CHAPEL END CHARLIE

The scene: St Marys Stadium one stormy June night. Turkish barges his way pass security, shoulder charges the door, and bursts into the boardroom . He falls at the feet of his exasperated idol - Cortese: Oh no, not you again. Turkish: Messiah! Messiah! Cortese: I am NOT the Messiah! Turkish: I say you are Lord, and I should know. I've followed a few. Disgruntled SFC staff: He's not the messiah! he's a very naughty boy.

While he hasn't done that much for us as yet it's very harsh to write a 23 year old player off after a mere handful of starts here. Saganowski came here on loan and was fantastic for a while before turning into a lorry load of crapola - you never know but Dany N'Guessan MIGHT just do the reverse. The manager should be in a position to know by now just how much potential he really has - as much from the training ground as from games.

Fabrice Fernandes in addition to once playing for a team owned by Arcadi Gaydamak was also a backing singer in France's 1998 Eurovision Song contest hit 'Au revoir capacite' - he finished in 4th place.

I learned the other day that when Lionel Messi was still a 10 year old kid in some Argentinian slum the progress of this young player was in jeopardy because he was unusually small for his age - the result of a growth hormone problem. Even at that very early stage Barcelona stepped in and payed for the £1k a month cost of treating his condition, and the rest is history as they say. If our scouting network gets anywhere near to that level of attention to detail I'd be delighted.

I nearly had a bit of a preseason fixture myself this afternoon while walking across the playing fields with my kids, a bunch of footy mad 10 years olds came up to us and issued a invitation to join in with their game - looking me up and down they said "we promise we won't be to hard on you mister" Children can be very cruel you know ......

It was along the lines of - "our last game was against United so we all knew we were already relegated" If you go into any game with that attitude I would say that defeat is a racing certainty - I wasn't that impressed to put it mildly.

Speaking of players with bad attitudes towards this grand old club, did anyone else see what Kevin Philips had to say in the Sunday papers about his attitude towards our final 04/05 season Premiership game v Man Utd last weekend ? What a utter, utter, kn0b that man is.

The problem with Puncheon is that he thinks he's Ashley Cole but played more like George Cole - when he was in a Saints shirt anyroad.

I've no real complaints about this list, but spare a thought my friends for the youngsters who have been released without ever making it into the 1st team. It must be bloody hard to be told that you're just not good enough at that age. Good luck to them.

And the award for the Saintsweb member who most wants to fool others into believing he looks like Humphrey Bogart go to ...........

I intend to spend the next few months monitoring just when the BBC get round to giving us our own dedicated Ceefax page again.

Every time we take a risk on a player with a dubious injury record (David Connolly/Lee Holmes ... etc or even great players who are past their prime like 'Killer' Svensson & Marian Pahars) it always comes back to bite you on the bum. In a game increasing dominated by players who more closely resemble proper athletes rather than the type of beer drinking/fry-up loving pro's I grew up watching in the 70's, physical fitness is no longer a 'nice to have' optional extra. The modern game not only demands fit/quick players, these young men also need to be blessed with the type of robust body that has a good chance of withstanding the severe battering the game will surely inflict on it. David Connolly is beyond any doubt a classy little player and the record shows he scored some vital goals in our last few games of the season - but for my money he's just too big a risk.

And you'd be right. I have a ST but hardly ever make Tuesday games because of work commitments. The main reasons I buy a ST is to guarantee the same seat, sitting with the same fans around me every weekend/bank holiday game, and saving myself the bother of buying tickets on a match-by-match basis. If the club were to reintroduce a membership scheme that guaranteed me 'my' seat when I wanted it then I'd seriously consider it - even at the risk of losing my ST holder/superfan status (wink wink) Not that I really expect the Don to organise his ticketing arrangements to suite the interests of a mere fan of course.

Don't know, but I'm prepared to bet you and me will still be there long after both have gone.

I stood and applauded Guly off the field on Saturday after a fine display - but in all honesty I applauded even louder when AOC came on to replace him. I see many on here talking about 'class' - now Guly is a certainly a good player (on his day) but Chamberlain is what I call real class. All just a fans opinion of course.

Correct - Morgan signed a 4 year contract in June 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/southampton/7477504.stm Harding, Jaidi, Connolly, and Butterfield, are all out of contract this summer.

So we don't really know if they were there or not ? Now I hope I can make myself perfectly clear - if the Liebherr family prefer to keep a (ultra) low profile then that's entirely their business - all I'm saying is that it would be nice to know for sure that the owners of this great club took a real interest in it.

Why Lowe gave this useless drain on our resources a 5 year contract I shall never know, never mind we can get shot of him in ....... 2013

I was amused to see coppers & stewards were still intent on 'protecting' the away fans when all that was occurring was that 1000's of good natured Saints fans were applauding them and singing "you are staying up - you are staying up" at them. Even before the match had finished the stadium announcer had informed everyone that Walsal were safe because Dagenham were beat - in all my years of following SFC I've not seen that happen before.

Jobs a goodun I reckon Nigel - and I do hope the Don forgives you for only finishing second ......

On the contrary, the record shows that Nigel Adkins has received the dubious benefit of my full (but unlike you not unquestioning) support since his 1st game in charge here - you must be confusing me with some other person. As for both Pearson & Adkins being "good managers" this would be one of our rare moments of agreement - I don't remember however many Saints fans feeling he had merely done a "ok ish" job on the last day of the 07/08 season - far from it.

So you're saying that because Pearson didn't get us promoted (having only had a struggling team for a few months) when Adkins manifestly has (with a good team for nearly a full season) this means that Adkins must per se be the better manager ... oh & and what is more you can 'prove' all this with some numbers ? Remarkable.

I bet Pep Guardiola will have shat in his pants when he saw this - I know I did.

As I'm in a argumentative mood I'd quite like to take issue with this - unfortunately (damn you!) I can't find anything here to disagree with. But by Great Shatner's ghost I will have my revenge sooner or later.....

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination. ~Andrew Lang