Whitey Grandad

It still is.

I agree. Plus a Left back.

They'll all be asleep in their padded seats.

Hi Pete, great to hear from you again. For what it's worth, here is my gripe that I have just this minute sent to the club, For the attention of Mr.Anthony Cole-Johnson Dear Sir, I am writing to protest in the strongest terms possible about our forced ejection from Block 31 in the central Kingsland Stand. There is a group of us there who had sat together in the Upper East Stand at The Dell and we transferred as a block to the new St Mary's stadium. Watching Saints is for us a social occasion as well as a chance to watch a football match. None of us is interested in any seat padding and if it had been a problem we would have brought a cushion with us. When I first opened the letter I thought it must have been April Fool's Day. What on earth were you thinking to treat such loyal supporters in this manner? Despite some mind-numbingly awful performances in the twenty years since the stadium first opened we have continued to support Southampton FC through thin and thin partly in the knowledge that we were at least retaining our seats in the best position in the ground. If you persist in this nonsense it will mean the breakup of friendships that date back over thirty years. Financially, times have been hard this past year and the majority of those who sit around me are past retirement age and on a limited income. Yet they have managed to scrape together the money to continue to support the club through all the bad years out of loyalty and love for football. To think that we could cough up an extra 50% for our tickets shows a deep lack of understanding of the value of your 'product'. In your position as Director of Sales you must surely be aware that once a Season Ticket has been relinquished it is very rare that a new one is bought. I strongly believe that any extra income that you might think you will derive from the new seating arrangements will be offset by the loss of your loyal customer base. How do you think these loyal supporters would feel when they look across at the 'plastic fans' sitting in what they have come to regard as 'their' seat? It would not surprise me if there was a hostile atmosphere around them. I urge you to reconsider your serious miscalculation. Yours,

Trust me. So do I.

As an old git myself I count as one of the concessions. These prices mean a price rise for me despite being forced to move to what used to be a lower priced seat.

I don’t think anybody has suggested that, but he got enough of a hand on it to push it back upfield and could more easily have just pushed it wide and behind. Was it even going into the net? For the second he must have had his eyes shut. He could at least have shown willing. For the third he could have been more active and charged at Rice. Instead he might just as well have leant against a post and waved him through. It’s not as though these are isolated examples. He has made serious blunders going back over more than one season.

Once you bring agents into the picture things get even more complicated. Golden handshakes, golden goodbyes, image rights, it gets very messy. The reason that sometimes a player hands in a transfer request is that he then forgoes a golden goodbye payment whcih can sweeten his move to the next club. As far as we are concerned it's the overall figure that matters. I don't know how much players might discuss their individual remunerations in the dressing rooms but too large a discrepancy can cause friction between them.

When my father in law lived in Christchurch in the 1970s we used to go along to Bournemouth and sat on wooden benches with a seat cushion that you rented for a few pence. Proper football.

I don't expect much transfer activity until after the Euros. Quite so. Whatever money we got for them we would have to pay the same to get an equivalent player. It's the poorer players that we need to replace.

He put one into the side netting against Leeds too. I've always felt that he would come good if given enought time but he seems to have gone backwards. Yesterday was very poor.

Selling Targett meant that we could bring in someone else.

When I rang the ticket office Monday last week about the arrangements for the Leeds game I asked about changing the name on my wife's ticket. They told me to wait until the new season tickets went on sale. I asked when this would be and was told "in a week or so". So any moment now. Presumably that's why the office is closed.

Well put. It sums it all up for me. In my case it would be £300 extra for each of two seats. That's almost a 50% price increase.

I think you are all overlooking the fact that there is no transfer fee involved. It makes quite a difference to the economics.

Yes, they were awful. For the United one you could hardly claim that he was tripped if he could take a few more steps before throwing himself to the ground. It seems these days that if a player feels a touch they will throw themselves to the ground screaming in agony and rolling over a few times just to make sure that the referee hasn’t missed it. Maybe clutching some part of their body that was nowhere near the contact too.

A clusterfuck all round. A gaping hole where a right back would have been leaving too few players to plug the leak when that attack came pouring through.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. No player should ever have his hands on his hips whilst the ball is in play.

Yep. He seemed confused as though he didn’t know what to do.

Er... no he wasn’t. He got constantly caught in the wrong position and opposition teams would just wall-pass their way passed him. He had a flaky start at Villa too but fair play to him for improving his game. Sometimes a move is the best thing for both club and player.

Pay more peanuts you get bigger apes.

We played like a team of strangers. Thank took that season’s over. Plenty of time now for a good long think about the next one.

New goalkeeper please.

There’s not a lot they can do if they can’t trust the keeper.

I’ve just seen the first half ‘highlights’. That shot bounced twice before it got to McCarthy. Forster for the second half please.