The Kraken

I quite clearly was, but I was belittling it because it's a second rate trophy that only the bottom 48 sides in the league can compete for. A fantastic day out at the time but nothing to hold your hat on as an achievement by a club who have spent the bulk of the last 40 years in the top division and for all but 2 of those years have technically been overqualified to actually enter in the first place. didn't stop my enjoyment of it, of course. It just didn't set a high benchmark for me.

Who says I didn't enjoy it? It's just not something I'd list amongst the club's greatest achievements, not really close. I found it more fun than sustained Premier League mid table stability, but it was much less of an achievement IMO. Fair enough if you hold it higher than that, I really don't.

Of course I'm not. Neither do I hold it up as a major trophy or anything to aspire to for a Premier League club (as admirable an achievement as it was at the time).

The only upside I can see is this. Say we get £50M - £60M for Shaw and Lallana; we could, in theory, get 5 or 6 players in for that amount of money. £30M for a full back is silly money; Shaw is a fantastic player but look at Clyne for £2.5M, just how much difference is there really between the two? Lallana is much more difficult to replace; but at 26 years old he's probably at his peak. I don't like it, but we know the squad has massive deficiencies. It's pointless thinking we'll get like for like replacements by spending the same sort of money, so the objectives change slightly. That's about the only positive I can take from what I see as nailed on departures for those two. If we don't reinvest though, then it's a massive concern and the only ambition is avoiding relegation.

Did he win the JPT too?

True, but that's also what kind of makes it a great airport. The planes can't be too big so the queues are never massive, getting on and off the plane takes no time at all, you can get from touch down to the car within ten minutes. Try that at Gatwick, which is clearly a brilliant airport, but also a monumental pain in the arse.

For some reason, this makes me sad.

LAX is pretty dreadful. American airports are typically OK, spread out and new, but LAX was just a compact sh*hole. Not a fan of JFK either. I do think we're spoilt with Bournemouth and Southampton airports on the doorstep, they're both excellent little hubs.

It's not exactly unprecedented for football clubs to provide houses for the upper echelons of management, plus manager and players.

Put some carpet in the toilet and I might think about putting a bid in.

It's very odd. For some time on here there was a recognition that the club had a brilliant plan to achieve as much as it could while living within its own means, not racking up debt, bringing players through from the youth team and creating "The Southampton Way", a new inventive way of taking on the big clubs. It now seems that the posters who went along with that have been superseded by a growing number who want to criticise the board for "not showing ambition" and not funding a spending spree well beyond our means in order to hit that previous Champions League dream. And that, somehow, this "lack of ambition" if the polar opposite of how Cortese expected to achieve the vision.

How did they not match? Cortese wanted a club that lived within its means and brought players through, while supplementing them with signings from monies the club earned. Are you saying the club now don't support that? That they have a vision that is different to living within our own means and relying on youth?

He "left" because his objectives were different to the owner, who had funded his previous ambitions. In any case, you talk about "ambition", but Cortese's ambition was always for the club to live within its means, to not spend money it didn't earn. Did you not support that ideal? He spoke about it often enough for us to realise it started out as his long term goal. Odd that now the board are being criticised for going against that plan.

Well no; because, as it turns out, he didn't have it.

Good. Our average attendance last season dropped by around 600 from the previous year. And it was around 1,500 down on our all time Premier League average high. All that, despite having our most successful season in Premier League history and playing a remarkably entertaining brand of football. Talking up the prospect of a new, bigger stadium would show a complete lack of prioritisation of issues, and a flagrant disregard for business sense.

Again, I just don't see it that way, not without any evidence. I genuinely don't believe there's been a change in distribution of points through the division, it's kind of always been this way for at least as long as the Premier League era in my mind.

Chambery. Grenoble. Charles de Gaulle. Toulouse. Basically, the French ones. Although Nice was, erm, nice.

Sorry, what point are you making here? Surely not that Everton have not been given a bloody nose before and come through it just as strong?

I'm not sure if its that simple. I don't think the points distribution has changed much, just by performing a very quick and random look. Have a look at the very first Premier league, 1992-93. Mid-table of a 22 league was 11th (Chelsea) and they stayed up by 7 points. Tottenham finished 10th in 96 and stayed up by 6. In most seasons it was more, but by way of comparison 10th this year was Newcastle and they stayed up by 16 points.

When was the tipping point? Up to what point was this not the case?

I didn't dismiss your opinions at all. You're welcome to them just as much as I'm free to think that they're speculative nonsense. My "counter argument", which it isnt it's just another opinion, is further up this thread.

A post full of blatant assumptions and factually incorrect information.

That's kind of where I'm at. Not fantastically optimistic about progressing much further but it's definitely possible, it all depends just how much money will be made available to replace what I see as some inevitable departures. But even if the side has the arse ripped out of it, there really should still be enough to stabilise and sustain a top 10 side this season. Which I'd have seen as a decent result anyway if we lost no players.

I'm not sure how you can gauge anything in terms of numbers from my comments. Other than it is "people". I don't know how many (and couldn't care less, to be honest), but yes, the likelihood is that there are far more realists than Champions League daydream believers.

Of course there is. Where did I say otherwise?