spyinthesky

I was speaking to a Saints fan yesterday who occasionally watches Dartford Apparently Tommy only played one full game on loan at Dartford, a 5-1 home defeat by Wrexham back in mid November,Brett Omerod, (remember him?) scoring twice. It was rather embarrassing as our Tommy had the rise taken out of him by both sets of fans and was shipped back to Chelmsford City straight after and replaced by a keeper not felt to be good enough by Div 2 strugglers Portsmouth (Phil Smith?) Tommy now is reserve keeper at Chelmsford who play in the same League as Eastleigh. I guess a further move down the leagues will soon be in order? Meanwhile interested to know what has happened to our other young prospect signed at the same time as Tom ie Anthony Pulis

Interesting piece on Southampton and the Saints team contained within Not exactly complimentary but I guess we are all big enough to take the adverse remarks. It is a bit embarrassing if the comments on the behaviour some of the (youthful) away support last year is correct

First of all anyone giving players stick should be ashamed All of us can get frustrated but to abuse your own players is counter productive and does nothing to enhance the individual's or the team's performance. That said I had tried to keep an open mind on Danny Fox, Jos and the keeper. All three were found wanting and I am sure this is recognised by the management team. It was very unfortunate that both first choice 'keepers were injured and were the two full backs plus the team's defensive midfielder. Both Jos and Yoshida have not looked secure playing alongside Lovren and again it is unfortunate that Fonte is carrying an injury. As regards Danny Fox, I recollect that Burnley fans reckoned he was Ok going forward but suspect defensively (during Burnley's short spell in the Prem) and were somewhat surprised that we paid such a large transfer fee for him (£1.8m?) for him. I reckon their comments were spot on It is eveident

Indeed I assumed that there would be somewhere in the region of 50% allowance for 'stoppages; ie top rate tax plus NI. Not sure how much (if any) players pay into their pension schemes nowadays but the PFA scheme used to be quite beneficial as players could draw down at a relatively early age.

Just out of interest I am reliably informed that Guly nets £40k a month so presume, by this, he is on approx. £20k a week which, I guess, is not a massive amount for a Prem player. However I guess most of us would find this level of recompense to be pretty well acceptable if it came our way

A place where you would not enter if you had a favourite tie?

Who was the Academy striker who scored loads of goals and eventually went to Brentford before disappearing off the radar? There was also the young striker who got sent off playing for Saints in the Man Utd cup tie a few years back and ended up at Southend

Agree entirely Was it last year (or the year before) when our decent Youth team were dicked 5-1 at home by Nottm Forest? Their main striker was, if I remember correctly, Patrick Bamford who Chelsea then snapped up for £1m or so. He is now learning his trade in the lower leagues (Milton Keynes Dons) That what the 'elite' clubs seem to do with their players I am not saying this is right for everyone as we seem to have done alright by blooding our youngsters in the first team However I think it is probably more difficult for young keepers, central defenders and strikers to make the step up than fullbacks, midfielders or wingers

A very fair assessment by Andy Awford (which couldn't have been easy) including condemnation of their idiot fan contingent

I was one of the 8,000 or so who forked out £22 to watch was basically our second string struggle to beat Bristol City in the League Cup. Team looked strong enough on paper to beat Div 1 basement dwellers but if it hadn't been for Kelvin Davies we might not have got through We will need to be relatively strong for this fixture and prices will have to be reasonable too

Not sure if mentioned elsewhere but the number of English players on the field for both sides at the final whistle Saints: Callum Chambers Academy Luke Shaw " Jack Cork £750k James Ward Prowse Academy Harrison Reed " Adam Lallana " Jay Rodriguez £7m Rickie Lambert £1m Man City Ziltch

I went with Jevon and Micky Pearce Both made their way in the world Arthur Fowler was nearby. Has moved on from supporting Walford Town to bigger things

Have been invited to the occasional corporate but first time at Stamford Bridge yesterday. Went with someone who hadn't been there since the 1976 S Final win over Palace ad we were reflecting on the changes since the days when you approached a Chelsea away game with a frission of fear. Have never been 'wanded' prior to entry to a football game before. The Restaurant area was packed but it appeared a good 50% of the guests were speaking in a foreign tongue (a good percentage were Russian - understandable I guess) The food was excellent. However when we came in at Half time there were a surprising amount of people still eating their 3 course mains. Either they hadn't watched the first half or had arrived late and were making up for their lack of grub by tucking in during the break. There was no cut off time for the consumption of alcohol as is rigorously enforced in the Boxes at St Mary's There are large electric heaters in the roof space of the stand. Presumably the cost of power is sponsored by Gazprom or the like as the cost must be substantial. There were quite a few women and children around us, most either chatting away or looking at their phones/Ipads etc I expected to get some abuse when I involuntarily leapt up to celebrate our first goal but no one said a word (thankfully!!) Whilst the corporate experience was interesting (and enjoyable to a long standing Saints fan like me who was brought up generally wet and cold on the terraces), the disappointment of losing (especially after taking the lead) remains the same at whatever age

I was in the corporates at Chelsea (very interesting experience) and those regular Chelsea fans around me were all predicting a Saints win at the half way stage We looked very comfortable at that stage To be fair to the Chelsea manager he changed the teams formation and immediately this paid dividends Losing at Chelsea and Arsenal is no disgrace but it shows how far away from the top 4 we are in terms of squad strength

I just hope our players turn on the style I watched the 1-0 defeat at Marchwood a couple of years back and the Pompey lads seemed more up for it and probably deserved to win although I recollect we had 2 or 3 of our better players out through International duty

Understand that the club has purchased approx. 15,000 tonnes of sand from Southern Ireland to be delivered to the Marchwood Training Complex . Estimated cost £250k Some suggestions as to what the sand may be for. Add your own, as appropriate 1. Foundation for new pitches 2. Brazilian type beach football facility 3. Part of an Indoor Dome complex with artificial reef and lagoon etc to allow foreign players to acclimatise 4. Sand castle centre for the players children 5. Somewhere to bury the chest with all the BVI Loan money 6. To toughen up the skinny Academy U16 players who will get sand kicked in their face prior to training by the U18 squad 7. Part of a monkey petting complex. An idea borrowed from Pompey

Apparently most of the job applications have come through the Jobsite application process as part of the sponsorship deal

Anyone sent their DPF off for cleaning Apparently a company by the name of Ceramax can do it but not sure of the process or the cost

According to a new report from PWC and the think tank Demos based on a wide range of measures including health of population, job availability, affordability of housing, commuting times, income equality etc 1, Reading & Bracknell 2. Aberdeen 3. Edinburgh 4. Soton 5. Cambridge 6. Oxford 7. Preston 8. Bristol 9. Belfast 10. Norwich All subjective, of course, but I like it here and we do have the highest ranking football club!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And they never averaged over 37,000 in a ground that had a capacity in excess of 50,000

I know non competitive games shouldn't count but didn't we also score seven at Fratton Park in a testimonial (Alan Knight's) when Le Tizz took the pizz Also it is worth remembering that Pompey's 2-0 win at the Dell in January 1988 was their first win in 10 derby games and our friends were so elated that they named a Fanzine after it. We then won the next 6!! So in 27 'modern derbies' Saints have won 14 and lost 6 with 7 draws and scored 54 times and conceded 36 I guess this explains some of the bad feeling from down the road

If Matty was around now would he have fitted into the Managers style of play? Possibly not which would have meant losing so many good memories Think the likes of Keegan, Channon, Walcott, Bale, Shearer would have suited our style of play but currently, as a unit, we are playing as well as the teams of the 1980's Next few games will tell us a lot though

As ever after a great saints victory and a less than glorious performance by our neighbours down the road, our resident Pompey fan came up with the usual twaddle about the Saints always being in the shadow of that lot down the road which history proves otherwise ie we have been the top team in 50 of the 86 years since both clubs entered the league in 1921. The comparison is even more marked since 1960 when we went up from Div3 and Pompey went down from Div 1 (ie 47 plays 7!!!) Anyway the conversation moved onto who has moved from Saints to Pompey and vice versa in recent times. These are the player moves we came up with. POMPEY TO SAINTS BARRY HORNE (AND WE PAID £700K AS A TRANSFER FEE) Peter Crouch (via Villa - £1m) John Beresford (via Newcastle - £1.5m) SAINTS TO POMPEY (all frees!!) STEVE MIDDLETON PAUL GILCHRIST RON DAVIES EAMONN COLLINS IVAN GOLAC GEORGE LAWRENCE SCOTT HILEY MATTHEW ROBINSON ALAN MACLAUGHLIN DAVID CONNOLLY Mick Channon (via Norwich) John Gittens (via Middlesboro) Malcolm Waldron (via Burnley) Ian Baird (via Leeds) Colin Clarke (via QPR) Trevor Hebbard (via Derby) Dave Beasant (via Forest) Andy Cook (via Exeter) Seems to be a bit one sided Perhaps our ex players were intent on doing a bit of missionary work to the east of the County but very few, if any, seemed to live down there preferring the comforts of the SO post code area.

Funeral Thurs 14th November at Soton Crem Apparently his family have been deeply touched by all the nice comments made on various Saints (and West Brom) websites

Signed on loan for a month 'as cover' Interesting comment when Tommy's move to Dartford was mentioned on the Chelmsford FC forum ...'More fool them'... Seems like Tommy has made a suitable impression at Chelmsford Tommy has made 30 league & Cup appearances for 9 clubs in 8 years Perhaps he is a late developer!!