The Kraken

Yep. Small mistakes and individual errors are unprofessional but forgiveable. The whole season ticket sales window has been a complete shambles from the start, the club should be embarrassed how bad its been, the level of demand should have been completely expected and managed. Considering booking fees etc are at an all time high, the p*ss poor level of service is unforgivable really.

Imagine the poor sap who is going to have to manually trawl through all the transactions to see which ones were in error.

He really does look a wrong un. Imagine that mug gawping back at you from the front of your football programme; it'd be enough to choke on your half time pie. Thankfully we have a sophisticated, suave abnd handsome chairman to represent us.

Well that'll be competition for us then.

Fair play to him.

Too long; didn't read.

Welcome back to the Premier League.

Yep, that's all true. But to be fair, as it has been in years past so not really much difference to now. I think we agree that once the big clubs come calling and the player wants to leave, there's relatively little we can do except hold out for the best price. I probably agree with you that there's now slightly more chance that we may be able to hold out for a longer time once that happens, maybe for a season or so (though in the case of AOC, our most recent departure and under this management, I don't believe us playing in the PL would have made any difference to how quickly he would have wanted to leave, it just might have taken him slightly longer to break into the first team in the first place). I've said before, I think we'll definitely be a bit less succeptible to losing players to the likes of Sunderland, Villa, Everton etc. Though not completely of course, money talks in this game and you can't guarantee anything where players are concerned. If we can promote the idea of academy players staying for longer then its a great thing, though obviously top young players will gravitate towards the very top clubs, so its a massively tough sell for a club like us however well we establish ourselves.

The potential problem with that, of course, is that previously a lot of our young stars haven't been local; they've upped sticks to be here in the first place. Chamberlain was the closest from Pompey, but Theo and Bale in particular lodged here as they came from Newbury and Wales respectively. Shaw originally comes from Kingston upon Thames, so a move to Chelsea would effectively mean a move home for him. Its not quite that simple when our scouting network goes as far as it does and, with the new Academy regulations, can go even further in future.

I know.

Being as the debate is (or was) "Do you like the new kit?", I'd guess it doesn't. It's still a personal choice, isn't it? If it sells more than the sash kit, I'll still think its a poor Saints kit.

The only part I agree with that is the part about sanctioning the purchase of someone like J-Rod. We will doubtless open the purse strings much more than we've ever done, even taking into account how the transfer market has rocketed in recent years. But if you take the likes of Bridge, Richards, Walcott etc, they all pretty much put in a transfer request to leave, so it wasn't just a choice to sell them. We are now more of a position where we seemingly don't have to sell, which is an advantage. But I don't agree woth your night and day analogy. In any case, it matters not.

Yes, very true. Also true. I think this is yet to be seen; my first thought is that I don't think I agree, and if so (as you suggest) only be for an extra year or two at the very most (and not seeing top class players stay with us until 22, 23, 24).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/a/arsenal/4614538.stm Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe told the club's website: "We are bitterly disappointed. The purpose of developing the best Academy in the country is not to sell scholars to larger clubs. "We have done everything to keep Theo at Southampton. But his family and advisors are determined that he leave this club and go to Arsenal.

If its anything like the WC or Euros then the whole squad is on the bench for every game.

Well they can if its clearly a fully grown adult and they used a child's ticket. Or a senior ticket and they're not that old. Student tickets granted will be very tough to check, but as stated in the post above mine, the need to show proper ID to actually buy one in the first place is also a deterrent in itself.

Sorry but I disagree entirely. Lowe got (at the time) great prices for Theo and Bale. And Theo was only under pre-contract so it was potentially an ever tougher sell, to get a deal worth at the time up to £12M was "eye-popping" to coin a current phrase. I'll criticise Lowe for plenty; for extracting a decent price for a player, no way, he was extremely good in that regard. Add in the likes of Bridge, Dean Richards, Kevin Davies and he had a decent record at getting top dollar for players.

Yep, exactly, that is entirely my point. I've been saying this for some time and have consistently been shouted down on it, with various posters claiming that that days of AOC, Theo etc leaving so early are behind us and we now have a much better chance of keeping players until their early twenties and beyond, even if the big clubs come calling. I simply don't believe that to be the case.

He did it once for Man City, I have it in mind it was David James he brought on up front. He also did it for the England U21s, I can't recall the name of the keeper who came on, but he was awful. Edit, it was Joe Lewis.

Not really. The new turnstiles supposedly have an alert system for when a concession ticket goes through; plus they're supervised by stewards who can visibly check who has just come through the turnstile, and whether they seem obviously not to be a "concession".

The proof will be in the pudding. If Shaw, JWP progress to the first team, U21s, fringes of the national team and stay with us until 22/23 years of age then we'll have advanced. I still think this is an enormously difficult area to just say "we're well financially backed and ambitious now so its less likely to happen if Man Utd come calling". despite what they're doing in Germany or wherever. Rooney at Everton is the "typical" example I'd use for the PL.

Yes, I know its not the literal translation. A bit like "putain" in French literally means whore but means a hundred and one other things in a different context.

Vaffanculo.

You don't recall correctly. He was on a pre-contract agreement with us. He also signed a pre-contract agreement with Arsenal, until he signed pro when turning 17. Poor choice of reference material, but his wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Walcott