The Kraken

Its been mentioned before, but the whole erection of the fence was done so that they didn't have to keep the fans in. Remember the Pompey games at Fratton and keeping the fans in was not really a solution, as hundreds waited around anyway to chuck all manner of bricks, stones etc. In restrospect the fenceline didn't work perfectly this time, but keeping the Pompey fans in would have had no guarantee of success either. Its a sad state of affairs when a whole wall of police plus a big f*ck off fence are deemed insufficient prevention of trouble, and the blame is laid solely at the feet of the police.

Exactly right. Bignall was barely used anyway, and especially with Connolly now back from injury (for how long....) there's no need to take Bignall on.

I agree that names, addresses etc shouldn't be published, as it's the thorough reverse of "innocent until proven guilty". But still, it is the law and all newspapers do it, so it's not as if the Echo are being unethical about it. And they're giving fair column space to both sides of the trial argument (the judge's comments refer to the lack of evidence surrounding the two non-guilty individuals, so much so that he ordered the jury to find them non-guilty as there was no case to answer). The trial is still underway for the other 3, so reading between the lines the evidence against them is perhaps more substantial.

See above. Having a whole page devoted to a not-guilty verdict is hardly going quiet, is it?

There's a whole page feature in today's Echo about the two fans who have been found not guilty. What more do you want?

Not sure if I remember the gates being closed at the end. I do remember Hughes getting a couple of goals and also rattling the post with a long range shot; we were in the upper tier front row for the game. What a player he could have been without the injuries.

The Sky bubble would have to literally implode for £5M to make a huge difference. And if it did, and we subsequently had only gate revenues to offset the cost of the refurbishments/new stadium, I'd suggest that it will never happen.

So you want to see the newspaper article AND my comments on them? Just how much information are you looking for?

Could it though? Its widely accepted in the Prem we averaged somewhere around 30,000 per game. It largely depends how many extra fans you think we'd attract, but I'll stick with my belief as stated above that we wouldn't really need a stadium any bigger than 40K, as we'd only likely sell more than that against big 4 and its debatable if it would be a significant amount more than that in any case. Best case scenario; 10,000 extra seats sold per game, lets say sold at £35 each which was our very top price ticket last time in the Prem, that's an extra £350,000 per home game. However, its still extremely unlikely that against the likes of Blackburn, Blackpool, Wigan etc we'd get any more than the 30,000 we used to average. So I'll be generous and say that we'd get 40,000 for only half the games played. So 10 games, £350,000 per game, that's £3.5M extra per season. Add in extras such as beer, food, programmes and whatever and lets say its a round £5M extra revenue per season. £5M per season. Even setting aside the actual cost of putting those extra seats in place, £5M is not going to push us into the top 6. In today's prices that's not even one Rory Delap. When you consider that in 2010, Liverpool's revenue from domestic television was £47M; down from £50M in 2009. That's just from domestic football. And that's ten times what we could hope to achieve by simply increasing attendance. Raising attendance is a nice to have, but it's not really going to get us anywhere by itself. TV money is where the real money is to be found, where even the smallest clubs eclipse their matchday earnings by the money on offer from Sky.

By "the area", you're really talking about the city. Any inner city location is going to be a headache for any club; it's not an issue that is unique to Saints. The area will struggle for the extra traffic but it will cope. Besides, I'm sure any planning permission would be entirely dependent on the provision of much improved park and ride and other transport schemes. I personally see absolutely no point of expanding beyond 40,000. We just wouldn't get any more than that except for games against the big 4, and even then its debatable how much above 40K we'd get. So we're only adding in 8,000 extra customers, or 25% extra than current capacity. The area can cope with that. Whether it makes financial sense to pay anywhere between £16M and £24M to achieve that capacity is another matter altogether.

I think reactions like this to leftback are more tiresome tbf. If you don't hold much stock in what he has to say, then ignore it. LB clearly has an avenue to infirmation from the club that most don't, so I for one welcome his (admittedly agenda-strewn) messages.

Quite frankly, I couldn't give a toss. Pardew is gone, for whatever reason; it is immaterial now. Hearing some newspaper tales of their view of the events holds no interest for me, its old news (and not very important news at that).

To be fair, I think it'll be years before we can hail the appointment of Adkins as a masterstroke. I still maintain that, even despite a poor start to the season, we would have achieved promotion from this division with Pardew at the helm. The squad we have assembled is such that, whoever is in charge, it will be a failure if we do not go up this year. The whys and wherefores of Pardew's sacking are immaterial; I expected promotion with him in charge, I expect promotion with Adkins in charge, and anything less than that is simply not good enough. Where I think you may be proved right in the masterstroke claim is that Adkins does seem to be a very progressive thinker, and can perhaps adapt to situations better than Pardew. That said, Pardew's record in the second half of last season in uparallelled in Saints recent history. So, for now, its swings and roundabouts. If Adkins gets us back to the Prem within the 5 year plan, then yes, his appointment will be a masterstroke. Until then, and while we remain in League 1, we are very much a work in progress.

No thanks. For reasons I've stated above I think Stoneham would create a completely soulless footballing experience and have a detrimental impact on crowd numbers.

And the police will have to prove that those charged were indeed throwing objects. Pretty much all of the accused have admitted that they shook the fence but deny throwing anything (though I think one admitted making a throwing gesture but did not actually throw an object). Without any CCTV I'd say the police wouldn't have a prayer of a conviction, so I imagine there must be evidence to back up the accusations otherwise it really shouldn't have even got to court.

Lets just be clear about these so-called "lads", those in court are aged 43, 28, 49, 46, 29 and 36. In other words, old enough to know better.

If we're going to go for a city centre location then there really isn't a site that would be much better than what we have. Getting 30K to 40K people into and away from a city centre location in one hit is always going to be a logistical nightmare, no matter how good the transport links are. That site above from Joensuu would kill that road out of town, it's completely grid locked as it is with Ikea, throw in a football stadium and it would utter chaos. I think our best bet is to stay where we are; I think our gates in the Prem reflected that we had a good inner city location. I think a Stoneham type development would see numbers drop off, a day at the football is more than just the game its the social aspect before and after, and without the options the city gives you with that I think it would be a major detraction for many to attend. Gate money pales into insiginifiance in comparison with the TV money on offer from Sky; I personally don't think even with a good run of form in the top division that we'd justify a stadium much bigger than 40K. And certainly not for games not involving the top 4 or 5 clubs. In any case, the problem we will face with funding for a new or redeveloped ground is that football stadiums just aren't worth as much as they cost to build. The cost for our stadium was £32M, and as soon as it was built it was probably worth less than half that. Because it a totally unique facility that is of little good to anyone except the football team. If we get back to the top I believe we'd be much better served maximising our current attendance before jumping head first into a ground development which doesn't give us an enormous lot more than we already have, but that will cost almost as much as the original cost of the stadium.

10 mins or so left racine is on for mcnish. gobern and holmes also off as a few under 16s get late runs out

70 mins GOAL! and that's number 5 as ben reeves crashes in a low shot from the right at the near post

47 mins GOAL! Saints 3-0 up doble again with the assist for mcnish to grab his second of the game

43 mins GOAL! Saints 2-0 up callum mc nish taps home at far post from doble's pass almost identical to the first on the other side. Half time: Saints 2 Bompey 0.

Doble almost makes it 2 moments later but his effort trickles wide of the far post

25 mins GOAL! Saints 1-0 up harlee dean taps home doble's pass

From Saints twitter: Team: bialkowski, dickson, a.martin, tafazolli, argent, holmes, dean, gobern, mcnish, reeves, doble. Saints looking comfortable on the ball early on mcnish going closest to a goal so far with a shot just over the bar. Ben Reeves hits a low shot on to outside of the post from a Lee Holmes cross.

Richardson was not out of contract; we paid a fee "believed to be in the region of £450,000". Dickson went to tribunal.