sandwichsaint

A few years ago they used to run a cup competition along the lines of the JPT which mixed Div 3 and 4 with the top end of non-league (the Vauxhall Conference as it was then). Cue the sports reporter on our local TV late-evening news bulletin concluding with, 'And finally, in the South coast derby, it was Bournemouth 2 Dover 0'; that must have been one of the furthest derbies in the history of the game.

Aren't Brum/Villa/Wolves nearer?

Wolves home, FA Cup 3?

I still don't buy this FIFA/UEFA conspiracy bo77ocks, it just doesn't stack up. Alpine's original point was that he knew, first-hand, a FIFA official who told him that they (officials) were briefed to favour the bigger teams. I refuse to believe this and no one has produced any credible evidence on this thread that the refs and officials are 'officially', FIFA-sanctioned, bent. Beckham was sent off? Get over it! Ref completely blindsided misses a handball? Get over it! Trottman kicked the ball out of the keeper's hands at Southend (allegedly, there is certainly no clear cut video 'evidence' to prove this)? Get over it! If games were routinely bent then why let France get to the 110th minute of a series of twelve games to let them through? Why not give the penalty when Annelka fell over the keeper (not a pen but the ref could easily have got away with giving it)? Why not card a few Irish players in the first leg and take them out of the second leg via suspensions? Of course sport is riddled with cheating and fixing (drugs/dodgy transfers/bribing officials/match-fixing etc etc), the essential difference being that these acts are perpetrated by individuals, or teams, or clubs. Where this crosses the line is that it is claimed by many on here that the official body (FIFA/UEFA) actively sanctions an improper outcome on the pitch, 'by briefing match officials to favour one side over the other'. Rather than persue an arbitary incorrect referreeing decision Ireland would have much more beef in their complaint if they focussed on the off-the-field shenanigans. The seeding system has clearly back-fired in that only 2 of the 4 seeds went through (more massive evidence that the games were fixed, not!), approx the same number that might have gone through in an open draw. If the goalposts were moved and the original competitions rules stated the 8 qualifiers will play off via an open draw then the Irish would have a very strong case in law to say that the decision to move to a seeded draw was a breach of natural justice, it is far more likely that the original conditions didn't specify any details of the draw but merely said 'the 8 teams will play off', in that case UEFA have cleverly left themselves open to manipulating the draw at a later stage (which they did to maximum effect for the 4 'favoured' teams) and to the detriment of Ireland who ended up with a 25% chance of playing the biggest fish in the pool as against a 1/7 chance of drawing France. At the end of the day it is all irrelevent now: there won't be a replay, Henry won't be banned, nobody will apologise, Ireland should have scored a second, it will all happen again sometime in the future. C'est la vie!

Absolutely refuse to believe this! I'd rather be called naive and gullible, than subscribe (in all senses of the word) to something that in reality is one big con!

Gotta feel for the ref this morning, who had been excellent up till then. It was just a complete fluke that both the ref and lino were blindsided as to the ball falling beyond a crowd of players and out of their sight... when you look at it like that then perhaps it's a surprise it doesn't happen more often? Have to say would it have happened with one of Platini's much derided 'extra linesmen' behind the goal?

So if in March we are in solid mid-table and we are playing Leeds at Wembley then I take it the knockers above won't be wanting cup-final tickets? AP has to balance short-term success (creating a winning side/winning mentality/squad building/ bums on seats) against a long-shot at the play-offs. He would have got slaughtered if he had played the reserves v Charlton and we had been turned over. For me, he's doing a pretty good job so far and I'm sure he's as aware as any of us of the obvious limitations of the squad and will strengthen decisively at Xmas and again in the summer. Clearly keeping our profile high and our gates over 20k can only help in attracting the quality of player we all want to see at SMS. Yesterday was a bad day at the office and a real wake up call for those that think this team would be challenging in the CCC! The GK and back four all have individual merit but collectiviley they are not adding up to the sum of their parts, no clean sheet in 12 is pathetic at this level! I said after Southend (and got slaughtered for it) that you can't accomodate Lallana wide left in a 4-4-2 and keep a strong defensive shape, point proved yesterday? MS and Hammond both poor yesterday, neither seemed to know what the other was doing, neither of them effectivelty shielded the back four (I would imagine Wotton will play the first 60 mins next Sat) and neither had any quality to unlock BHA's massed defence. Lallana needs to go back in the free role in a 4-5-1 where he was unplayable for a run of about 5 or 6 games. Antonio's bull-in-a-china-shop style is better suited to the bench than starting games, Papa showed when he came on he's still keen to be here and I'm not sure we will keep him interested long term if we continue to bench him. Connolley has looked class so far but yesterday was a game too far for him (particualrly given the scraps he fed on), if he can score a goal in 20 mins do we need to play him for 90 mins? I'd be wrapping him in cotton wool and trying to get 2 years out of him. I think most people at the start of the season would have given AP 2 years to get out of this league, and considering he started from somewhere well behind zero and has had only a part of one transfer window most people would probably still say we are on track to achieve that. If we see good attacking football and plenty of goals (not the long ball rubbish served up yesterday!), we continue to strengthen the squad, we continue to play to 20k-plus home crowds, we go to Wembley and win the paint pot, and we finish somewhere between 8th-13th it will have been an excellent season, a few on here last night want to get over themselves, and quickly!

A re-match against Swindon would be sweet and would hopefully show how far we've come. I'm assuming it's a 2-legged semi after this round? You would have to think that if we win on Weds and avoid Norwich we have a v realistic chance of Wem-ber-ley.

Confused now, is the Park and Ride still running from Hamble Lane? I've never used it myself but somebody ought to tell thir 'official' site if it is'n't....

If that goal had been scored in the Champions League this week they would still be showing it now! Awesome! Pace, power, control, thinking it through, and a really cool finish .. absolutely top draw! Just watch him move it inside off his right (wrong) foot and finish first touch with his left ... first class.

Scything run into the area from Antonio and the commentator calls it as 'muchos, muchos, muchos, Mick Channon .....', classico!

http://www.atdhe.net/10303/watch-bristol-rovers-vs-southampton I'm watching this one; first time I've ever used it and it works a treat. Pretty even game, Saints 4-4-2, Connolley looks lively and a couple of decent bits from Antonio, haven't seen much of Lambert yet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/oct/21/gareth-southgate-middlesbrough-sacked-fans Decent piece in the Grauniad yesterday saying much the same about Gareth Southgate, (sorry can't do posh links)

Not sure if it's entirely about 'man management' but judging by the above it's certainly not about coherent thought and persuasive arguement. Rarely have I seen such mangled syntax. TBF I did LOL at the dead duck/feathers/race horse analogy.

TBF it's probably more a case of monkeys and typewriters, how many ex-Saints managers are there are out there? There must be a dozen either managing elsewhere, or somewhere on the periphary.

Never say never, but I'd be very surprised if AP walked out on Saints in the next 2-3 years. He's got everything he needs here and is on the verge of building something really good, with all the fan and boardroom support he will ever need.

LOL Where did you live at Crabble? RiverEnd, Town End, Centre Spot, behind the rugby club? I'm also a bit of a part-time Jolly Boy too; it's the first time Saints and Dover have ever been one game apart in the FA Cup draw, and wouldn't you just love it that's it's Eastleigh (and 60-odd other combinations) that stands between us? Have to say that old Saints from the last 5 years would have been given a very difficult time with an away draw at Dover but I can't see the current lot being bothered too much by non-league oppo; Dover and Saints promotion double? You'd have got 500-1 at the start of the season, lucky to get 50-1 now!

My personal triple whammy was: Wolves away last season, Sheff Weds away last season, and then Swindon away this year. Three absolute shockers on and off the pitch, hopefully we'll never see that sort of a shambles on the pitch again, and that sort of beaten-before-we've-started response from the travelling legions. Last three games I've been to have been brilliant on the pitch and off! Charlton a Gillingham h Southend a ..... how fortunes can change .... onwards and upwards from here me thinks.

I don't watch it very often but did last night and I quite liked the feature on the Swindon fan. The guy got to meet Danny Wilson before the game and DW always comes over as a decent bloke whenever I've seen him ,a bit of joshing and banter before the game. After the game (Swindon lost 0-2 at home) the guy gets to meet with DW pitchside and lays straight into the team including two f-words, Wilson keeps smiling, as the guy gives the team both barrels. Who hasn't at sometime wanted to stand where that guy was stood, right after the game, and give it to one (or more!) of our managers?

When was the last time we were 2-0 up in an away game before half time? Can't be very many times in the last however many years; it's great to see us scoring early and scoring often!

I'm really finding it hard to get my head around this attitude that a minority of people would 'choose' not to go up this season ... some would rather we waited a year and Went-Up-As-Champions, others think we might not be ready .... FFS! In no way am I suggesting this would happen but take this scenario: We win 25 of our remaining games We sign two more decent players in Jan We play the second half of the season to home crowds of 25k We take followings of 1500+ to all away games We win our play-off semi 4-1 on aggregate We win 3-0 at Wembley in the play-off final Pardew named L1 manager of the year We sign 4 good CCC players in the summer window We have a 'proper pre-season' for the first time in how long? We sell 18k season tickets for next season's CCC Are some people really saying if that scenario carried through (however unlikely!) 'we wouldn't be ready to play in the CCC next season'; would some people really swap that scenario 'to go up as Champions' twelve months later?

Is it on in Hotshots? (or whatever it was called)

Can we start the season again? On the Gillingham and Southend performances and with the current line-up how many points have we nominally dropped so far? You would have to think that we could/should have beaten Millwall, Brentford, Colchester, Stockport .... those points are handicapping us just as much as the -10. I think if we can maintain current form/team spirit then 4 game mini-sequences of W-W-D-L (7 points out of 12) are not inconceivable. Obvious concerns are squad depth and relying heavily on certain individuals, remove any 2 of KD/Trott/Jaidi/Hamm/Schn/Lalla/Lamb/Papa and we would start to notice the difference, we really do need to keep our strongest X1 fit and suspension-free for as long as possible. I think we will be comfortably out of the bottom four by the half way mark (we need to make a net gain of 6 points in 11 games to achieve this) and we will then have 23 games to finish in a solid mid-table finish. For what it's worth on the evidence of the last 2 games I don't think we will finish in the relegation or the play-off places, but probably likely to finish nearer the top than the bottom. Saturday at Oldham? I hope that we will be committed and hard-to-beat, and we can maybe grab one or two goals in open play again now that for the first time in ages we have got a range of goal scoring options. 0-0? 0-2? could be a 1-0 or a 2-0 .... tricky away game, I'll take what comes with the condition that we beat MK Dons at home the game after.

For Keith's mum: So farewell 'the Pink', Not the Floyd or Lilly or the Panther, though you were special to us. A miracle of old technology. Done down by new We'll all miss you. EJ Thribb (age 17 in 1977)

Always known as 'the Pink' in my house c1970 - 1976. Remember queueing on a Saturday evening outside the newsagents at Netley for it to come out, it used to arrive in Netley around 6 o'clock; if memory serves for the price of 4p (or '4 new pennies' as we probably said then). Fantastic paper in its time, big match day report, lots of inside stuff about all diff sports around the area, all the main results and tables on the front page, first half reports on local league games, and 'final' scores from local league games printed vertically as an extra in a horizontal column across the bottom of the back page (small prize for anybody who knows the technical name for that bit?). Absolutely excellent piece of journalism/editing/printing to get the whole thing nailed together (presumably on traditional type face), printed and in the shops by 6.00 o'clock-ish. Can't comment so much on the quality of the paper in the later years but my Grandma used to periodically post me a bundle of old copies and it was a great way for any 'exiles' to keep in touch. Guess like lots of things it's been superceeded by the all-conquering t'internet but a shame to see it go.