SaintBobby

I'm kinda with CB Fry on this. I don't know why they don't confirm it in a one liner the second the ink is dry and say "...full interview to follow in 2 hours/this afternoon/whatever" The club do seem to think they can keep things under wraps more than they actually can (especially in the spotlight of the Prem....many more media hungry for any scrap of info and much more willing to pay for it). I basically approve of the club doing things in a discrete, quiet, methodical fashion. But - blimey - in an era of 24/7 news at least announce "job done" as soon as it has been. Also, if I remember rightly - wasn't the thing to stuff the Echo a news story entirely in the club's hands - new kit or something? To release that at 11.30pm, when you could do so at noon, just looks petty and vindictive. If a player really does sign a contract at 11.30pm for some strange reason or other , well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

"Quite" a lot? I'd say we need to start from scratch. Lallana might just cope in the Prem - the rest of them are strictly Championship players.

At 4/7, the bookies' prediction is that we will have about a 65% chance of staying up. I hope they're right.

Excellent. To be simply told my bill is going up would be annoying. To be told three different ways my bill might go up makes me feel like I have options. Nice.

It's worse than that. Not yellow - amber or red. One untried player in for a huge £7m and one (blocked) N Irish midfielder wrapped up in legals. We need August to come around very slowly if we are to have even a fighting chance now, I'd say.

This. Don't start a thread about how important it is to show huge respect for someone when you don't even know their name.

I travel from London for games by train. It takes a little over an hour. I like walking from the station to the ground. Who would a St Mary's station be aimed at...and who would it help?

wtf? John Westwood ‏@JohnWestwoodPFC good news on new team being pulled together ‪#wewillneverdie‬ ‪#pompey

I hate it when news outlets, such as BBC Solent, use the term "understand". E.g. "The BBC understands that Capello will become Russian manager". Presumably everything they report is what they "understand". But they tend to add in the word "understand" to mean "we kind of think this, but aren't wholly sure". Which isn't really the dictionary definition of "understand"....

is this just some fanboy's guess at value? e.g. based on what Football Manager will price them at (or vice versa)

Jack Cork. HTH.

Blimey. Long, slow Summer isn't it? Desperate and ludicrous. That is all.

Nope, but I did have a Swiss flag with "Saints" written on it.

God bless him. So sorry he hasn't seen all the good times which he has brought us.

Probably been covered elsewhere, but Federer won today aged 30. How many recent men's winners have been that old? My best guess is only 1 or 2 over past few decades and that Murray is probably as old (at 25) as the average Wimbledon winner. I.e. he has probably peaked about now.

I went to the final today (got a flukey ticket). Seats were selling for many thousands of pounds on the black market. (one of the Sunday papers said it was £32,000 for a pair). Don't get that too often at Fratton Park - don't think they can even sell their allocation at Wembley.

Blocks 5 to 9 are the corporate block. I know this cos I've gone for that "club lounge" deal and took seats in block 5, which was pretty empty when I coughed up the cash a week ago.

Superb player. Am not ITK, but this solves our winger problem in a stroke. He's not merely a Championship player, he's one with bags of potential. Pretty close to being the sort of player we have lacked (not that we've lacked much in last couple of years)

Run an economics think tank in London. Love it.

Pleased with this signing. Any chance he will be team captain, do you think?

Total shambles. Sigh. After much umming and erring, I decided to go for three seats in the club lounge area. When the total came to £3,510, I was half expecting them to add on a £3.50 booking fee!

Seems utterly bonkers to me that a player of this age/experience can be worth £4m. On the upside, shows that investing heavily in the academy really can be a growing money-making machine for us.

Think my annoyance is the prevailing (although slowly diminishing) view that press conferences are where news is announced. This is amazingly rare these days. And virtually unheard of in football. Perhaps it's our collective memory of the Keegan capture?

What a shambles. Disappointing and seems very symptomatic of a pretty shoddy approach to customer relations/marketing.

This. Well, I guess it's a tiny tad over 0% (presumably some youngsters etc buying their first ever season ticket? one or two people who were out of the country last year and now back in Southampton?). But as close to 0% as makes no difference.