ericb

Not a pretty win that and lets be honest if Benteke had his shooting boots on Palace probably should've won it but we did everything we needed to do in the end. Hojbjerg, Ings and Elyounoussi had great games and McCarthy pulled some superb saves out. Still think our defence looks about shaky as f*ck and a side with a good goal scorer will put a few past us but i'll take that for now and hopefully it's something to build on.

with apologies to Gutta Percha Oh Southampton's profits, They really grow very fast (really grow very fast) We don't want to win things, our money grabbing's unsurpassed. [Repeat x 2] Balance Sheet, Balance Sheet, Balance Sheet.

Nope it was superb, and will long stay with me as one of my favourite away days ever with Saints. But it was also the league cup semi final. This is a third round tie against a side that's better than us, at a ground we have an abysmal record at, and we're likely to have less than 500 people there as a guess. It's quite possibly the worst draw we could've got to be honest.

Oxford or Wycombe away for a new ground, or Millwall or Fulham away for a **** up in London. Most likely Palace at home or Arsenal away.

Leicester winning the league is, ironically, probably the worst thing that could've happened. Not only has it meant that the top clubs have lifted up the drawbridge, thrown their weight around in cash and started questioning tv deals/rights, but it's also re-affirmed some people's confirmation biases about us. We shot ourselves in the foot when we spoke about Champions League football, you had a generation of fans who'd grown up with relative success from league one onwards, who'd heard talk of Champions League, and seen us come a whisker away from it. They believed what had been said because they didn't have the basis of history many of us do. To most people that have been doing this a long time it's plainly obvious that Leicester wasn't the beginning of something different in football, it was the end of a period where the big/rich clubs had become complacent and taken their eyes off the ball. I'd argue the beginning of that end actually came with our own, limited success, we threatened their status quo, so they signed all our players. Leicester than shattered that status quo, so they all signed even more players. The reality we have now in the premier league is the new normal. And lets not lie, that normal is that for 14 or so of the teams in the league the end game is ultimately relegation. We are absolutely no different in that regard. That's why my thinking on football has substantially shifted. I know that the reality is it's a matter of time before we go down again, so the league has kind of stopped being important to me. What's important now is that given we're in this world where we know it's a matter of when, not if, we go down, then i want us to use the time we have in the top flight to try and win a cup. Because that's all the success we'll ever experience. Depressing i know, but it's the reality of football unless a european super league happens, or the money stops.

Ah well guess i'll just to have to pretend i didn't know that, because they're surely not going to be checking tickets are they?

Brighton to Falmer train is free with a match day ticket.

https://southamptonfc.com/matches/2018-19/efl-cup/brighton-v-saints-2018-08-28/ticket-info

Yup totally agree, and what i was alluding too, i think it's highly likely that if they can get away with it they'll go down that route, financially it makes a lot more sense to them.

When does the TV pick happen for this? I assume the if our game got picked it'd move to the Wednesday night?

Your mistake is think we care. We've all seen lower standards of players in the past, and you know what i enjoyed football a hell of a lot more then than i do now we're in the lopsided, biased from the start money league that is the premier league. I watch Saints for Saints, not for who we're playing, and i'd rather watch a more competitive Saints side (and league) without "better" players than what we get served up currently.

Absolutely inevitable that the premier league will follow suit, and makes the likelihood of a European (or world) super league even higher too. I've said it before and i'll say it again, i honestly think you might see the big clubs "brands" leaving their countries completely. What difference does it make to the owners of Liverpool if they play in Liverpool or Sydney? Or for Manchester United if they play in Manchester or New York? I can full well imagine a world where they all globe trot ground to ground in a league with no promotion or relegation and a season played out across the world for tv revenue.

God no. I think it's an absolutely pointless endeavour and a massive waste of everyone's time. The football club is a private company with no need or desire to answer questions about it's finances or structure to paying customers. At best you'll get media trained professionals not answering poorly constructed questions from people with no training in journalism or ability to ask quality probing questions. At worst you'll get self congratulatory backslapping and terrible "jokes" to form soundbites and give the fake impression that we're not customers but instead one big happy family. Personally i'd prefer it if they hadn't bothered with this at all and just got on with their jobs.

But i thought Saints fans forced Puel out for being boring and it had nothing to do with him falling out with players in the squad and them not respecting him. Must just be an organised campaign against him that means that the same stories seem to be coming out from Leicester, because this forum is never wrong

They're not all happy, and they're not all acting in the most professional way behind the scenes. One is even acting in similar ways to Jose Fonte at the moment.

and if you don't want to mention Mane or Pelle then you could always go with, Oh Danny Ings, the goals, the goals are flowing. From north to south, and down the Itchen wing. From Netley Marsh and back home to St Mary's. Oh Danny Ings, you’ll make the Southampton sing.

Oh Danny Ings, the goals, the goals are flowing. From north to south, and down the Itchen wing. Pelle’s gone, no Mane on a goal spree, But Danny Boy, you’ll make the Northam sing.

Also got Fulham away on a saturday 3pm, which i'd guess will be the biggest take up for tickets for us this season as an away day (if you include the "neutral" section). Genuinely happy about this, especially as it's still summer sales on plenty of the train operators sites (you can book London to Wolverhampton for £16 return at the moment).

If it's right there's only one game moved for TV that's fantastic news, means i can hit up the summer sales on the train fares and pre-book for away games.

There were serious cost cutting measures looked into as part of "disaster planning" if we'd have gone down last season. The non playing staff would've seen a large amount of redundancies, a lot of "sole traders" would've seen their contracts ended. Also a decent chunk of the playing staff would've had release clauses triggered (or pay cuts if they stayed). Financially we'd have been ok, but the club would've looked very different the other side of it.

Too many people on here spend their lives playing computer games and think that football is different to the reality. In all of my lifetime, barring a handful of clubs, football has been a cyclical thing. We had, from promotion in League one to the League Cup final with Puel, one of our golden eras. That was always going to come to end at some point as a club our size cannot sustain it long term. We're now reverting to our "natural" place in the football hierarchy, which is somewhere between 10th and bottom in the top flight. In the long term we might get lucky with a crop of players and sneak europe or a cup final again, but it's far more likely we'll be relegated before that happens (history shows us that's true of a club our size). The only one on that list that i'm disappointed/surprised by is the academy side of things. Whilst we've always been hit and miss in the transfer market (and i'd argue more miss than hit for our highest transfers), we've also consistently produced great youth players, and that's not just the modern academy either.

Absolutely terrible performance, i can't remember a saints side being so easy to rip apart in a long time, our midfield looks non existent and there's gaps big enough to fit the Oriana in the defence. I know it's only a pre-season, and it's being played out in considerable heat, but this really looks bad for the start of the season.

I'd argue we need a DM, we haven't had someone that effectively breaks up play since Wanyama left and there's no real destroyer type player in our side anymore, hence our defence being so exposed.

Pretty indifferent to be honest, i eventually renewed but the premier league has sapped a lot of my enjoyment out of the game. It doesn't help that you pretty much know the top six before the season has started and you can take a good stab at the winners of most of the competitions without much of a risk.