CHAPEL END CHARLIE

1 - Funding - you just don't get to be where we are without money. 2 - Leadership - both from the touchline and the boardroom. 3 - Team Spirit - good players all confident in their ability and working for each other.

Painful as it may be to admit, ex Pompey player or not, but you just have to say that Steve Claridge is a top bloke and a credit both to the game and the BBC. He even seems to be spending more time at St Marys than Fratton Park these days - so obviously a good judge of where to find quality entertainment to boot.

I've just gotten round to seeing 'Pather Panchali' - a shoestring budget 1955 Indian film shown as part of Mark Cousins mammoth 'History of Cinema' series. A beautifully realized family story set in a timeless Bengali village, in some ways I suppose you could say that on the face of it little exceptional (one heartbreaking tragedy aside) really happens in this film - but don't let that put you off for one moment because all human life is here. In its own modest way I found this film to be quite exceptional. We follow our dirt poor Bengali family in their ramshackle house as both parents (but especially the mother Sarbajaya) struggle heroically to raise their children (a lovely teenage daughter called 'Durga' and her younger brother 'Apu') amid the grinding poverty of rural India. All the little dramas of family life - Durga steals some fruit to feed her aging aunt which brings shame on her proud mother, a crisis as father doesn't get paid for 3 months and lacks the nerve to demand his pay - a missing necklace - arguments with the neighbors - can the family really afford to host a modest party to celebrate the birth of little Apu ? Watch out in particular for the wonderful performance of Chunibali Devi as the aging Aunt Indir - worth a best supporting actor Oscar in my view. Undoubtedly the most well known scene is when the children run away and trek for miles across the countryside just in order to see a steam train past them by - one of those seminal moments in cinema history this - and trust me when I say that until that moment of revelation you would have been hard pressed to tell whether this film was set in 1920 or 1820. For what seems like a age the novice director Satyajit Ray focus his camera on the monsoon rain falling on a Lilly pond, a lost moment in time captured with such an intense beauty that I wonder if you could ever find a better example of what pure cinema is supposed to be about. I lack the elegance to do this remarkable film justice, so if you get the chance seek out and invest a little of your time in Pather Panchali - its well worth the effort.

An eclectic mix of Talksport and Classic FM .. oh and Solent for Saints away games of course .

I'm certainly not one of his biggest fans and there's still plenty about his game that makes me want to tear my hair out (not that I have much to spare anymore) but looking back on our goals this season you just have to admit that he very often plays a key role in them. To state what is rapidly becoming the bleedin obvious, this player best position is as a striker. I've said in the past I don't really see him as being a premier league quality player - please believe me when I say I'd be delighted to find myself eating those particular words.

Well with Octobers league fixtures now completed lets review the month: Watford (H) won 4-0 Derby (A) draw 1-1 West Ham (H) won 1-0 Reading (A) draw 1-1 Middlesbrough (H) won 3-0 So from what you might well consider to be some pretty tough league fixtures that makes 11 points gained out of a possible 15, or put another way 10 goals scored and only 2 conceded. For the perfectionist seeing our 'B' team getting beat at Chrystal Palace in the Carling Cup and failing to win any of our away games might be a tad disappointing I suppose, but all-things considered I'll take that as a satisfactory October thank you very much. The only real downside I can see is that all this success is making me sound like a bit like NickG - now that really is a cause for concern .......

The Northam ? It's a bit like the British army - I'm very glad its there but I wouldn't to be in it myself.

I can only echo what many others have already said - we were more than decent today, and to be frank we made Boro' look like a team placed a league below us rather than a mere two or three places. More than that every department of the team put in a good performance, we defended better, our midfield was dominant, and our strikers much sharper than the opposition. From a whole host of good performances I'll pick out Richard Chaplow for special attention - he was superb and that bald head was everywhere. The forum member who said on here that he could be the new Chris Marsden was spot on. This game was almost embarrassingly easy for us at times, and when the crowd started chanting "we're taking the p1ss, we're taking the p1ss" I was forced to agree. Now if we can only sort out our rather less impressive away form then we're going to take some stopping I reckon.

If -big if at this time - we do get promoted back to the PL then something tells me we won't just be there to make the numbers up. We already have a core of decent players to build upon and I can see significant funding being made available to sign more quality players next summer, and yes we would most certainly need reinforcements. Although extreme wages such as £200k a week are (I hope) out of the question, when/if we do find ourselves back in the Premier League we will just have to bite the bullet and pay the going rate for good standard PL players. I suspect this may come as something of a nasty shock for a novice chairman who may not yet realize the full insanity of the economic madhouse that is top flight football. In spite of all that I just don't think the Don is the type to be happy with a mere 12 or 24 month stay in the limelight, only to then see SFC sliding back into the relative obscurity of the football league. He has said he wants to make us a stable Premier League club and I can't see the slightest reason to doubt him - he's been as good as his word thus far has he not ? That's not to say he is guaranteed to succeed of course because when men make plans the Gods tend to laugh - but I don't doubt the sincerity of his ambition for one moment.

This game must be won ! After a relentless pro saints propaganda campaign the length and intensity of which would have made even Dr Goebbels blush, I've finally managed to persuade the MUFC supporting parents of my much loved Godson to allow me to take the little chap to his first ever football match on Saturday. Such has been the success of my shameless efforts that this gullible five year old is now convinced that Ricky Lambert is the worlds finest striker (his status nears that of a demi-God) and that SFC is without doubt the biggest, best and most successful football club in existence. So I hope you can all understand that this result is of particular importance to me - indeed, anything less than a convincing victory and there be hell to pay!

Under real pressure for most of the game from a very decent Reading team all accounts, but we still got a point even when down to only 10 men. I'll take that 7 days a week and twice on Sundays thanks very much. Perhaps other teams are starting to work us out now and find ways of stopping us, so time to shake things up and give more opportunity's to the likes of De Ridder and Lee Holmes maybe ? On another point, is was kinda good to see how rapidly 'Fish' Mills has secured himself a starting place at this level and - to my mind anyway - I must say that the wisdom of letting him go and spending good money on a replacement (who seems little or no better) is open to question.

I agree, If you weren't there (at least in spirit) when we were bottom of L1 on minus 10 points then you're just not a proper Saints fan in my view - indeed we should have a tee shirt printed to that effect. Johnny Come Lately's who can only be arsed to turn up now that we're doing well are barely one step up the football gene pool from the hordes of irredeemably 'plastic' MUFC/Chelsea/Liverpool/Citi fans that infest our streets. Looking back, some on here deserve medal for all the crapola SFC has put them through in the last 5 years - but seeing where we are now it was all worth it.

Yes of course its far too soon to start counting any chickens - but show me a Saints fan who claims to have not even considered the possibilty of promotion and I'll show you a liar.

This player has done pretty well for us, but I'm not quite so sure I see him being a big success at a higher level - a question that will only arise should we get there of course. If Celtic are really holding out for the reported £2m for him then we might well be able to find better value - and a better player - elsewhere. In the meantime a good addition to the squad.

It looks like we managed to boss one of the better teams in this division - away from St Marys - even without our best player. I will take that as another good sign as to just how far we could go this season. The chap who said that Ricky Lambert was actualy our most important player was perfectly right - most 'important' player not being quite the same thing as 'best player however.

If you had heard the managers amused/mystified response to this rumor on the radio then you'd be in absolutely no doubt as to just how improbable James Beattie's return is. As of the middle of last week, there had been no significant contact between the club and this player. Now Beattie might fancy a second go here (why wouldn't he) or maybe his agent could be trying to drum up some interest, but none of that amounts to a hill of beans in all honesty. But more than any of that, does signing aging players on (presumably) large wages seem to fit in with the clubs transfer strategy of signing promising young players at (or near) the prime of their careers ? I'll eat my hat if James Beattie re-signs for this club - and its made of tin.

I quite agree. The truth 'that dare not speak its name' is that not only was Guly poor (again) for much of the game today he was almost comicly bad at times. But then he goes and unearths some of that quality, scores a goal and shuts you up just as a fan is about to boo him off - damn his eyes !

Until quite recently I couldn't see how he was better than Butterfield in all honesty. But fair goes, he is now performing like the player we thought we'd signed last season.

I heard Nigel Adkins say on Solent that there has been no contact between Beattie and the club - indeed reading between the lines he seemed to ridicule the idea.

It's a sign of the strength of our midfield that good players such as Chaplow, Schneiderlin, and Holmes can't even secure a regular starting place. As it happens I'd start Chaplow ahead of Guly, but with results like this it's very difficult to critise any of the managers decisions. All this success can make this place a tad boring - how I yearn for the good old days ................

Thanks very much for that - interesting (if insanely dangerous) stuff. Britian was such a busy, confident place back then, legions of town planners utterly determined to complete the work of the Luftwaffe and replace our old slums with new ones. But what do I know ? That 'Great Arthur House' concrete monstrosity you can see them constructing is now a Grade II listed building I understand.

A team with forwards of the caliber of Ricky Lambert and Mackail-Smith at its disposal would score 50 goals a season from those two alone. If you could keep them both fit, you'd be almost guaranteed automatic promotion I'd have thought. A missed opportunity then ? ... You'd have to know what went on behind-the-scenes to be sure, but quite possibly.

I saw the modern Japanese language film '13 Assassins' on DVD last night - and I regret to say that, despite some impressive set pieces, I was left vaguely disappointed by the experience. Set in 19th century feudal Japan, this is very obviously yet another adaption of the familiar Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven story, but with the villain of the piece becoming a powerful nobleman instead of some mere bandit and with the entire nation (rather than a single village) his imperiled victims. The film opens with a highly uncomfortable 'Hari-Kari' ceremonial disemboweling scene as a proud Samurai warrior kills himself as a protest against the evil Lord Naritsugu, and rest assured we are soon left in absolutely no doubt as to why he should feel so strongly about it ! Left unchecked this dangerous psychopath threatens the stability and peace of the nation. The trouble is that Naritsugu is not only the son of the former Shogun, but also the half brother of the current ruler, and thus above the rule of law, and even the bounds of common decency it would seem. So the powers-that-be must find a way to ride themselves of this monster while at the same time saving the face of the Shogun - 'saving face' always being a important consideration in traditional Japanese culture. The solution to the problem of course is to have him secretly assassinated by a band of hand picked Samurai led by a idealized example of the type, Shinzaemon. The film is firmly back on the Seven Samurai storyline now as Shinzaemon goes through the process of recruiting his 12 (later 13) assassins and a elaborate trap is set for Naritsugu and his escort - although I must say these important scenes are handled in a rather perfunctory manner compared to the earlier versions of this story. In truth you struggle to get to know many of the 13 as proper individual human beings, rather than stereotypes. And so to the mammoth 50 minute battle scene as Naritsugu's army is ambushed on the road and engaged in a battle to the death with Shinzaemon and his grossly outnumbered band of brothers. I'm sure you can guess how it all ends, so I'll restrict myself to saying that after a while fast edited 'Chop-Suey' sword action of this nature can become repetitive, and for one man to kill 20 or more opponents (with apparent ease) does stretch creditability to the limit when this remarkable feat of arms is repeated time, and time again. By far the best film portrayal of face to face, blood 'n guts sword slaughtering I've ever seen was in Mel Gibson's visceral 'Braveheart' - to be frank, nothing on offer here even comes close to matching that level of brutal combat realism. Another case of "not a bad film but you could do better" I'm afraid. So my top tip is to beware of imitations, save your money and buy the real thing instead. In this case Akira Kurosawa's magnificent Seven Samurai. I promise you, you'll never regret it.

Football clubs just aren't as sentimental as some fans would like - if it's club policy that everyone pays (and this is applied fairly to all) then I find it hard to object to that in principle. That's not to say I would take the same line if I were ever in charge .... which, thank God, is not a very likely eventuality.

My exit strategy (based on years of hard earned experience) is to go for the ramp every time, rather than risk a horrible traffic jam taking the steps up to the railway bridge. As ever, happy to help.