ant

Hmm. Broadly I'm fine with a weighted ballot. But having approx. 12% of the 2,000 'capacity' fixed for the first game (likely a higher percentage if you consider the 2,000 is lowered by hospitality) seems a lot. Think I've had my season ticket for a decade now (essentially as soon as I could afford it after getting my first 'proper' job). And whilst I don't expect to be in some mega-special category for that, it feels a pretty hefty disparity in favour of the super fans. Ultimately there'll always be people 'losing out' with such a low attendance cap. But my main point is that if they're intending to rotate through ST holders as often as possible, having a high percentage of fixed allocations doesn't help that goal.

It'd be good to know! Was looking at buying one for a Christmas present, but there's no indication whether they'll actually be dispatched in time. It's said 'PRE-ORDER' (with no elaboration) since the day they first listed the Sportsbet versions on the store.

This is some stunning whataboutery and false equivalence. Never advance; never progress. If it's not traditional, it's not valid.

Well worth watching the Asif Kapadia documentary on Maradona. Kapadia also directed the stunning Senna documentary; both films shine a very different (more humane) light on each great, versus the media of their time. Yes, Maradona made many mistakes. Whilst very, very gifted he was human to a fault - and horrendously exploited whilst in Italy. Not to completely ignore his misdemeanours, of course... Just that - as ever - it's all a little more complicated than the 'surface level' viewpoint. RIP.

The amount of refunds they're having to process is mental. Guess it keeps someone in a job, but surely we've long since passed the point where they should be a bit more pragmatic? Refund us to the end of the year at least, and save a lot of pointless toiling. Won't it be costing them a few quid to keep operating like this? Unless cashflow is utterly desperate they might as well refund the lot now, minus a holding fee. Putting us on parity with most other clubs. They're unlikely to be able to 'cash' much (if any) of the money they're holding, and pretending otherwise doesn't seem productive. FWIW, I'm actually not too bothered when it's returned to my account. Simply seems nuts from their side.

Seems they still haven't sorted this yet, as I had pretty much the same thing happen last Friday. First tried to put an order through whereby the voucher covered all of the items + postage, i.e. there was £0.00 to pay. However when attempting to put that through (twice - having to re-enter all personal details each time), I was simply dumped by back to the store homepage. With the items still in the basket. Then added a filler item so that I had £1.45 to pay. That time I reached the payment screen and submitted my card details. Upon which the payment gateway hung, then crashed. The order sort-of seems to have gone through in the sense that it's listed under my order history. Albeit without an order number. Subsequently received three confirmation emails, none of which had an order number either. There's a pending £1.45 payment on the bank account, not yet processed. Emailed them there-and-then to enquire what's going on, but haven't heard back yet. Currently anybody's guess whether I'm to receive zero, one or three parcels.

Yep, just noticed this. The way it's worded, the club will manually adjust the final instalment to remove your credit. So in my case the last payment of £185.93 would instead be £73.93. Seems a bit counter-intuitive that when you click the 'Use my balance of £ 112.00' checkbox it doesn't adjust the figure of the final instalment. Think that's what confused me.

Supposedly so, but it's still an option at the Checkout.

Decided this morning to lump in on renewing, being in the privileged position that I don't mind the money being sat in the club. With that said, thought I'd spread the payment across a few instalments since the option's there. But when you select this at the Checkout it says you can't apply your 2019/20 credit. Having scoured the initial sales emails and the season ticket FAQ on the OS, I can't see this mentioned anywhere. I guess it's possible to work around that by both selecting the instalment plan and requesting a refund on last season's credit. Just seems needlessly convoluted.

Guess that money ain't hitting our account "in pounds sterling" then - nor any other currency Gao would care to mention. 🙄 That he unambiguously stated his willingness for the club to accept money of 'unknown' origin (hmm...) probably says a fair amount about the man's moral fibre.

Nope. 😔 https://theathletic.co.uk/1922323/2020/07/13/ornstein-manchester-city-premier-league-chelsea-onana/ Massively missed opportunity.

Some of these are quite fun. Particularly surrounding Ward-Prowse (who I consistently hear being sarcastically referred to as a 'set-piece expert' at games) and Redmond, who apparently never takes anybody on.

Haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, but the xG on Ings' effort was 0.05. Which (regardless of what you feel about use of stats in analysis) boils down to 'he made something of nothing'. I think that's part of what makes Danny so potent - you don't have to feed it to him on a plate. Give him the ball around the box and he's more than capable of crafting it into a chance.

It's interesting how perspective frames things, though. In Puel's season, 46 points was seen by most, if not all, as abject failure - mostly because of the dreadful end to the season. This season we started horrendously, then have been in excellent form since the November international break. The positivity has grown across the campaign, rather than tailing off. Which is where we're at now. My initial feeling was to agree that Puel had a much better squad, although when you look at what we ended the final match of 2016-17 with, I'm not sure there's an awful lot of difference. Forster Cedric / Stephens / Yoshida / Bertrand Davis / Ward-Prowse / Romeu / Tadic Austin / Redmond Subs used: Boufal, Gabbiadini, Pied --- Anyway, looking at our Prem record against Brighton I was expecting it to be pretty mixed, but turns out it's 3W, 3D. Could've sworn there was a loss in there, but must just be that any time Murray scores against us it feels like a loss. 2-1 home win, for me.

But he doesn't smile much and phones in his performances... Yeah right. Consummate professional on the pitch and has been frustrated when previous managers/tactics haven't been up to snuff. As have many of us. We've been seriously lucky to have somebody of his standard 'phoning it in' for so long.

Here's one for you, then. Within a week of the 'lockdown' my employer made me redundant. In short, because they couldn't be arsed to run the basic, minimal admin to furlough me. And despite me offering to defer any wages until such time that the government portal was operational and paying out. I've been running on about £150/week since (not any form of benefits - from taking whatever part-time work I could). I support the current measures. I'm able to see that these were necessary to reduce transmission and to avoid overwhelming ICUs. To prevent other avoidable, indirect deaths that could've occurred due to lack of hospital capacity. My finances have taken a tremendous hit, and will take a long time to recover. It will affect future plans from the big (trying to save for a mortgage deposit) to the trivial (such as missing out on the next likely season ticket, for the first time in a decade). The nation's seen more than 30,000 deaths already. More than 30,000 in the space of a couple of months. More than 30,000, when - even if we are past the peak - we'll be living with this virus for a bloody good while yet. More than 30,000, despite the measures that were put in place. Given those factors, how is a projected 250,000+ deaths so implausible, had this action not been taken? Had we not shielded the most vulnerable. Had we not reduced transmission to a minimum. Had we not prevented emergency services from being overwhelmed. Your second and third paragraphs trip over themselves... If you're advocating easing lockdown measures and the economy magically recovering, then businesses would spin back up again; services would be required, purchases would be made and staff would be needed to facilitate that. There'd be a lot of turnover, and people shuffling between jobs, but mass unemployment would begin to settle down. Equally, I find it bizarre that some don't seem to think that deaths on a grand scale would have any effect on economics. Even for those so callous as to call for allowing the virus to ravage those most at risk. More realistically we're looking towards a measured, phased approach back to some semblance of what we're used to. I simply don't understand what's to fault with playing the percentages and safeguarding against a second spike? Anybody that thinks we're going to imminently return to 'normal' needs to give their head a wobble. There is no silver bullet to deal with the situation, and decisions made need to juggle an incredible number of factors. Yes, there must be some semblance of balance. Accordingly the likelihood is that we're going to see varying levels of restrictions placed upon us for many more months to come. Opening everything up again now simply places us right back where we were at the start of March. Measures will be loosened (and, if necessary, tightened) as required, per balancing on that tightrope. Which seems entirely logical and reasonable to me, so long as any adjustments are made in a timely manner. Without delving into the motivation, the papers and associated media have been incredibly irresponsible over the last couple of days in feeding messaging that's not simply not borne of the reality. Today you could already see the effects of that, with more and more people acting like this is coming to a close. It ain't. Not by a long straw.

Speaking of Twitter, I see Le Tiss has been covering himself in glory again. Appears about one stage away from retweeting David Icke.

By and large this thread nails what the club's getting wrong. They would learn far more from taking on board the gist here than through a hundred surveys. With that said there does seem to be one significant element of hypocrisy. Wherein the club's berated for forgetting it's community status, yet also criticised for demonstrating and extolling social values. Like it or not, Southampton's a diverse city, and football isn't just for white men. I don't see that the club having an awareness of the local makeup really detracts from the footballing element in any way. If we're ringfencing football then who are we saying it's being ringfenced for? Are we equating those of other faiths, LGBT fans etc. to being casuals or tourists? Saying that those people aren't already present within our hardcore support? Many are quick to pick up on the supposed failings of minority groups to integrate, yet also criticise attempts to facilitate such integration. Which is a shame, and gives rise to something of a paradox. I don't see any value in failing to welcome anybody that wishes to support us. Our hardcore support of tomorrow - the ones ultimately holding the same ethos as shown in this thread - will come from the Southampton city of today. Written here, you'd think that the majority of our marketing output was aimed at minority groups. When really it's a tiny percentage, with other output perhaps having a general vibe of "all are welcome". TL;DR, I think the thread raises important points about the club's lack of identity and lack of identifiability, but can't equate that with them welcoming all. It's not virtue signalling to be inclusionary.

The concentration of current-player chants was very low. Frankly this shower can get to **** - but it's our club to the death, and the vocal support of that was the only enjoyable part of the evening. It's starting to feel like gutting the lot and going back to square one may be the only way to proceed.

The support was far, far better once half our fans had found the exit. Bearing in mind that this was still prior to half time. I do find it a bit odd that it works like that; it wasn't like those that stayed and sang weren't still physically spread out. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of the motivations for leaving. There's a few I know that follow the club here, there and everywhere, and you couldn't question their dedication. But I bet there was a significant portion that wouldn't come to games if we weren't in the PL.

Yep, will be there. Was initially annoyed at having been moved from Block 46 to Block 15 - though it looks like a benefit now, as I've just realised it's the 'home' end.

Less than 2 pages of posts for a hard-earned point against United, having come from a goal down, and keeping them at bay for 20 minutes with a man less. How many more contributions would this thread have had if we'd crumbled and lost? Having read through, many of the posts here fairly highlight the positives and negatives of the game. Just find it baffling that so many more people are willing to lend their opinions after a loss.

After seeing the OP, was gonna pipe in with a comment along the lines of 'new player, same ****ing thread'. But it appears there's actually a pretty sane contingent here that are willing to give him time. Just hope that translates to attitudes displayed by our fans in the grounds.

Broadly agree with the overarching message and sentiment here, but from what I've quoted it does appear you're comparing apples and oranges. Anybody know what the lowest priced kids ticket was for the match?

That's one hell of an assumption. On exactly the same site as you've linked, there's a case study on those 'cool burn' smoke bombs which explicitly states that they can still cause fires. And that's if it was bought from a reputable source... Other examples burn at tremendous temperatures. Regardless, I maintain it's problematic (and leaves significant room for future escalation) if away fans believe that they're untouchable.