VectisSaint

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Not much doubt why we signed him in the first place, those that saw him play in the NPC before Guly did his thing know that he was a talented player. He's taken a long time to recover from that and a foolish accident with a jet ski (apparently) but he always showed that he was a very useful footballer although he probably needed to toughen up a bit for the PL. Shame is that **** happens like this to many players during their career, would be good to see Chung involved again though, but doubt that he will trouble our first choice strikers. I guess it is more likely that he will eventually get a loan or transfer back to Japan when their next season starts in Feb/March 2014. Not much else we can do with him until then.

Why does anyone take any notice of what Glasgow has to say? He is a troll, and a troll that doesn't even know what the word prolific means. Surely no-one really took GS's pathetic posts about Billy being prolific seriously did they? He is just on a wind-up and it seems to have worked. I guess I have fallen for it too, but just put the dimwit on ignore along with a couple of others of similar ilk.

There is a lot of sense in Higgy's article, experiences I have seen for myself. The schools of excellence and academies are all very well, but taking the best kids out of the grassroots game at such early ages is part of why the game is dying in this country. Not only do the best kids need to have fun playing with their mates rather than with a bunch of other promising youngsters, but the other kids who are not so promising need the good players around to help them and their local teams. They also benefit from the parents of the better players who are often enthusiastic enough to be coaches and helpers in local kids football clubs, take the child away to play in academies and you lose the parents as well. I've seen this first hand where local teams effectively fold because they lose one or two of their best players. The academies and schools of excellence prohibit their players playing for any team other than the academy. It may be OK in bigger cities, but in rural areas particularly it can have a devastating effect. But the FA bods just don't see this and only have thoughts for their "elite" players. Kids need to just enjoy playing football without too much involvement from coaches, unfortunately society nowadays does not encourage the ad hoc kickabouts that many of us enjoyed in our youth, everything has to be organised to the nth degree with adults supervising everything and stifling enjoyment. Higgy sees some of the things that are wrong and well done to him, the difficult bit though is doing something that positively changes the status quo by de-assembling some of the structure that has been put in place in the last 20 years. Charter Standard clubs do little or nothing for kids enjoying playing football.

Can't see anything petulant about Giordano's comments. Petulance is your stock in trade. Your comments about Gaston have become so tedious like another poster's comments about Lallana. You continue to spout absolute rubbish about Ramirez the sort that those who seldom watch games (one friendly in Austria) might do. I accept he he has not shown world class yet, but he still shows more class than I saw from 21 players on the pitch in Kiev last night and I believe he will start to show more of what he can do in the coming weeks. There is always an air of excitement in the ground when he comes on because everyone watching live knows that he can (sometimes) bring touches of magic to a game, and thats what we all go to see. I think a lot of people forget that he is 22, slightly older than Clyne and over 2 years younger than Lallana.

You forgot Wilner.

There are a few trees at Chadwell Heath though where their training ground is.

Well, it looks that way now, I'm sure I posted this on the Rio thread, and clearly I was responding to a comment by you about Rio. Looks like the Mods have been playing around with threads and combining things a bit randomly. Comment still stands though. It amazes me that we supposedly have one of the best academies in the country but did not have a successor to Crocker lined up, and in the meantime the results of our u18s and u21s have started to go pear shaped.

Still bothers me a bit that we have not replaced Matt Crocker. Not having a head of Academy is a bit strange.

The age thing I really don't get. OK he will probably be too old after the World Cup (although Sheringham played at top level at older age) but he will be spot on age wise when the tournament takes place. All this tosh about building for the future is rubbish, England should aim to take the best players to each tournament, the squad is plenty big enough to take a few youngsters as well for the experience. People seem to forget that Rickie is 2 years younger than little Stevie Gerrard and 4 years younger than the boy Lampard. Will Lampard be shoved out before Brazil next summer when he will be 36? Not likely. Gerrard will be 34 next summer, Rickie will be 32 and a bit. I also don't really agree about the pace thing, OK so he is not super quick, but he is no slouch either. His footballing brain makes up for any shortcomings in this area, its only thick idiots on the TV who still see him as just a target man, he showed on Friday with the 2 assists that as we all know there is a lot more to his game than being just a target man, ironically both his goals so far have been headers, and I don't ever think of him as being particularly outstanding in that department. He should also push Lampard out of the way and take on the free kick duties. Don't know many who really are not pleased for Lambert and who "hate" him, just a few pathetic TV pundits who have no idea what they are talking about, even Townsend who I loathe was singing his praises on Friday night. Still it was nice to hear that SRL used to work in a beetroot factory, something I had not heard before.

Good stuff, these Serie D sides are top class opposition for Italy "B", bit like England playing the Skates.

In all the games I saw both play always thought Chung had more about him than Mayuka, but his injuries have wrecked his time at Saints. If the comments about loans and work permits are true, and they probably are, then there is little option because he won't go back to J-League until end January, their season is nearing its end (round 25 of 34 this weekend I think). Still think if he can get back to match fitness he would give us a good option from the bench, because we are short of options up front, especially if we get an injury or two. He can't be too far off full fitness, I don't believe he was "banned" from Staplewood, just not involved in the first team training, so there is no reason why he could not be fit, he did play for u21s once in pre-season as well. Don't think he will ever be the £10m star though, but he did show that he is a talented player with bags of energy, and like Sharp a very likeable bloke. Hope he gets the chance to show us what he can do again.

Must have missed his appearances for England

What a shame they got the 1975 FA Cup winning team. If they had waited a year they would have got Saints instead. I don't think anyone in 75 Final (West Ham v Fulham) ever played for Saints but could be wrong. A few of the 40 should be easy to get (current players). Wayne Talkes still lives in Southampton (remember him from my old school in Sandown, saw him play several times for Island schools team along with my "cousin" Brian Humber who played for Saints Reserves but never made the first team), look up his address on 192.com (sub needed). Ali Dia might be difficult, although anyone could pass themselves off as Ali, just as Ali passed himself of as a footballer. I heard recently that Ali has not been heard of now for several years, not sure how true this is.

The article is very poor, not only for the reasons already stated but clear confusion between English and British players and interests, the article is supposed to be about why the England team is poor, so how buying Welsh, Scottish or Irish players would help is beyond me. On a side note I would love to know why Swansea and Cardiff should have any interest in promoting the England team. One of the problems of allowing foreign teams into England's Premier League. Still they have their own problems, no Welsh players were bought by EPL teams this summer at all (though one was sold)

Thought Chris Baird was signing for Arry, must have fallen through. Danny Butterfield is free again, played twice for Carlisle then left.

Actually not, ton as a suffix in a place name is usually a corruption of 'tun', which meant enclosure, farmstead or hamlet/village. Hence the original name for Southampton was Hamptun (alternatively Hamwic). Here endeth the history lesson.

And the problem with this is Mr Winter? Right man right place. Better than pinning your hopes on some other English "strikers".

122

Its Yoko come to have a love-in with Dani.

Why? They do produce some good 'uns occassionally. Best CF in the world ever, Big Ron, and then there's that Giggs bloke who was quite good as well (not to mention John Charles foe the oldies). Maybe we can use the 2% to try to attract a replacement for Matt Crocker, the Academy seems to be having a bit of a blip since he left, and as far as I can tell he has not been replaced as yet.

We were not appalling against Man City or Manure, in fact for most of the game against Manure we were ****ing brilliant. We were appalling against an awful Wigan side admittedly (though Fonte's glaring mistake was immaterial), and completely lost the plot against the Arse. From then on we started to improve slowly. This season we have been goodish against WBA (though they are not the team they were), average against an awful Sunderland side and poor against an average Norwich side. But we have defended well in all three, apart from 2 lapses (Lovren has slotted in brilliantly) and looked mediocre in the centre and up front, creativity and finishing is lacking. But no way am I questioning the manager at the moment. I have to assume Clyne and Shaw were not fully fit and the plan was not to use them except in an emergency, and there was clearly a plan to replace Lallana with Gaston again, a mistake by MP perhaps not to see that Lallana was playing very well and to change the plan rather than stick to the pre-match arrangement.

Linked with West Brom this morning according to Birmingham Mail. May depend on who is bestest mates with Mourinho, Clarke or Pochettino.

Don't you think it would have been better to have built the stadium to incorporate Royal Pier, including docking facilities for Red Funnel and Hythe Ferries, it could also include a new terminus for the railway. The main stadium could have been built out over Southampton Water. I've seen mockups for this it must be feasible. Oh wait.

No, Cape Verde Islands. The other one was from Brazil