The Kraken

There was; the organiser dude saw the finished thing a few days before the unveiling and gave it a massive thumbs up Fan on the board would have been a ridiculous notion and would have served only to satisfy the ego of one of the usual publicity-hungry suspects; thankfully it came to nothing.

It's an awesome start so far. Still keeping my feet on the ground though, Leeds are the only team we've beaten in the top half of the table. There will be much tougher tests than we've seen so far; full credit to NA and the team though, the goals scored is quite incredible (especially given that we only have 2 fit strikers).

More to the point, in the absence of Barnard, who on earth would we play instead of him?

Just imagine the photographer. "Now, could you scowl a little bit more? That's better, you look nice and miserable. OK, big nose at the back, if you could just squint your eyes a little bit more to make it seem like you've been crying, that would be great". Dicks.

Most?

I'd have thought this one was pretty self-explanatory. The Echo are Southampton's local newspaper; therefore, as a consequence, a high proportion of its readers are going to be potential customers of the football club. Any news story in the paper is in effect a marketing tool for the club. Therefore, the more exposure in the paper the club receives, the more indirect marketing it is performing. Take the recent Markus Liebherr friendly day at the club; it was very poorly attended, and received very little pre-exposure in the newspaper, except maybe for a mention the day before the event. IMO it was an opportunity missed not to get onside with the paper and run a feature of events over a number of days leading up to the day. I bought the Echo in the whole week leading up to it, not once was it mentioned that there was all the children's activities going on outside the ground. As a result we got a very poor attendance, when in like for like fixtures in the past (Ted Bates trophy) we've seen much higher gates. The Echo is a much more powerful marketing tool than some fans on here realise; all potential fans simply don't log onto the OS every day/week for their fix of Saints information. So to shut the local paper out is short-sighted IMO.

Ronney Rosenthal won't score many goals IMO.

This. £6M plus was being talked about for Maynard and Rodriguez, and Rickie is much more important to us than either of those two would be. RL completely dictates the way we play, and while perhaps not reflected in the transfer market he's worth much, much more to us than £5M in the bank IMO.

As I explained to JRM above, it really isn't.

I don't neccessarily disagree with the first part about getting season tickets on sale earlier. But you are speculating about how many we could have sold were this to be the case. Put it this way, how many people were put off buying a season ticket because they went on sale later than expected, and for a shorter window? Were there significant amounts of people who were caught out by the short renewal and regular price window? For the record, I don't disagree with the idea of what you're saying. Its just that, without being in posession of the full facts (knowing how many season tickets we actually sold is just the start of that) I'm loathe to make sweeping statements about what the club should and shouldn't have done, or be doing. Although I can't see any logical reason for having a shorter window for season ticket sales. Also, with "better offers", I assume you mean lower prices? OK, that may bring in higher sales of season tickets. But you'd have to be in posession of a decent cost-benefit analysis to show that the money you'd "lose" on lower prices would be more than regained by the supposedly higher level of season ticket holders. Also, by that rationale with your Fulham v Blackburn example, you'd have to know whether the higher attendance would actually make you more or less money than just operating with regular sales. No-one (apart from perhaps the club) knows that, so anything else is pure speculation. Filling the ground is all well and good, but when it's done for a a fiver a ticket it doesn't bring in huge direct revenues, and also increases the variable costs such as stewarding, policing etc etc. So its not so simple as to just say "get more people in and we'll make more money". Of course that's a massively simplistic view of it, and doesn't incorporate such notions as feel-good factor, attracting more people to the club for future sales etc, but I hope you understand my point.

How many season tickets did we sell?

What thoroughly odd logic.

Yes, I'm sure journalists have no idea how to pick up a telephone, dial a player's number and conduct an interview over the phone. Why do you think they would they have to conduct the interview only in person?

They need to report on the team, that's for sure. But considering they've had very little direct contact with club staff they've still managed to find copy quite easily. So while the Echo journos may have to work a little bit harder to put together material, it's not as if they're not going short of stories. Even the photo blackout and shut-out of Echo reporters from the ground (childish, so childish) didn't stop the paper from filling the back pages. Also, don't under-estimate the amount of people whose only outlet for Saints news is the Echo, which the club benefits from as an indirect marketing tool.

Pardew gave an interview to the Echo on his arrival at the club, and also gave one or two other soundbites throughout his tenure. Cortese also gave an interview to the Echo on his arrival. Since then there's clearly been a bit of a media blackout.

I don't think it's exclusive to the Echo; the club just don't seem to do many features with any press other than the standard pre and post match interviews they're obliged to give. Any other direct quotes will only appear on the OS, and news agencies (including the Echo) just re-print those. The BBC seemed to buck the trend recently with it's "The Adkins Diet" feature, but some of the quotes (and there's not many contained within) seem very, very familiar; so I wouldn't be surprised if its seemingly a re-hashing of interview(s) that NA had previously given.

The "£3" extra also needs to be broken down, as it's only true in a percentage of cases: Some people only buy tickets from the ticket office (zero charge). Some people buy tickets for a group of people (£3 shared between a number of people). Some people buy single tickets but for a number of upcoming home games (£3 shared between a number of tickets). So the actual £3 extra per ticket is only relevant to a handful of cases, and only where the tickets are being mailed out. I think the idea of a booking fee for telephone sales is entirely fair; although I'm not sure about the £3 cost, £1.50 would seem a fairer cost to me. I also agree with the charge for online sales, as it covers the cost of staffing, postage etc, but again I think the cost is too high. But in theory it is a fair system, as those that buy from the ground are not punished by an inclusive price for mail outs. I also think our seating prices are pretty fair too, no complaints there. I do think the prices for the corporate areas need addressing though; as highlighted by the huge swathes of empty seats there this season.

Probably because there's so many that will defend them and call threads like this a "p!ssing contest", as if the precious lambs shouldn't be persecuted for being wrong. As I've said before, if you're bold enough to publish a point of view on a public forum you should either be man enough to back that opinion up or to laugh at how misguided you turned out to be. Moaning that people call you out on being wrong is just deflection from being an idiot in the first place. I actually think its quite funny to be called up on mistakes in the past; I've made quite a few as I'm pretty sure everyone has. What I can also do is either justify why I made those mistakes in the first place or laugh along as what a completly idiotic viewpoint in was in the first place. Getting abusive towards others for pointing out the error is just childlike aversion of blame.

And yet, despite all the posturing and complaining, attendances at SFC have continued to rise since Cortese and all of his evil dastardly plans came through the door to start milking the customer dry. Any fan who doesn't feel part of the club because he's asked to pay a small amount of extra money to get match tickets posted to him, or because he's asked to pay a pound for parking longer than 30 minutes at the stadium, is a little bit too sensitive IMO. The ticket tax in itself is a good idea, if arguably a pound or so too expensive in my view; but the amount of toys that have been thrown out of the pram about it is just plain ridiculous. Especially given that there are plenty of ways to avoid paying it, or to minimise the cost of it. As to the OP, yeah he probably had a point that the ticket office could have let him know about parking when he booked the tickets. But if he didn't directly ask about it at the time, it's perhaps a forgivable oversight, and certainly didn't need all the gushing and wailing that the club has sunk to new, never seen before depths with this latest appalling infraction.

If young players are good enough, they will get a chance. Shearer, Le Tissier, the Wallaces and many others came through the ranks when teams were allowed only one or two on the bench. Having "only" 5 on the bench now should make no difference to the progression of younger players; so long as they have enough ability.

Exactly this. The only thing I find hilarious about this thread is how it highlights how precious and uppity some people get when their original projections are proven to be the utter drivel most considered them to be in the first place.

I fail to see the difference. If you're going to be bold enough to air your views on a public forum then you should be willing to have those views reasonably challenged. And if any projections you make prove to be vastly wrong, why not highlight it? I've got no problems with people digging up any previous statements of mine and showing how wrong I was about certain things; this is a discussion site after all, and I'm more than capable of laughing at myself. If people are willing to make outlandish public statements but aren't prepared to accept the consequences that when they're wrong they will get called out on it, then they're far too precious IMO. And they should probably consider whether it's worth their while making the statement in the first place if they can't accept later criticism of it and throw a hissy fit at the notion they were proved incorrect.

Edit: wrong thread

Why do you portray it as a comparison between either Pardew being good or Adkins being good? A lot of people think that Pardew did an excellent job for us, by turning the club around, making some excellent signings and perhaps being unfortunate not to qualify for the playoffs. A lot of the same people also believe Adkins did a brilliant job in getting us promoted, and is doing an excellent job right now. It's possible to credit one without taking credit away from the other.

Cry me a river. If you want something for free, at least be prepared to get off your arse and actually go and get it.