ericb

Milton road under the roof! I had my best times as a saints fan there and made friends for life. Ah for the days of Oh When The Saints not being just slow, but each word being sung till you were out of breath.

To be honest with you i'd be very surprised if his little twitter rant isn't in breach of his contract. Most companies, let alone something as high profile in the media as a football club, have clauses written into contracts about defamatory statements in the public sphere. If i were Puncheons agent right now - and regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation - i'd be incredibly angry with him. He's more than likely going to pick up a fine and highly likely to make himself a less attractive option for other clubs. It really is sad since the bloke is really not that bad a player and took a tremendous amount of stick from many saints fans somewhat unfairly. In particular the myth that gets touted about him going to markus liebherr's funeral in jeans, one that has been debunked by images and videos but is still trotted out against him.

Every penny we give them could help save that tinpot ****hole of a club, so regardless of how good they are none of them.

In some ways i don't blame the few, i blame the media. Their fans are staggeringly badly informed about what's going on, you just have to talk to them or look at what they put on social media sites to see it. Now i know this is naive but one of the points of the media i thought was to hold public and private bodies accountable, and for all the grief it gets on here the Daily Echo does try to do exactly that with us, even to the extent of getting barred from the ground (a huge thing for a paper that relies on Saints to sell papers). The News on the other hand seems to shy away from holding the club to account, i mean ok they finally seem to have started but where was the questioning of this corrupt and morally defunct entity over this period? It's really no wonder that the fans can't see the depths they've sunk to, or the underhanded and arguably illegal actions that've come about if NO ONE in their local press has the gaul to challenge them. Still this to me looks very much like the final comeuppance and i can only hope that this time round something will be actually done about it.

At least one post referred to Celtic as "Taigs" a well known sectarian slur from the times of the troubles and about as acceptable as calling jews kikes.

I know all about it to be fair but the difference is i don't see people using sectarian arguments or slurs against Rangers on here. Just a bunch of right wingers (and a couple of Rangers fans) attaching themselves to something to do with Southampton FC and using it as an excuse to spout more sectarian bull**** that we could all do without. At the end of the day there's no ****ing need for this kind of bigoted (on both sides) religious crap in football, and personally i find it deeply, deeply embarrassing seeing certain clubs down south - Chelsea, Millwall, Everton, hell even our friends the Skates - attaching themselves to it. It's basically just another platform to preach hate and backward thinking and i'd personally like to see Saints fans rise above it. Mind you in any element you get the small minded and stupid who'll turn things over to their own ends.

Couldn't agree more! Personally i like Celtic up north because i loved Larsson as a player and i like the work that many of their fans do in the community to combat fascism. I also don't find it that surprising that our resident right wingers support Rangers with their long history of connections with English fascist and racist groups (for those of you that don't know read up on the links between Chelsea/Rangers/C18). As for booing minutes silence and supporting the IRA, well that's just as ****ing stupid in my opinion, but then when has common sense ever prevailed in football?

When do the tickets for the brum game go on sale?

wow bournemouth's average is only 588, that's pitiful isn't it? I mean considering how many close games there are in league one.

Funny i've seen Clyne a few times this season and think he looks absolute class, far better than what we have and easily good enough for a premiership team. I know a few Palace fans and all of them would be gutted if they lost him and mention him in the same breath as Zaha. Can't see it happening personally since i think he'll go premiership but it would be a great signing if it did.

Actually agree he contributed, and at vital times too, but still think we'd have been a better team last season with another center back. Not of course that that really matters since we went up. As for Harley Dean, **** knows what he's like i've never seen him and as everyone can see football forums aren't exactly the hotbed of rational thought and [for the most part] reasoned informed opinions on footballers or teams.

That's fine i realise it's not a popular view amongst many at st mary's but i'm just saying it as i see it. He reminds me of "old school" center backs (and i don't mean that as a good thing). In my opinion his reading of the game isn't great and his first touch and distribution is woeful. Also the speed issue will keep the whole team further back and given we don't have enough pace up front that's a seriously worrying thought. To me he's a great guy and a cult hero but just not really good enough. Give him a talismanic role by all means, club captain or something, but let's keep him away from the pitch and actually aim to improve as a club.

Yes Jaidi is nowhere near good enough for what we want to achieve. He's slow and suspect with the ball at his feet. Ok he's got one hell of a header on him and you can't fault his attitude but he's just not good enough, in fact i hold the unpopular view that he probably wasn't good enough in league one with the exception of a few games (Brighton comes to mind).

football fans are incredibly chlidish aren't they? Basically there seems to be a game of my dad is bigger than your dad going on on that Celtic Forum. Then on this side there's some equally idiotic comments (especially from the bigot with with a Rangers avatar - seriously on a saints forum!? why?). Personally i think Celtic are clearly a bigger club than us with a much, much bigger support (and a damn good support at that). Cup winners cup and European cup history and a real record of success. I guess that's why most on here want Hooper since they think he's good enough to do a job ABOVE the league we're in now.

I was drunk at nearly all of those so it's clearly me that causes the noise!

skates at their dump, i desperately want to beat them in their back yard before we lose that chance for a generation. Failing that the Arse at the Emirates will do nicely

it's a sweeping generalisation based on race and not true (or at least far more complicated than is being said) therefore the comment is in my opinion racist. Whether that makes her a racist or not is questionable, in the same way it's questionable that Suarez is despite the fact his comments where (if that makes sense). To be honest i think it probably says more about the medium than anything else, answering heavy socio-political questions in 240 characters is always going to be hard/nigh on impossible and lead to simplification of issues and language.

On a personal note for me it's been about rediscovering away days, if we do go up i'm going to miss the affordable close away days that have really added to this feeling of a club on the rise. Part of what's been great about 2011 is feeling we're a big club again (relatively speaking), not just through winning but through filling other people's grounds for them and seeing the animosity towards us from other teams. Long may that last.

Personally i'd love to see us put a cheeky bid in for Nathaniel Clyne, for me he's probably the best right back outside the premiership and would give us an incredible defence. Very much doubt Palace would sell him though so it's pure pie in the sky.

Really good news, though if we do get back to the prem' Jose probably needs to reign in his habit of climbing all over opposition strikers. I'm still amazed that he hasn't given away more penalties since he's very lose with his hands!

To me they look like the kind of solid team that grinds out results and gets up, there's normally one a season that does it the boring ugly way and i can quite easily see it being them. As has been said if we don't get another striker (and i actually think another box to box midfielder) we're going to fade. I hope i'm wrong and anyway top 7 would still be an incredible result in our first season back but i've just got a feeling what we have now has been found out to an extent. Funny i think the posters on the ugly are actually a lot more informed about football than those here. Less inclined to swing from best team ever to pile of ****. I'm guessing cause it's an older crowd who've been going longer (and less of the new fan/spreadsheet football lot).

between 2nd and 4th too, makes a big difference what we spend in jan as i think west ham will definitely win it & can see a good run from 'Boro. Hope i'm wrong and we finish top two but i'm just not convinced our away form is good enough.

Either you're taking the **** or you're a ****ing din that's trying to excuse your own racism.

That's brilliantly missing the point, well done. If you actually read what i said originally (novel i know) i said that the buzz, the feeling of actually going to what is - whether you hate them or not - a very special game in english football is heightened by the walk, by being able to see that vitriol in person. Again i never said that women and children shouldn't go, but that those that go by train are a very different crowd from those that go by bingo bus. The walk down goldsmiths adds to that, whatever you think it's fun and it gets the adrenaline running, and by having the police taking that option away and forcing us onto sterile (their words) buses and areas it loses something. I'm sorry but as a saints fan, hell as a football fan and as a [shock horror] bloke i enjoy it and think it's ****ing up the game by taking it away. I'm a ****ing long way from being a tory but i really do think the world we live in is a little bit too sanitised boring and well.. safe. What happened to making your own choices? What happened to the laugh of going with a group of mates, on the **** and that feeling of walking into enemy territory. I mean yeah it's tribal, yeah it's probably stupid, but it's part of growing up and lets be honest it's one of those things that's fun in life. See the problem i have with football now is that there's too many of the internet types more worried about stats and figures than the culture of the game (by that i mean terrace culture). Look at this place, half the people here are addicted to a ****ing football spreadsheet on their computer or irrelevant **** on twitter, what happened to enjoying it for pride in your city? Or a group of mates going on the ****. There was a 24 year old nipper on here saying it was a sunday. Like the day of the week makes a difference. As to your point about trouble, no i don't want any kids or women to get their heads stoved in, but i do want them to experience the rush of winning somewhere they shouldn't. To know what it feels like to take a chance in life and enjoy the buzz of doing something that's stupid in other people's eyes. Not to give up and let the police (or anyone in power) tell them what to do. If they wanted to do it in the way you describe the bingo buses would still go, but people miss out on that train ride, and as someone who said they'd been in '84 you MUST know what that feels like right? As for worrying about trouble well let's be honest we all grow up of course, i no longer stay up till 7/8am caning my own body to the point i can't stand anymore, but it's sad when that decision is taken out of your hands by some pitiful excuse that doesn't hold the light of day (was it really that bad other times since the 80s? i mean think about it, really?). Anyway rant over, but i just think the best away day of the season was ****ed up by the police. And there are a lot here to happy to endorse it and ffs even suggest it for other games, or maybe just (and this is an unpopular view) they were too scared to go otherwise. Something that's stupid in itself as these days even the goldsmiths is safe as **** to be honest. As for VFFT's point about what we do not making a difference, you're probably right. Short of a court action i doubt it will. But i for one would seriously think about doing it again (and i'm old hat at fratton), i just didn't really realise how much they'd [hampshire police] take the **** out of us and how much it'd ruin what can be one of those defining days in your life.

Fair enough but annoys the **** out of me how people are just sitting back and letting the police turn derbys into bubbles here. Just because they like being herded in and out on buses singing about whether their downstairs or upstairs doesn't mean the rest of us should put up with it. Our support seems ****ing gutless to me, talking up the bubble and playing into the polices plan. **** one mong on here said all games should be like it, what a ****ing joke.