norwaysaint

I like it almost because it's naff. Most updates are either bad or minimal. Ours is interesting at least. What I really hated were the awful mock ups done on here over the years, I think it was a poster called gecko who made them. I thought they looked naffer than anything else I've seen and far worse than what we have. (Apologies to gecko, it's all a matter of personal taste)

Like most of us, I'd like to say lallana, because I like him more, but if we're honest Osvaldo's goal was the best. Such a shame, at the time I think we really felt like he was about to prove himself to be a great signing. lallana showed great skill, but the defending was horrific to non-existent. they pretty much stood off him and let him do it. Same with JRod's at Fulham, there was no challenge. With Osvaldo's goal, he did great to get onto the pass, then beat Kompany who was battling very hard to stop him and ended up on his arse, then three more defenders try to block him from shooting, but he still beats them all. Adam's is beautiful, but Osvaldo's is a far more impressive goal, bastard.

As far as I can see S-Clarke said he's not ready YET. Stedje thinks he's championship level, hardly the scrapheap. Saint Tony thinks he's been rushed into the team because of a lack of options and that he might end up playing league one, that's happened to loads of players who weren't ready and had to work their way back up through the ranks. This still adds up to three posters in 55 posts who think he won't make it and the rest all think he needs more time to develop. This just doesn't tally with the idea of saying he's much worse, consigned to the scrapheap, being "slated" or "being ruled out". The consensus is very clearly that he needs time to develop. Why obsess over a small minority that think he'll end up a level below (two posters) or two levels below (one poster). This is just silly, he's being rated as needing more time to develop. By nearly everybody.

Wow, there's the usual over reactions to other posts in here. 55 posts up to this point and only ONE poster has said he's not good enough, the others have nearly all said he's not ready YET (which implies that he possibly will be, given time), which seems fair enough. Why is it such a crime to say he's not the finished article yet? He's pretty young and most people think he needs time to get up to PL level. I'm surprised that's being jumped on so much. Who, apart from Window Cleaner has "consigned him to the scrapheap"? Too many posters on here are so desperate to be the voice of reason these days that they don't really bother reading most of the posts, they just look for one rogue opinion they can jump on. There'll always be one or two to voice the minority opinion, the exception that proves the rule, stop obsessing over those posts.

You got protests for pretty obvious reasons. Anyone who posts with the sheer volume of the likes of Barry, Glasgow and Turkish is clearly using a huge amount of their time working on this, in some cases, clearly to escape crappy jobs or to avoid being with their kids or partners. If they have invested this much in their posting, they are also going to whine the most when the moderators sweep away the crap they fill the board with it. Allowing the trolls to post what they want, because they complain otherwise is a bit pathetic. In the past I know of a couple of posters who were only allowed to post on the muppet show so that their trolling couldn't get in the way of main board debates, you can always try that again.

The fate of the babies hasn't been shown in the books, Bearsy. I'm guessing they grow up to be the walkers, meaning the walkers are an in-bred bunch. Funnily enough there are a lot of people called Walker in and around the Southampton area who could be described the same way. I like the idea of a gang of White Toddlers though, perhaps with baby walkers, or skeletal hobby horses. The main bloke at the end was credited as the Night's King, who has been mentioned in the books in old stories/myths. It comes up in Storm of Swords and you can read this info without any real spoilers: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Night's_King He hasn't actually appeared in any of the books at all, so it was quite a jump to stick him in there.

It's a misunderstanding to say people just want everyone to agree, that's not the point being made. I think most posters are very happy to discuss differing viewpoints, it's actually a fun part of a forum, but that's not what's happening. Certain posters are willfully misunderstanding or ignoring every answer to them, just to keep spouting the same repetitive comments that they know are based on nothing and will just irritate everyone. Examples? Okay. Barry Sanchez has repeatedly posted about how embarrassing and unrealistic it is that MP said he wanted CL football. To illustrate this his evidence was a link to an interview. It's been pointed out to BS that the only quote in the article about the CL was that MP refused to consider it any time soon. BS replied, showing that he was aware of that. Subsequently, despite knowing the reality, BS has repeated the comment and posted the link again and again on multiple threads, clearly just to wind people up. A couple of other posters went on and on about how "everyone on here" said we'd finish top 6 this season without improving the team, it was then pointed out that only two posters said we might get as high as 6th and about 30 said otherwise on the thread in question. Despite this the comment has been wheeled out again and again just to irritate everyone. Disagreement is good, but just wheeling out stuff you know is bull**** on every other thread just makes it all dull and repetitive. It's not debate or discussion at all, it is trolling. I don't consider GS a troll, he's just a slightly annoying bloke with an internet addiction and way too much time on his hands. He doesn't really get that involved in proper discussions and I find him easy to avoid or ignore. I don't really care if they are banned or not, but I find it laughable that Steve Grant can post that grown ups can just ignore anything they don't like, after he banned some fairly innocuous posters for being "sarcastic" or "flippant". If we can just ignore it, how about you un-ban all of the banned accounts? No, I didn't think so.

Funnily enough, at least two of the posters that people are fed up with being on here constantly and generally being pretty unpleasant people have also mentioned on here that they have recently become fathers. Spreading nasty attitudes and spending too much time on message forums posting rubbish to get attention from strangers, you've got the reasons for all sorts of society's problems right there. I bet they're great parents. I can just see BS sneering and snidely insulting his kid if they dare to sing "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."

I don't think you've actually read the article properly. The quotes are minimal. He doesn't discuss any of the things the OP says he does. I don't even think there was an interview. The journalist is trying to squeeze out details from a couple of vague meaningless comments.

Well, looking at that article, lambert neither speaks out about speculation about MP nor about Shaw and Lallana, but otherwise it's a pretty accurate thread title.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

OK GoT this week, not a lot of action, but the ending's a pretty odd departure from the books that will fuel speculation about what's going on.

What an odd comment that doesn't match at all with what he posted.

Although it's silly to ignore all history before the premier league, it's also silly to say there's been no change. The premier league era has also seen a massive amount of global commercialism and a huge change in the amount of money being spent. It's far harder now than ever before for a club to get past the super spenders at the top. We massively stepped up our transfer spending the last two years and are horrified at having wasted about 15m on Osvaldo, but the top four barely blink at having a transfer flop of that price. before the PL era, outsiders often found themselves up in contention, Forest, Derby, Wolves, Villa, WBA, West Ham and even Saints were in the mix. Now we'd be shocked to see somebody else in the top three at the end of the season. There's just too much money in the big teams' squads. A points tally we could have got in the eighties would be far harder to come by now. We can't discount the pre-PL era, but it's not a straight comparison either.

For the prem, last time was Bridge in 2001-2 Last time we had 2 players (3 actually) in a PFA team of the year was 2011-2 for the Championship PFA team, Davis, Lallana, Lambert Last time we had 2 in for the top tier team? Never, I think. Keegan, Shilton, Watson, Channon and MLT all got there but never 2 at the same time.

Would yourself have done that? Myself thinks itself makes yourself sound a bit thick not to know when to use the word yourself and when to use the word you. Themselves are not interchangeable words. As as for what you say, I agree, but I suppose it is a full time job for both of them at the moment and once matters on the pitch are sorted, MP can look at who will be here next season, who he hopes to bring in and what the club will offer him. It'd be silly for anyone to make promises they can't keep now.

On the back of those firm and emphatic statements, I think you'd get great odds on an open bet too.

This year saints are on course to equal our best ever finish in the PL, we've come back from the foot of league one to take a well earned place in the top half of the prem. We have one of the best teams we've ever had and many members of the team have come up through our own ranks, others made the journey from league one all the way up and some of them were even with us during the relegations and still stuck with us. Our team is praised in the media for the way we play exciting possession football and we have more international standard players than I can remember since the early eighties. We've been told nobody is for sale and that the manager has the board's backing. We've spent huge amounts on players for a club our size and have had about the same hit and miss ratio on transfers as most clubs, although we've had to learn that stepping up a bracket in transfer fees gives no guarantee of success. Our academy has gone from strength to strength in a very public way, that would encourage young players to come to us and we've invested very heavily in training facilities. Yet looking at this forum, many of the threads are pretty negative. People use the phrase "happy clappers" as a way of sneering at anyone who feels positive about things. Even if we eased off and dropped a few places in some seasons, we'd be doing better than we usually have over the last twenty years or so. So my question is, are we never happy or is the negativity just an unrepresentative few shouting louder than the others? How happy are you?

This is pretty damning. Our players are just not good enough.

Lloyd James 71

Everybody's forgotten Benali. He played for saints this century, came through the academy and featured well over 100 times.

This guy reckoned he hadn't done that well at Everton either to be fair, here he is disagreeing with somebody saying he did a decent job there. He clearly hadn't noticed Everton's league record after Moyes took over either: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?49227-Things-that-surprised-you-in-the-league-(non-saints)&p=1891292#post1891292 (It's nice with the search function on this site, you can just put in a keyword, a posters name and the see all the contradictory bull**** they consistently post.)

How many posters was that by then Jamie? Was it one or two posters that you're obsessing over with this quote? I'm going to guess at one. if we look at your history though, I seem to remember you calling Adkins a legend and saying that MP would definitely take us down in his first season... http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?31921-How-much-do-you-rate-like-nige http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?37624-Adkins-Southampton-legend http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?42470-Ponchito-wont-last-the-year

The squad isn't a problem, but it'll really take something to turn them into a decent team. Seems like ages since I've seen an England team play at all cohesively. Those days of back fours playing together with little change for a few years or strike partnerships that clicked. I probably always thought that though and remember with rose tinted spectacles. The 1990 team wasn't that settled before the tournament and they did okay.