Turkish

Aston Villa spent over £100m between 2008-11 and never finished higher than 6th or got to the FA Cup final. How much more improvement are you expecting?

It was a great achievement, we didnt play great football but we had some great results and it was a terrific couple of seasons. We were solid at the back, hard working, fit and Beattie was on fire. Beating Liverpool at Anfield when they were half decent, beating Arsenal at home, a team which was one of the best sides of the last 20 odd years. And it was our highest league finish in 22 years, yet still we didn't sell out every game.

Maybe it wasn't that great, but it was still our first FA Cup final in 27 years and our highest league position since 1990. Dont forget we also signed Kevin Phillips who was at the time, labelled our biggest signing since Shilton on the old S4E forum. I certainly remember lots of excitable "who's got a ticket for xxxx game?" type posts on here at the time. There certainly was a lot of interest but we weren't turning thousands away every week and just off the top of my head i remember us beating Fulham at home that season 4-2 and there only being 25,000 there.

Such a Dell sized mentality Jamie. It's even in your username FFS.

Does this mean that a lot of kids between 2005-09 living in Southampton are now all Pompey fans because they had success in the late 00's whilst we were sh*t?

Exactly what it should be and exactly what us Dell sized mentality posters have been saying all along as well. I wonder what the self titled intelligent posters will have to say about this? No doubt as Cortese agrees with us it'll be that he too has a Dell sized mentality, negative, lacking ambition etc etc. This has to be the case.

The training and coaching side of it is great, it's the matches i dont agree with. I dont think kids should play competitive matches until they are 12, as until then it is all about learning the basics and how to actually use the ball. Small sided friendlies and maybe the off six a side tournement are all they should play. Okay, i realise matches at that age aren't the be all and end all, but he parents are already on about how great it'll be he can play against Chelsea and Liverpool, not how great it's going to be for him to learn the game and develop his skills. Too much emphasis on matches and not enough on having fun and learning skills and techniques. Maybe i'm just still haunted by freezing cold sunday mornings on muddy pitches being screamed at by dads to "get rid of it"!!!

Dont agree mate. Football at that age is all about having fun with your mates and developing the basic skills. I'm all for clubs doing coaching but getting them to play in matches is a bit to much for a kid. They need to spending all their time enjoying playing football and having a ball at their feet, learning how to pass and move, instant control and tackle properly not having the pressure of playing for a club and expectant parent. Its at that age you learn all those skills so they become second nature. When i was a kid we played 11 a side from the age of 8 on big pitches with full sized goals, it just involved a lot of lumping it forward with the biggest and fastest players scoring all the goals. No wonder we are so far behind the Spanish, French and Germans techncally when kids are brought up playing football like that.

One of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever heard. So we put Man United tickets on sell at £50 then reduce them to £40 if they don't sell do we?! How are the fans that paid £50 going to take that? What is to stop everyone just refusing to buy a ticket early onas they'll know due to our brilliant flexible pricing policy they'll be able to buy it a week before the game for half the price? Utterly stupid idea.

Ahh and we're back to flexible pricing. Can someone please explain why any sensibly run business would spend 10s of millions expanding and then dramatically reduce the entrance prices for to sell the tickets?

A classic moment!!! This place is full of people who get their knickers in a twist if they dont agree with someones opinion or their view gets challenged, then they get all upset and resort to Bexy/FTF type rants and accuses other people of having no lives. It's not us thumping our keyboards in anger at posts on an internet mongboard!!

Ha! Yet you're the one calling people names and having rants.

In post 252 MLG clearly lays out the factors that need to be taken into account when deciding which club is bigger Historic attendances population league and cup success infrastructure Yet when it comes to deciding which club is bigger out of Saints and Everton or Villa none of these things apply. For example, despite Saints having never had a higher average attendance than Everton and smaller grounds than both of them it doesn't matter because we should speculate of what attendances might have been in the past if Saints had had a 50,000 capacity stadium (despite averaging 4,000 lower than a 24,000 capacity in the early 80s with our best ever team) and what they might be in the future if St Marys is ever expanded. Apparantly in the case of Saints, guess work as to how things might have been and could be in the future is a much better guide to facts.

I didn't find it tiresome Micky. You made some valid points.

have you got any skin left on your finger tips following that bitter rant??

The dungarees put me off her I'm afraid.

We've got three at work. All of them fit, a great laugh and top girls. A bit more down to earth and less precious than a lot of the English ones there. And yes, consider it home and no plans to go back.

That would be quality. One of the best atmospheres at SMS was the MK Dons JPT second leg, the Northam looked and sounded excellent that night. I dont see why it's an issue, they stick the fans in the corner at Leciester which is a virtually identical ground without any problems. Wasn't it the OB that put a stop to it all last time?

I've read that, an excellent book.

FFS Colin, they're call Special Needs Goose these days.

Good idea that!

He really was a bit of a helmet in his time here. I used to see him all the time in the Rhino back in the late 90's and early 00's. He always be in there giving it the large one and dressed is some expensive but horrendous clobber. Although he did buy be a bottle of Scmirnoff Ice once. Quite a few players used to be regulars in there at the time. Mark Draper, Wayne Bridge, Gary Monk used to be in there everytime i was it seemed!!! Centro was another place a lot of players used to go. Remember seeing Hassan Kachoul and Matt Oakley in there a fair bit.

Yep, was replaced at half time by Francis Jeffers!! We lost 3-1.

Or run around a lot, cover for Glen Johnson and stop and pass the ball backwards everytime he gets it and he'd be nailed on for the right midfield spot.