View From The Top

I didn't want Puel sacked, although I appreciate why many home game only fans did, I could see what he was trying to achieve and away from SMS we played some great stuff. However, that doesn't alter the fact that MP is totally out of his depth. It's turgid, grim, uninspiring football with awful team selection. In all my years following Saints, with the exception of Branfoot, I have never wanted rid of a manager after so few games.

I've been of the opinion for weeks that he's an utterly clueless bloke who is leading straight into the bottom 3. Puel, for all of his faults towards the latter end of the season, had us playing some cracking football away from home. Now we are awful both home and away.

This really is beyond awful.

I'm 50. Been to war, been to prison, had cancer, lost a professional career risen & to the top in a related one. I've cut out all the negative/right wing people in my life, including people I've known since we were kids or was in the forces with and done it without remorse. I'm left with people I know, trust and can relate to. I ride a bike. I ride it long and hard 52 weeks of a year. I ride big distances and fast short distances, I ride in Europe, I ride in the UK, I race, I win & I lose and I love it. It brings freedom, pain and a glow of satisfaction. I kiss my kids every morning and every evening before bed and let them know how much I love them at every opportunity. I watch them play football, cricket and compete at showjumping every chance I get. With my wife, we've been ridiculously happy for just shy of 30 years, we travel far and wide at every opportunity with and without the kids. I go to countless away games with my lad and usually I don't give a toss about the result, spending the day with my lad is all that really matters. I fu_cking love life.

Someone has ripped a load of pages from the front and back of my dictionary. It just goes from bad to worse.

A book just fell on my head! I've only got myshelf to blame.

How about you fu_ck right off. Simply put, so you can understand it, a number of posters who quite happily slagged Pelle off are now lamenting not having Pelle. You understand now? The. Same. People. Knob.

None of us can help but notice how so many are saying how Pelle is the exact type of player we are missing in terms of his hold up play and goals. Do me a favour. So many on here did nothing but slag him off and say how sh_it he was week after week the whole time he was at Saints. Moaning about his finishing and pointless flicks. I can remember being at countless away games when he was getting dogs abuse. The same people who no doubt were calling for Long to start ahead of him due to him running around a lot.

He'd be my number 10.

I was there too and I also thought we were worth at least a point. Luck simply isn't with us at the moment.

Nor the clubs either.

Strange how others see it as the stokies I work with & friends who work at the club have all said, to a man and woman, how lucky they were, how well we played in the 2nd half. Strange world.

I've heard no one calling for his head at any game I've been to including today. That said, I really don't rate him, he's far, far to conservative, even more than Puel was. He needs to grow a pair and drop Redmond.

The manager needs to grow a fu_cking pair and change things as it's clearly not working. Also, drop Redmond. Got soaked getting to and from the ground but home in 30mins makes a pleasant change.

Yep, it's still there. In all the years I've been up here I've never been in it.

The Royal Exchange. I know it well. Cracking pub. My road club ride out of Stone so "important meetings" are often held there.

Joules is a cracking pint, not quite as good as Titanic though. Both the best Joules & Titanic pubs are actually in Stafford, which is lucky for me.

It's what my father died of as he was of a generation that didn't go to the doctor for that sort of thing. I had, was treated for and recovered from cancer in my tight tonsils last year, one of the cancers becoming more commonly occurring in men between 40-50 and caused my the HPV+ virus, the same virus that causes cervical cancer in women. Operation, all back teeth out, feeding tube into the belly and 6 weeks of daily radiotheraphy and 8hrs of chemo every Tuesday. Treatment made me sick as a pig and took a good 9 months to recover from and I'm still only at about 90%. Cancer, is, as they say, a c**t.

I'm going. I've yet to see us score this season. #justsaying.

What a beast of a player. Best player on the pitch my a mile today. Just need to sort out the AM issue now, which is the glaring issue we can all see.

That just about sums it up for me.

Palace. A few black clad Ultras does not an intimidating atmosphere make. Stoke. For the big games yes, as for the rest, no. Huddersfield. 1st few games in the top flight and gazillions of clackers. What did you expect. Loud it was. Intimidating? Not even close. Leicester when they won the league. What did you expect? Any ground in the world in that situation would have been bouncing. Been many a time when it's been the same as any other ground. I've been to 100s of away games over the years and today the vast majority are sterile and the reasons why have been fully laid out by other posters. I'm hoping today will be decent as it often is against the big boys, just like Stoke are. It's the run of the mill games when it's really poor.

It's a fair point and one I have no answer to. All I do know is that he would rather do away games because everyone stands and, usually, gets behind the team. For me, personally, it works out a damn sight cheaper than trips south and I have to agree with him, it is an all round better day out away from home.

I f'kin give up. I've actually just read that people thought the game against the skates was too hostile. Jesus wept, it wasn't nearly hostile enough. At least Sotonjoe is still a moron so that's ok. One thing they really need to do is bin the insanely loud music before KO that drowns out any effort at building an atmosphere. SMS has become so sterile that my nipper doesn't want to bother with home games anymore and only really wants to do away days where there is some sort of atmosphere with the away fans. It's also cheaper!

Drums? Ultras? FFS.