Halo Stickman

40 minutes? Seems like some of the scribes on here have been drowning in their own pi ss for the last 40 days and 40 nights!

At least Matt has earned the right to an opinion, which is more than you’ve done with that condescending sneer

On the other hand, negative media coverage, especially the stuff spewed out by the broadcast media which doesn’t differentiate between the chairman and the rest of the club - i.e. ‘hope Southampton get relegated for what they’ve done’ – could simply produce a bunker mentality in large sections of the fan base, which would suit Cortese just fine.

Interesting - thanks for posting.

Remind me again, why did the hard-nosed, egotistical Italian banker with ambitions to meddle in football strategies, styles of play, formations and transfers, convince the Liebherrs to invest so much of their money in SFC?

So, pre-season, Cortese, the bloke that pays their wages, tells the team that most of them aren’t good enough for the Premiership. No wonder, for several games, most of them didn’t look like they were FFS. Even if that was reverse psychology, or, indeed, even if it had a ring of truth, I can imagine how p1ssed off Adkins must have been at the time. In fact, I’m starting to wonder, pay-off or no pay-off, how Adkins stopped himself from walking out months ago.

Holy crap. Are you the weirdo who delivers the Good News magazine to my house every Sunday?

My first match was Saints 4-0 Burnley in 1967. Ron Davies scored a hat-trick and Dave Merrington turned out for the opposition. The only reason I know this is that I still have the programme on which my dad scrawled the score and team-changes. In truth, I don’t remember anything about the match, but on the way home an incident occurred that changed my life for ever. A passer-by asked the score and my dad replied, ‘we won 4 nil, mate’. He didn’t say ‘Southampton won 4 nil’ he said ‘WE won 4 nil’. I was just a young boy, but to this day I remember how proud I felt that WE – me, my dad and those eleven blokes in the red and white striped shirts – had won. At that moment, a new Saints’ supporter was born. My dad and the eleven blokes that wore the red and white stripes that day have long since departed, but my passion for the club is still as strong as it was that evening 46 years ago. Believe me, there are times – yesterday, for instance – when I wish it wasn’t! But I can’t fight these things; whatever **** runs the club or even plays for the club, the passion for the shirt still burns, and will do for the rest of my life.

Cortese is a silent Mafioso armed with a stiletto; Lowe was a bell-ringing Morris-man armed with a hockey-stick. Wouldn’t want to meet either of the ****s on a dark night….or any other kind of night, come to think of it

Excellent appraisal of the situation.

Win a few games and everyone will have forgotten Adkins, will be singing ‘Pochettino’s Red & White Army’ and praising Cortesse’s decision making I hate this sentiment and the reason I hate it is because it’s true. If we do win a few games this is exactly what will happen because the overwhelming majority of us are just selfish ***ts who don’t really give a damn about others. In footballing terms, as long as we’re winning, who gives a sh1t? But just because it’s true, doesn’t make it right….and doesn’t mean people have to keep ramming it down our throats FFS!

For me it’s always been about something more than just winning; however, I’ve always struggled to articulate just what that something is. But what ever it is, it sure has been diluted by today’s events.

Anyone wish to revise their selections?

Protest all we like but it’s that b@stard Cortese that runs this show, we know it, he knows it. Football. The Beautiful Game. The Premiership Experience. Don’t you just f ucking love it?

This has got to be some F*CKING SICK JOKE!!!

…..and every 4 – 5 days the world’s population increases by an extra million. We’re all heading to hell in a handcart

By the way, I’m not advocating that gun club members should be denied their sport. I just think that, in the large majority of cases, it’s probably better if their guns are securely stored in a safe place and not in their own homes. In the case of my grandfather taking his own life, yes, he was suffering from depression at the time; let’s face it, you’re not likely to shoot yourself if you’re feeling tickety-boo about life! And yes, if he hadn’t have had easy access to a gun he’d probably have found other ways to commit suicide….who knows?

You don’t necessarily have to go nuts (in the purely psychological sense) to become unfit to hold a gun. Don’t forget the interesting case of Charles Whitman who shot dead 14 people in the 1966 Texas University Tower killings. His post-mortem revealed he was suffering from a brain tumour. Although, psychiatrists had mixed views on how big a part this actually played in his actions that day – he also had psychological issues - it is well documented that certain physical ailments can bring about drastic personality changes. It all hinges on how quickly doctors can diagnose a potential problem, particularly with gun owners.

The sausage was battered and, at the time, she preferred pickled gherkins

The trouble is that a lot of these so called pundits and commentators turn up to games hamstrung by their own agendas. One of the worse examples of this I witnessed was the England B international against Russia when Le Tiss played brilliantly and scored a hat-trick. I watched the match on TV whilst listening to the radio commentary. You would have thought that Alan Green and Harry Rednapp, who was the radio pundit, were watching a different match! They did their level best not to mention Le Tiss at all! Of course, it could have had something to do with the fact that Hoddle was about to pick his England squad for the 1998 World Cup and that one of the places Le tiss might have taken would have been that of a certain Jamie Rednapp

Years ago I was queuing in a fish and chip shop, late at night, when a local nutter, out on bail from hospitalising some poor sod in a pub brawl the previous week, stuck a sausage up my girlfriend’s nose and goaded me by making all sorts of indecent suggestions to her. Back then, I was quite a punchy young chap, especially with a few beers inside me, and, even though I knew of his reputation and realised I was probably about to get a good pasting, I was just about to punch him when a black chap suddenly joined the queue and nutter, who was also a well known racist, decided to turn his attention to him instead. Girlfriend and I slipped out and walked the 100 yards or so back to our place. Thirty-five years later, I honestly can’t tell you whether or not, if I’d had a gun in my house, I wouldn’t have walked back down the road and calmly blown that f*cker’s head off! I could also tell you about the time my grandfather decided to end his life by shooting himself with his own shotgun, sat on his doorstep with my mother and the rest of his family the other side of the door… …but, on reflection, I’m probably not the right chap to answer your question. Suffice to say, I’m glad I’ve never owned a gun myself and would never entertain the thought of keeping a gun in my own house.

That photo of the Sardinian beach you posted reminded me very much of a beach at Pefkos in Rhodes that we stayed near in 1991. A couple of years ago I looked it up again online and there were buildings all around it! Such a shame that the Greeks don't appear to have the same building regs as the Sardinians