SaintBobby

Well, market prices are market prices. It's been very difficult to persuade any of the c. 3,000 travelling fans to part with a ticket for a premium and for them to go into the home end. If there's anyone who thinks I'm insane to not go in the home end, then sell me your ticket and trouser a £50 profit!

Am still desperately seeking two tickets - willing to offer £70 for one or £150 if you can provide me with two. PM me if you're able and willing to help - might just mean you having to go in the home end at £20 a pop.

Still desperately seeking one or two spare tickets - am willing to pay well over face value. PM me if you can help.

Like an idiot, because of a heavy work schedule, I didn't get round to ordering tickets for Leyton away before it was too late. This means I've very badly let down two friends. From what I can gather, it is possible to get tickets on the day in the Leyton end, but I badly want 3 adult tickets, next to each other, in the Saints end. Am willing to offer £50 - so a total of £150 for the three. If you're inclined to trouser some extra cash and watch the game from the home end, or experience the joys of Saints player's live "commentary", I'd be very glad to hear from you. Please PM me if you can help.

Unfortunately, the BBC are under no obligation to offer to sell you a licence. And as they aren't governed by the profit motive, I doubt this will change. For those complaining that they can't get BBC stuff on their laptop in e.g. California....unfortuantely, the licence fee is territorial not personal. Your annual fee of c. £135 allows you to watch the BBC in your own home, not on your own personal travels. I think this is all totally mad and the BBC should be sold off entirely.

No, I meant cathartic.

Really rate Trotman, and hope we keep him. But as others have said, Pardew has shown himself to be quite exceptional - to the point of genius - in the transfer market, so I don't think we need to be too worried - just hopeful.

I'm not bothered about the Lowe threads. They are certainly popular in terms of posts and readers. Now things are on the up, it's sort of cathartic in a weird way.

Hmmm....how disappointing. What about his alleged £8K per week salary?

Hmmm. Not so sure. I had a small, residual modicum of sympathy for Lowe until the 2nd coming. I think he then made bad footballing decisions (i.e. Poortvliet rather than Pearson....or indeed delete the "rather than" part of that). The collapse into administration was just ridiculous though - especially as it was 24 hours after the deadline. My strong impression was that Lowe was just caught unawares by Barclays and it was a bolt from the blue. He and Wilde were also utterly hopeless at finding an alternative buyer. Once we'd finally gone into administration, we cut it fine, but ended up being bought by a billionaire. Again, my impression is that whilst the club was always technically for sale, this meant little more than SLH being publicly listed. I dont think Lowe and Wilde were actively and aggressively seeking an alternative buyer. If they were, then they were very bad at it. Lowe's first period in charge was a very mixed bag. Some real highs, but plenty of woeful lows too. His second spell was lamentable. He played a weakish hand catasrophically and appallingly badly.

Apologies if this has been covered/discussed before, but... Was having a pint last night with a mate who's an Arsenal fan, but in other ways is basically an acceptable member of the human race. He knows his football inside out and reckons Rickie Lambert is an exceptional player. He then made the casual remark that at £1m, Lambert was by far and away the most expensive signing ever by a club in the English third division - and probably the most expensive by any third tier club in the world. Questions: 1. Is £1m the confirmed transfer price for our new no. 7? 2. If yes, is my mate right that we have the most expensive player ever to play in the 3rd tier. 3. If yes, isn't that pretty f**king cool?

Was interested in what Claridge said about Connolly. He was probably the one signing this season I didn't take that seriously, in a not bothered sort of way. But I wonder whether we have a 15+-goal a season striker on our hands. Not sure how we fit him into the system, as we seem to have deserted 4-4-2, but am v pleased we may have depth in the squad. I'm one very happy Saints fan at the moment. Not so much about where we are, but certainly about the direction we're moving in.

Her whole presence is deeply patronising. I don't blame her so much - more the format. Claridge and the anchorman are pretty good - but the editorial stance of trying to show (mainly via Lizzie whatshername) "They're mental football fans...really mental...wow...look how mental they are..." is just lamentable. It's almost as if it's a football show aimed at people who aren't really interested in football.

I love this forum, I really do. But I do think it helps to show why fans should never run football clubs. We're too happy with things going right, and too prescriptive when things go wrong. If patience is a virtue, it's not one we show very often. As an aside though, has anyone, anywhere, actually called for "Pardew out" this season? Other than as pardoy?

I'm now looking ahead to each game expecting to win - rather than being prepared to accept a hypothetical Faustian pact for a draw. I wouldn't have "taken a point" at 2.59pm today - for the first time in ages at an away league game. I don't expect us to win all our remaining 33 games, obviously. But I'm starting to think something like W 20 D 5 L 8 is VERY realistic. That would mean 73 points and the play-offs.

I assume it was Mellis for Lallana as the last substitute? I know there were only seconds to go - but the official Oldham site's claim that Bialkowski came on to replace Lallana surely can't be right? http://www.oldhamathletic.co.uk/page/NewsUpdate/0,,10337~1829050,00.html

Very, very good result. And a riche vein of form to be sure. Keeps the play-off dream very much alive.

some worrying Oldham possession....

This is without doubt the worst radio commentary I have ever heard.

Jahidi sounds like he's having an off day.

Weymouth 0 Dover 1, for all those Saintsplayer subscribers whose real passion is Weymouth or Dover.....

I thought ML bought the club for c. 13 - 15 million. There wasn's £30m of pure debt - most of it was the mortage. Best guess is that Aviva and otehr creditors got about 50% of their claims.

Your congratulations are noted and accepted.

Interesting, but am not sure this stacks up. For Saints, we need to parcel out our "football" points and our "actual" points, due to the penalty. (so, at present, we have 15 of the former and 5 of the later). If we are on 39 points after 24 games, we will be CRUISING to the play-offs and will probably be odds-on for automatic promotion (even if we're only, say 9th in the actual league table). That's because we will have accrued 49 "football" points in 1/2 a season -and if we achieved that in the second half of the season, we'd end up on around 86-88 points. The best way to factor in our 10 point penalty, is to see it as something that needs to slowly erased over time rather than suddenly made-up in one quantum leap forward. In effect, we're going to have to do - on average - 0.2 points a game better than if we didn't have the penalty. The best way of charting our "real" progress is to take out the 10 point penalty which is (understandably) applied before a ball is kicked and just knock off 0.2 points from our total for every game we play (that will come out as a 9.2 deduction over the season - but that's fine, because we're very likely to have a superior goal difference to our closest competitors which is worth the other 0.8 of a point) In real terms, we are therefore on 12.4 points after 12 games. If replicated over the rest of the season, that leaves us hovering on the brink of relegation. But I think it's fair to say that games 7-12 are probably a better indicator of our future performances than games 1-6. We averaged 0.67 points from games 1-6, but have averaged 1.83 points from games 7-12. If we can keep up this average of 1.83, we'll end the season on about 67 points. Either in the play-offs, or just outside.

Yeah, I don't think your response contradicts anything I've said - or even addresses the most salient points. I don't think Pearson is a "great" manager - but I think anyone arguing his strengths has better evidence from his time at Leicester than from his time at Saints. The 3/13 points comparitor just doesn't make any sense to me. But, to be honest, I think Pearson's stats over his short spell are better than the stats from Pardew's early weeks, in so far as such a comparison can be made at all. 3 wins out of 13 at the tail end of a season in a relegation fight in the CCC is very different to 3 wins out of 13 at the start of a (highly financed) League One campaign. Different circumstances, different problems, different challenges - but if really forced to measure up the 13 NP v the 13 AP games, I'd say the former was a better achievement (or a lesser failure) By way of comparison, I'm pretty sure we lost more games than we won under WGS and Chris Nicholl. But that was in the Premiership as one of the lesser clubs. The ask of Pardew in League One - with more financial support than any of our opponents - is (rightly) that we win far, far more games than we lose. A record of W 33% D 33% L 33% would be a triumph in the Premier League. Possibly even count as vaguely tolerable in the CCC. But would be a dramatic and embarrassing under-performance in L1. The real straw man here is the notion that there's a contingent of fans who want Pardew sacked. I'd say that's probably the opinion of about 1% of Saints fans. Maybe less. Many more, however, will consider that a record of W 3 D 6 L 3 is a rather poor start to our L1 campaign - notwithstanding the recent improvement in both performances and results. And I don't think it's madness to ask "how much time should Pardew be given?" as a hypothetical question on a rambling message board. FWIW, my own view on this is: 1. If by Xmas, it looks as if we are probably (i.e. at odds on) heading for relegation, the board should sack him and get in a new manager before the January transfer window. 2. If at the end of the season, we are no more than a mediocre L1 team (i.e. W 15 D 16 L 15) with no obvious signs of improvement and are unlikely to enter the 2010/11 season as bookies' favourites (or maybe 2nd favourites), we should change managers in the Summer. 3. If we are not promoted in 2010-11 (or are clearly not on target for promotion after c. 12 games), he should be sacked. But, I'm pretty damned confident none of these three scenarios will come to pass. I'd put the chances at something like: Scenario 1: 2% Scenario 2: 10% Scenario 3: 10% So, I reckon there's a c.78% that AP will be leading us into the CCC - and probably beyond.