sandwichsaint

Nah, prices wouldn't fall that far in Championship (the price cut would be the extra games, similar prices, four games more). Much bigger prob would be the telly money but isn't there now even bigger parachute payments so prob ok on that score for two seasons. Not going to happen anyway, this year or for the foreseeable future.. we'd have to do some really silly over-selling combined with some serious under-recruiting on replacements to be relegated..... (amazing what a 3-0 home win can do for a chap's confidence).

Not quite 10000..... Eight seasons of PL football at SMS have averaged 30,755 Eight seasons of non-PL football have averaged 22,200 (which includes 17,849 when we went down from the champ to lge one, and 20,982 in our first season in Lge 1 For our single most recent season in the Championship we averaged 26,420. If it's priced right and we are competitive in the Championship looks like we have a base of c24,OOO. http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/soto.htm

I might have got that wrong then, I should have just written 'people didn't want to see JWP....in the side again' .

Fickle things football fans! Three goals against a really weak side and everything's good again. Thought people never wanted to see JWP and Hojberg in the same side again, now they're our number one pairing, based on one decent game. Plenty of positives though, Yoshida, Cedric, Romeu all had good games and the front three of Tadic/Redmond/Jay Rod looks well balanced and threatening when they are all on their game (which they were yesterday). Did MOTD2 clear up the phantom/non-offside goal? And not seen it anywhere else, why wasn't the foul on long for the penalty a straight red? Onwards and upwards, never get too high when we win or too low when we lose (unless we win on Weds then we can get as high as we like for the rest of the season).

Totally off-topic, has anybody ever done an FA Cup and Lge cup double? Can't think they have, that would be one in the eye for the knockers who said we were finshed.

Having only seen it once live. Ref is standing facing goal 25 yds out Ball is struck into goal (via defender) Lino doesn't flag (correct decision) Ref thinks fds are in, or close to,GK's sight lines ..... Ref asks lino if (fd*s) were offside when shot was struck, Lino says 'yes' so ref disallows goal.... correct if that was it. but apparently no fds were offside. Having seen it once, live, i call 'goal# and ref c'''up, MOTD2 will show us.

A lot of truth in this, if Klopp throws in an alarm clock I'd say 'done deal'. Liverpool mate, ST holder, says he is a beast; the media have him down as a bit of a lady's part. It's a long time (over-long some might say) since we had a beast-cum-lady's-part around the place, he might be just what's needed to get JWP, Redmond and Hojberg to the mythical 'next level'.

Have you got one that cross references price of STs v distance traveled? Given that we have STs close to £London prices/£top6 prices and the widest/most far-flung ST fan base in the PL (based on some dodgy RL metric from way back when). I for one am not rushing to put £50 of fuel in the car on Sunday, leave home at 08-00 and arrive back home at 17-30 .. to watch (probably) one goal (and it's a toss up which side scores it) .... damn my sense of entitlement ... I much preferred going to Swindon/Wycombe/Ipswich/Norwich/ Walsall/Peterborough midweek (!) knowing we would be entertained and we had something to play for too!

Traffic and parking should be pretty light on Sunday ...

3-0 13,200

Matt Oakley was playing for Exeter last season (33 games at the age of 37), not sure if he's still playing this season?

Saints ease past Norwich with a much-changed team, it's not pretty, it's freezing cold, but we get the job done. 75% of the post-match thread slags the: team/selection/players/manager/rotation/the board/other posters, plus ca change? C'est la Saints Web vie!

Everton won't be happy........'first centre half to go to China'.

2+2 with Allardyce's comments this morning, you would have to think we are playing hard ball with Palace over the price .... good on us!

Solid explanation of the bleeding obvious. (x - y ) + vz + va = Where x is the original squad, take away y (the best players), and add v multiplied by z, where v is the number of new players added and z represents a cheaper, younger, emerging player, you end up with something less than the original x. Repeat for a few years and add 'a' (academy players) to the equation and we will end up with three teams where the second and third teams are better than most people's but the first team is never quite as good as it might have been. The (sustainable) Southampton Way in a nutshell.

Spanish Carlton Palmer.

Thoroughly decent bloke, always seemed very genuine and honest with his comments.

You missed out Lallana's wild slide on Cedric when we were countering two on one in the first half, and a host of other misdemeanours. On balance booking Tadic was one of the few things he got right all night.

One of the few things he got right all night! It was clearly a yellow card in the rules of the game (Tadic running ten yards directly towards him, waving his arms and presumably giving him a right sweary mouthful too); notwithstanding that Tadic had been wrestled over by Clyne immediately preceding that it was the 'correct' decision. Agree the ref was totally inept and biased all evening but let's get him for the plenty of things he did and didn't do!

Loving all the Liverpool 'under-performing' and 'not-turning-up' stuff this morning .. a little bit of credit for our team and our manager please.

Somebody's tired What a great night that was, thought the support was really good too. Definitely given ourselves half a chance which is a massive step up from the 'no chance' we were on 12 hours ago!

A touching scene, and he could give you some tips on how to drink wine while you were at it.

Chris Perry - his legs had gone but he put himself through it every week for us. Antonio - I thought he had excellent potential, the forum genius's and the fans on the board knew better, one that got away. Osvaldo - I didn't see much of him but he was always 'interesting', and that goal too - probably 3 years ahead of his time punching Fonte out as well. PS I do realise we couldn't sign Antonio at the time.

When did the story about his missus being unsettled 'appear' in the press? Pre 5pm Saturday or post 5pm Saturday?

Sat16th Sat 23rd Boxing Day football on the Tuesday Sat 30th NYD fixtures on the Monday FA Cup 3 on Sat 6th Jan This would have seemed a completely 'normal' set of fixtures at one time. Two flies in the PL ointment: the games will be moved all over the shop for TV, and the completely superfluous round of games shoe-horned in on Wed 20th Dec. Clearly the 'fairest' option would be to have every team play on the same dates and move the TV games to 13-00/17-00/20-00 or whatever on the scheduled day. Double clearly this won't happen - TV pays the piper and they want games spread right through the holiday period. Best get our whinging in now and then suck it up, it's what every other team has to do, just might feel a little bit sorry if a smaller team qualifies for the Lge cup SFs though....