ericb

For visually impaired, radios and headsets are included in the ticket price. - these headset rarely work and it's absolutely vital that the person going takes a radio in case they don't, in fact i have personally commentated a game due to both the headsets not working and a radio being out of batteries. There is an additional 88 seats for ambulant disabled (i.e. still regiastered disabled but can walk). - not sure if this includes blind people but from my experience the seats are completely normal seats, including all the normal complaints of seating/access etc that we all have at st mary's (times by ten for someone who's blind) There are designated stewards who will help with getting refreshments etc for disabled supporters who come without an enabler. - this is just not true, at least not for blind people anyway. Not that i'd ever bemoan the stewards who are excellent, but a blind fan seriously needs a carer with them since there would be no way they could even make it into the ground, let alone get a drink or go to the toilet at half time, without someone aiding. It's actually very noticeable just how badly designed the ground is for people with visual impairment, much worse than the dell which had far easier access. Now honestly i do think it's a little "unfair" if disabled people get a free ticket, especially if it's one impairment against another. But for me i think it's the least the club can do for a tiny percentage of their fan base. Especially when you get to know the people that go, aside from those like the one i know who's been blind since birth and has mental health problems (learning difficulties) there are people who've lost their sight in motorbike accidents etc. If the club can't find it to offer something a bit special for them, and if we as fans can't look to ourselves to fight their corner when it's needed then i'm personally disgusted. As it stands if it comes down to this i'll probably look at spending some of my own money so the person i know can go, if this means i can't get a season ticket myself so be it. For him it's one of the highlights of a life that i wouldn't wish on a single soul. Mind you as some have said, welcome to the greedy premiership, where people don't matter and money and success does. Another reason i guess for me to fu.cking hate the shambles that our game has become.

Done most things going in my time to be honest with you, with the exception of the big two, and have seen friends suffer the consequences (one dead, many commited/with mental health issues). Now if it came to a child of mine i'd be pretty fu.cking angry if they did it, hypocritical? Maybe, but also i know the dangers. I had fun, i got lucky. There are plenty that don't. But.... I actually would support legalisation of a sort, maybe decriminalisation is a better term. Certainly when you look at other places it's been tried the statistics seem to back up that drug use goes down, and with the harder drugs legalising them and having the available on prescription from doctors for free definitely drops crime levels. With this in mind though i also actually agree with Dune that the most important thing is education in schools, and i'd get alcohol under this bracket too (something i've done much more damage to myself with down the years). Also if we're ever to do anything about stopping people from destroying their bodies we could do far better than to glamourise those that kill themselves or over indulge in popular music/culture. And then for one last contradiction... I really do think that it's not really the place for the government to tell us what to do, so long as we understand the implications and are willing to take the risks; so long as we're not harming others in the process, it should really be our own choice and we should live (or die) with the consequences. At the time i did i had a shi.tload of fun, i saw the world in ways i never would of otherwise and i made some great friends and had some incredible nights, if this lifestyle catches up with me one day i won't be looking for sympathy. I made my bed and i'll lie in it, since ultimately you're the only responsible for your actions.

well given that the tory government have cut disability for the blind and are charging for care services that they never charged for before i personally think it's a disgrace. What you have to take into account is that for many people you're actually excluding a number of fans, since if the blind person can't go there needs to be a carer looking after them during the game. If that's someone that goes you're either charging them an extra expense to find a carer, or they're going to stop going too. As for numbers i doubt there can be more than half a dozen blind people in my experience (and that dropped down to my 2 or 3 in league one). If any group of fans deserve some sort of thank you for turning up in the dark years (pun intended) then it's the people for whom even getting to the stadium is incredibly difficult.

Why the hell would you do that? What if it was florescent blue with orange stripes and pink lapels? Fuc.king odd attitude if you ask me, but then i don't buy shirts anyway and find grown me wearing replica shirts a bit odd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

i'm a republican and totally indifferent to the whole thing. I struggle to "hate" royalists in the way that they want to portray republicans as doing so, i just find the whole thing bafflingly odd, but each to their own and all that, and in the grand scheme of things they're fairly harmless. I'll save my vitrol for the Tories who are asset stripping our country for their mates, the lib dem's who have gone back on any iota of social responsibility and the the labour politicians who took us to war and started charging for education. You know, the one's that actually affect our lives. As for being grumpy and miserable? Fu.ck that i loved having the extra days off and spent them with a woman, down pubs and in southampton, mind you coming back up to london was a bit of a pain due to people but that's too be expected as plenty wanted to "celebrate"

Record shops have always been there and there's always a new generation of people collecting, i've been digging myself since i was about 13 and am now in my mid 30s. In fact the only thing more predictable than the fact that records (i hate calling it vinyl so fu.cking pretensions) is the frequency that people talk about it making a comeback. A couple of warnings to the original poster though, it's a damn fu.cking expensive habit, i spent the best part of a ton this week on a couple of things i've wanted for years & popped up at a market. Plus at the start you'll be ripped off all the time until you start learning about prices and what to look for (hint if it's popular it's probably cheap, if you've never heard of it expect to pay a packet). The other thing i like is that you get mini communities around it, when i lived in soton i used to see the same faces at the fare's each time and you learn where the stalls you like are & how to barter properly. Anyway have fun and try not to fall into the trap of buying things because you think they'll be worth something, at the end of the day it's about the music & if you're not going to play it - just grip it and flip it - then you're spoiling enjoyment of music for someone else.

Center crate in the foreground looks like a non Blue Note LP in a Blue Note inner, sacrilege! I use a little app called Kuvva http://kuvva.com/ that serves a new desktop from featured artists every day.

If wages weren't an issue i'd happily take Kevin Nolan to be honest, better than some of what we have in that position and played in the prem already. As for Guly i was a big fan in league one & the champ' thought he was a good creative player who scored goals and created too. Don't think he's good enough for the prem' but then i tend to think a lot of our squad aren't & without a lot of investment/luck we'll struggle. So the gamble is let someone like Guly go on the basis that we sign someone on higher wages in the hope we stay up, or give some of our players the opportunity to prove they're good enough. That's the poisoned chalice of the prem' though isn't it? Change the side to stay up & fu.ck it up & we end up with a lot of problems financially again & our better players leaving anyway. Go with what we've got, struggle and maybe go down again, and then have to face our better players still going but in a financially sounder position. Of course we'll be pushing europe/champions league so this won't be an issue, but it does worry me.

oh and for those that didn't realise that's clearly a joke! i'm not going to rig it, they might even pay off some charities with the money if they do!

given that i work at the place that made that i'm so sorely tempted to rig it so they don't win, it'd be actually quite easy to do too....

There's a hell of a lot of truth in that, and it's often been the way with the press and football fans, saying that though there's also well known problems with racism/ultras in eastern europe, as there is too in italy. It's just as stupid to brush it under the carpet as it is to say that you see it at every game, it's the same as people saying you're going to get robbed in st mary's at night. There's definitely higher crime there and if you want to find it or proof of it you will, but if you have some common sense you can also avoid it.

Of course i wouldn't want you to give up your A game by admitting to it.

Top class posting dune, i doff my cap to that level of bait.

To be fair if they went in the lower leagues they are, and if they go away as well as at home they are. Never understood why people think all fans are the same when patently they're not. As for the moaning i don't think people mind saints getting new fans, it's just the attitude of premiership only JCLs that ****es people off. Which really is understandable, since the time that fans are needed the most is when a club is doing badly.

Funnily enough i think there's no real team i care about with any passion in this division, obviously i dislike Harry but i quite like spurs as a club/team. For the main the proper needle games we've had recently seem a lot more exciting. Saying that Swansea were fun when we played them last so would be nice to get one over them.

Reading fans have to be the worst i've ever come across, i've met quite a few and nearly all had two clubs. Utterly plastic club and i rank them up there with MK Dons and Wigan in terms of the worst of modern football.

For some of us it's a part of our work, we're expected to interact with our community and it's an incredibly useful tool for that. But as with any social media/web platform it's a bottom up system and no one dictates how or why it's used. Therefore many use it as an extension of facebook, or as a way of staying in contact with friends, or to follow footballers, or to wind up others and have a laugh. Non of these things belittle the medium, or else we'd be talking about the removal of books due to the printing of tabloids, it's just that in the same way people read the sun for celebrity gossip rather than news, whilst others choose the telegraph or guardian, people will take what they want from it. Be that vapid and shallow, or useful and meaningful, it all has a place. Still BURN THE MEDIUM CAUSE I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT!!! DROWN THE WITCH. DROWN HER I SAY!!!

he's probably waiting for the costing on the extra 20,000 seats he's going to add to the stadium and to complete the signings of Messi, Kaka, Mata and the others FFS. I mean jesus we're bigger than Everton, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and all so he knows we'll sell out our tickets ten fold and even have to expand Southampton airport to deal with the Japanese and Indian football tourists we're BOUND to see flooding through the gates. You lot are all just stuck in a small time dell attitude FFS

HAHAHAHAHA HAAHAAAHAAAA HAAAAAAAA HAAAA HAhahahahahahahaha oh my god what wit, what insight! My god you've split my sides!!!! Really you should think about comedy you're an absolute genius. Atkins!!!! Who IS HE!!!??? HAHAHAHAHA. Oh no wait a minute you're a bellend that picks up on little mistakes.

No no no, you can't slag off the spreadsheet don't you know that's what football is about & we're lucky we have such knowledgeable people when it comes to it

Yup absolutely nothing to do with the fact that google tailor your search history to your most searched terms and therefore are more likely to show things that are related to southampton since you've probably been searching for them. Nope i'd say that's completely conclusive proof that we are now bigger than Bayern Munich since they've not won anything this season too, in fact i think it probably means we should add another 10,000 to that 50,000 stadium we need.

Fu.ck sake it's negative people like you that mean the Us will never succeed, can't you see the move the Colchester Community Stadium was just the start of a plan to win the champions league with a 50,000 stadium. In fact in three years players like Messi will be begging at thier feet to play there due to their massive catchment area and incredible potential that clubs like Norwich, Everton and Chelsea can only dream of. You're just stuck in a small time Layer Road mentality