Turkish

What's wrong with the tried and tested WHEELER DEALER of talking openly with the press though the window of your car? Seems to work well for other clubs.

Maybe if we give them Fourpast as well we can bump up the price to £20m? :lol:

Strange. You think we shouldnt sign better players than we have in case it upsets players already here?

I wont be satisfied until we have a manager that is regularly interviewed on Sky leaving the training ground with his car window wound down, stopping to talk openly with sky reporters about every transfer rumour there is.

So what?

I didn't see any on telly either, plenty in the away end though plus plenty of segregation. But this can't be true because Highfield has posted that the ethiad was only 96.2% full and we all know every club fills every seat available except for us who have segregation and Away fans not selling out when we don't fill 100% of SMs

You seem rather obsessed with this point as this is the second time you've mentioned it this week. I hope I am wrong. Time will tell. I didn't realise until Sunday that Adkins net spend as manager is only £3m so I don't now think £20m is that unrealistic a figure.

Yet here we are with 8 working days of the transfer window, the manager clearly wanting to sign at least one if not two centre backs and wingers all summer and we're still looking around for them. Add to this two top players with their bags packed set to join and for bizarre reasons both deals fall through. Yep, its all everyone else's fault.

I work with a bloke now who was on Saints books in the early to mid nineties. He was hot property at the time he tells me and turned down Man U and Spurs due to Saints reputation and him living near Bracknell. He told me plenty of stories about Merrington, The players and just how well respected Saints youth team set up was back then. At the time he was there we had a lot of Scottish players Apparantly. Says the banter was excellent and would have boarded on bullying these days. Magilton was the worst for it. Ironically Souness released him towards the end of his tenure which was Lowes first season in charge IIRC and he went to Fulham and ended up playing for the likes of Aldershot and AFC Wimbledon. As has been said yes Lowe made changes but it was also very good and well respected long before he arrived.

It seems when dealing with clubs that won't be bullied our conversion rate is spectacularly bad.

I didn't say Everton sold out. Post 108, i said "nearly sold out" So yes, it is your mistake. At least 1,000 missing at the Eithiad were Saints fans. Plus whatever segregation there was in place which also takes up seats. Our "sell outs" with the exception of Coventry where to give credit to the club every attempt was made to get as many SFC fans in as possible, we're all between 95-98% of capacity, the same % as all the ones you listed above. so it's fair to assume that segregation and away teams not selling all their tickets would have played a part in those club not filling every seat, in exactly the same way that we couldn't for every game played at SMS.

Christ, don't say that the CoC will destroy you. Every deal is everyone else's fault, nothing to do with anyone at SFC.

What a strange arguement, pluck a figure out of the sky and use that as supposed evidence that struggling to sell out for our return to the premier league is anything other than disapointing is very odd.

Sorry, where has this figure of 45,000 potential fans come from?

Nice try. We were 1,000 short for Man City, add in segregation and I bet every Man City tickets was sold. Same with the others who were 95% of capacity, away fans and segregation. For example our official capacity is 32,689 yet our complete sell out matches last season of Pompey, Coventry, Reading and West ham had crowds of 31 743 32636, 31892, 32351. All short of capacity with full take up of tickets from home and away fans. In fact two of those fixture set record crowds at the time, despite being well below the official capacity. I doubt Stoke and Swansea took their full allocation and we certainly didn't.

Not really point scoring. In the opening posts of the thread I was very clear to invite the "intelligent posters" to explain why we were struggling to sell out this game and tickets were slow for Man United. These same "intelligent posters" had assured us that St Mary's was too small for us and here were literally thousands of fans from all over England celebrating promotion with us as it meant they could now come to Southampton to watch premier league football. So far "intelligent posters" havent come up with a plausible explanation as to where these fans are. Plenty of personal insults, especially on page one, not one explanation.

Just like London, Newcastle and Manchester No one in Merseyside on holiday this August it seems. It's only Southampton that are struggling to fill their stadium, which is far too small for them already, due to summer holidays.

Dog. bone.

Personally I'm glad Cortese hasn't followed the advice of some on here otherwise rather than having 3,000 seats available for Wigan and 500 for Man United, we'd have 21,000 and 18,000. Now wouldn't that be embarrassing.

Is it? Or is it actually the case that they are now possibly interested? Oh that's right, journalists are all lying scum, that's why everyone has been hanging onto every word ones in Italy and England have been saying for almost a week.

We are often reminded that in 2004 or something a big game sold out in one day. Based on the information we have available to us its arguable that because the United game has gone to general sale and there are tickets left, there is actually less demand for tickets than then and our fan base has decreased since our last premier league stint. This despite the ambition and rescources we've never had before, huge catchment area and millions of floating fans from all over the country we were assured would pack to St Mary's every week to see Premier league football.

Wrong again. I remember that game. It was actually really hot so I expect a lot of people went to the beach or new forest instead

Perfectly logical. What isn't logical is banging on about challenging for the title then signing players from te championship.

In a nutshell. Ironically just what dull drums was doing the other day as well. Mongboarders have short memories.

Yep. Well done Cortese for doing deals for players from Exeter, Colchester, Preston and Burnley. Add in a few loans and out of contract and out of favour players that's impressive. Not quite such a hit rate on players that will fullfill his European dream though is it.