the Prem!! Anyone who thinks we will sell-out every game/nearly every game in the Prem at these premium prices is seriously deluded - have you read a newspaper today?

Old, but frequent, gripe; why do our away tickets seem to go on sale so much later now? I'm waiting for Reading and Derby tkts to come out yet West Ham (which game is in the same week) have had theirs for at least a week and they are available on their general sale now. Is it that all our opponents only give them to us a week or 10 days before a fixture, or do the club actually receive them earlier but only release them relatively close to the match date?

Erik Martin?

Cue the old chestnut 'They would have been counted in the attendance anyway'. I've never seen any 'evidence' that this urban myth is in fact FACT. Why would they count people that aren't there? No one wants to know how many tkts have been sold, we want to know how many came through the turnstiles and watched the game. Looked like the (very late) promotion on the Chapel arm-chairs fell a little flat?

Apparently a couple of the lads missed the game yesterday, they were still looking for the Woolston ferry at three thirty.

Davis 9 FR 9 (best game in a Saints shirt) JF 8 Hoov 8 Fox 7 Gully 8 Hammond 8.5 Cork 8.5 Lallana 9 Connolly 9 RL 9 Take your pick really, I've gone for Connolly but when you've got this level of consistency you are going to win a lot of games of football!

Fair play ESB! After my rather intemperate outburst I too wandered over to Wiki (the source of all truth) and 'tis indeed the case that 'gay' dates from much before I realised. One moments thought would have placed TRB's Sing if you're glad to be gay squarely in the 70's. (Still didn't find over-much evidence that this was the primary reason for Marvin to change his name though!)

I'll wager you a pie it doesn't go past ST holders (would love to be proved wrong though!)

Is it too early to say I'm looking for 3 (or 2) tickets? If any ST holders are feeling a bit chicken-licken at the sight of a 'skate' I will gladly make it worth their while to fd me their tkts. PM me, you know it makes sense, innitt?

I very much doubt this is true, when did the word 'gay' come about? mid-80's?

Dover are struggling for goals at the moment. He would def get a game there but whether he would get any goals is alltogether another story.

Rather than the point you are attempting to make (using the figures 25.7% and 11% to somehow imply that tax rises on the rich have risen massively, they haven't - in the 70's we still had 'super-tax' in the 80%s and 90%s). Your figures actually show how unequal income distribution has become, to the extent that we are now relying on 1% of the population to fund 25% of the income tax base - as well as the more unequal distribution of wealth we now have much higher indirect taxation which is paid by everyone at the same rate. Of course the top-rate turkeys won't vote for Xmas; read Simon Jenkins in today's Grauniad for a more realistic comparison of income tax versus other types of taxation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/08/tax-winners-trickle-up-economy

Did you actually read the OB's comments? Probably something to do with it being a) potentially illegal, and b) potentially dangerous?

Redknapp's team away at Mansfield in the Lge Cup? (wink thing)

Did anyone on here go to Benicassim? My nipper went and he randomly met up with several Saints fans out there ... bloody scarfers!

OK player at the time, but we can do much better now - let's all 'draw a line' and quietly move on. (This thread has bought on some nasty flash-backs; it's so much moorrrre fun supporting Saints nowadays).

Netley chip shop after Sea Scouts on a Friday night - chips 6p, pea fritter 4p, pickled onion 2p, lo the boy that had saved up 12p over the week; to live like a king after scouts on a Friday night. They also did 'scraps' which was basically a bag of fried batter off-cuts which you soaked in S+V and which cost 1p !!!! Bliss on a cold Friday night in Netley. Happy days (1971-'74), a wholly more innocent time than today!

Pure Alan Partridge! GWC, unintended comedy genius.