benjii

Arsenal's a funny one. There seemed to be a sense they were struggling at the start of the season (losing first gome at home didn't help) but I think I'm right in thinking they already had more Premier League points in 2013 than any other team which kind of suggests they were perfectly capable of winning the title, especially with one or two good additions. Obviously Ozil is one and Giroud has found form. They probably don't have the squad depth of a Chelsea or City which should see one of those two pick up the title but if Arsenal can sustain their form until Jan and maybe add another couple then there's no reason why they can't win it. United have not been a particularly good team for the last few years but have managed to win the league a couple of times because City and Chelsea have conducted their management so badly. I wouldn't be surprised to see United between 4th and 6th. Saints have done great away from home. At home, we should probably have more points as Sunderland and West Ham are rubbish. That said, we didn't play badly against them and were a tad unlucky. By contrast, we were pretty lucky to beat Swansea. I don't think we're playing as well going forwards as I'd hoped but when you are solid at the back it means you can win games anyway; we have enough talent to stick the ball in the net without playing superb football. Hopefully we continue to gel and improve. I think we lack another midfielder who can go past a player - Lallana has been very good for the last few games but if he were to go missing for a while I fear we would become very predictable in attack. In theory, Ramirez should be that player but you have to wonder whether the writing's on the wall there. Depends what's been said behind the scenes; if he's still in contention then I hope he plays his way into the team. If he doesn't then we should be looking to sign a player who can pick the ball up and drive forwards. Someone in the style of Ben Arfa would be perfect. We have no depth at left back or goalkeeper and that could be a problem if we have long-term absences there but you can't really expect to have a squad without any weaknesses without spending City/Chelsea type money.

Ahoy hoy, Which pubs, reasonably close to Soton centre, have the best Saints streams for non-Sky/BT Prem matches. I would like to watch our match on Saturday in such a pub. I think we might lose to a late winner but we shall see! Thanks Super Saints fans.

Why would Walker and Johnson be shoe-ins? Walker was rubbish in the previous set of qualifiers and Johnson has been shown time and again to be inadequate at tournament-level. Right back is a position where you don't really need so much time to gel (in the way forwards, centre backs or centre mids do) so the best candidate, come the summer, should be able to slot straight in. I quite rate Smalling (over Jones anyway) and his versatility should see him in the squad but I think Clyne is a better right back. If England scouts watch our games then if Clyne doesn't get a chance in the friendlies they are doing something seriously wrong IMO. I agree re Shaw. He isn't better than Cole or Baines yet so there's no reason why he should go (unless there are injuries). As for Lambert; he will need to start playing better as he is really in the squad based on last year's performances, rather than this year's so far.

Clyne is our player with the greatest chance of making the squad IMO.

I would suggest you are a little short sighted then. He is quality.

I said exactly the same thing. He knew he screwed up from the Swansea reaction and decided to give them a free-kick before we had even taken it. Wanyama's celebration was funny though.

Our best player so far. Two goals conceded in four games. Excellent stuff.

We played 4-4-2 away at Wigan in the second half and we were excellent. Long term I'm not sure it suits our squad though. To be honest, formations are rarely the issue - with better finishing or better set piece marking we would've beaten Sunderland and would have two wins out of three.

Fair play, but that was you. I bet the crowds were much lower than they are at the moment, and they will be again. You might enjoy it but it's all you will have. It's back to "fifty years of dross", to quote Harry Redknapp. If you're happy to accept that and that you will have spent the best part of 100 years as the laughing stock of Hampshire then fair dos.

It looks like the weather will be awful tomorrow. Rain, but worse, strong winds. This should favour their agricultural style.

I don't know Bearsy. Why don't you imagine crane is Bear boners and Russian boy is Russian girl or something and maybe you will be having nicer dream?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6divyNPlzo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Rickie did ok. Created our best chance with a lovely pass to Walcott. Some sloppy touches in the second half but, as has been said, Lampard and Wilshere didn't help him out much. I think he desees to stay in the squad. Wilshere was terrible and so was Walcott. Walcott does my head in. Walker is simply not a very good player. Johnson is not good enough as an elite-level defender but is probably still a better option. If Clyne has a good season there's no reason why he can't go to Brazil (if we manage to qualify). Cole was unusually sloppy. Can't understand why we don't play Carrick so that Gerrard can get forward a bit more. Gerrard gives the ball away far too much when playing from deep. A draw's not a bad result when half the team plays badly but on another day Ukraine would've had a penalty or two so I would say we were pretty lucky to get away with a performance like that.

You've hardly ever seen him play, have you? You've said on here before that you don't watch Saints matches. Why do you think you are qualified to have an opinion on this? Now, that's arrogant.

FFS - I can't believe the amount of hot air here. He is clearly not good enough. The fact that some other players may or may not be is entirely irrelevant.

An acquaintance of mine managed to find the only non-****y massage parlour in Pattaya. He was not pleased.

Er, no - obviously not. They have other sources of revenue apart from share sales.

Worth a copy and paste to illustrate its full majesty...... * * * * * DAVID NUGENT Total outstanding: £143,250 Payable by: 40 monthly payments of £3,581.25. DAVID JAMES £145,921.90 – 40 months of £3,648.05. KANU £155,314.50 – three lump-sum payments of £51,771.50 in March 2014, 2015 and 2016. BENJANI £214,572.73 – 4O months of £5,364.32. HAYDEN MULLINS £632,281.32 – 28 monthly payments of £21,867.19. One lump-sum payment of £20,000 in January 2016. AARON MOKOENA £288,844.80 – 40 months of £7,225.92. DAVID NORRIS £182,729.92 – 40 months of £4,568.26. ARUNA DINDANE £176,245.03 – 40 months of £4,406.13. LUKE VARNEY £153,818 – 40 months of £3,845. ERIK HUSEKLEPP £40,000 – lump-sum payment of £20,000 in January 2014 and January 2015. HASSAN YEBDA £264,491.44 – 40 months of £6,612.29. STEPHEN HENDERSON £42,935.86 – 40 month of 1,073.40. GREG HALFORD £162,802.76 – 40 months of £4,070.07. RICARDO ROCHA £165,136.61 – 40 months of £4,128.40. JAMIE ASHDOWN £78,731.92 – 40 months of £1,968.30. JASON PEARCE £29,162.51 – 40 months of £729.06. HERMANN HREIDARSSON £42,935.86 – 40 months of £1,073.40. KELVIN ETUHU £3,000 – one payment made on Aug 30, 2013. JOEL WARD £20,206.57 – 40 months of £505.16. STEVE FINNAN £88,312.50 – 40 months of £2,207.81. MICHAEL BROWN £472,375 – lump-sum payment of £200,000 on Aug 30, 2013. 40 months of £6,809.38. RICHARD HUGHES £372,484.42 – lump-sum payment of £200,000 on Aug 30, 2013. 40 months of £4,312.11. LIAM LAWRENCE £616,666.54 – lump-sum payment of £200,000 on Aug 30, 2013. 40 months of £10,416.67. DAVE KITSON £608,333.36 – lump-sum payment of £150,000 on Aug 30, 2013. 40 months of £11,458.33. TAL BEN HAIM £1,633,333.36 – lump-sum payments of £650,000 on Aug 30, 2013 and £150,000 on Aug 31, 2014. 40 months of £20,833.33. * * * * * So, some edited highlights... If those figures are correct, they have to pay £130,692 each month to former players! Plus a bunch of one off payments. I assume the parachutes covered all those due this August. Now, according to Deloitte's football finance review, in 2011/12 the average revenue of a League 1 club was £5m (down 8%) and in League 2 it was £3.3m(up 10%). Let's, perhaps generously, assume Pompey have a good revenue for a League 1 club (even though they're in League 2) - let's say their revenue is £6million (excluding spent parachute payments). They have to spend about £1,570,000 on monthly payments to former players. That's over a quarter of their revenue! Lol. Plus they have to pay the one off payments. Can we please all take a minute to stand and applaud the following heros: Mr David James: Not played for the Skatesfor ages yet taking the best part of a grand a week. Mr N****wo Kanu: Proud recipient of £50k once a year for the next three years. Should help him now he's in his sixties. Thank goodness they managed to bend the rules to extend his previous contract. Mr Hayden Mullins: A completely ****e player who the skates need to pay about £5k per week to for the next two years. Liam Lawrence and Dave Kitson: Another £5k a week in total for these two plucky stalwarts for the next three and a bit years. But..... the undisputed hero of the hour, the main-man, the chief rabbi: Mr Tel Ben-Haim Three and a bit years of just under £5k per week, plus £650k lump sum last month plus £150k lump sum this time next year. Skates - the gift that keep on giving.

Not picking on you in particular, just running with your example for now.... If you decide to buy a Season Ticket with a bunch of mates and exclude your kid from that then surely you accept there's a good chance it might be a bit tricky to take him to matches without having to part with some extra cash? Especially a Premier League match which is in high demand? The U11 offers are a concession on a concession... they are very cheap and part of the requirement is that they are purchased with an adult ticket. Clearly that means a new purchase of an adult ticket, not just a season ticket, otherwise people would be more encouraged to snap them up for illegitimate use - as evidenced by this thread - and depriving the club of adult ticket revenue. Your motives are not in doubt (I'm sure you do want to take your son, not some gypo) but you must understand that there needs to be a set of rules which might, on occasion, inconvenience your desire to buy a particular seat for your son at a heavily reduced price? You speak of "core values" - what does that mean in practice? Operating a ticketing department on a case-by-case basis? "Oi, mush, I'm Saaafamptin till I die - givvus an U11". Come off it. An adult ticket along with a kids with the U11 discount would come in at about £50 - £60 total wouldn't it for the various classes of match? How much was your ST? Probably about £650, if not more. You could've taken your son to over half the home matches for the same price. You may have preferred, for whatever reason, to get an ST with your mates though, so fair enough. It just occurs to me that when you, in heart-rending fashion, say you are "no longer able" to take your son that may be more the result of a decision to allocate resources in a particular way on your part than the result of any club policy. There are other people on this thread moaning about not being able to buy particular tickets off the back of having a "shared" season ticket. Well, guess what? Season tickets are not permitted to be shared. I'm not saying that should be the case or that no mate has ever used mine but it is one of the conditions of issue so to belly-ache about not being able to exploit one's own breach of such conditions for further gain is, frankly, pathetic and infantile on the part of those other people. Where I do agree with a lot of people that there is a problem is not with the rules themselves, but with the communication (and maybe the actual "service experience", in your case, as they seem to have ignored your email). Web-text is often ambiguous; the website is awful to navigate; the ticket portal doesn't work very well; the points system is one of the great mysteries of our time... etc. Those are legitimate gripes IMO.

Although those traits are generally well evidenced in Spanish and Italian teams so I doubt it will be unknown to him! That said, I agree it would be useful if he does nothing mental. I had a premonition that he will get a brace in this game and take his shirt off both times after scoring, thus receiving a red card as a result of two yellow cards.

So the only matches which are more than a whopping £3 cheaper for an adult are Hull v Huddersfield and Sunderland v Peterborough with no others being less than £15 and most being between £15 and £20. The pleas on here for it to be a tenner would make it the joint cheapest. I think the adult price is fair enough and it is a very large discount against our normal adult price. Pay your money and take your choice. If you don't think it's value, don't go. As others have said, though, I think where we have messed up here is with the kids prices. It's a great opportunity for kids who don't normally go to be taken on the cheap and it's not as though they will be taking up seats which could be sold at a premium price. I remember at the Dell it used to be £3 for U18s for League Cup games and it was a good laugh going with a bunch of mates who didn't normally go (back then the early round was two legs as well, which I liked). £18 for adults, three or four quid for U18s and free for U11s would be my shout.

Whilst I'm sure they are sub-human scum, your lack of professionalism is shameful.

It depends what you mean by "winger", as to whether or not we use wingers. If you mean someone whose preference is to boot it up the line past the full-back like a glorious streak of greased lightning - a la Neil Heaney or David Lee - then, no, we don't use them really (slightly better examples being Robben, Moses and, of course, Neil McCann). If you mean a player who adopts wide starting positions when we are in possession then, yes, we do use them. The wide two in the three will often start in very wide positions when we are building attacks. They are playing on the wing, it's just that the phases of our play normally involve more passes to enable the full-backs to push on before we attempt to get "round the back" in wide areas, rather than the "winger" simply getting their head down and legging it to the line. As part of those passing phases the wide players will naturally move around to look for space to receive the ball and link up the play. This is not really much of a change from how we employed "wingers" under Adkins when we went through League One and Champ. We played a more traditional 4-4-2 but the wide players were typically the likes of Lallana, Guly, Chaplow, who are not "wingers" in the "take him on" style (only Chamberlain really had that ability and he wasn't around at all in the Champ). We would often rely on Richardson/Butterfield or Fox/Harding supplying the ball into the box after those players created space. The difference now is that simply pinging it to the far post for Lambert to head in or knock down is a less reliable play (although it has its place) as the defending is much better. If that premise is accepted then you need to get a few more players with guile in central positions so that there are other options.

This is ******** though, isn't it? Do you honestly believe that? That it is unlikely we will score a goal from open play - "soon"? If so, you are mental. Both Lambert and Rodriguez should have scored from open play against Sunderland. It wasn't lack of pace or playing narrowly which forced them to screw up good chances. Lallana hit the post against Norwich. We are creating chances and, significantly, we are looking pretty solid at the back which suggests to me that once one or two of our forward players hit some better form we will have a good recipe for winning matches. Even if we accept that we lack width and pace (and I agree to an extent, without Shaw and Clyne that we do, although it doesn't merit the usual hysterics) this will be largely remedied once Clyne and Shaw are back in the team. I don't think Pochettino thinks that Chambers and Fox are better. And if all we really need is "pace and width" (things which Rodriguez can actually provide anyway) to radically improve then expect to see more game time for Isgrove and Rowe as the season progresses. The injection of new pace and width would basically mean that at least one of: Lallana, Ramirez, Rodriguez (and potentially Lambert and Osvaldo) would get very little game time. I think the club has taken the decision that it is worth perservering with those players and giving them a good chance. If Lallana and Ramirez continue to give performances which suggest they are not fitting well into the Premier League then I would expect to see changes but, for now, I agree with the approach. As noted, we also have plenty of fast youngsters who we can give some "impact" time to if necessary. I'm annoyed to see Puncheon go as he is more effective than Lallana or Ramirez but it sounds like he really wanted to move back to London. We have played three games, two away, taken four points and looked very solid. Beat West Ham and it will be seven from four matches, which is top 6 form.

Nice one, mug76.