St Marco

Its a difficult one for sure. He deserves a few more matches at least But my concern is that he isnt learning from his mistakes. His team selection and tactics have been shocking recently and he continues to repeat them. On contrary to the resident mongs conspiracy theory that Cortese is telling adkins how to play I do believe that we are being told to play attacking football. Sort of like adopting the Barca mentality. The problem is we have those players and they are not getting picked. To leave off a striker who scores for fun is criminal. If he continues to do that I can see Rickie getting ****ed off. He deserves at bare minimum another three games but if in those games we have not improved then its time for a change. As the guy on talksport said sometimes great football league managers struggle in the premier league. Maybe he is just not cut out for this level and this type of pressure?

Cortese doesnt choose the team or the formation. People thinking that are just desperate. First they said Guly had to play every game and he was dropped for 4 games. They said Kelvin had a clause in his contract saying he had to play and he was dropped. And so on. Face it Adkins is in charge and his tactics are what has cost us. Cortese has a few bad points but even he will change his attitude when things change. Look at what happened with Puncheon. Adkins has been getting it wrong and people just want to try and use it as another stick to beat the chairman with. In this dat and age of 24/7 football news something like that would get out very easily.

So I think we can expect the wannabe reluctant owner to start legal action over the fact people who actually care about the club were chosen instead. It is going to get really messy from here. Fans have to cough up the cash they promised. Businesses will have to cough up money they promised, the council will have to give them a loan from the publics pocket. And on top of that we will have the fallout from Chinny and co. If Carlsberg did Xmas presents....

The difference is with Lowe we would probably know what the accusations against him were. People would say Lowe did xyz and thats why he is a bad human etc. Matty has not and will not give the reasons why he thinks that about Cortese. He doesnt go into detail and just keeps coming out every month with the same thing. What annoys me about it is MLT shouldnt be saying anything at all. Who is he to pass judgement on people? He has bet on fixed matches he played in! I remember someone back in the day spoke to Mick Channon about MLT asking what his strengths and weakneses were and they said his weakness was he was sometimes childish. Matty seems to not understand that he is the only one talking to the press and people about it. Cortese has said nothing. Personally I think Matty should either come out and say what the issue is or shut up for good. The fact he doesnt say anything makes me think it isnt true because if he had something he would use it. Can only think the reason he doesnt is because he will end up getting sued for it.

Yeah I got that too....

Surprised Neil Allen has not done an article on this http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4577329/Ex-Pompey-ace-Yann-Nsaku-held-in-anti-terror-raid.html

True. There are however a fair few guys out there who I think could do a better job but it is hard to tell if it is realistic or not. Like remember when we were in league one and rumours of Pardew had started to surface. People said he wouldn't drop to league one. Would someone like Rafa come here? Would someone like Ranieri come here? Either of those guys have more top flight experience then Nige but how realistic is it that someone like that would come here?

As Clarke said would be interesting to see who people think would be a better replacement?

David Cameron.... Not really sure he should be classified as a celebrity though. Should be labelled a c.unt!

The thing is Adkins is a really nice guy and in a perfect world things will work out for him here. But the reality is we are on a poor run of results and in a results business your decisions are looked at so more closely then any other league. The next batch of games is huge as we have West Ham, West Brom, Swansea, Spurs and Norwich. Three of those you would guess will be near the relegation zone come the end of the season. If we go through those games with our current ppg then he will be gone. The thing is people need to remember he is inexperienced at this level, he is learning this level and we above all have already learnt that a simple mistake tactically can cost you. What concerns me is that it seems to be the same mistake. It was what happened versus Man Utd. Take off the attacking players who were causing problems and bring on guys and play them out of position in the hope we can shut up shop and keep the score as it is. If we have learnt anything is that as a unit we cannot defend. That is not something we are strong at and isn't our style. We should not be giving up our strengths to play to our weaknesses. Chaplow is a good lad but in the PL he is no winger. Guly doesn't have the same ability as Lambert and cannot hold the ball and defend. Adkins made similar changes against man Utd and it cost us. Today however was slightly different in that first half we SHOULD have scored more goals. We didn't. That isn't the managers fault. But what is his fault is the tactical changes. I still think he will come good. We have such a long season to go and if you can say anything about Nige is that he seems football obsessed to the point he will go over every mistake a billion times over. He will analyse everything in such detail. As I said before regardless of results he deserves at bare minimum until xmas even if we are 10 points adrift at the bottom. If your honest and look at the games as a whole we have played some amazing football. The best we have possibly seen here. We are a young team and we are learning. In Adkins we trust.

Okay Kraken let me put it to you like this.... WOULD we sell out our stadium IF the tickets were the same price on average of watching Man City. I.e if each ticket was £20 compared to the current £35? That is what i'm driving at but you simply don't seem to accept it even though the figures are shown to you. We are the fourth most expensive club based on average ticket prices in the league. You try to indicate that it shouldn't matter and that we should be above the leagues trend and sell out every game no matter the price which is stupid. I just looked at the tickets and the wings are sold out and they are the cheapest seats at £38 a seat! To sit in the Centre will cost you £42! Again to compare that to Everton its £31 for the wing and £32 for the Centre. And at those prices they still have a lower % then us! If the tickets were cheaper more people can go and watch the games. It means more people fall into that afforadbility bracket. Nearly £50 to watch a game in the centre that is on TV and we have over 30k sold by looks of it? Again thats pretty impressive!

Firstly it would be hypocritical to talk about how poor an event is attended if the person criticising is one of those who didn't attend. Secondly I think it is naive to think at some point down the road we will not have to upgrade. The problem is your thinking that day is today. As if we have put in the planning for it already. The population of Southampton is increasing as is the surrounding areas. Just like with The Dell there will come a time when we have too many people wanting to watch. It could be in 5 years or in 500 years (as long as we have not defaulted on the loan for 3 billion pounds we got out the other day right?). Thirdly if the stadium was bigger the club could charge people less. Tickets are expensive. A good model of this is Man City. An adult season ticket costs between £270 and £745. Meaning that would cost between £14 a game and £39 a game. They have far more cheaper tickets available then expensive ones. Where as we have the tickets between £495 and £975. Meaning that would cost minimum of £26 game and maxiumum of £51 a game. Now if you put that into the premier league table to see who has the cheapest and most expensive seats your see it goes Arsenal - Most expensive (£51 for cheapest and £102 for most expensive) Spurs - (£38 cheapest and £97 most expensive) Chelsea - (£31 cheapest and £65 most expensive) Saints - (£26 cheapest and £51 most expensive) Point being how many of our seats would be at the cheaper price? Behind the goals and wings. So thats what 10k cheaper tickets? The rest are average to high. So if we are selling an additional 20k in that bracket which is £35+ a game then that is pretty good going. Especially when you compare it to teams like Man City who have far cheaper tickets. So our attendences do not mean that is the true demand for games. It means the demand for games at that price. In some case our tickets increased by 60% this season. To think that would not have any effect again I think is Naive.

@Turkish & Kraken. Go read the Villa game thread and your see at least 2 in that thread posting who were not at the game but yet have been negative about it Secondly your right attendances have not been full sell outs. That can be seen as a bit crap considering we are in the pl. However wouldnt the best way to judge how our attendences are be to compare them to everyone else in the league? Based on that rule we are currently the 12th most followed club in the country. How can you guys not be happy about that? Also you guys in the past have used Everton as an example of support or who we are trying to follow. Just thought I would point out that Everton has a 40k+ Stadium. Their average is 35k. Or 89% full. Ours is 32k and 95% full. But yet just having a quick look at the Everton forum I can't see them talking about how poor their attendance is?

People who slag off the attendances while not going themselves is sort of silly no? How can you criticise people for not going when you don't go yourself?

It won't be for everyone and for every 60 year old stuck in their ways will be a 60 year old who embraces the change. In fact of the 72% of the nation who use a smart type device 20% are over 65. http://www.thedataoctopus.co.uk/sector-review-smartphones-and-tablets/newsletter/ That will increase as we get older. The generation of people who don't understand computers or want to is almost gone.

Its evolution. It happens to every format. We went from records to tapes to CDs to MP3s and now to digital streaming. If you put programmes into that definition they would be in the tapes section. I'm sure on here we have a lot of people who love to read and have moved from physical books to using a kindle. Others who have gone from buying the times or other papers and reading them on their phones or tablets. When you catch the train in the morning nearly everyone is using some kind of media device. Having a digital copy still has the same effect as a physical one. The pages are the same, the content is the same. The difference is space and portability. Having 5000 digital programmes won't take up any space in your house and you can take them wherever you go. Look at this forum, I'm sure a lot no longer browse it at a PC. Not all changes are bad. With digital programmes you can read when you want, don't have to be at the game to get it, be a fraction of the price etc. Me personally I'm all for evolution.

Someone I know who works for Liverpool said they have been thinking of scrapping physical programmes and going digital. Maybe this is the same thing. Most people own a smartphone or tablet style device so makes sense. It is sad those guys lost their jobs but any old style paper profession was going to end eventually.

Are we dead yet?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-04-fifa-13-biggest-sports-video-game-ever 4.5m in 5 days, Sold 7 copies every second. Insane...

Again I never said he paid up front. I didn't indicate he had paid. I simply asked how you knew that we haden't. As you said "We have yet to pay for the training ground ". No word of an assumption with it so you can't blame me for saying what I said. Point was none of us have a clue what is going on. Cortese is as secret as secret gets. The problem is anytime anything normal happens some try and turn it into something negative. In Bishops Waltham where I live they are supposed to be building a Sainsburys. They started to build it for a few weeks then stopped. Nothing was done for months. Does that mean Sainsburys has no money? The reason it was stopped was because of a planning problem. Something was changed from the planning order and that was what was being looked at. What is to say this isn't something similar? If it was then that would just be normal, you sound like you have experience with construction process so i'm sure you would agree that sometimes things stop for various reasons, probably more then not it isn't because of money. This hounding of MLG for saying what he said is stupid. Nobody can predict the future. Even Turkish said in the Ramirez thread that he wouldn't sign. Anytime Ramirez is mentioned should someone mention that he said he wouldn't sign? If they did wouldn't you agree that would get really tedius after awhile?

I never said it was being paid up front. I said how did you know it wasen't being paid? I don't know how construction business works and by all accounts people say they are paid when they complete the job. Which means how the **** can you criticise them for not paying when it is normal to not pay until then end?!

Jesus some of you really do need to get off the computer sometimes.... Any little thing comes out = same faces turn it into some giant ****storm to beat the club with. Someone comments that giant ****storm is not accurate and explains why = attack the guy! I serioulsy do not know how people can live their lives in such negativity. It makes this forum boring as hell that is for sure....

Kraken how do you know the training ground has not been paid for yet? Or you just trolling again?

Be interesting to see how much was borrowed and what is used for. Dont really think you can say it is a positive or negative thing until that happens. But I will enjoy reading the resident mongs theories on how it is the end of the world! More interestingly if you think about it if Markus family no longer wish to put funds in why have they not sold up? Would be the best time to do it with the club debt free. The value drops the further in debt you get.

Got my copy a day late (**** you Sainsburys) Awesome game however in Career mode got shipped off out to Southend on loan Hopefully they recall me! Also saw the sales figures for first day....fifa 13 sold more copies in 1 day then football manager sold in 4 years. That is insane!