JRM

that's not quite how it works. if teams "can afford to be generous" than the man city etc would reduce prices as it would be meaningless to them, those clubs deserve a lot of credit for bucking the trend and offering affordable top flight football.

White males are under-represented at the Olympics - Olympics are institutionally racist, as is the premier league.

Reading are excellent value for money, they also offered those prices regardless of promotion and now find themselves in the play off final! I work with a lad who is based in Bracknell who having moved over from Germany a couple of years ago wanted to get into going to football again and has snapped up a couple of season tickets for him and his son, I am told Reading have also been giving away a lot of free tickets at Andover soccer school this year Saints have to realise other clubs in our catchment area are offering better value deals which we should be competiting with to fill the ground, surely we all want to see crowds close to sold out next year. If we go down the Leeds approach there is no way I would be getting a season ticket, £750 for the 2nd division is an absolute scandal, especially when they have so many seats to fill. Fair play to Wigan and Blackburn who realise it is better to have a decent crowd in with cheap tickets than small crowds at “premiership” prices. Both of them cheaper than us in the 3rd division.

No you are missing the point, with season tickets what we want is the best deal, often that is had with the early purchasing, look at the number of season tickets Norwich and Brighton have been able to sell at this level with good offers, the objection is not that it is a late announcement of season ticket details, more that they will be more expensive and less attractive to buy than the ones offered by other clubs. last time we were in championship i gave 10 away games that season a miss as could not justify the cost, including games like Palace on a Monday night where £30 entrance was taking the p*ss

that's how much is was for Fulham fans to go there as well, £46 (and with saints ticket office you could be paying a ticket tax on top as well) west ham will surely have to bring prices down next season, but doubt it will be less that £30 which is still an absolure rip off

I think they'll have a decent chance in league 2 next season which is a fairly poor division that has 4 teams promoted from, they'll get 4-5k crowds which is more than several teams in that league and Stevenage have shown what can be done. AFC Wimbledon should be in the same south east regional group for jpt as mk dons so there is a. Chance they could meet then. Any higher than league one will be beyond them unless they can expand ground,, ironically AFC have not been good for kingstonian whose ground they bought. Hopefully we get them in carling cup.

it's just a song, it's not making a vow never to cheat on a club, easter weekend a couple of years ago i went to wolves away on good friday and joined in with saints fans singing "southampton til i die" , the next day i went to Chester v Macclesfield in the Chester end with other Fulham lads i was up for the weekend with, we all joined in with "chester til I die" , the following day we went to Man City v Fulham and sang "fulham til I die" i don't think anyone is going to interrogate you for singing before about another club. that said, i don't like the song.

I’ve tried explaining to people before, study the club business methods and it is quite clear they are ambivalent towards season tickets and have no desire to maximise sales, - Late announcement of details, especially when we have full house end of season game full of potential business to sell season tickets to yet make no effort to make announcement. - No advertising or marketing - No renewal forms sent out - No Installment plan - Short renewal selling peiod - Refusing to sell to people the day of the first game of the season simply saying “bad luck mate you’ll have to wait until next season” - No half season tickets - The introduction of the ticket tax, being a savvy businessman prepared to take risks Cortese would prefer a low uptake of season tickets with a higher ratio of pay on the day customers paying premium price of ticket, often with £2 extra on the day or the £3 booking fee.

great stuff, that article makes him sound like a top player, hopefully we could get £1.5 - £2M for him and use that to strengthen for the championship without selling any of our other players.

one of the last times we were at Selhurst (last but one), i think our support looks quality compared to their "ultras"

No I'm still singing; Oh Stevenage Is wonderful Oh Stevenage is wonderful It's full of tits, fanny and boro Oh Stevenage is wonderful

Not strictly true, you cannot imply that they had small crowds but then they boomed when the investment came in, Chelsea had huge crowds in the 70s, and have a huge fanbase of floating fans in south west london / surrey, they have a much bigger fan base than us. The low support in the late 80s - early 90s was due to many other issues.

even better than that, there was chaos at the bournemouth at home cup game when they were in the wrong positions and had to swap positions as the ones standing by the beer outlet couldn't sell it as they weren't over 18 hahaha

I love posts like this, can see them being quoted in 3 years time when we are back in league one asking "where did it all go wrong?"

I think he is going to go. If he wants to leave then the best case scenario is we hold out for the best price and hope for a bidding war between man utd, arsenal, real madrid and get as much as possible as up front cash, we then need to use it for 3-4 top quality championship players. would be a shame to lose him, like walcott i get no pleasure from watching him do well in champs league, hardly even count him as an ex-saint he played so few games

hahahah brilliant, i doubt many of them even knew who he was, or maybe they checked his football manager ratings then rushed out to celebrate

Maybe when the players realise that we have a Las Vegas supporters club they will realise we are a MASSIVE club, and any of them thinking of leaving will quickly put pen to paper and sign up / turn down offers from premiership clubs? I expect to see scenes like this when Kenny Miller joined bursaspor

they did not make it "very cheap" we were still most expensive in the league. and the club did not bang on about it it pre-season 2010/11, they hardly mentioned it, they didn't even notify existing season ticket holders when they could buy, people only knew by official website

and if you beleive the club do want to sell season tickets, please explain what steps they have followed to do so?

you dont get it. this business sense is similar to the photographer ban, changing conventional ways of selling to a more profitable model, they will not actively "get rid of" season tickets, they will just not make it easy or as attractive to get them, the principle motivation of this is to make more money from the pockets of you and I, the fan. and you can leave out the bonehead comments

The suggested process already exists in some clubs in Germany, I recall going to Schalke and Hamburg where in order to purchase refreshments you need to have a oyster style card which can be “topped up” , season ticket holders can top up their swipe cards for this purpose, so it isn’t a radical revolutionary suggestion, Arsenal also do this for members I think who do not get sent paper tickets for matches they just get their cards “activated” (or maybe this is what they do for season ticket holders for cup games) either way they effectively activate a card for a game. It could be done for members, the only difficultly they would have is identifying who has which seat. (as that wouldn't be printed on the card in the opening posters suggestion)

Well go on then ignore it kev you plonker. Go ahead and explain to us all what saints have done in the last couple of years to ENCOURAGE season ticket sales. Last year we had a huge potential to sell more – captive audience after the 50k that went to JPT final, positive outlook to the new season, but no, as Turkish pointed out it was kept hush hush, no marketing, just a official site announcement late on 31st may saying you had a month to renew with no instalments, I was on holiday for 2 weeks in june last year and had to borrow money to get mine. This year we had a full house last game of the season, big programme sales, a lot of website hits, if you as a business had any intention of selling season tickets that would be your key opportunity to raise awareness and advertise. As I have mentioned before a mate of mine tried to buy 6 season tickets for him and mates after the Plymouth game, prepared to pay full price, but NO they could not buy them – how is that a good way to treat your supporters? I am also on a number of clubs mailing lists due to buying tickets for games as a neutral a few times, almost all of them have sent out mailings advertising season ticket sales, when you can buy them, at what cost, Fulham do a mailing, Reading have had theirs on sale for a few weeks and committed to keeping the same price whether they get promoted or not and have subsequently had very good sales. Saints, in my opinion, are complacent, and have adapted the business plan of best case scenario saints do well next year, high crowds of match by match purchases, paying the £3 ticket tax = more income generated from the fans. Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of football clubs, they should be treated with the service that regular customers deserve.

last year they were announced on 31st may and were on sale for renewals for 1 month. saints / cortese do not want season ticket holders. they want more pay on the day at higher rates.

i can't view that at work, can you copy and paste the list of teams and odds on here? relegated prem teams will all be considered favourites i'd have thought

why on earth were some of you weirdos studying cortese's facial expressions at the final whistle rather than enjoying the promotion and celebrating?