Legod Third Coming

Stadium attendance record... wow!

Come on Saints get it together!!!

I find myself cheering Cotteril... strange feeling...

Yeah, last time I said that he gave the ball away and cost us a goal against Cardiff - you muppet

JOS the BOSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If our home form can't last forever, neither is it inevitable that our away form won't improve... That said, I am annoyed at all the missed opportunities and hope they don't come back to haunt us later in the season.

Actually the word you were looking for was 'much'...

To be fair, if today we signed Lionel Messi (yes kids that's what today's equivalent signing would be) I think we could all assess his potential...

This is my biggest concern. I wasn't there yesterday but we can't have 60% possession, 9 chances on target and come away with a point. Later in the season we could come up against far better opposition and will look back on this period as a missed opportunity to build up a 'bank' to see us through a potential wobble...

Does he have a cat? If so he will get off scott free...

LOL - I love the idea of a football D/L method... What it does though is: a. helps us win more games. I'm never sure of football law but one thing I do recall from school, if you score more than the other team, you are declared the winner. b. helps should we need to win promotion on 'goals scored' if we finish equal on points and goal difference. c. encourages meaningless drivel like Nick's and now this... oops...

It doesn't matter who the England manager is, England will never win a major trophy until the game is completely restructured. When players like Carragher admit that playing for Liverpool matters more than playing for your country, you know the game is up. And frankly, I don't blame them. If it was a choice tomorrow between promotion and England winning the World Cup, for me it would be a total no brainer. Do you care about England, no I mean do you REALLY care??

If they do, this is a disaster for clubs like ours. One thing few people thank the FA (EPL) for is the collective sale of league rights which ends up with teams like ours receiving a far higher proportion of revenue than if we sold our own rights.

The next four games will define our season. I have a feeling we will win them all. Because: 1. We are undoubtedly the best team in the league. 2. All of those teams will have a go , which suits us well. 3. A superb team spirit which sees victory as an inevitable consequence of hard work and belief.

If you think the football you're seeing today is worse than that under Branfoot and even some under Chris Nicholl, you are mad. If you think it's worse than that under Gray and Wigley, I'm stunned you can operate a computer... (Oh and having watched football at all levels for years, I can tell you categorically that Barcelona today are probably bettered only by Brazil of the 70s). If you're talking about The Dell, we all miss it. I especially miss sitting there in the p i ssing rain and watching us lose 1-0 with a last minute goal to Bolton or Blackburn or some other boring, useless team who used to turn up, park the bus and nick a really sh i tty goal on the break in the last minute...

True. SKY and EPL happened to come together at the right time for both parties. SKY needed subscribers and the EPL needed money. Whether that was some Faustian deal as others might believe is not a debate I would even want to enter. There is a product available, SKY are the highest bidder for it, so they must utlimately be responsible for the money today.

A superb reasoned response thank God! FWIW I agree with a huge bulk of what you say - and I hope you were not offended that the natural assumption was that (as is most often the case) SKY were being unfairly 'picked on'. I have no particular axe to grind for or against SKY other than to point out that they exist in a free market which encourages their existence and that, dependent on your beliefs, they do nothing that is not legitimate. I actually admire their programming quality and am grateful that, but for them, the technology now available to the television watcher is far higher than had it been left to non-commercial organisations or those with the typical advertising model. They innovate and I admire innovation. If you then want a debate about the economics of the world order, I would love to have one - probably not here because it's a football forum.

Correct, but it would be hard to sell rights if there was noone there to buy them. So SKY must utlimately be responsible for the value of those rights.l

Then I trust that you also: 1. Refuse to pay your BBC licence on the basis that its top stars earn equivalent salaries to footballers (£18m paid to Jonathan Ross pre Sachs-gate...) 2. Refuse to watch the Grand Prix, because the drivers can earn upwards of £20m per annum for driving a car. 3. Marched against the banks to protest at the average investment bankers' wages (£6bn paid out by Goldman Sachs on annual bonuses). 4. Do not shop in BHS or any of the other outlets owned by Philip Green... SKY do not pay footballers. Football clubs pay footballers. So rather than demonise SKY, why don't you demonise Nicola Cortese??? You cannot pick SKY from a capitalist world order and isolate them as being responsible for establishing the economic imbalances that exist globally. That is just a bit daft in all honesty.

As a (hopeless) former economics student, the free market tends to monopoly. However, in this case, it's not about a monopoly. ANYONE in the world can bid for the rights to show EPL games and the highest bidder will win. Hell, they've even STOPPED SKY from buying all the games. So now I can't see those on ESPN without paying more (thanks EU). SKY bid a large sum of money which helped (along with the outcome of Hillsborough) to build the Premiership as we know it. The reason the clubs will happily play at midnight if asked, is they are PAID a ludicrous sum to do so. It is also worth bearing in mind that, thanks to SKY buying the rights to the league, clubs such as ours earn a disproportionately HIGH amount of money from the deal. No one in the world wants to watch Southampton, but we benefit because the EPL packages the rights of all clubs and sells them as one. I despair of SKY being painted as a demon in the world. Rupert Murdoch creates a product. Don't like it? Don't buy it. But I'm old enough to remember when the only football game I could see live was the FA and World Cup Finals. I'm happy to pay £40 a month for the privelege of watching football whenever I choose, analysed by people whose opinion I often respect and would not swap Soccer Saturday on non-match days for the absolute dross turfed out by the BBC a this time which I have to BUY regardless of the quality...

If there were no EPL, there would be no reason to modernise football grounds and increase their capacity, because there would be no real incentive for promotion - so most likely you would just have a lot of poor stadiums but with seats where the terraces once were - The Dell! Don't imagine the football you see today or the Champion's League would have been possible without a broadcaster willing to pay ridiculous sums of money for the rights. How do you think the ECB finally funded winning back the Ashes?

You're right, but surely all that will happen is that the price for public re-broadcast will middle somewhere between what is being charged in the UK (£480 per month) and in the EU (£118 per month)? This shouldn't need to have any impact on what we pay as consumers - although if there is an impact it will be upwards, we know that!!!

I'm not sure it would help for the SKY bubble to burst. Who will it help exactly? Next time you take your seat at SMS imagine how it would feel to be sat on a delapidated bench at the Dell, riddled with under-investment in the second division, Because without SKY there would be NO SMS and NO Cortese either...

Have they really achieved this objective? They play a brand of football which can be beautiful to watch but which is utlimately delivering very little and the promised dream team has failed to materialise despite countless promises. Only United have actually delivered success based on this premise and, as you point out, it is still supplemented by quality purchases - Rooney, Ronaldo, etc. To achieve what United and Barca have is possible - it will sinply take the decades that it took them!!!

In truth, surely what they get from the EU countries is almost irrelevant by comparison to the international rights they will receive in China and beyond...