The Kraken

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Dear me. The latest wheeze on POL is trying to get a picture of Levi Kushnir, and post it on their forum so they can add him to the Chainrai witch-hunt. Notwithstanding the irony of PompeyScot offering to host the picture on his own website (in spite of his hissy fit at the "invasion of privacy" he claimed he underwent); I just hope Scumfinder Frattoniser isn't put onto the case to find Kushnir; he'd probably turn up Lord Lucan before he found the chap he was actually looking for.

Exactly. At his level, seeing out his contract with Saints could well be the difference between never having to work again, and having to re-train for a career outside of football when he hangs up his boots. I'm sure he'd rather be playing for us than not; I'm also sure he think about his future life (even it does mean playing the mercenary card in the short term). I don't see the upside of us hanging on to him, even if we do pay a proportion of his wages. As you say though, I'm sure SFC know exactly what they're doing.

dune

A customer charter has little to do with actual performance on the pitch, TDD.

You can bet that if we did have a published customer charter, and had the FSF deemed it one of the best, it would have garnered a lot more interest and praise than the faux indignation this thread has attracted.

The Pompey Trust have responded to the media wars being engaged at he other end of the M27.

32,095 at that game, apparently. We had more than that for a few Premier League games. 31,904 at MLT's testimonial.

Derby, for the way their neanderthals reacted to beating us in the playoffs. I can fully understand a bit of goading, but they went much further with a significant number of them causing a massive disurbance and trying to break the police line to fight with Saints fans (after they'd won FFS). It was just small-time in the extreme. And it absolutely p*ssed it down after the game so I got soaked. Harumph.

Good answer, Bear-features.

No, it really isn't. Unless you want a fanbase who believe everything they're told and question nothing. The whole point of a message board like this one is to debate issues; not just blindly assume that the club will get absolutely everything 100% correct.

Bloody hell, Hooiveld at left back?! With Lallana in front of him?! I'd rather have Dickson than Jos at left back. I'm wondering if Puncheon will get dropped for this one, in order to cover Baines' overlapping. I'd be tempted to go for: Gazza Richardson - Yoshida - Fonte/Hooiveld - Clyne Davis - Schneiderlin Chaplow - Ramirez - Lallana Lambert But with Chaplow in a role to cover Baines bombing forward (so it may revert at times to a 4-3-2-1).

*waits for information as to why this news is actual a good thing for SFC*

Can someone ask Neil why the Trust have only offered £2.75M for Fortress Fatpipe, when Corp Ho told us it was worth £10M and upwards?

Agreed. Its not as if we've never had decent League Cup attendances before (over 20K against Colchester at St. Mary's few years back), but there seems to be little enthusiasm for it amongst Saints fans these days. Even when in League 1 and drawn against Premier League Bolton we only got 10K. Compare that to West Ham's 25K last night against Wigan (who probably took about 5 fans themselves) and it's really quite poor. Is it cost? £15 really isn't a huge amount to pay; I get the feeling even a ticket price of £10 wouldn't do it. Is it the opposition? Well, our attendances in league 1 and the Championship would suggest that more than 20K will go and watch Saints play lower league opposition if it feels right, and pay more per ticket for those games than they were being offered for last night. Is it the sides put out? Likely to be a factor, yes, although last night's team contained a number of players (Gazza, Richardson, Hooiveld, Yoshida, JWP, Cork, JRod) who will be in contention for at least a place on the bench on Saturday, and some will start. So its not exactly a team of nobodies, or a development side. Is it a common factor that all PL sides get crowds this low? Well, no. Crowds are down, of course, but West Ham had 25K, Chelsea over 30K, Leeds over 20K, even MK Dons had more watching them than us last night.

I'm only up to page 14, I'm almost crying here! His love in for Sulaiman Al Fahim was quite brilliant, but this one has just almost finished me, I'd completely forgotten about it. You're right though TDD, I shouldn't clutter this board with nonsense, it should be a new thread.

Ah, Corp Ho; that poor, deluded fool. I do love his particular gem of inside information (no doubt from his contact at the club who he saw socially 2 times a week). This was on page 3 of this thread; no wonder we've gotten this far, the lols have been incredible. :lol: I'm bored sh*tless today, stuck under a blanket with a heavy cold and a lemsip in hand, I think I may have to search out some of Corp's best quotes just to pass the time.....

Yep; there were also only two other sides who let in more goals than us! Played 38, scored 71, conceded 63. We finished 7th in the league after losing our last two games of the season; had we won both those games we would have finished in 3rd place.

You're right TDD, I do. You see, I've done the prawn sarnies a few times before, but I certainly wouldn't be going corporate now as the quality has sunk so badly (while the prices haven't, they've gone the other way). I just think its a small problem area that needs addressing; some of those empty seats can be explained by the worldwide financial situation, of course, but I believe a lot of them can be explained by the over-priced yet under-delivering nature of the corporate service these days. It doesn't offer any value for money which is why IMO the takeup is so relatively small. I also don't like seeing swathes of empty seats (particularly in the Man United game when regular seats sold out two weeks in advance).

Villa's allocation (according to their OS) was 31,000. The segregation goes all the way to the edge of block 43, block 42 is entirely made up of home fans. According to the SFC ticket site, blocks 43 - 48 have 3524 seats. Add in some for the disabled areas etc, lets say that's 3,600; so with a full away allocation 500 seats are unused or for segregation. So a typical full house will be around 32,169. against smaller away allocations (e.g. Coventry last season) we can get a little more, hence the record SMS attendance of 32,363. Last time in the PL our highest attendances were just over 32,000, so its clearly an achievable figure; it just requires all home tickets, corporate boxes and corporate lounge tickets to be sold, which we're obviously a little bit away from just now.

Without wishing to labout the point; for the other teams that I listed and their attendances much higher than ours, most of their fans knew they would also not put out 100% strength sides and yet their attendances were all relatively decent. The fact they played Premier League opposition may have been a factor; we'll see in the next round if we draw a PL side (though our 10K gate against Bolton in the League Cup 2nd round a couple of years ago suggests its no guarantee). Again, we'll have to disagree. It wasn't a 100% strength team, of course it wasn't, but to call it a reserve team just isn't accurate IMO.

I get it now. So you're saying that (in spite of whatever the previous team was) there can only ever be 11 first team players, and the rest are reserves. Even though it may not be entirely clear who those are. If Mayuka starts in the next game, who is the reserve, him or Puncheon? If Cork makes it back from fitness and is available for the weekend, which one of him, Morgan or Davis is the reserve? Richardson replaced Fox at half time and we could go with that formation again; or we could not. So is Fox the resrve, or is Richardson? Gazzaniga started in goal but is now suddenly a reserve, despite the fact that your choice of first team keeper hasn't yet started a game for us. Which one of Fonte, Hooiveld and Yoshi is the reserve?

JWP has been in the "first team" 3 times out of 5 this season. He's come on as sub in the other 2. I'm sure he'll be disappointed to hear he's only a reserve. But I do enjoy how utterly black and white you are trying to make team selection, its laughable. Was Ricky Lambert a reserve when he started on the bench against Man City?

After getting thumped by Arsenal down the flanks, I wonder if (away from home at least) we might do something to play a bit tighter. Neither Puncheon nor Lallana offer their full back much protection so it could be an option to go a bit more defensive out there by having someone like Chaplow, JWP or Cork to play RM but in a more defensive manner.