waterlooville saint

Thanks for everything you’ve done for the club, good luck for the future

This is great news. Peretz improved us in lots of ways last season. Our defence became more solid as a unit, he made some outstanding saves and commanded his box well. There were a few clangers, but on the whole a definite upgrade. He’s clearly a character, both in the changing room and with the crowd, which I love. Really looking forward to next season now.

The Stewart situation is frustrating, but I’m not blaming either party. its easy to say the club should have sorted it earlier but we were in an insane fixture schedule in March, April and early May, so I’d have expected both sides to say let’s sort it straight away after the end of the season. The club may well have wanted to extend by an extra year as part of that. As a fan I’m frustrated, but I can understand why Stewart and his representatives want to take this unexpected opportunity to look at other opportunities, especially if he has a good World Cup

I thought we used the loan system well last season, but not so well in our previous promotion season. Being committed to buying THB and insisting on buying Flynn Downes meant we spent nearly £40m of our transfer kitty just putting the squad back near the level of a team that finished 4th in the Championship. Last season we bought our main targets in the Summer and used the loan system to bolster the squad in January. It really depends on our transfer kitty this Summer as to what we do. Hopefully we are able to get good fees for some of our returning players, get a boost from the rumoured clause in Fernandez at West Ham and only have to sell one of our main players if our budget is really squeezed.

I’ve voted no, as for the last 4 months I’ve actually enjoyed watching us play football. Should we have done the spying? No, but I’m sure we’re not alone, just got caught. In a strange way there are positives about it - I can’t understand what, exactly we were benefiting from doing it, but I like the thought of a manager who thinks that small advantage will help and can somehow influence our performance - we’ve not had anyone like that for a while. People are saying this has ruined our reputation, but it was far worse when we got a whole 12 points last season, and the two 9-0 defeats. I don’t understand why people are saying us getting kicked out will cause people to lose their jobs, we’re still in the Championship. Ok, we may have employed more people if we got promoted, but that’s not losing jobs. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be some sort of reprimand but unless the FA forces us to sack him then I don’t think we should. Am I happy about us being kicked out of the playoffs? No, but I don’t think we would have got there without his ability to build a team and get everyone pulling together. The big question is can he get everyone to continue doing that? Only time will tell.

That's a Bummer. Selectred my seat, just finished the purchase process and it's kicked me out and put me back in the queue 😡 3000+ people ahead of me. Hope it doesn't happen again. ... Now received my ticket via email. Guess there are a few gremlins in the system!!

Has to be Scienza, he's been standout throughout the season. Since mid-January a whole lot more names come into the hat - Peretz, Larin, Azaz, Downes, Manning, THB, Bree ... in fact you can list most of the rest of the squad.

Pleased to say that as a member I've just got mine in the Northam.

Got my ticket!! Horrible experience, nearly bought 3 by accident 🙄

Got my ticket online this morning as having to move from block 15. Somewhat disappointed to find that most of blocks 45 and 46 were already taken. Either I was slow off the mark this morning compared to others in the relocation blocks or they were made available to others already. Managed to get into Block 46 but nearer the front than I was looking for. Still it does mean I might be able to spot myself on TV next season 😀

I’ve got my ticket 😃 but god was that a horrible experience. The site did its best to make me think I’d screwed up again by showing me an error message, which fortunately I clicked through and got into the main ticket booking site, then had real problems getting it to let me book a single ticket. Really not a nice experience. So be aware when you’re trying to book it’s a clunky experience, may cycle you through the queue twice and throw in some error messages

Just had the same. Really hoping it’s because there are 2 queues but not convinced. very frustrating to say the least 😡

On the face of it, I'd say it's as good as we could have expected. Relegation always meant there would be a high turnover of players. We needed to trim the squad size, freshen it up, which we've done. Results will be the deciding factor on how good it really was. I find it hard to believe the level of negativity about some of our new signings I read on here and other forums. Yes the Sunderland result & performance was a total disaster, but look at the number of changes that took place in the lineups during the first 5 league games, the majority of which were outside of the managers control. Hopefully the international break has given us time to bed some things in, even though we've had quite a few players on international duty.

I'm looking forward to this one. I know I'm about to give us the kiss of death but really think this will be our first home win. I'm going 3-1 as I still can't see us keeping a clean sheet.

It's my 2nd season as a season ticket holder in block 15 and it was great to hear the noise being generated by the lads at the back and I enjoyed being able to join in. Really looking forward to the rest of the season if it's going to be like that (football and atmosphere :)) but I may need to take strepsils with me each week as I can see myself losing my voice!! I'm also going to have to learn the words to a lot of the chants as I don't know them.

I find the negative comments about JWP really odd. He's been an amazing servant to the club and once Ralph came in and gave him some guidance, he's been one of our best players, if not the best. Yes I'd have loved him to stay for the season to lead us back to the Premier League, or even until January if things weren't working out, but I can understand the reasons he's given for moving. West Ham seem to have been the main club firming up interest and they are in Europe this season. I'm a little surprised Liverpool haven't gone for him, partly because of all the holes that are appearing in their midfield lineup, but mainly because Garth Crooks said he should join them every time he put JWP into his team of the week!!

For the most part I really enjoyed the match last night. I was a bit concerned at half-time that we would regret not scoring more in the first half and I was worried that those thoughts had proved true when they equalised, but the team stuck to the plan and we got our rewards in the end. I was really impressed with how we played keep-ball in the 9 minutes of injury time, except for that misplaced / overhit backpass near the end. RM said before the game that there were still lots of things to work on and I think most of those are in the final third of the pitch, as well as working on defending corners which was really the only thing making me a bit nervous. Apologies if this echoes other comments elsewhere but I've not read back through all the posts as I saw there were some negative ones being quoted on the last page and really can't be bothered with that. We should be enjoying being Top of the League for 12 hours or so and the first time we've won our opening match in many years.

Looking forward to this evenings game, more as I'm hoping it's the start of a new era of positive results than anything specific about the result tonight (I know that sounds counter-intuitive). I'd love a win to get the good times rolling again straight away but will be very happy with a draw, which I'm really expecting, as we never win our first game and I expect it to be a raucous atmosphere which I'm not sure how our team will cope with. If we don't do anything stupid in the first 20-minutes we'll be OK.

Personally I think this is a great piece of business by the club. As others have said I was a bit surprised when he went on loan to Bournemouth last year but that was because they had great plans for a new defence (which we all know went pearshaped to put it politely). He seemed to have a pretty good season at Bournemouth once they found their shape and he got established in the team. We'd all be getting really excited if the club announced we'd signed a new CB with premier league experience, which is effectively what this is.

I'm really pleased for him, he had a great season last season at Girona. There was a really interesting article on The Athletic about the background of the possible transfer to Barcelona and please for Romeu that it has gone through. I was one of those people that said his legs had gone towards the end of his last season with us and I stand by that, as I saw a player who regularly struggled to help cover the CB's when our press was beaten, which is a key part of the defencive CM role in Ralph's playbook. I really think it was a big part of why we went on that bad run.

I'm in the "quite liked him" camp. Yes he has made the odd error, but he has also scored a few and at least he looked like he was trying and actually cared when we lost, which is more than can be said about a number of other players last season.

Can't see this mentioned elsewhere but ... I'm in Block 15 and the season tickets there have gone up by 20% as it's been reclassified. Last year was my first year (for a long time) as a season ticket holder and I paid £400, this year its £499 for early renewal and no communication from the club that this was going to happen.

I don't know an awful lot about Nathan Jones, apart from a few of the posts on various forums from Luton fans, but he sounds like the sort of appointment I was expecting our owners to make when they came to replacing Ralph. He seems to be a moneyball style manager which matches the SR ethos, which I think is a great approach for a club like us. Initially I was confused as to why they sacked Ralph at the start of the week rather than waiting until after the Liverpool game but the more I think about it, the cleverer the decision is. He's now got the whole of the world cup to review the squad, mould the team to his way of thinking and style of play and confirm where he thinks the squad needs strengthening. I really hope he is able to help the club take the next step forward. There is a risk of us taking a step back first, but we at least have given him the best chance possible for the remainder of the season. Welcome to the club Nathan Jones, I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

Read the original post of this on Reddit via Facebook earlier today and thought it was very insightful.

In case you've not noticed, we've been playing the long ball out from the keeper, in the general direction of Che Adams, for a number of the recent games I've seen at St Mary's and the televised game I saw against Bournemouth. Only recent one where we played it out from the back was against Arsenal. I'm sad to see Ralph go as he's done a great job (for the most part) in trying circumstances, but let's give the new man a chance.