The Kraken

I seem to recall Bridgey giving it a go once or twice when he was with us.

I don't think your criteria for ranking clubs based just on attendances is particularly valid in today's game. The massive amounts on offer in the form of TV money and sponsorship has reduced the need for a huge stadium full up with paying punters. Don't get me wrong, it certainly helps, but you have to consider that Sky pay £50M a year just to clubs for being in the Premier League. Add in TV related bonuses, prize money, Champions League etc and you're probably talking in excess of £100M per year from TV money alone. Now add in sponsorship; Liverpool have just signed a kit deal worth up to £25M per year. That doesn't include sponsorship emblazoned on the shirts themselves; Man United's current deal with AON is worth £20M per year. So that's around an extra £150M per year up for grabs for the most successful sides. Man City have used their owner's money to get themselves into the top 4 very quickly. But now that they are there they have a massive advantage compared to the likes of Spurs and Liverpool in the Champions League money they will receive. Finish up in the top 4 next year at Liverpool/Spurs expense and the gap just becomes much, much wider. With the amount of foreign investment coming in to the league, you have to look well beyond attendances as an indicator of potential for success. The UEFA fair play rules may start to bring it back into line, but I suspect with the amounts at stake the likes of Chelsea and Man City will just find ways around it.

You have to take what Gold & Sullivan with a pinch of salt, they're well renowned gobsh1tes who will peddle all sorts of stories to the press to ingratiate themselves with the fans. That said, their financial situation is without doubt completely dire, as they inherited a complete catastrophe of a club from the Icelandics. Kieron Dyer and Freddie Ljungberg, who started just 32 matches between them over the course of their contracts, cost £34M to the club. Insane. You can bet that the likes of Rob Green, Scott Parker, Can't Control and Robbie Keane will all be on very high wages. But (perhaps apart from Keane) they all have a re-sale value and should be in demand from a Prem club. West Ham's massive problem will be the amount of dross that they have on the books but that still earn 20K, 30K or 40K a week. No club is going to want to take those salaries on board, so West Ham are either faced with the owner's stumping up or shipping them off to other clubs and subsidising their wages. I cannot see Sullivan and Gold sitting by and watching the business impode; I think they will take the decision to get rid of as many of their players as is possible, so a huge fire sale. It could mean severe problems for the 'ammers.

I don't believe the club are "putting off customers". But I do believe they are doing the very bare minimum to drive sales of season tickets. I think the club realise that they simply have to have a certain level of season ticket holders; I don't go along with the assertion by some that the club don't want to sell season tickets. They know that they have to. The club are savvy enough to realise that you need a core support, and the only way to assure that is to sell season tickets. That said, they are doing the bare minimum in marketing season tickets as they want to maximise the amount of customers they can get to pay on an individual basis. The hardcore supporters will buy a season ticket whether it is well marketed or not. The club will then take a gamble that those who they can't/won't convince to buy a ST will end up paying more over the course of the season by purchasing on an individual basis. Whether that has worked or not; who knows?

Have to say that this is actually a very fair point; the idea of offering an installment scheme but at discounted prices really doesn't make commercial sense. Its pretty much a standard practise in various other industries to charge a higher price for paying by installments; just one example would be car or home insurance, whereby you get the benefit of a cheaper price if you pay up front. Paying in installments usually works out around 10%-15% higher.

Whoever comes down from the Prem will be amongst the favourites because of the parachute payments. And the three teams who don't go up via the playoffs will be up there too. So we'll be expected to be around upper to mid-table. Which is fair, if they assume we'll spend some money. I was a little surprised to see Leeds at 20/1, being as they just missed out on the playoffs after a great start to the season.

Quite right. Such a shame they wasted the time they could have had with Lawrie by having Osman butt in with his terrible impressions. It was a bit cringeworthy when they tried to get "Mick McCarthy" (Osman) asking Lawrie questions, and Lawrie had to ask who it was supposed to be. Quite a nice story from Lawrie about a story Alan Ball had told him, and maybe the inspiration for Bally while he was manager with us. Alf Ramsay was a London boy but apparently had had elocution lessons to hide his accent, and spoke extremely prim and proper. During England training he called over Bally and Nobby Stiles to speak to him. AR: So, H'Alan and Nobby. Do you h'own a dog? AB & NS: Erm, yes boss. AR: I see. Now, tell me, do you h'throw a stick for your dog? AB & NS: Erm, yes, sometimes. AR: Good, good. Now, does your dog bring you that stick back? AB & NS (confused, thinks AR has gone mad): Yes boss, yes he does. AR: Excellent. Now that is what I want you to do with the football. When we lose the ball I want you two to go and fetch it and bring it to Bobby Charlton.

I think your memory might be playing tricks on you there; we had a dreadful start to our relegation season. We lost 3 of our first 4 games, and despite beating Blackburn in our second game of the season it took us until mid-November to register our next league win. I'd much, much rather see us come flying out of the blocks from day one. I'm too used to seeing a lacklustre start and then having to play catch up.

Wigan: They're in huge debt already and relegation would mean they would have to consolidate, rather than throw money at a promotion push. West Ham: as above, they are totally screwed financially if they go down, Sullivan & Gold talking about bailing them out to the tune of £40M. Blackpool: Wolves seem to have a bit of money behind them (stadium upgrades in planning) whereas Blackpool would "only" have parachute payments to fall back on.

It was an incredible run, that's for certain. The test will obviously come in whether we can hit the ground running at the start of next season. The season before last (2009/2010) we also had a fantastic second half of the season after a slow start; not in the same class as this season, but impressive nonetheless whereby we took 45 points from the final 22 games. We all know what then happened over the summer. But there are reasons to feel much more optimistic this time round. There is a cohesiveness between the CEO and the manager that was so obvously lacking before, and that also translates to the playing squad who exude a huge sense of togetherness. It sounds like NA has been told he will be backed in the transfer market, and rather than plugging holes like last year we are looking to add quality in certain areas. I really can't remember the last time Saints made a flying start to the season, so here's to NA getting the troops geed up for a proper crack at the title next year.

I hope you're right. What I've heard is that a agreement with Arsenal has already been made. I just hope it includes a loan back to us for the whole season, it would make perfect sense for both parties. With promotion to the Championship it certainly helps our cause in that respect.

Absolutely correct. There is of course a big difference between what we should aim for, and what we think can be realistically achieved. This summer's transfer activity and the makeup of the squad by the end of the summer transfer window will be a huge indicator in setting expectations for the season ahead. At present I think we have a squad that would finish anywhere between 8th and 16th in the Championship. But, as Nigel Adkins alluded to himself, we don't need wholesale changes to make the step up. Most of the current squad can make the step-up to Championship level. The difference will come in the signing of 3 or 4 players who will stand out at that level in the same way that the signings of Lambert, Fonte, Harding, Jaidi (and to a slightly lesser extent Hammond, Barnard, Chaplow and Guly) stood out at League 1 level. Add in the Lallana/AOC factor on the wings and it's certainly a time to feel optimistic.

Far too high IMO. Previously in the Prem we averaged around 30K. Full houses against the top sides, but often 27-30K against the lesser lights. That seems a pretty good benchmark to use. Against the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City and Tottenham I could see us selling 40K, so long we were performing fairly well i.e. mid table. Any more than this is unrealistic unless we sell around double the allocation to the away side, so around 8,000 tickets. Against sides like Everton, Newcastle, and Villa we'd do well to sell 35K. And against the rest 30K would be a decent turnout. The amount of additional revenue available from extra seating is miniscule compared to the amounts given out in TV rights. It's debatable whether extra seats would bring us any more than £3 or £4 million per year. TV rights for the top sides are not too far away from £100 million annually, which kind of puts it into perspective. With that in mind and, given that we already have a decent sized stadium as it is (and that just extending St. Mary's to 40K would cost around £25 million) I don't see stadium expansion as a viable business case. If significant investment were put into the team to enable us to consistently finish top 8 or above then maybe, but without that I think we're fine with what we have. I can't imagine anyting worse than having a 50,000 seat stadium and only half filling it for many games.

Our league attendances this season make some pretty impressive reading. After 22 home league games our average attendance is 21,729. Our total attendance over the course of the season is 478,042. Saturday's sell out means that we will exceed half a million on Saturday. Also, a crowd of around 30K will mean our average attendance for the season will rise above 22,000. On three occasions in the league our attendance has exceeded 25,000 (against Bournemouth - 26289, Brighton - 26237 and Carlisle - 25076). In only 5 league games has our attendance dropped below 20,000. The highest attendance of the season came in the FA Cup game against Man Utd - 28792. Here's looking forward to seeing those numbers continue to increase next year.

Full squad: GOALKEEPERS Frankie Fielding (Blackburn Rovers), Scott Loach (Watford), Jason Steele (Middlesbrough), Alex McCarthy (Reading), DEFENDERS Joe Bennett (Middlesbrough), Ryan Bertrand (Chelsea), Kieran Gibbs (Arsenal), Phil Jones (Blackburn Rovers), Michael Mancienne (Wolverhampton Wanderers - loan from Chelsea), Ben Mee (Leicester City - loan from Manchester City), Kyle Naughton (Leicester City - loan from Tottenham), Micah Richards (Manchester City), Chris Smalling (Manchester United), James Tomkins (West Ham United), Kieran Trippier (Barnsley - loan from Manchester City), Kyle Walker (Aston Villa - loan from Tottenham Hotspur), MIDFIELDERS Marc Albrighton (Aston Villa), Jack Cork (Burnley - loan from Chelsea), Tom Cleverley (Wigan Athletic - loan from Man Utd), Mark Davies (Bolton Wanderers), Adam Hammill (Wolverhampton Wanderers), Jordan Henderson (Sunderland), Jonathan Howson (Leeds United), Adam Lallana (Southampton), Henri Lansbury (Norwich City - loan from Arsenal), Josh McEachran (Chelsea), Fabrice Muamba (Bolton Wanderers), Jack Rodwell (Everton), Danny Rose (Tottenham Hotspur), Scott Sinclair (Swansea City), Jack Wilshere (Arsenal) FORWARDS Andy Carroll (Liverpool), Nathan Delfouneso (Burnley - loan from Aston Villa), Gary Hooper (Celtic), Jay Rodriguez (Burnley), Freddie Sears (West Ham United), Daniel Sturridge (Bolton Wanderers - loan from Chelsea), James Vaughan (Crystal Palace - loan from Everton), Danny Welbeck (Sunderland - loan from Man Utd), Connor Wickham (Ipswich Town). Ex-Saints Jack Cork and Adam Hamill also in the squad. This is of course just the provisional squad and will be cut to 23 players by 1st June.

I think every single Saints fan should change their name by Deed Poll to Markus Liebherr.

Alpine Stain. What a visionary. You absolute plum.

Given how tight it's been between us and Huddersfield in the last few weeks/months, I had a look at our relative form in the second half of the season. It's a great run of form for both sides, and just highlights what could have been for them and us had we hit the ground running from the start of the season. Since January 1st, Saints have: Won 17, Drawn 4 and Lost 3. Total points 55. To put into perspective, that form over the course of a whole season would have gained us 105 points. Since january 1st, Huddersfield have: Won 15, Drawn 9 and Lost 0. Total points gained 54. Over the course of a whole season they would have gained 104 points. All completely meaningless of course; but it just highlights what a shame that it took both of us so long to get our acts into gear. A 3-way race for the title could have been a real treat. In any case, lets carry on that run of form and get promotion clinched tomorrow.

Don't be a *****. The best "football team" finished top of the division by a comfortable distance. Beating them (and getting 4 points in the 2 matches) was very, very enjoyable. But that doesn't change the fact that, over the season, they have been the stand out team and won the league well.

Having seen just how much pain he was in when stretchered off I would be enormously surprised if this were to happen. I'd m very happy to be proven wrong though. And I think if ever there's a time to get at Brighton, it's this weekend. Which I why I suspect Adkins will play Lallana if he proves his fitness.

You may think so, but I very much disagree. Guly is (and has always seemed to me to be) a "number 10". And the problem with that is, in that position, you pretty much have to build a team around that type of player. MLT played in very much a similar position, but then he was such an incredible player that he justified having a team built around him. Guly doesn't have that presence and, for me, struggles to fit into a fixed position. I certainly don't see him as a centre forward. He is at his best when running onto the ball in central areas. As a centre forward his back is facing the opposition goal much more and I don't think this plays to his strengths. His goal today I think typified the strenghth in his play, where he can burst through the defence from a slightly deeper position with his pace and skill. Ricky Lambert wouldn't have scpred that goal today, which highlights the difference between a centre forward and the number 10 role. I'm still not sure whether we can bring the best out of Guly; he's obviously got a lot about him but unless he can be given freedom to operate in that position between the midfield and the strikers I don't think we'll ever see the best of him.

Last 10 games: LWWWWDLWDW OK, the last 5 games weren't as good as the first five but still, that's averaging 2 points per game. Not too shabby. Perhaps you meant the level of performances were dropping off?

This is the first time at St. Mary's I've seen real reason to criticise Adkins. His double substitution of Barney and Morgan for Guly and Holmes was suicidal. After dominating the centre of midfield for the entire game, those subs saw us gift wrap it to Brighton and encourage them on to us. Our attacking threat was also largely diminished as we couldn't keep hold of the ball. In any case, butterfield came on because AOC had cramp, but it was also a measure of shoring things up and solving the problem that the double sub had created.

If we can get some good money for him then I'll not be disappointed to see him leave. Plenty of potential but I don't think he's realised a quarter of it whilst playing here, and I also don't think he's the type of player we need right now.

I don't buy Puncheon's outburst; it just smacked of a player who was a bit out of sorts at a club and looking to play the blame game. Look at his previous; he's had disagreements at many of his previous clubs, which suggests he is trouble. And saying that he is happier playing for "a manager who wants him to be there" is just rubbish, all of pardew, Wilkins and Adkins gave him plenty of chances to perform and he didn't step up to his potential here.