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Or possibly back to the future. ie the days of Lowe and a squad of the positively bloody average!

Pretty much sums it up.

What is to become of Gazzaniga? I thought he showed touches of brilliance at times and although I understand he wasn't the answer at the time, neither was Davies. So how do you progress a young keeper? I'd hate to see him kept on and end up like Bialkowski, but what do you do to advance him? Another Gk brought in now would probably see the end of Gazza, which I think would be a pity.

It certainly seems that he does as a pastime.

I thought Chaplow's addition to the squad was a big boost in the promotion bid. Sorry he didn't get much chance at Premier level and good luck in future.

I can't make my mind up about Lallana. He has fantastic close control, but doesn't seem to have the required end product. I think perhaps a quality additional signing could see him sidelined.

Has the amount paid to buy Saints ever been confirmed? 13m was being quoted early on.

Is there embalming fluid used in that?

I'm the mayor and so is my wife! I/we get free season tickets but dont't use them as the weekly airfares are too expensive.

I thought the wins we had last season against City, Chelsea and Liverpool were good, but I thought on each occasion we had got them, the respective teams, at the right time. The results that followed indicated there was some truth in my surmise. I was over the moon that we were still in the Prem. at the end of the season, but concerned not so much at the tapering off of results, but at the final league position relative to where we ciould have finished. This, I feel is impacting on our ability to attract the players we're chasing. I know if I were after a move that I'd be looking more favourably at a top ten club rather than one in our position. So I think we have to improve a fair bit next season to continue toward the ultimate goal. That is assuming fourth place isn't going to remain out of our reach for ever. So a minimum of 10th will do it for me.

Very droll. I liked it, but generally a woosh. Loss of irony factor on the pro stripers?

Now there's a man with strange sense of perspective.

I must have missed the original thread. I've just ploughed through it and I too am surprised at the ages displayed. I'm certainly not the oldest and can't go back as far as 1946 to see my first game. but it was in the 40's and against either Bury or Fulham in the old 2nd Div. I can remember Ian Black in goal for us, he shortly after went to Fulham. Bill Ellerington was my favourite player back then. Much clearer in my memory is the late 50's in Div 3 and the 60'sin Div 1/2, although I was hauled off to Australia to live by my Aussie wife in late '66 allowing only a limited exposure to top line football. I have been back several times over the years, each time visiting The Dell or SMS and will again, come September. Most memorable game has to be 3-1v Chelsea in Sep/Oct '72 one of those games we should never have got near them on the run of play. Saints have always been close to my heart and better than plastics I see elsewhere on my travels. I'll be 72 this year,

Thanks for the information. It's difficult to keep up from afar, but then again, I did have the same problem at school!

Sorry if this has been covered previously/elsewhere, but whatever happened to the Huddersfield winger who broke his leg last season? He seemed a likely prospect and I expected him to be in a higher league by now. Was his name Pilkington, or similar?

I haven't seen it mentioned but surely a 3 year deal in 2008 puts him out of contract. How do you swap an out of contract player? Excuse me I'm not too well up on this sort of thing, or did I just not read it correctly?

The9 has every right to complain about the salary paid to Cortese. Cortese, as chairman of a (very) limited company has every right to ignore The9 or any other complainant. It's pretty much a nothing sort of debate.

With the level of money Arsenal have been splashing around lately, I just can't see an upfront 10M+ offer coming from them. Also can't see Cortese accepting much less from them. I can see a disgruntled wannabe star being in for a not very happy period at this club. Hopefully the situation will be speedily resolved.

Just a polite observation on how to play football in the best manner. My opinion is that you can pass the ball around in neat patterns all day long, but you won't neccessarily go anywhere unless, that is, members of your team are running intelligently off the ball creating space for defence splitting passes to be played into. It seems to me this is the area of play that is lacking for most of the time and the reason that people are screaming for a longer ball to be played. This is due to the absence of players such as Le Tissier and Jimmy Case, who spring quickly to mind, that could in fact make defence splitting passes during a game. Hopefully we will get back to this standard of football in the near future. Also, I find most Serie A and Spanish games on tv pretty boring when compared to Premier League games, but that's just my opinion.

I can't say I'm surprised about Eddie Howe being put down, being an ex manager of our deadly ex non rivals Bournemouth. What does surprise me is no mention to date of our current non rivals Brighton and their leader the dreaded Poyet. God please let the season start soon. As south coast clubs, good luck to B'mouth and Brighton in the coming years.

Henry Horton Saints player and Henry Horton Hants cricketer.

I think we'd all be a whole lot happier if we had a 3-4 Million pound signing already announced. There again perhaps not!

Not many, if even one, of the posters on this thread, know for certain whether or not players sign for any of the reasons put forward. I think the original question asked is valid. Those who have had a go at the author of it obliously don't agree, but why get upset over a question, not even a point of view? I think the sooner the season kicks off, the better. Hopefully we end up with "N Adkins Football Legend Star Of the Champions League.", but surely it's a little way off as yet.

Now and again there has been, in time gone past on this forum, mentions of the "irony" in various posts. Here we have a whole thread of it and it would seem largely unobserved.