The Kraken

We'll definitely get a new kit as our deals with Umbro have all been one year deals (for the home kits anyway). And our overall deal with Umbro ends this year, I believe. I've always quite liked Nike kits so it would be good to sign up with them (not that it really matters, I only wear Saints kit for 5 a side). With solid red this year I feel it will be a welcome return to stripes next season. Hope so, anyway. *waits for The9 to show up*

Dear me. It clearly isn't "just me" talking about it; otherwise why is Wes suggesting increasing the proportion of away fans in a bigger stadium? Even you yourself said "I don't see how having 4,000 away fans in a 40,000 stadium can be a "much bigger advantage" than having 3,000 in a 30,000 seater." How is that not considering building more seats for away fans? I don't mind having a conversation or even being proved wrong (as I often am), but come on now.

Sorry for not responding immediately to you, but alas I've been to the gym. In future I'll remember to put my social schedule to one side to provide answers to random faceless people online. My point to you about the Dell was to highlight that "success" in whatever guide is no immediate guarantee of filling a stadium; even one much smaller as we had at the Dell. Success in those guises (top 2, Europe) wasn't enough on its own when we were in the 80s and had a team filled with the European footballer of the year. And neither was a massive catchment area. If you can be arsed to read the other drivel I've written at the top of this page, you'll see exactly where I stand on how many future fans we might expect to see; so your statement that I've "ignored the 30% more fans" is obviously complete nonsense. As for your last paragraph, ok then! As for Wes, if he looks in my previous response to him I've already answered his direct question and given reasons why, so there's really no need to repeat it, is there?

As I said, it's not something the typical top ten clubs do, and IMO not something we should strive to do either. Much better to work out how many seats we need to cater for increased home attendance and leave it at that. Otherwise where do you stop? The likes of Tottenham, Man United, Arsenal etc would likely fill an away allocation of 10,000 or more if it was offered to them. For the likes of Fulham at Craven Cottage, who already have sh*t loads of empty seats, its perhaps worth their while filling them one way or the other. For us, building a whole load of extra seats and then needing additional away fans just to fill them makes no business logic to me. At all. but then, if that what floats your boat and you think its a good idea, good luck to you.

No, I was trying to have a conversation with someone who only seems to want to throw out insults. As a consequence after this I shan't engage with you any further, you've clearly got a bee in your bonnet about something and I care not what it is. The last thing I'l say on the matter; the proportion argument does nothing for me. It's not a league rule (rightly so IMO); none of the other top sides do it; and it gives away sides an increased advantage. To answer your question; yes, I do see a problem of increasing the capacity by 5,000 and having to let in 500 away fans to fill it. I'd much rather we just built an extra 4,500 seats and filled them entirely with home fans. Feel free to chuck another insult back as I'll leave you to it now.

Good for you. How many of those games were against sides in the PL top ten? It's not IMO a business principle that I believe we should (or will) aspire to. It's a measure taken by clubs who have paid a lot for a number of seats and, try what they may, they simply cannot shift them. Sides like Wigan, Bolton, previously Blackburn. They are hardly business models we should be looking to emulate.

If you can't then that's fine, and we'll disagree. But there's probably a good reason why many clubs who can't sell out their stadiums don't give a higher allocation out of choice. Otherwise you could get loads of clubs knocking on an extra 5,000 or so seats just to fill them up with away fans.

Christ, you're uppity today aren't you? Did you miss the part where I asked you if that's what you meant or not? It was the part where I said "unless you're suggesting that we increase the away allocation just to fill a bigger stadium". Which, incidentally I think is a lousy idea.

If you need to fill seats that you can't sell in a ground you already own, there is an argument for it. Although I'd suggest it gives the away side a much bigger advantage and shouldn't be entertained myself. Do you think it should be a valid reason used for potentially expanding a ground though? i very much don't.

Wes, I think you're getting confused. The away allocation won't rise at all; the regulation is 10% of total capacity or 3,000 seats, whichever is smaller. We could have an 80,000 seater stadium and would only have to provide 3,000 away seats. Unless you're suggesting that we increase the away allocation just to fill a bigger stadium? Which, as I said earlier, is not a good idea and a self-defeating principle.

Sorry, perhaps I'm being daft here, but I'm not sure what your response was. Once the away end gets to 3,000 seats there is no obligation to provide any more to the opposing side (and it would arguably in fact be slightly self-defeating to do so). Spurs, West Ham and the sides you've mentioned always sell that out. So, given your original point, can you clarify that there's a significant extra number of these fans that we should look to accommodate at St. Mary's? And by extension of that suggestion (and being as the away end is full) we should look to accommodate them in the home sections?

For me, you've hit the nail right on the head there. My opinion as I've said is that we'll pretty much always get up to 40K against the top 4, 5 maybe even 6 clubs (Man U, Man C, Tottenham, Arsenal, Liverpool will always be a big draw, and maybe Chelsea). The question then becomes what will we / could we get against the rest, and as you say, does that make a 40K / 45K / 50K stadium viable. Which is why I think the club will be closely monitoring attendances over the next 2 or 3 seasons to see if they can take a rough stab at that answer. If they comfortably think we could sell 35K+ for at least half the games and more then it becomes a viable opportunity. If it looks like we'll get close to full for those games but average around 33K, 34K for the rest then it becomes much more doubful whether its worth the money. However, for your last paragraph about attracting more big-spenders. Well, that's one area where the club is currently failing, somewhat spectacularly. Corporate boxes not a third full, corporate suites a naff and overpriced experience. If that's where the funding streams are going to come from then that side of the business needs a bloody great overhaul, because at the moment it simply isn't working.

I did ask the question to clarify it earlier, Wes; thanks for the stroppy response though. So you do think we would swell the attendances of our home game by letting in more away fans then. tell me, would this be from an extended away section or would they just sit in with the home fans?

Unfortunately its just another case of the club entirely misunderstanding the needs and wants of its demographic, and providing them with what they think they should have rather than what they actually want. And it seems like they're too stubborn to take on board constructive criticism about it all; its a take it or leave it approach (and a lot of people are indeed choosing to just leave it).

We didn't sell out at the Dell during the times of European qualification so its an entirely valid point. Good smiley though.

The question is, and its pretty much impossible to answer right now, how many extra fans will come with some form of success? Forget all the nonsense about catchment area, attracting fans from north Hampshire or whatever. We have a decent fan base already where the core of our fans have and will come from; as encapsulated by the fact that in a 32,000 seater stadium we sell out 2 weeks in advance before the really big games (Man United and Tottenham). So how many extra home tickets could we sell against the likes of these teams? I'd hazard a guess at around 40,000, that's kind of a figure I've always thought is realistically achievable. Now, here's the bit that's especially debatable. Against the top sides, I really don't see a lot of movement in this top figure compared to where Saints are in the league. Whether we are down towards the bottom, mid-table or chasing Europe, I don't think that top figure will move by too much. There'll be some difference of course, but a lot of the casual Saints fans those fixtures attract aren't too dependent (IMO of course) on where we are in the league, more who we are playing. And the draw of seeing a top 5 club at St. Mary's is already a decent one for Saints fans. Where we would see a difference according to league form is in games against the mid-ranked sides, and against the lower ranked sides. Fulham 28K the other day; with a Saints side in the top half and upwards I consider we'd be at least 3,000 or 4,000 above that. Much further? I can't see it myself against the lower sides (and those who don't bring a full away allocation), but against the likes of Everton, Newcastle, Sunderland, then perhaps mid 30s and a tiny bit higher perhaps.

Well you've convinced me. And I think its a shame we've never been able to tap into our massive catchment area in the past. In previous decades when Reading were minnows and Saints were qualifying for Europe, finishing second in the league and what not, well we must have been doing something very wrong to not attract all of Hampshire and beyond to come to watch us. Thankfully that's all about to change this time round.

Maybe there's some mileage to Wes Tender's theory about West Ham and Tottenham fans coming to St. Mary's after all....

You mentioned 1.7M who were definitely closest to Saints. Its actually much less than that, however much you try and argue the case. Ha ha ha, you claim mine as the stupid point yet don't even know what county you're talking about. By the way, Devon and Cornwall combined have a population of 1.65 million; around about the same as Hampshire which you're claiming is a massive factor in enabling us to grow. So which is the stupid point, mine or yours?

Having an extended administration period is by far the worst thing that can happen to them. The PST is totally and utterly reliant upon the parachute payments as their operating budget; those payments are being spent as we speak and the PST's budget is slowly dripping (flowing) away. Chinny wants his money back, and will take what we can. If he can't get the parachutes then he'll likely just pillage the club in other areas and take whatever isn't nailed down (its likely he'll do that anyway, to be fair). Pompey fans should enjoy the ride while they can; they currently have players they can't really afford and so have a team much better than they should. It's only going downhill fast once the takeover goes through, the minus 10 hits, and the players all leave as the club can't afford their wages. Be careful what you wish for, Skates.

Yes, and Basingstoke is closer to Reading than to Southampton. And the likes of Fleet and Farnborough are closer to Chelsea than they are to Southampton. Plus you perhaps need to read the opinion of the person who lives in Basingstoke to get a fuller picture of the situation. Plymouth. By your rationale they should be utterly huge. I'm not sure why you've turned this into a comparison with other smaller clubs. Back in the Premier League we're already (arguably) back to that size of club, perhaps even bigger than Wigan or West Brom. That's not the point at all (if you're going to accuse others of missing the point entirely).

The only reliable figures to go on are from PKF's 6 month report issued mid-August. At that point their own fees stood at £1.3M, with additional legal costs and other fees at an additional £550K. So roughly £300K per month. There's plenty of meat on the Pompey parachute payment carcass yet. PKF have now been pretty much given the green light to conduct their own forensic examination of the previous ownership mess in order to work out if Portpin do indeed fit the requirements of the Owners' Test. This could rumble on for many more weeks yet, I'm not expecting a takeover to go through this side of Christmas.

As I said, Michalczuk is a real chopper, he's pretty much been exposed by the skates as a Chainrai stooge. To the extent that he has been deinigrating the efforts of Micah Hall (even us nutjobs can appreciate what a really good job he has done) and ridiculing him for not being an accredited journalist.

This is simply wrong on more than one level. Hampshire is very, very different to Southampton, with many north Hampshire residents closer to Reading than to Saints. And there are swathes of north and north-east Hampshire which are geographically closer to West London than they are to St. Mary's.

I'm not sure I understand your first point, could you clarify please. Are you saying attendances for the West Ham and Tottenham games would be boosted by having lots of away fans in the home end? I think I understand your second point, that with a bigger ground West Ham and Tottenham fans who live locally will obviously adopt Saints as their second team, which I disagree with (certainly for any significant size of extra fans anyway).