saint1977

I usually agree with your posts Bobby and certainly I think he should get a decent run off the bench but I really want to see us develop a winning mentality and that means putting sides to the sword. Sunderland have a got a huge number of players out and despite Di Canio's rhetoric they ought to be made to work very hard on Sunday by a hungry and dominating Saints. MP has dropped hints last week that new signings are in the offing so if a couple of first team players think we've cracked it and head mentally to the Maldives, they might find themselves on loan and playing at Oakwell in the NPC on a cold December afternoon because they can't get in the revised 16. So a repeat of the Spurs performance with more clinical finishing is the standard expected for both Sunderland and Stoke. Looking for at least 4 points out of 6 and so will MP and NC I'd imagine.

QPR fans, be worried, be very worried! Saints fans heard comments very similar to these.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22399438 Don't doubt there are some underperformers there but with Barton seemingly coming back to his alleged £80k p/w contract from OM, team harmony might just get a whole lot worse!

Exactly, Saturday was a totally unacceptable performance clearly and you can tell that MP has thrown the proverbial tea cups. But how many league games have we lost in 2013? Not many I think. There is a common thread in the QPR, W Ham and now W Brom home games where our lack of pace out wide and up front has made us easy to blunt, we are better when teams come out at us. However, this can be addressed in the summer, assuming that we get a couple more points to secure safety (I think we'll draw the Sunderland and Stoke games and Wigan will deserve to stay up if they win 3 more games, probably at Villa's expense. Hope Sunderland win tonight!) Back to Saints. Not sure I agree with Alpine's colourful description of last summer's transfer activity. J Rod looks a bargain at £6/7m, Yoshida for £2m (We'd probably have got Liam Fontaine in the UK for that), Clyne for £2.5m (one of our best ever buys), Davis for £750k odd etc. Now OK, the jury is out on Ramirez and Vegard Lucan and Gazzaniga was literally a replacement for Tommy Fourpast, but overall we have 14-15 PL players that can sustain themselves over a 38 game season. There will probably be 15-20, mostly fringe or non First XI players going out and I'd reckon 6 quality first-team ready players coming in, which gives us 20-21 plus some promising youngsters emerging, which as fans we've always enjoyed seeing them develop in a settled First XI. It's up to the players that are slightly under threat from these new purchases to not repeat Saturday again and to prove that their form since Xmas is more representative of what they could offer us next term as first XI starters. I think we need: 2 x cb. Jos's efforts have been admirable after a shocking start to the season and remember, he was a stop gap in the NPC let alone the PL. He'll stay as cover I'd imagine but we are badly short in this area. Whether we reinforce at LB depends on how close the club reckon Matt Targett is to pushing Luke Shaw for a starting spot. Perhaps one of the centre backs might be right sided with a bit of pace so that they could play RB reasonably comfortably if Clyne is ruled out? 2 X Wingers/express pace strikers. Don't mind where they are recruited from, we need exciting and dynamic wide players that can create a step change in our play and enable the fluidity MP wants. In our segments of the market, we won't get players that are the finished article so we'll need to work with raw athleticism and ability. Striker - We're still short of a different option. Mayuka may or may not be it and I'd like to see him getting a longer run off the bench in the next couple of games. CM - Not as convinced as others that we need to buy here as we have Morgan, Cork, Davis and I reckon Adam, Gaston and Punch's futures might lie infield too. However, given the number of DMCs we are linked with, I'd say the club disagree with me and I'm sure they will be right. GK - Boruc has signed a new deal but are we happy with KD and PG as back-up? Does Boruc need more competition? Not sure NC has been impressed with Gazza and as Nigel was a former GK this might have sealed his fate so wouldn't be surprised if we did buy another GK but there isn't an 100% clear cut case for buying one either.

How the tables have turned though! We've had so many great moments with Markus, Nicola, Pards, Nigel and now MP since that it has turned the volume right down on that memory. There's no way the current squad, who are also far more talented as well as gutsy, would have lost let alone capitulated. Only Quashie, to his credit, and Camara turned up. Niemi went from potential legend to villain. Just for good measure he then drained the skates when their crisis began kicking in for a year to top up his pension pot! Funnily enough though, it wasn't that game in the relegation season that haunted me but the Villa home game capitulation. Something wasn't right about that second half. Villa were mentally on the beach and I'd booked my flight for the midweek game at Bolton, 2-0 at ht, what could go wrong? Still, these things go in cycles and one of their goalscorers that awful day now plays in our midfield! Enjoy Saturday's game, have a beer or two, think about our new summer signings and theirs. I don't think many of the 30k Saints fans will be thinking about that day, let the skates have it for those defeats at Accrington on a Tuesday night in the snow.

Thanksb Dig Dig, I'll do that. Thanks for your reply as well Trousers, I too suspected there were good reasons for buying them in bulk but it does raise some questions. I've been reading the PTS saga on and off and some fine work has been done on there!

Not having a pop at Bangkok because our ticketing system is very random but that's a good question that somebody ought to ask the club. I was expecting the Stoke tickets to go quickly so can live with that but concerned about next season if STs for myself and my other half aren't financially viable. I might look to car-share next season with other fans from the SW if people are interested. I'll join the site in full as well so I can get PMs, is there a non Paypal option for doing so?

Same here. It's a real disadvantage trying to get tickets and not living within 15 miles of the ground anymore. Suspect demand will only increase. FAO Simo and all the other 'uber fans' - I went to a huge amount of games in L1, including Carlisle away, Northampton in the Cup, Brentford away x2, Tranmere, Stockport etc etc. I was restricted to Saturday games firstly by working in London and then moving to the South West because I was offered a great job down here, a million times better than anything I've ever been offered in Hampshire. I get to as many games as I can now, the ticket prices are fine but it's the petrol that's the killer. I'm thinking about an ST but my wife will want one so with travel and subs etc I'm looking down the barrel of £2-2.5k and that's a serious push plus you can rule out all non-weekend games. I'm not complaining at the cluib because that was my choice but for people to call themselves better fans because they can pop down the ticket office whenever they want and they haven't got the courage to relocate if their career requires is pathetic. I'm sure the club will get it sorted because if we are going to attract people from a wider catchment - and I think we can - we need more flexible ticketing options that cater for people further than 4 miles away.

Also, half the reason we signed Ryan Dickson is because he murdered a right sided combination of Lloyd James and Jake Thomson in the Brentford home game (!) and Otsemobor in the away game. All of those 3 are awful players and the James/Thomson right sided combination has to be the worst I've ever seen!

Wright was awful in whichever position Burley put him in but the one I remember was the QPR home game where Burley played him at left back. I mean, he was bad enough on his right foot! Cost us the game and kicked in a motion a slide that nearly relegated us. McCann - tried hard, awful in the PL, had a few more decent games in the NPC but his signing post FA Cup Final showed the game was up for Askham and co. unless new investment came in (which would never have happened with them around). Bernard - As much as I don't rate Fox, this guy was far worse. Attitude stank as well. Lancashire - Saw him play for Aldershot this season at Torquay and they lost 4-3 having been 3-0 up in the second half. Just not professional standard - to be fair he was far from alone in that particular academy intake: exhibit B Jake Thomson - and will be out of the game in 2 or 3 years. The mystery is how Saints couldn't score against Walsall when we played against him and them in League 1?! Lloyd James - A trier and will at least make a fair L2 player. Did see him score a great volley at Brentford after about 4 minutes and thought the Griffin Pub had put something in our pints that was mind-bending! Not SFC standard in a million years but any academy product that makes a professional career of a decent length deserves respect IMO. Euell - I remember the fans reaction when he was substituted during the Plymouth game at home!

A sensible perspective on her (and Lawson's) economic track record can be seen here. This obviously doesn't cover the successful TU reforms or the unsuccessful social changes such as the Poll Tax but I thought it covered some of the key points in a balanced way: http://www.voxeu.eu/article/economic-legacy-mrs-thatcher John Major made a good point I think - the rhetoric was often more fierce than that reality and she was far more pragmatic than most politicians in a volatile climate at the time. Pity that the Tory right don't have the grey matter to understand that. Ironically, I was in the middle of reading Heseltine's autobiography at the time and he was making a similar point about the Tory right - most of them haven't been in business and can only recite theory about how they THINK the economy should be. Personally, the 1986 'There is no such thing as society' speech would have deterred me from voting for her but I rate some of her achievements as a PM in waking the country up a bit, even if I wasn't that keen on her as a human being.

Totally agree Minty and sadly, this is why whatever happens re: Levinson, it won't make a great deal of difference. Until newspapers/media outlets become more objective and neutral and not puppets for political parties/elites/unions/far right organisations, the debate will be about rosettes and not how we can sort out some of the thorniest challenges - energy poverty, pensions, health, education, jobs - to benefit the majority of the public and to set reasonable expectations at each end of the social spectrum from individuals. Moreover, it would help if each person's or families circumstances were looked at in isolation rather than the crude labelling that occurs of social groups. Take away the party politics and actually there are more good ideas on this thread than British Politics has come up with over the last 40 years!

No, 42+ is absolute safety, 40 or above likely to be good enough. Besides which, with much more money per league place than when we were last in the PL, we want to finish as high as we can. Defeat on Saturday would drop us right back into deep trouble, a draw would be OKish but a win would be a big stride forward. What gives me encouragement is Sunderland's fairly nasty run in and Wigan's game in hand is at Man City.

I agree - how pathetic and no business justification seemingly given either. If I was Cortese and I read this I'd be over-turning it straight away. These days, travelling up from the South West I don't tend to buy tickets in those type of numbers but a few years ago when I lived in Hants 8-10 of us regularly went to away games together and sat together after a few pints in the away pub and we would have been furious if some jumped up twonk had made some bureaucratic nonsense rule up like that. There were some strange rules in Luker's time but even he would have thought this was too daft to implement!

Fair point that, we were as Keith Hill said 'the Kings' in L1 but we weren't favourites last season by a long chalk, Sven and Sam had spent a ton and Brum had retained most of their big earners. Top 6 would have been considered quite an achievement in August 2011 when that season began. Also, we were by far the best side to watch all campaign. Back on topic, what a brilliant time we've had as fans since Markus bought us. JPT and Wembley season 1, Lambert signing and Pardew making some other seriously good purchases. Nigel built on that after a slow start and built a real togetherness and promotion after that emotional final day at home to Cov. Last season was brilliant with the odd blip after Xmas and touch wood, we should secure our PL status first season back with the games we have left if we are professional, great home wins over City, Liverpool and now Chelsea to enjoy. Might buy that DVD of the promotion seasons when the season finishes.

Yeah, I'd buy Le Fondre, liked him since he was at Rotherham. Kebbe maybe too long in the tooth now? Remy obviously too but rumoured to be on circa £80k a week at QPR; after all, why else would you go to QPR over Newcastle? I didn't believe Harry for a moment when he said before the window that he wouldn't be spending big - yeah right! They should get their money back on Remy but Samba? That's up there with Nugent and/or Utaka for his worst over-paid flop in recent years and we won't even mention Boogers or the Romanian striker at W Ham. Alex Pearce did well for us on loan at the level below but not mobile enough for the PL, let Cardiff or Hull have him.

I wouldn't normally agree with this but I do on this occasion. It was one of the worst decisions I've seen go against Saints and one of the worst you'll see all season. There's no way Shaw brought him down, Grant Holt must have laughed his head off at that being given, you could see he was expecting to be booked for diving. We're too nice as a team and frankly I'd like to see SMS being a bearpit for refs and opposition players in the remaining home games. £50k fine is well worth it IMO.

This and the post by Crazy Diamond. I'd also agree with CB Fry in wishing Paul Sturrock well in the final and also for the rest of the L2 season. It was class to wish us well v Man U after he'd been shafted by SFC's toxic politics. This point has been done to death on here but some people still don't get it - the club needed to either be sold in 2003 to build on the momentum or have a major investor brought on board to depose Askham and his other hangers on so that they could take their precious money and disappear. For Lowe's faults, of which there were many, it's not hard to list 5 positive things he did at SFC. Try doing that for Guy Askham. WGS knew he couldn't take us any further and we were in a death spiral after New Year 2004 to 2009. That squad was badly needing refreshing, we just needed a few experienced heads in their late 20s with PL experience to keep us top 10 until Bale, Theo, Lallana et al came through. What we got was Nilsson, Jakobsson, Van Dire and a clutch of other rubbish bar Crouch. Where Lowe did screw up horrendously and relegated us in August 2004 was to sack Sturrock with no replacement. The board at the time should have over-ruled Lowe, it's not as if he had anywhere near a majority stake. The atmosphere at the Blackburn game was surreal, even though we won with a dodgy pen it was so quiet. The club had become very stale in a short space of time, the board were split into factions with no leadership. Contrast that to now and it shows you how far we have revived. Still lots of work to do this season mind!

A couple of pre-war titles before the advent of mass TV will keep them very warm on a freezing Tuesday night at Morecambe, Fleetwood and various other delightful places they will be visiting next season - if the PST bid even succeeds.

Spot on Minty, we rented a cottage for our first 6 months in the South West after selling our property whilst we were finding the best area to buy in. We'd never have considered not leaving it in mint (no pun intended) condition for our landlord. I'd hope that if we had to relocate our property in the future and rent our current house out that we'd have a good relationship with the tenants and see the same. This is a dispute between two wealthy men that would be a 4 sentence job on Page 27 if they weren't connected to SFC past and present. Frankly, my view is that this has no bearing in terms of what goes on for our first XI on the pitch. I still admire Franny for a decade-and-a-half's dedicated service, MLT is still one our of greatest ever players and Cortese is and has done a superb job as Chairman and CEO. I can state those mutually exclusive 3 facts without the desire to take sides and I say let the rich men have their day in court. I like you am very surprised that this wasn't put into a written contract - with a verbal contract it's one person's word against anothers and very hard to get the bottom of. With the sums of money allegedly involved, I'd like to think the vast majority of users of this site would have put this into a written agreement.

This tallies with what I heard at the time and retrospectively as well. Sturrock's image was not what Lowe wanted at all plus wasn't SCW at the Villa game? The club needed to be sold at that time, Lowe was trying to re-invent the wheel with only a small stake in the business and old man Askham lurking in the background. It was a strange appointment and stank of panic at the time after the fans uproar over Hoddle's proposed return, which seemed to be cancelled at the last moment. I went to Man City and we played well and as say his results weren't that bad but the end to the season was limp and there were rumours that his position was under threat all summer. The summer signings - bar Crouch - were very lukewarm and the whole club had gone totally stale. People talk about politics at the club now but it was x1000 worse back then, very gossipy. I don't like Harry or his attitude when he managed us but could anyone have kept us up? The whole place was in nosedive and a nice bloke like Wigley was always going to be eaten alive in that environment.

He most definately did get a few games the9, I remember him playing v Forest at home and he caused them a lot of problems. He was exactly as you remember him, he beat four Forest players in the corner with a bit of skill that had the Saints fans roaring with approval. A bit like with Neal Bartlett, I'm not quite sure why he didn't last longer. Talking of rapid wingers that probably needed to improve their end product, do people remember Andy Williams and Neal Heaney? Williams was a taller version of Powell but almost as quick with just as many tricks. I remember him being our best player V Bolton on a dire opening day in 97/98 - Dave Jones's first game - and giving Chelsea the runaround as a sub. Heaney was the quickest of the three, I mean really quick but his delivery was terrible and frequently threatened the fans behind each goal. He was linked with Blackburn at one stage for big money but ended up following Bally to City when they were relegated and then to Darlington. Williams went to Swindon and was winning MOTM awards and then vanished again, I'll ask my Swindon supporting mate what happened. If you want to see ex-Saints, go to Exeter, Tisdale has a few like Aaron Davies and Matt Oakley. Saw Ollie Lancashire for Aldershot v Torquay at Plainmoor on a Tuesday night earlier this season. No wonder Aldershot are struggling with him at CB! Aldershot were 3-0 up and lost 4-3 in the last minute which pleased the locals no end. He certainly hasn't improved. What's happened to Lloyd James?

I agree Gemmel but this squad come across as professional - the way they've handled the recent upheaval is impressive. 5 points from the next 3 would be a very handy return and would give us one foot in the door. QPR are goners, just hope they don't spike us with a shock win at SMS. If we stay up and they go as expected, we should make them an offer for Hoilett, he's exactly the player we lack and with our coaching set up we could get the best from him. Fernandes will have to seriously subsidise them and they'll have trouble meeting FAPP unless they return instantly. Someone on here said Zamora was on 60k a week, I've heard figures well north of that (e.g. 90k)! Villa are reliant on keeping Benteke fit but could eke out enough wins to save themselves. Reading's home games are key, they need to beat us, I think they have QPR and definately Wigan at home because their run in looks otherwise unpleasant. Kone returning is Wigan's best hope but their defending is awful. Can't see Toon getting sucked in with Cabaye fit and some shrewd January buys and Norwich and Fulham are good enough at home to not fret too much.

I concur with much of what Saint Bobby has said - getting a CB was top priority and we got one, a left sided one at that. Admirable as Jos's recent efforts have been, you just a have a feeling that there's an OG around the corner. Mind you, I think (or hope) Kone's still at the ACON as he caused us all sorts of problems in August. Would have liked a winger but I have a feeling MP might get a bit more out of Mayuka and that would be like a new signing as we've hardly seen anything of him (and you can't draw anything from the Sunderland display because Messi or RVP would have struggled we were that poor). QPR are reckless, typical Harry. Not surprised his media contacts are protecting him and it gives them a break from brown-nosing Nigel Farage.

Some harsh comments on here. Forte got those two crucial goals v MK and chipped in the following season in a couple of League Cup games where he started. He also did very well at Notts County but seemed to have less impact at Crawley for some reason. Good L1 player but not NPC and not PL.

The key area to strengthen with top urgency was CB as we were sailing very close to the wind if Yoshida or Fonte had got a knock or ban. We've done that with Forren who I've also read some where can play LB if needed so cover for Shaw too. Ideally I'd like a wide player with express pace as that's an area we do lack to change games but we've already spent a lot this season and I wouldn't want us to emulate the Skates in that regard if we had to pay over the odds for a wide player that wasn't top priority for the club.