St Marco

The problem is though teams around us are playing each other at the weekend so win,lose or draw someone will be catching us or moving away. Blackpool are a team deep in the **** and are the team form wise are most likely to fall into the drop zone. But they are playing Norwich. The team below us. If we lose and Blackpool win it will move them up 4 places. If Norwich win and we lose we drop back to 2nd to bottom and Blackpool join us in the drop zone. So really i think if we can get a win and hope those 2 draw we really will be flying. The problem then becomes Barnsley will have 2 games in hand over us due to not playing at weekend and Watford play Charlton. If Charlton lose that they will be over 10 points adrift, i think we have to say they are relegated if they lose. So really if you look at it a loss and results going against us really could put us further back in the ****.

I will hold my hands up and say i was not happy about the appointment of Wotte. Replacing the old guy who failed with the coach below him rarely ever works. I think what is important is that most people thought he would continue on in the dutch system Lowe had installed. If he had i don't think we would be seeing threads like these. He changed the system and changed back to an English system, one which works. I don't like the way the guy talks, don't like his chummyness with the board etc but what matters most to me is the results on the pitch. And he is getting the results. We have just won 3 games against 3 very good teams. Granted they all played **** but we didn't let them have the chance to play, that is important. Wotte deserves a huge amount of credit. When he was appointed i never had a go at him, never said anything bad. I said he is our manager and we should now support him. I think a lot of people felt the same. He wasen't our choice but at least give him the same chance we gave people before him. He is doing all the right things on the pitch even if he isn't off it, but thats ok, i would rather it is the way it is then the other way round. But as much as he deserves praise i think we have to think on the side of caution. We are still 3 points in the drop zone (due to GD) and we have a very hard run in of games with Birmingham,Derby and QPR. Three wins can easily turn into three defeats such is the nature of this league. If that happens no doubt people will swing back the other way but they shouldn't. Truth is we are in trouble, we are the ones having to win games to get out of the position we are in, we have a long way to go. If we can get a few more results under our belt we will be in with a huge chance to stay up. The faith has returned to the club, the results and performances are the reason for it. As long as the results continue we will continue to be happy. So i will wait until the end of the season before i judge Wotte, he has my full support until then win or lose. If he keeps us up he deserves the job and all the praise in the world. If he doesn't and we go on a bad run then a lot of people proclaiming the second coming will look very silly. And if there is one thing i have learnt through the many years of being a Saints fan is that to assume anything will always cost you in the end.

Was a great night last night. I think it was the best i have seen us play all season. We deserved to win by more and should of done with the goals that should of stood and Saga and DMG missing some sitters. How Saga missed that shot i will never know. A lot of us thought because we were not taking our chances they could nick a draw in true Southampton fashion but thank god that did not happen! But it has to be said as well as we played i have to be honest and say Ipswich are the worst team i have seen play this season. It reminds me a lot of us and how we played earlier on in the season. They were there for the taking and on another day we could of won 0-5 no joke, if we had John or Rasiak in there instead of DMG it could of been 0-10 I was one of those who was not happy with the appointment of Wotte, didn't think he would make a difference. But he has and he has done everything right. I am not exactly pro-Lowe board and that but Wotte has really impressed me with the performances of the players and he deserves credit for it, the results are what matters and he is getting them. He has a personality less interesting then a fish and more controversial then anyone i can think of who has been at the club, but he can say whatever he wants, he can call us all a bunch of ****ers and i would give him a pat on the back as long as the results continue. He is making all the right decisions and correcting the ones he gets wrong. Morgan last night was awful and he took him off for Wotten who broke up their few attacks, decisions like that are what being a manager is about. If you compare that to Jan who would just bumble along and not change anything etc. The only thing that really ****es me off is that we have waited until the last 15 games to play like that, took that long to realise Lowe and his grand plan was destined to fail. For the 3rd game in a row all the teams around us win again but if we can match the teams around us results then win our game in hand we will get out of the drop zone. If you said that was possible 6 games ago i think most people would call you crazy. The team is finding the form at the right time but we have to keep going. A loss can really do you in and you have to keep winning just to stay in with a chance. If we can continue in the style and confidence we are then i really do think we can stay up. We will obviously not win the 12 games but it is so important that if we lose we forget it and move onto the next one without thinking to much about it. Confidence is key and for as long as i can remember we are playing with bags full of it. So well done lads, you keep doing us proud!

Very interesting game tonight. Facing 3 ex Saints people in Wright and Gorman,Magilton. Hopefully i'll get a chance to speak to Wright as i know from pervious convo's he really enjoyed his time with us and has a soft spot for us. Hopefully he will do a Brucie and let in a few hey We are playing them at the perfect time. They are doing pretty poor home form wise with having won only 6 of their 17. And only winning 1 of their last 5. So i think we have a good chance to get something as we go in with the confidence. It will be a hard game and will probably go to the wire but i can see us nicking it 1-2. I would be delighted with a draw in all honesty! But a loss will be a bad result as teams around us playing each other i.e Charlton vs Doncaster (hope Doncaster win that). Then on sat more teams play each other with Charlton vs Watford and Blackpool vs Norwich. So losing could be very bad for us. But will be there and have a good feeling, so will say 2-1 to Saints Saga and then Surman to score winner!

Managers attract players through their contacts. If they are someone who has been about and managed lets say the england u21 squad then they will likely be respected in the business more then the guy who managed your local sunday league team. Pearson has spent as much as we have spent at Leicester. We have spent supposedly £1m on Schniderlin alone. Leicester have spent around £500k. Look at the players they brought in. Hard working pro's who will give you their all. Next season they will be a different team but for the job of going up to the CCC the strategy is right. The same rule apply's to us. Our strategy was to save money but go with the youngsters. A strategy that most people fans and pundits alike knew would not work. But Lowe knew different didn't he? He knew all those people were wrong and he would be right. 30 games later and he changes back to what we were like last season. Great strategy right? Or more likely no strategy? Now you may not have liked Pearson, fair enough people are allowed their own opinion. But using Pericard as an example of Pearson's loans is a bit laughable. Wright,Lucketti,Perry etc all saved this club from the beatings we were getting. We turned into a team shipping goals into a team hard to score against. And that is what kept us up in the end. 3 defeats in 13 games turned it around. Now the journey men that you mention were a bit hit and miss. But John was our top scorer of over 20 goals. You think our current striker DMG will do that? He has played every game this year and is not even close to John's scoring ratio. And that is the difference between then and now. We had lots of players who simply could not be fooked, they needed someone to stand up to them and that is what happened.

3rd to bottom in the drop zone, 4 points from safety, 2 very hard away games to come, 13 games left (12 after tonight) etc etc. While i am glad we all have some badly needed renewed faith let's remember one thing. In our team currently playing only 1-2 players were not at this club last year. Meaning all the players we have brought in (15 at last count?) have had no effect on the team. While Lowe has removed a lot of players to save cash on the wage budget he has also added to it himself with useless buy's/loans. We have now fully reverted back to an english system, the only hint of a dutch experiment remaining is the manager and staff. Lowe was nowhere near being right, he bumbled onto 2 wins, 2 wins which reading some peoples words is like we have won the champions league.... I 100% believe that if we had retained our old system and our old staff we would have attracted better players for next to nothing such as what Pearson has done at Leicester. An experienced team will always do better then a team of kids, and we are seeing that now with the results and the performances. So Lowe did what Lowe does, and that is trying to be different, trying his own methods, which never work. This is just another example of it. If we stay up then we will at least have some players with experience of this league for next season. If we go down then i don't even want to think about that.

Will be there, not one of my favourite places to go but got a good feeling. Think we will get something as Ipswich are in a bit of a rough patch, not too good at home.

2 wins on the trot is a great result and gives us hope. But even with the wins we are no closer to pulling ourselves out of the drop zone, we remain as we were. And that highlights how important the games we lost were. Especially to the teams around us. What happens now is what matters and the players will have confidence to go into games that before they didn't have. We now have 2 gigantic away games against 2 very good teams. If we lose them we will go further behind, that is the nature of the league. So i think the next 3 games will decide it for me. If we don't get at bare minimum 4 points from them then i think we will just run out of games and sadly what happened in the first 30 games is what will have relegated us.

Because the guy i qouted was one of the three involved. Those words were not of my own just copy and pasted what he said.

This is what the guy said "The lad was drunk and couldn't get into the ground. he went back to the pub that he had been in. As he was off my bus Myself and another stayed with him. There was us 3 and a family in the pub, and 2 other lads from Southampton , (NOT FOOTBALL FANS ) One of them had said that the boy had offended his brother in law and got stroppy, I calmed it down and bought the family a drink each , all sorted then I was outside talking with them and drinking our drinks and for no reason whatsoever the one of them who was behind me hit me with something from the side .split my eyelid right across. he ran up the street shouting and calling us. I was covered in blood and asked what the fook that was for. he started coming back and jumping up and down and the 3 of them joined in and said Come on blah blah blah. The boy who was drunk came out of the pub and one of the others kicked his legs from nder him, and he went down flat out unconcious. I had 5 stitches across my eyelid. he is in a bad way in Southampton General hospital. all the crap about us 3 involved were refused entry to the ground is utter ****e. 2 of us never went to the ground as we stayed with him not to leave him on his own. Al the ****e that it was footbal fans fighting is utter ****e. Thats the truth " Those 2 guys who gave up their tickets and stayed with some drunk guy they did not even know are top top blokes. How many people in this day and age would do that? Not many. I feel really bad for the guys and the complete and utter ****s who did it deserve locking up. Hopefully with all the cctv cameras all over the place as well as witnesses that will be exactly what happens. These little punks are what drags this country down. I hope the guy who got his eyelid cut by some spineless **** from hitting him from the side out of nowhere presses charges but more importantly i hope he and the guy in the coma make a complete recovery and return to full health. Another sad day for our city.

Yeah obviously that bit made no sense to me neither. But i think we all know what the guy meant, went to pub because they could not get in hoping to hear the game or something (we have all been in that situation before those who travel). Was then attacked from behind etc. Lets just hope it's not true.

Apparently Seems that a couple of Cardiff fans did not get into the game so went to a pub nearby to watch it then they got attacked. One is in intensive care and the other needed loads of stitches acording to their forum.

I didn't notice any fights either. If this is true then my thoughts are with the guy in hospital, hope he makes a full recovery. Hopefully it is not true though.

I really do think Size (can't be arsed to spell Saeijs all the time) has been a massive coup for us. He has had the same impact Davies had last year with Lucketti and Wright. It would be a excellent signing if we could afford him.

A very very good result from the lads and nothing else to add that hasen't already been said. Size is becoming a very important player for me, very confident player and makes you feel confident too. Him and Perry have a good partnership going and with Davis pulling out the saves he is that must also bring confidence. We rode our luck at times and we were lucky to have a ref with some balls to give that penalty. The only negative i have is that i think if this was a different day we could of got a thrashing. The boys ground out the result but we never really threatened their goal. I lost count of how many corners they had or how often they were in our half, would be great to see some possesion stats? They missed some sitters and thank god they did. For me MOTM was out of Davis,Size or Saga. Those 3 players make a massive difference to our side. So i think i'll hand it to Davis for his saves which really were out of this world. I would love to see a replay of them! It is a shame that all the other teams lost but it keeps the pressure on them and gives us the fans belief now that we can battle and grind out results. I would take wins like that every day of the year! Now onto Mr Wotte I like many was cautious about the guy. His background, his part in the Lowe regime support, his words and comments did not fill me with confidence. But he has installed belief in me that we will fight to the end and we will try. If things are not going our way he will try different things rather then persist with the tested methods that have made us lose so much under the previous manager. Speaking to people at the game they mentioned he has changed things around within the camp and this in itself is building confidence amongst the players. They feel a more togetherness then at any other time this season. For me that is a massive difference only a manager can make and if he truely is having that effect then he deserves credit for it. At the end of the game when they had the huddle i think that banished a lot of negativity i felt towards the guy, i felt confident we might be ok. But unlike some people i won't proclaim him the great one just yet. 8 points from 18 is a start, a start that can go either way. If he keeps it up and the boys play with the passion and spirit they are then we can survive. But all it takes is one thing to happen i.e a loss and it can go the other way. I will support him and the players, even the board until the end of the season. Then will be the time to judge them. If we survive then he deserves more respect then Pearson got. He will deserve the job full time. But if we don't survive. Then i would expect them all to resign. So credit where credit is due and the manager and players deserve the respect they get. They did us proud again.

3-1 Saints again

If anyone can find a way it is Saints

Another busy period of games in a short space of time for us Sat 28th Feb - Cardiff (H) Tues 3rd Mar - Ipswich (A) Sat 7th Mar - Birmingham (A) Tues 10th Mar - Derby (H) So how do you see it going? I think we will win against Cardiff and Derby, lose to Birmingham and get a draw at Ipswich. Making it 7 points from the 12. I think one thing is for certain though, in the next week and a half we will find out if we have the bottle to survive or not. Lose 2/3 of those 4 and were fooked.

100% agree with you Nick but i think this has to go down as a must win game for us (they all are these days). But we only have 6 home games left, 5 after the game. The fixtures we have are a mixed bag with Derby and QPR,Charlton,Palace and Burnley. If we are going to stay up we have to say chances are we will need to win at minimum 4 of those 6 and hope we get some away wins. If we lose and then have 5 games i think were have to then win all of them, but i can't see us winning against Burnley. Maybe draws with Derby and QPR. Our away games are going to be very tough what with playing Wolves,Birmingham,Ipswich and Watford. So a must win game or will make the remaining 12 games even harder. After this game we then have 2 difficult away games at Ipswich and then Birmingham. Meaning if we lost all 3 of those games we would probably be royally up the **** hole. But i have a good feeling about tomorrow, i think we will win and avenge the loss we had on the 1st day of the campaign. A loss which was a bit harsh on us i felt. I got last weeks prediction score right and i'm going for another 3-1 to Saints this week

got mine today but won't be able to play it until i get home on saturday What is the multi-player like?

I wasen't saying you were a **** i was saying people who act like a **** to others doesn't mean they are passionate and mean their behaviour is excusable. I have not intended to insult you so sorry if you feel i have.

Hey i'm at the matches, at the marches, people know my views about the board and the way the club has been run. But i won't insult someone because they share the opposite view. Passion and being a **** are two totally different things.

But it is not about getting a win, the threads are not about football most of the time they are just people having pops at each other. That is what is putting people off this forum. People don't want to re-read the same things over and over again. Don't want to read xyz having a personal go at xyz time and time again. By all means discuss the club, discuss the football. But that doesn't mean people have to do that with the sheer level of rude agressivness that they do. If someone does not agree with someones view they don't need to insult them because of it. That is what is happening.

See i wonder if the club being in the situation it is currently in is actually to blame for it. Reason i think that is because even when we were doing well in the prem league i recall threads on S4E very similar to what we have now. While the atmosphere will naturally be better when the club is doing good on the pitch there will always be people who will find something to argue about. The way i see it every situation possible will bring a different set of things to disagree with each other for. For example when we were in our playoff season people (me included) would argue at what our 1st team should be. We would argue about those types of things, we are all different and thus we will all disagree with somethings. Even if we were world champions there will be something to argue about. But that is called "having a discussion". We discuss our views, that is the point of a forum. What we see recently i would say is more down to people's behaviour and egos. Disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, wanting to cause problems. As mentioned it is only a few people who are like this but all it takes is one remark and it degenerates another thread. There will always be people like that, just in my view they seem a lot more rampant now.

The Myst Watched this on Blu-Ray the other day. Thought it was one of the best horror films i have seen for a longtime. Very few films these day's actually absorb you into the film where you think "holy fook you guy's are screwed, how will they get out of it?", this film did that and the ending was up there with the best i've seen, truely a memorable film momment that will live with you forever!