The Kraken

That's symptomatic of the MoD in general, or at least every department I've had experience of working with. Money and resources are no object whatsoever; they'll try to do it in house, throw huge manpower and funding at the problem, then when they realise they can't actually do what they need to do they'll outsource it to a select supplier (usually BAE in my experience) at huge, set labour rates and enormous cost. There is seemingly no-one held accountable for keeping costs low, or keeping projects on schedule. The most inefficient organisation I've worked with (except for the US Army, who to be fair are even worse due to the compartively gargantuan budgets they work with).

Ooh yes, you've got me all rattled you silly little sausage. Though by the way, I'm not the one ganging up on the early leavers by agreeing with the fella calling them "c*nts". That bit was you, by the way. I prefer to stay to the end. So do you, apparently. Quite why it provokes such anger that others don't buy into that, I do find odd. As you say, each to their own though.

Really? How can we become confirmed champions before April falls? I'm intrigued.

I'm ambivalent to it all. As I said above, I stay to the end because I live locally, but I totally understand if people want to leave early for whatever reason, including beating traffic. You seem to be amongst the ones getting all teary and stomping your feet about others not sharing your own values on all things SFC. If you want to stay to then end, good for you. If they want to leave its entirely up to them. They've supported the team and the club, and they've paid their money. Again, I wouldn't leave early, I don't need to and (usually) don't want to. But quite why so many people get so arsey and upset about those who do, I just find that thoroughly weird and obsessive.

Chicken balti pastie. Have one of those and you won't entertain such ludicrous thoughts as vegetarianism again.

As far as trophies go, its a thing of beauty. A perfect example of the contrast between old school tradition of "Division 1" and the bling, tacky Premier League ™ monstrosity. Unfortunately though, as nice as it would be to win it, its all secondary to the actual aim of getting promotion to the top league. Winning the league is just the icing on the cake to getting out of this division; whether it happens by finishing first, second or up through the play-offs, the end result is exactly the same. I'd prefer to win the league; of course I would, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. But if you offered me now a guarantee of promotion this year, but going up in second place, I'd absolutely take it. No-one remembers who won the Championship 5 years ago, do they?

Or it could be that you're the pr*ck for getting so hot, bothered and all upset about the fact that other people you don't even know choose to support the team in their own way. But there we go.

I think Supersonic's idea that he could look cool and brave on the internet has backfired somewhat! Silly tw*t.

If Cestrian Saint isn't on a wind-up then he's either massively stupid, a bit mixed up in the head or just has a enormously misplaced air of arrogance. "When will people realise we're not going up" indeed. What a thoroughly ridiculous suggestion to present as fact.

Exactly right. Not an issue for me either as I'm within walking distance and usually go to the pub afterwards anyway. But, especially when we have crowds of 30K+, you'd have to be an utter dribbling idiot not to recognise that the traffic getting out of town is an absolute shocker. if some people want to get away and beat the worst of it, I have no problem with that and can't believe how unbelievably precious some people are on here that have got their knickers into such a twist about it and are stamping their feet about how unfair it all is. I usually go down for a beer before half time on around about 40 minutes, so that I don't have to wait for 10 minutes in a queue and then don't have to down my drink within 5 minutes. Sometimes we even have a couple of pints and make it back to our seats 5 or 10 minutes into the second half. I expect some of the uber-fans will start crying about what a shameful state of affairs that is as well.

Wow. You're a brilliant mind reader to know for certain what they were thinking from that far away. Go you.

Being as they're talking about making over 5000 tickets available, potentially more, I don't think there'll be too much bother for those who really want to go.

One national newspaper had Saints tipped to finish the league lower mid table. The NPC is much, much more open that the PL. West Ham were tipped by pretty much everybody to literally run away with the title but have found it a bit harder than that. Reading could easily win the league but wouldn't have been in too many bookies top 3 predictions.

A lot of what you said is true, because for teams like Wigan, Blackburn, Wolves etc etc, survival in the PL is the be all and end all. They regularly put aside progress in the cups to focus on staying in the league, and 17th position each year is a thoroughly acceptable outcome for some clubs. That sort of mediocrity goes hand and hand with the money on show at the top table, but it removes a huge amount of ambition from the lower lights who just know that they just cannot complete with the top few sides. It also leads to massive impatience on the part of chairmen; Warnock's treatment at QPR after everything he did for them is a point in case. I just hope that, if we do go up and then struggle a bit, our chairman will have a little more patience in his manager than at Loftus Road.

Of course we should be aiming to get to and compete at the highest level. But it is a weird one; I've deifnitely had more fun at games in the Championship and League 1 rather than when we were in the Premier League, and have been to comparitively far more games since our relegation from the top flight. But the aim is always promotion. It would actually be different to see a Saints team in the top flight giving it a good go. So many times in the PL we took a very pragmatic approach; and had a team of work-hards rather than a team who could outplay others. Adkins doesn't strike me as being too safety-first, so perhaps a PL Southampton under his stewardship would give us somehting we haven't seen for a while. Of course, we have to get there first....

Fox is a waste of money, Tandoori Lee was a stupid risk to take, , Hooiveld is terrible because he couldn't get in the Celtic team, and Guly is **** because he's black. The unerring opinion of some of your fellow SainsWeb posters.

Yep, you're right, Rickie Lambert deserves praise too.

Nothing to do with the football manager then? Or all of his staff? The whole ethos of "together as one" deserves a bit more than praise of just 2 men.

Now you've done it. Don't ask him if he ever served. It's a bit like asking him why as he never goes to Saints games he still feels the need to pontificate on all things Saints from a distance with an air of ignorance and beligerence.

Don't lie. It's because he's a darkie, isn't it?

How have you even got a clue it is racist from even one of them, let alone all of them?

Statement from Trevor Birch: You're all great. You're all brilliant. You're all so wonderful. I love this club. By the way, I'm bringing Chainrai back......

Dalek will be delighted. Or he would be if he wasn't a spamming moron.

Personally I never needed "closure". I'm not even sure what it means. I didn't like getting relegated from the PL. I didn't like struggling and then getting relegated from the Championship. But, we were in League 1 for 2 years and I'll be damned if I look back on those times as anything but a really good time. I went o more games per season than I'd been to before; I went to grounds I'd not been to; I mixed with some proper, real fans of decent clubs; and we won a cup and a promotion in two years. If you can't find fun in supporting that then there's something wrong. The Premier League is where its all that, no doubting that, and the objective is to get back there as soon as possible. But I'll never try to erase or diminish our achievement so far in falling from grace, and then rebuilding ourselves. And the fact its been such an enjoyable ride makes our slip from the top a little easier to stomach.