Halo Stickman

How does that square with the fact that we have the 12th largest stadium in the premiership (17th largest in the entire country) and were able to waste £30 million (far more than most clubs) this summer?

Midway through the long running Gaston Ramirez - oh yes he will, oh no he won’t - summer signing pantomime, a lot of excitement was generated by a blog waxing lyrical on how refreshing in was for a newly-promoted club like Saints to be targeting quality players such as Ramirez. I can’t find the article but I recall the thrust of it was that Saints were right to aim high and dare to dream by splashing out heavily on gifted individuals capable of taking us up a level rather than spend lesser amounts on a bunch of seasoned relegation scrappers. After all, if it all went wrong, no real harm would be done: we would simply sell these talented individuals at the end of the season and make a healthy profit into the bargain! Leaving aside the question as to whether or not Ramirez is actually worth the money (too soon to tell perhaps but personally I have my doubts), ten games into the season, I’m wondering how many people think that spending £12 million on players like him rather than £175,000 on players like Mulumba, who single-handedly bossed our entire midfield last night, was: a) inspired, b) stupid c) naïve, d) arrogant, e) something other than the above?

Every single one of our criminally expensive summer signings save Clyne was worse than Fox tonight

Do not resuscitate

Sounds like this bloke could give career advice to some of our defenders.

For the reasons you've outlined, I imagine anyone we get in January is likely to be a loanee (with perhaps an option to sign on a permanent basis at the end of season)

Bridge wasn’t exactly impressive in the couple of games I saw him play for Sunderland last season.

It would concern me if Adkins was playing someone simply to justify their acquisition. Players should only be selected on their ability, current form, fitness and effectiveness; factors such as who bought them or how much they cost are irrelevant.

I'm hoping that the one positive to come out of Tuesday night is that our fringe players proved themselves so inept that NA will now be less inclined to bring them on at crucial times for our more effective players.

It would be unhealthy and unprofessional if Cortese and Adkins had a cosy relationship: emotion and sentiment between employer and employee usually negates effective decision making. Respect for the role each plays within the organisation is really all that’s required. Whatever that role is, of course!

Until we get definite answers as to who is responsible for our summer transfer strategy, our insistence on 433 and player selection, how can any of us really make a fair judgment on NA’s managerial capabilities, let alone call for his dismissal? I appreciate the difficulties involved, but for the sake of our club it’s high time that those that actually KNOW the answers come clean.

At one of my first ever matches I turned to my dad and asked why the Saints’ fans kept booing one of our own players. ‘Every team has a whipping boy, nipper’, he said, ‘and right now Fred Kemp is the Saints’ whipping boy’. Over the many years since then I’ve come to realise the truth of this and also that once a player adopts this unwanted – and often unwarranted – status, there’s virtually nothing he can do to win those supporters around: Guly could score a hat-trick and then stand outside the stadium handing out his wages to departing fans and there would still be some that would boo him the next match Usually, the best recourse open to these unfortunate players is to leave the club and, ironically, when they do this they often end up becoming firm favourites at their next club

My first game was in 1967 against Burnley; Ron Davies scored a hat-trick and Denis Hollywood got the other one; Dave Merrington was playing for Burnley. As other posters have already stated, in those days, the opposition supporters would often try to ‘take’ the Milton en masse. On these occasions, the police would form a half-hearted line down the terracing in an attempt to segregate the fighting fans with the result that both sets of fans would then end up fighting the police. Back then, all this was simply seen as part of the pre-match entertainment (although often it would continue throughout the match because most of those guys had no interest in the football at all!) Was Dougal the bloke that always wore a white butcher’s coat?

Nice one!

When The Football League Show did their 20 minute piece on Saints’ last day of the season, one of the main things that shone through was the excellent team spirit throughout the squad. The step up to the Premiership obviously necessitated changes to that squad; players have left, others have come in. I don’t know whether these changes have affected team spirit and only time will tell how much they have added to the quality of the squad. Most of the new players have represented their countries and I like to think that, generally speaking, they don’t get to do that unless they are half decent players. A lot of us have mayor reservations over the way these changes have left our squad looking decidedly lopsided, whilst others, including myself, have doubts over the quality of some of the individual signings. Hopefully, over the rest of the season, these doubts will be proven unfounded. There is, however, one signing in particular that I really struggle to get my head around, namely that of Jay Rodriguez. Whilst I don’t doubt this player has good potential, it’s obvious that he’s not a wide man and that the only place he’s effective is playing up front in the middle. So, if we’re going to persist with 433, there is no place for Lambert and Rodriguez in the same team. Now, I can’t believe we spent £7 million on a player simply to act as cover for Lambert; therefore, it seems to me that whoever decided we needed Rodriguez doubted Lambert was Premiership standard. For all I know, that person's doubts may well be proved right. But to make that decision so early in the summer and before giving him the chance to prove himself at this level, strikes me as doing a huge disservice to Lambert who, let’s face it, has been our talisman over the past few seasons. Yes, people can argue that we couldn’t afford to gamble on Lambert proving himself in the Premiership: if he failed we would then be relying on Sharp, Guly, Lee etc until the January window and so, therefore, it was right to buy Rodriguez. Whilst, I can see the merit in this argument, I’m, nevertheless, left with an uncomfortable feeling that Saints have treated Lambert with a degree of disrespect. Perhaps I’m being too sentimental, but if the players feel even slightly the same way as I do then I can’t see how buying Rodriquez can have had anything other than a negative effect on team spirit.

Questionable summer transfer policy, signings, tactics, selections and substitutions; we have gone backwards these last few months. As much as I hate to say it, I have serious doubts NA can turn this around. Trouble is, most managers would struggle with our lop-sided squad

Agree, it's shockingly poor; I too have given up using it.

After an encouraging start to the season, Bates has seriously underperformed with the bat and will obviously need to improve if he’s to keep his place in the team. However, I do have some sympathy for a player in his first full season: how many times has he come to the crease with a large total already accumulated by the batsmen and consequently with the pressure on him reduced? Inexplicably for a team with our batting line-up at this level, very few.

Agree with others that Highbury 84 takes some beating, not just because we lost the game but because I fervently believe we would have beaten Watford in the final and that would have acted as a springboard to even greater success. Instead, we started on a slow decline from that point onwards. However, another game that sticks in my craw is an FA cup tie around 1972 when we were in the top flight and lost at home to Wrexham from Div 3. At the time, I was still young and naïve enough to believe that **** things like that just didn’t happen to Saints. Aaagh, those were the days

Hats off to Jimmy Adams: leading run scorer in Div 2 despite missing those 2 games early in the season (David Balcombe is also Div 2’s leading wicket-taker). Shame the rest of our batsmen can’t show similar resolve. Whatever happens at Lords, I guess it’s been a good season; however, I’m afraid I’m one of the old school that still thinks the county championship is what really matters and, although I agree with earlier posters that another year in Div 2 might benefit our younger players, it means that a repeat of our 1973 title success is still at least another 2 years away! With the resources Hampshire have had over recent times, we’re seriously underachieving in the 4 day game.

Aye, sinking ships tend to be found BELOW sea level.

We need to win 14 of the remaining 35 games to stay up; if we perform like we did for large parts of the Manchester games I reckon we’ll achieve that with a bit to spare. Yesterday, our front six was the best balanced and most effective unit Saints have put out for some while; it seems a shame we’ll have to break it up to get the new players in. In some ways we now have almost too many options up front. Sadly, this is obviously not the case for the defence. I don’t know the ins and outs of our summer transfer dealings but the fact that we now have a lop-sided squad reminiscent of those assembled by young boys on play station football manager leaves me puzzled about our recent transfer strategy

One of the most disturbing things about this sorry saga is that it's beginning to look like Lawrenson might have got something right for once

There are 3 kinds of people in this world: those that are good at maths and those that ain't