VectisSaint

The irony. You are aware of the history of Oz? It used to be a requirement of entry. LOL. That made I laugh.

Shame to see a young lad go, but 12mill, take the money and run right now. Of course it would be good for him to remain at Saints, but honestly will we miss him if we replace him with some of the Arse money? Probably not, exciting prospect that we will see develop elsewhere after a couple of years bench warming. Lesson to be learned: don't take kid into Academy who has ex-Skate money-grabbing parent, long term it will never work.

Can't see Jaidi, Barnard or Oxo being risked considering they were injured for yesterday. Would not be surprised to see Spiderman and Chaplow in MF, and Bart in goal. Doubt DC will be risked either, but otherwise would keep similar team.

Is he out of contract at Rangers? Signed a 3.5 year deal in Jan 2008, no confirmation that he has extended. Has played quite often for QPR but perhaps not considered good enough yet for the PL. Maybe possible part exchange for Punch, sound quite similar players (though one appears to have a good attitude), not sure he is a real need but maybe NA wants more backup for AL, de Ridder, Oxo and Holmes, especially if Oxo moves on.

But thats the whole point, isn't it? We have around 80 different songs, mostly not Skate-bashers, yet all that could be heard on Sky yesterday was the same anti-Pompey song over and over and over again. Thats the problem. I don't have problem with anti-skate songs per se, have been singing them with everyone else since the late 60s, but we used to be so original with the songs that we came up with. But yesterday, unlike ever before that I can recall live or on the box, it was just this one cringeworthy song ad nauseum. I heard the occassional OWTSGMI, Father's Gun, Ricky Goal Machine etc. Come on guys, lets get back to the originality and humour that has always been Saints supporters. Anyway, made my point several times, will give it a rest now, still reflecting in a great win, and next time will watch with sound muted so I don't upset the little would-be hard nut darlings who think they are God's gift to football chanting.

Of course, that nasty Mr Murdoch ordered the sound to be dubbed so the whole country thought the anti-Pompey songs were being sung all day. Stupid song, not stupid thread. I bet the fish-****ers would be laughing their faces off listening to a bunch of little hard boys singing "we're coming for you, you dirty skate bastards" over and over again. But then the irony is that skate bastards would not have been watching anyway, completely and utterly pointless chant.

Sounds like you are the bed wetter little boy, try growing some balls and learning about what is important, and realising that constant singing about no-marks is not what we need.

Looked reasonably assured today bar a couple of moments, one of which was caused by Harding. Very unlucky with pen which hit him on the chest, lino could not have seen it but still gave it. Did the right thing with his goal attempt header, always head down, but just got a bit too much over the ball. Clearly he is the main backup at the moment, will play reasonably often when Jaidi is injured (like today) or not able to play too frequently. Better than Seaborne. Clearly we need a new CB still though, but encouraging to have a decent young backup who will become good CB in the next year or so.

Crap, it was incessant, dirty skate bastards, we're coming for you, over and over ad nauseum. Unless of course Sky were dubbing over the other songs. Maybe it was only one part of the ground or something, but on TV it was quite clear, over and over. Quite embarrassing, spoiled what was otherwise a near perfect day. We really need to get over the fecking skates, we have bigger fish to fry than to be obsessed with them.

Agreed, so a few more OWTSGMI and a lot lot less dirty skate bastards, fathers gun etc. If we carry on like today some of them will begin to think they are playing for the skates.

Great start, we could have blown Leeds away completely today, really took our foot off the go pedal in the 2nd half, and yet still could have had 2 or 3 more. Penalty was a travesty, hit Martin's chest, shades of Oxo at Posh last season. We also showed that we have strength in depth. Only concern with the team is that we still desparately need another CB. Martin was generally OK, except when Harding played him into danger, but we certainly cannot go through a season with the 4 we have, if we lose Fonte at any point we will be ****ged. Only negative for me was the incessant singing of "dirty skate bastard" "song". FFS can't we at least give the opposition of the day some grief, or even better some Saints songs, it was a little embarrassing hearing this time after time especially in 2nd half.

Probably not aware we were playing, Arsenal don't start till next week.

Stick him on the front cover every game, seems to work for us. He was looking rather ****ed off though during the 2nd half. Can only think it was the incessant singing about the "dirty Skate bastards". Who ****ing cares about the Skates, we're not coming for them, we should have better ambitions than coming to get second-rate teams. Why do we have to sing about them all fecking game?

But with a game in hand

If you are not anti Cortese why did you come up with a list of anti Cortese issues, most of which are at best dubious and in some cases plain wrong. If you want to canvas opinion put forward a balanced view including all of the positive aspects, of which there are many. People don't have to love or hate the man, but most sensible people can form an opinion based on his actions so far that he is doing a lot more right than he is wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, especially in a new field, but in the end we are in a better position now than at any time in the last 20 years (arguably) in terms of future prospects. If I have one small beef with the current organisation it is the way that they have not embraced the past a little more, such as the apparent differences with MLT and Lawrie, but even here there are 2 sides to every story and MLT is clearly not the most intelligent bloke around when it comes to engaging brain before speaking. Even then the remaining members of the FA Cup winning team was brought back last year and Terry Paine involved last week. I think the icing on the cake would be to get Big Ron over for a game, I wouldn't miss that for the world.

Out of the relegation zone at last, should be mid-table by kick-off tomorrow.

What a bunch of whingers. Would anyone have moaned if it had been Markus on the front cover? No, of course not, but because it is the bloke who actually had the idea to takeover the club rather than the very nice man with the money everyone goes bananas. Perhaps they were planning to put Jemal on the cover and had to pull it at the last minute because he hasn't signed so had to find an alternative quickly and couldn't get permission to put Lucy Pinder on there.

So does that mean that Jemal is now a Young Boys Old Boy?

Speedie and Dixon ?

In the same way as nowt wrong with being a Skate ;-) Being a Thatcherite and IW Independence Activist is an interesting, completely incompatible, combination. One of the main reasons for the start of Vectis nationalism was the Tory party and its desire to amalgamate with Hampshire. Still, should not be discussing politics. Nice blog apart from that though.

As are Guly and Dean. Looks like the usual OS crap.

He is certainly the best manager since Pardew. Time will tell but he has the potential to be the best manager since before WGS. In all honesty was WGS really that good, did a terrific job keeping us up and getting top half finish, and to Cup Final, but probably was running out of ideas at the time he left. But he was great fun, and quite honestly even if not the greatest manager he brought many smiles to the face and I look back on his time in charge in a very positive way. The only one on the list since WGS who has any real respect is Pearson, sadly he was not given time to demonstrate whether he could have been good.

Lets hope the odious Bernie gets his cheque book out and installs him at Loftus Road, you just know if Big Sam gets hime that he will come back and haunt us. Good luck to either team that takes the waste of space. You have been warned.

Its a little bit worrying that people are discussing their favourite bearded players. But anyway, my nomination would be (Santa) Claus. Seriously best player with a beard ever unquestionably is Nick Holmes (unless Big Ron or Mick Channon ever played with a full set, I know Channon's sideburns were enormous at one stage, but I don't recall them ever actually joining up). I seem to recall Ivan Golac had a beard at one time but cannot find any pictures to back me up, perhaps my memory is playing tricks. Not sure Surman's bum fluff counts as a beard.

They had to leave a gap between games to allow for penalty shoot-outs which would have happened if games had ended level. Frankly I was surprised this didn't happen at least once, for 45 minte games. We all know how long pens take with all the silly rules about players standing in the centre circle etc. Would probably have got away with 30-35 mins in reality.