ooh it's a corner

at least this is of some comfort. Going down is bad enough, going down with Portsmouth coming up, and the momentum swing that both teams would be on, would be soul destroying.

Lots of comments on here about worthiness of fans and the shame of not selling out a cup semi-final, but if I were in a senior position at the club I would be hugely fearful of what this means to them. Clearly, the season ticket holding fan base has not taken up their ticket allocation. There will be many reasons for this, but I would imagine a large factor is disillusionment/apathy towards Southampton Football Club (and perhaps football in general). When your bread and butter fan base can't be arsed to buy FA Cup semi-final tickets, I wonder how many can be bothered to renew their season tickets (regardless of what division we are in next year). I'm sure we will sell out, but the last few thousand tickets are going to be bought by folks who don't pay to watch SFC regularly. I'm also pretty confident that unless we a) stay up b) invest heavily in proven footballing talent c) recruit a named manager we can believe in (happy if this is Hughes if he keeps us up) Then season ticket sales are going to fall off a cliff for next season.

We'd still only manage a nil-nil...

I still believe we can escape this. Point at home to Chelsea, 3 points against Bournemouth and a point each from Swansea and Man City. Huddersfield to get nothing from their remaining five fixtures (Watford, Everton, Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal). We stay up....

https://www.isportsweb.com/2018/04/09/whos-on-the-market-for-the-new-york-rangers-next-head-coach/ Ralph in a list of suspects for the NY Rangers head coach...... Could have a summer exodus on our hands again, but of backroom leaders rather than players (hoping we stay up of course)....

Might not be a job for boy, but haven't you just described Austin?

it's even more painful looking at it like that. With the exception of Austin/Pahars which is like comparing engine oil with fine wine, I would take today's players in every instance. They simply are not performing. They need to stop believing their own hype (and probably their agents' hype) and put in a bloody shift. Work hard in training, work hard during the game, try and notch some points. They really need to understand that there wont be a big queue forming to sign them up if we go down....this may be their only chance to earn £x0,000.00 per week.

The Hollywood stars and Chinese Palace are obvious tourist pulls. Get down to the palace early doors, close to 9am as poss, and you'll have some space around you, but during the day it is like a 1980's football turnstile at 2:55pm. Many of the Chinese palace names and hand-prints, foot-prints are famous folk from yester-year. So having to explain who Ronald Reagan is, makes the effort less interesting for the little people. We got our girls to find a star who they wanted to take a picture alongside and then you can google where their star is, along what is now a 2mile+ stretch of Hollywood Blvd with stars on it..... If you don't know where the star is, you've got no chance of stumbling upon it. NBA tickets aren't that hard to get hold of, but you can expect to be in the gods, if you want to pay a football esque price for your tickets. Getting close to the court will end up costing you £200+ per ticket. There is a huge corporate demand and that inflates the bloomin prices. Go direct to Ticketmaster as soon as your flights are booked and arrange to collect on the day. If you can tolerate the length of game, baseball is cheaper !!! Enjoy the beaches. There is something distinctly magical about looking at the Pacific Ocean, and I've never been able to work out why that is..... makes me want to go book some flights somewhere....

cant blame them for that. I would give them a greater chance of coming up than we have of staying up. Portsmouth next season? Depressing thought....

depends on what you want to do with the family. LA has got some great things to go and see/do. If you are into theme parks, then you've got Disney, Knotts Berry farm, Universal all within LA. Both Universal and Disney parks are much much smaller than their Floridian cousins, so if you have been to the FL parks, you may come away disappointed. Universal is especially small and is predominantly now just simulators, rather than physical roller-coasters. I was there 2 years ago with a 10 and 11 year old, and we only spent half a day there..... Obviously LA also has Hollywood and Beverley Hills stuff to go see, which is almost a bucket list box to tick, if you haven't seen it before. That said, brace yourself for more homeless people than you can shake a stick at. All of the US cities cant get to grips with this and inevitably, as a tourist with kids in tow, you'll feel a fraction more vulnerable because of it. If you want to go north, Santa Monica isn't far out of LA and again, it is worth some time on the pier and the beach. The town is also pretty vibrant, plenty of bars and restaurants. You're also within reach of Malibu and Six Flags, again if you want a thrill-based theme park. San Diego is more relaxed than LA, obviously closer to the Mexican border and therefore more noticeable hispanic than LA. Sea World is a big pull in that part of the world, as is San Diego zoo. Sea World does have some negative press around its treatment of large beasts, so has lost some of its popularity. If you are faced with an either/or choice, I would go to the zoo in preference to sea world. All of theme parks are a complete money making machine, so you have to be tolerant of this, or it just gets depressing. You will also pay top dollar for entrance, which again can leave you feeling a bit hard done by if you re only there for a few hours, because people have had enough/too hot/too tired etc.... You are within driving distance of San Francisco, Death Valley, Las Vegas, or San Diego. You won't have time to see all of those in a week, but if you're good travellers in a car, then you could expand the horizons a little by putting some motorway miles in. You could the major tourist stuff in LA 2nights, then drive to Death Valley (c 4 hours), night stopover there. Then head to Las Vegas, 2.5 hour drive from Death Valley, 2 nights there, Then head for Palm Springs, 4 hour drive, night stopover, then back to LA, 2 hour drive, then home. Depends on what you enjoy doing/seeing. Personally, travelling that far isn't something that has happened very often with the family so I don't like sitting on a beach/by the pool. Going full-on for a week is just about do-able, but everyone does get tired, and you are likely to want some time out just to blob by the pool. Also, if you've go to drive, beer consumption takes a hit, which isn't much fun when you're on holibobs. There is an awful lot to do/see/eat in that part of the world. Get everyone to give you their "must see" and hopefully you'll have enough time to do the top idea from everyone.

I can't see us coming back at the first time of asking at all. The best players we have will be sold, either to Premier league teams, or back to continental Europe. We then have a wave of first team regulars who would not get into many premier league teams, but who would be useful squad players in the lower half squads. These guys are earning millions at Southampton and they will be the hardest to move on. We probably end up accepting minimal bids for these folks, just to get them off the payroll. Thankfully the youngsters wont be on mega bucks, but I can't see us getting out of a very competitive division with a mixture of youth and average footballers, that we weren't able to move on in the transfer window.... depressing

all we need now is three quick Saints goals and we close the gap on hudders........

need a newcastle winner to keep huddersfield close. They are the only team that I think we could overtake assuming somebody can find the cow's arse and banjo combination......

However bad we're feeling right now, there is a Chinese gentleman wishing he'd spent £200m on bitcoin rather than this shower of ****e. I wonder what it feels like losing £100m+ with no easy way of getting it back?

is it too early to start drinking?

fifth time lucky, courtesy of correction from DevonSaint (well spotted sir)

Amen to that....

Fixtures for the bottom few. Assuming WBA are doomed and Newcastle and above can get the 35/36/37/38 points required for safety. Not sure when we will play Swansea, so have shoe-horned it in prior to the last game. [table=width: 600] [tr] [td]Southampton[/td] [td]Stoke[/td] [td]Huddersfield[/td] [td]Palace[/td] [td]West Ham[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]28 -15[/td] [td]27 -29[/td] [td]31 -27[/td] [td]30 -18[/td] [td]30 -21[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]West Ham (A)[/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [td]Southampton(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Arsenal (A)[/td] [td]Arsenal (A)[/td] [td]Newcastle(A)[/td] [td]Liverpool(H)[/td] [td]Chelsea(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Chelsea (H)[/td] [td]Tottenham(H)[/td] [td]Brighton(A)[/td] [td]Bournemouth(A)[/td] [td]Man Utd(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Leicester (A)[/td] [td]West Ham(A)[/td] [td]Watford(H)[/td] [td]Brighton(H)[/td] [td]Stoke(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Bournemouth (H)[/td] [td]Burnley(H)[/td] [td]Chelsea(A)[/td] [td]Watford(A)[/td] [td]Arsenal(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Everton(A)[/td] [td]Liverpool(A)[/td] [td]Everton(H)[/td] [td]Leicester(H)[/td] [td]Man City(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Swansea(A)[/td] [td]Palace(H)[/td] [td]Man City(A)[/td] [td]Stoke(A)[/td] [td]Leicester(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Man City (H)[/td] [td]Swansea(A)[/td] [td]Arsenal(H)[/td] [td]WBA(H)[/td] [td]Everton(H)[/td] [/tr] [/table] Got the venue wrong on a couple of those, apologies, this table is now correct......

....

Fixtures for the bottom few. Assuming WBA are doomed and Newcastle and above can get the 35/36/37/38 points required for safety. Not sure when we will play Swansea, so have shoe-horned it in prior to the last game. [table=width: 600] [tr] [td]Southampton[/td] [td]Stoke[/td] [td]Huddersfield[/td] [td]Palace[/td] [td]West Ham[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [td]Points (GD)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]28 -15[/td] [td]27 -29[/td] [td]31 -27[/td] [td]30 -18[/td] [td]30 -21[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]West Ham (A)[/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [td][/td] [td]Southampton(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Arsenal (A)[/td] [td]Arsenal (A)[/td] [td]Newcastle(A)[/td] [td]Liverpool(H)[/td] [td]Chelsea(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Chelsea (H)[/td] [td]Tottenham(H)[/td] [td]Brighton(A)[/td] [td]Bournemouth(A)[/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Leicester (A)[/td] [td]West Ham(A)[/td] [td]Watford(H)[/td] [td]Brighton(H)[/td] [td]Stoke(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Bournemouth (H)[/td] [td]Burnley(H)[/td] [td]Chelsea(A)[/td] [td]Watford(A)[/td] [td]Arsenal(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Everton(A)[/td] [td]Liverpool(A)[/td] [td]Everton(H)[/td] [td]Leicester(H)[/td] [td]Man City(H)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Swansea(A)[/td] [td]Palace(H)[/td] [td]Man City(A)[/td] [td]Stoke(A)[/td] [td]Leicester(A)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Man City (H)[/td] [td]Swansea(A)[/td] [td]Arsenal(H)[/td] [td]WBA(H)[/td] [td]Everton(H)[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Good luck to him. I sincerely hope he earns his bonus for keeping us up.

Come on Les, pull the magic rabbit from the hat. Get Thomas Tuchel in and surprise the whole world. Whatever you do, don't; a) Give it to Kelvin Davis/Francis Benali/Matt Le Tissier or anyone else with a sentimental history with the club b) Give it to Harry Redknapp, coz he will do it for free for the rest of the season (with a big bonus if he keeps 'em up) c) Give it to the cheapest option available. d) Give it to someone who cannot stand up to you or the rest of the Board. We need balance and wise governance, not the Les and Ralph show. thank you

You never know, the new manager playing two up front may take the pressure of him a little and he may find the back of the net. He needs to, because the thought of our record signing being ousted from the first team, by a returning Austin, is quite depressing.

Some of the names may be underwhelming, but wind the clock back 48 hours and we would have all taken that. I would rather be underwhelmed, with a remote chance of staying up, than watch the same mistakes game after game and go down.....

This is brilliant. It's like summer come early... I want somebody inspiring. The biggest sodding name we can buy. (and not Redknapp)