SaintBobby

Can I just say I think Stu has a point here. Ok, he may need a crash course in how to make friends and influence people, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. There's a lot of very odd, weird and incompetent behaviour going on at SMS. All things being equal, I'd expect Season Ticket numbers to be up by about 2K-3K for next season. With good management, it should be an increase of 4K-5K or more. This time last year, we had a threadbare squad and were starting with a ten point penalty. We now are clear bookies favourites to win the league and have c.45,000 fans who saw us win a Wembley trophy just a few weeks back. If we haven't sold about 15K season tickets by kick off on August 7th, the club has done something pretty badly wrong. And stupidly so. Nicola Cortese is obviously a very intelligent and capable man. But I don't think his (and his staff's) recent decisions bear much scrutiny.

Everything seems a bit over-heated here. As a fan - and STH - I'm pretty damned pleased with the overall ownership picture. Loved last season. Loved it. My worry is simply that a few things seem a bit, well, crappy. I'm just a tad surprised I've received nothing in the post asking me to renew my season ticket. No probs for me. I check the OS virtually everyday. But I sort of imagined there'd be an aggressive marketing drive to increase our STHs to, say, 15,000. You know the sort of thing - door-to-door leaflet drops in Soton, posterboards saying "come and watch the Saints", aggressive advertising of our pre-season friendlies and some tasty pre-season friendlies too (e.g. Ajax not Reading). I just expected this stuff to happen effortlessly and to be be rolled out from, say, mid-March. Maybe my hopes were too high or maybe I just don't get marketing. But Im just surprised at the rudimentary things that have apparently not been done. An example was a failure to get programmes printed for the Southend game at the end of last season. Ok, stuff happens. But I've never known it to happen before at a professional football club. Or David Luker not having the time to promote the new ST prices. Weird. We knew we were staying in League One at the end of April. Sort of expected season ticket prices to be announced and widely advertised by the 1st of May. Or maybe a well-drilled March Madness offer when we still had a shot of the play-offs. Again, I'm not that bothered. If we win on the pitch, then if we never print a programme again, or cant offer installment plans for STs or only advertise ST prices way after the season has ended on the OS, then fine. But to me, it just points to something not being quite right somewhere. That's what troubling me, rather than any of the specific things that seem to have gone awry.

That was dreadful. I think it was possible we would beat England on that performance!

I'm rather surprised and confused about how they've handled the whole season ticket renewal thing. And that's why I'm just a tad worried about the functionality of the marketing/ticket office at SMS. It does seem to me that they have advertised prices very late, rather inflexibly (no half-seasontickets, no installments etc) and a bit half-heartedly (no letetr in the post urging you to renew etc) I've never been in the job of selling or marketing season tickets, so this is just the view of the layman, but to my mind this doesn't look like a brilliant and co-ordinated effort to swell the STH base. Far from it.

I'm very happy with where the club is at. I don't expect the OS to report Harding's reaction to us signing a new left back, nor to provide a minute-by-minute commentary on the ongoing negotiations with David Connolly. It is wrong to assume a correlation between the club's activity and how much "news" you hear. Everyone is saying we must sign a right-back, we need a right-back, oh my god we don't have a right-back. They are bang on the money. But I'd rather sign a top quality right back on, say, July 10th than just have an assertion that we're looking to do so on June 20th.

Brilliant. Love it.

Im surprised only 1,300 people signed up for the installment plan last time. Im now a bit more sympathetic to David Lukers scrapping of it. I'd reckon the substantial majority will find a way to pay up front - and a good number of those who don't will spend about the same on a match-by-match basis. The club might make a total loss of only £10,000 or so by scrapping the plan, and this could well be offset by admin costs (Saints staff having to chase late payers; having to send reminder letters that your seat will be withdrawn if you dont bring payments up-to-date etc; finding a way to actually confiscate season tickets from those who have missed payments etc etc etc).

I'd have prefered Charlton to have gone up with Norwich and Leeds, but Millwall would have been my second choice. Next season, Saints, Charlton and Sheff Weds will start as favourites - with our odds the narrowest.

Wouldn't have wished death on Pompey until this season. They have cheated. They need to be destroyed and cast into oblivion forever for the sake of English football. That is all.

James was shocking tonight. I thought the right switch at half-time would have been to put Antonio on the right wing, switch Puncheon to the left and put Lallana in CM just ahead of Hammond.

Thats nonsense, surely. The starting odds were 11/10.

Interesting. What would you say the odds would have been at Ladbrokes on a Saints win after 30 minutes?

Best complaint is to the BBC - it's basically their coverage. Having to pay an extra £30 over and above my licence fee for this appalling service f u c k s me off too. Welcome to the world of state broadcasting.

Nope...but as I'm bragging about everywhere, I have £2,000 on Rickie as top L1 goalscorer (at 2/1) and he's now 4 ahead of Grant Holt. Happy days.

As a total stat nerd, I'm looking at Saints' results this season from going 1-0 down. I can't say I've completed a categorical search, but it looks like - on a cursory glance - that we may recover more points from 1-0 down than any English league team in any division since the war. As an aside, I spoke to a few bookies about this. They said that in live betting markets, the first goal is usually decisive. Of course, that's usually because it is scored by the stronger team (e.g. Chelsea 1 Bolton 0) and therefore just tends to reaffirm the pre-match odds. But in a relatively even battle - say Rovers v Saints - they reckoned the first goal nearly wipes out a recovery to win. Their best guess was that at the 30 min mark, the spot price on a Saints win vs Rovers was about 10/1 or 12/1. But we seem to do this a lot (Southend? Oldham? Leyton? Walsall? Hartelpool!) Would welcome other nerdy/statto analysis. I blame the manager. We shouldn't be going behind early this often. PARDEW OUT (note: this para is not serious)

I'll bring a squadron of pigeons. And a shotgun to pick off any last moaners. Whatever happens at the last game this season, we should shout our appreciation for a fantatsic Saints manager.

I wasn't there. But I wear his name and no. 19 on the back of my shirt. Top player. Totally delighted for him.

trying to do the maths. let's assume we win all 5 remaining games. we need Huddersfield to go W 2 D 1 L 1 or worse, right?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR That Huddersfield winner makes it a bridge too far.

looking like a pretty good investment all in all. Rickie was at 2/1 when he should have been 5/6. just hope Grant Holt doesn't score 4 for Norwich.... will be a difficult for me is Barnard starts scoring hatfuls...!

COYR. Need one more Rickie goal please. Drinks on me if he gets top scorer.

Am punching the air still. Partly cos we're winning, of course. Also cos I've got £2k on Rickie to be top L1 scorer at 2/1. Soooo close to him nailing me a £4K profit! Now make it a hatrick in the 2nd half!

Billy Sharp from Donny

Puncheon was busy - but enfuriating. I thought Antonio was quite good - except when he fluffed that 4-on-1 pass on the counter attack. Seabourne is okay-ish - but compares unfavourably (unfairly) to Fonte who is a cut above (although made a couple of unusual errors on Saturday) Kelvin was MOTM surely?

The OP is right, of course, that the positions a club is in at Xmas and at the end of the season can change dramatically. I seem to remember one season when Millwall topped their division at Xmas, but ended up being relegated in May. That said, assuming we're in League One next season, it seems to me that the target should be to win the division and accrue about 100 points. If we're falling short of that, we should be disappointed. And if we're falling way short, Pardew is doing something wrong.