The Kraken

Well I agree I'm right, so happy days!

Fire away now then.

Nope, I don't agree. That year's understudies were Paul Jones, Jason Dodd, Paul Williams, Kevin Davies, Marians Pahars, Rory Delap, Danny Higginbotham, David Prutton, Jo Tessem, and as I've said Fabrice Fernandes, who all for the most part appeared in ten games and upwards. As above, Pahars played 9 games and Kevin Davies 9. Agreed. But as functional and fitness-based a team it was, there are only 3 of them that I would have subbed out for our current squad. Which kind of proves a point, doesn't it?

...

Bless. Nice to see they're still including Kanu, even though he's refusing to play and taking them to court.

Baird/Richardson too close to call. Lallana over CMFG. Guly over Telfer, but Telfer only played there cup final, Fabrice Fernandes started 35 of 38 league games, I'd have him over Guly. Svensson over Cork, too close to call Schneiderlin v Oakley but I'd have Oaks experience, Morgan has more potential for the future. And I'd have Beattie and Lambert up front. All else 2003 starters.

Beattie got 23 league goals that year and you'd drop him for someone who has never played Premier League?? You obviously know your stuff. I'd give Lambert over Ormerod, but over Beattie that season?! Yeah ok pal. Similarly Fonte over Claus who had played hundreds of Prem league games, against Fonte who often looked troubled in the championship last season. And Morgan over Anders Svensson, my word. Even if you take Jones his performance top level is infinitely better than Davis. Excuse me if I completely disagree with that load of tripe.

Compare our best team now to the cup final team at that time (i.e. the team that achieved our highest ever PL finish). It doesn't come close, perhaps only 3 players we have now would get in the cup final team.

That's hardly a benchmark to go by, is it? Being better than the team that finished dead last. A better comparison is how we match up against the cup final side. At the moment, not all that well at all.

This I think will be sadly true; the season will be a bit of a reality check for some folk, as we've had 3 years of winning much more than we've lost. It'll be interesting to see the reaction if we're involved around the bottom end of the table (and with our tough start there's every chance).

What about our first season in League 1? Started with minus ten and Cortese said he wanted us to win the league. We finished 7th.

Cortese's stated ambition was to win League 1, and also the Championship. He stated the club was not just looking for promotion, he wanted to win the league. Even in his first season when we started with -10, and finished 7th, Cortese had said that he wanted us to win the league.

Well there is. For the reasons I listed. Unless you can guarantee that block 3 is indeed fully sold out with sales of season tickets?

Darren Powell. Far too injured to make any sort of impact for us, but I reckon if we'd have had him consistently fit we could have done much better than we did, I always liked the steel he gave to our backline.

I've been on the website to look for an update of that tweet but couldn't see one. As I (and others) commented at the time, we'll have to see just how accurate that list is. Block 3 is showing as sold out completely but I'm pretty sure others said it was just unavailable. Potentially blocks 6 and 7 too. Quite where the 17K figure comes from is a mystery, and I'd suggest a mistake. I've clearly missed the 22K mark posts that others have said. I think my prediction was that it would be around 24K - 25K. I know the club have previously not released ST levels before at time of sale (I think in the marketing brochure just out that's the first time under this administration). So we may have to speculate about what the final figure is.

You'll be more surprised if we DON'T win the league than if we do? Wowsers.

Link?

I would probably have congratulated them on being able to perfect the art of time travel.

Did they? Who said that?

Indeed. But we can continue to dream about it, which seems to be what Big Nige is suggesting. Although very very few of my dreams are actually Saints related.

Well that would be pretty poor, if true.

I'm terrified at the thought this hasn't happened yet. It's keeping me up at nights.

But we'll need to agree a fee or it will go to tribunal.

Ooh, don't say that. Not on here.

Around 2/5 of our games will be on TV this year (and many more of them streamed on the internet) so by that rationale quite a few people are going to get put off by going quite often.