ericb

Someone that doesn't rack up the debts that caused us to sell our best players. Someone that doesn't bully the non playing staff at the club. Someone that doesn't ban ex players or rip off local businesses to build his house. Someone that doesn't send threatening letters to journalists that offer condolences about the death of our owner. Someone that doesn't run the club for his ego and not for our good. But yeah apart from that he was great. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I get paid friday so waiting till then to renew, although if the stories about the lander guy are proven true, and he buys the club then i'm walking away from it.

Can't see anything other than a home win here, in the same way Chelsea beat us because they're better in virtually every position we should beat Hull because we're better in virtually every position. The game at theirs was an anomaly too, we were in bad form at the time and hadn't quite gelled yet. Can see Redmond coming back in the side for Boufal and maybe Clasie for Davis.

Beaten by a better side yesterday, simple as that. Chelsea are the best team i've seen in the league, both at St Mary's and Stamford Bridge, and we're absolutely leagues behind them. No shame at all in how we played either, came out strong and i didn't think we deserved to be 1 down to begin with. Romeu and Cedric were superb, Cedric especially i thought had one of his best games for us, he seemed to be everywhere and showed why there's so much interest in him. Boufal was interesting, one thing i noticed about him is that he shouldn't play on the left. Every time him and Tadic switched so that Boufal was on the right he looked far more dangerous and far less likely to make mistakes. I genuinely think we have a very good player there but have a feeling it'll take another half a season before we really see it as he needs a decent run of games in the league to learn it which he hasn't had due to injury etc. this season.

i'm going and i totally agree with him, there's not a position on the pitch they're not better than us in, they have some very significant to play for and we're on the beach. It'll be a fairly solid beating, i'm guessing 3-0 at least, though there won't be any shame in that as they're going to be champions. I have to say i've never understood this modern madness that says you're not supporting the club if you think we're going to get beat, sometimes a bit of realism isn't a terrible thing. Hull at home on Saturday on the other hand i expect us to win, despite them having something to play for we should be the better side.

I can remember Franny getting abuse from a lot of the Milton back in the day too, as well as Timmy Flowers early in his career. Goes to show that football fans haven't changed really it's just that people want to remember the past in the way they'd like it to be.

Imagine it'll be the smaller allocation so around 1,800 as we don't traditionally travel well up to places like Boro even if it is the last away of the season. Would suspect it'll make general sale fairly comfortably too as i can't see a huge uptake.

Not convinced it's the great news many think. It's clearly obvious Katrina thinks we need investment to progress and it's now hugely likely we'll sell VVD too. Of course for many people it's better the devil you know but i do wonder if not getting a sale might mean we regress in the long run.

Spot on mate, yesterday was an embarrassment, i had two people infront of me in the northam who kept sitting and then whinging at everyone else around them for standing. They also tutted at us for swearing and took photos of the city players whenever they got close. That's not f*cking football for me and not what i want from my day out.

I've never seen so many tourists at a game as I have today. Phone cameras out there for the other side. Today was everything I hate about premier league/modern football. And gave me an insight into why it's **** at big clubs. If that's our future than **** that, I'm not going anymore. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

He doesn't get humour in general, he's a damn weird one to be honest.

Unless you have to why don't you just avoid that end of the ground completely? There's pretty much three parts that don't stand at all, Chapel, Kingsland Chapel, Itchen Chapel, if you go there there's no issue

We probably didn't expect the speed of his development, in a very short period of time he's put himself in a position where's he arguably one of, if not the best, center back in the league. If you think a club our size can hold someone of his quality if the big boys come knocking then you've learnt very little from previous seasons sadly.

That's one of the most sensible things written on here in a while, no doubt it'll be roundly ignored now.

Hopefully they'll do a Q and A session with him and we can find out how it feels to raise someone else's kid.

Absolutely no way anyone, including Virgin, will do it next season. The value was in being the first to do it and get the coverage, now it's done there's no value at all as it won't get headlines so bears no fruit to the marketing team's ROI.

Also it would've cost virgin exactly the same amount of money for them to discount all of our away tickets in the league and probably would've got the same amount of coverage in the press. I don't actually believe that Virgin expect match going fans to suddenly switch providers because some of them got a discount on away tickets, what they wanted was a big bang marketing event that played into the Twenties Plenty campaign. Something that could've been done by doing the discount for all our away games instead.

I have a different take on it personally. I think the needle actually comes from the fact it's really infuriating arguing with Cherries fans about it. It's kind of like arguing with an idiot, they're always going to win because they just repeat what they've said again and again without listening until you eventually lose your rag. To be honest i really don't feel that it's that different to a lot of games we play who i'd never count as a derby, and in fact i'd say Liverpool, Spurs, United and to a lesser extent West Ham all have far more needle in this division. I guess the reason for me is that Saints/Pompey isn't about the football as much as the cities, growing up there you're reminded constantly at every point what they are to us, and every school or amateur match against them in any sport has a nasty edge. Bournemouth on the other hand isn't in the same county anymore, the divide of the New Forest makes it feel like a completely different world, the beaches are nice and there's some decent pubs and there's really very similarity between the two cities. So to most is seen as a day out in the summer more than anything else.

Shall we put this to bed. For anyone born in Southampton it's not and never will be a derby, for us Sotonians there's only one and most like or at worst are indifferent to Bournemouth, in fact i'd hazard a guess they sit in the top three most liked clubs in the premier league for most of our support. To those in the Forest or Bournemouth based, there's a bit more rivalry with some thinking it is a derby but these people are in a very small minority of the general support. For Bournemouth fans they younger generation think of it as a derby as they don't have one and have been brought up by sky to think they should, to the older generation most are indifferent and hate Leeds more, some are bitter about how some of our fans apparently acted in the 70's (i'm too young to say on that). To the press it's a derby game because it sells TV and papers. To most football fans it's not a derby because Saints/Pompey is so all encompassing. There's no arrogance involved in it, it's just a general fact of how things are.

Absolute b*llocks, Liverpool at home are probably bottom three in the league, United and Arsenal worse, it's a ground full of ipad tourists and daytrippers. Even away from home they're not that great these days. The media hype around them really annoys me, no doubt they were great back in the day but for a long time they're utterly terrible, in fact last season at St Mary's they had a group of tourists from the far east in the away end taking pictures on ipads during the game. Utter embarrassment to what was a great support back in the day.

Absolutely spot on that, though if i understand it right Everton would've been his choice but pulled out for some reason.

Hidden gem of North East London that most don't know about and is on the line to White Hart Lane is Stoke Newington, there's a heavy selection of quality pubs there including craft beer/real ale pubs and a few with good beer gardens too.

People are massively missing the point here, the reason the atmosphere pre kick off used to be better is that terraces meant you paid on the day and turned up anything from an hour to half an hour early to "get your spot" instead of staying down the pub. In that time the kids would turn up first to get their places, mess around watching the warm and have a sing song, by the time the older lads had turned up you'd already have things going and the atmosphere would build from there. Also the fact it was unallocated and pay on the day meant that groups would turn up together, stand together and create atmosphere in pockets that'd spread (everyone had their "bit" mine was the Milton under the roof) and as unpopular as it is there were far less women on the terraces so it'd be groups of lads stood together who almost always make more noise.

I think some people here are forgetting how phenomenally good VVD was right up to his injury. He basically didn't have a bad game and just before xmas carried the entire side, including scoring key goals when it looked like the rest of our side couldn't score an open goal. In my view he SHOULD win every end of season award pretty much, though i think more likely he'll win every player/club voted award and Romeu will win the fan voted award.

It's the midfield that worries me, aside from Romeu i don't see any other combination that can compete with the physicality of the Spurs midfield, and when Romeu gets tied up in those battles too much it exposes the defence. Personally think we either go gung ho with the attitude of outscoring them and play Boufal, Tadic, Redmond, Gabbi, knowing we'll lack cover for the backline. Or we close up shop by playing five across the middle in the hope of shutting them out, and lose probably two from the above (Boufal and Tadic would be my guess) in favour of a midfield of Romeu, JWP, Classie, Davis, Redmond, and hope to hit them on the break. Either way i'm not confident of much and can really only imagine one outcome.