Nineteen Canteen

Interesting approach and if revenue is important to your company why invite the sceptre of redundancy to your door by antagonising clients?

I didn't know milk floats could reach those kind of speeds? I suppose each to their own but encouraging your kids to spit on sight of a place name? Kind of makes you wonder where as a society we are heading with these types of learned or purposely taught behaviours. Would you shout insults or spit if for example a 'person at work' walked past you in overalls with some reference to Portsmouth on them. Hope not especially if they are in your house sorting your re-wiring or fixing your emergency plumbing problem. You would probably offer them some tea and biscuits and then the kids come home from school.....oh dear no hot water again tonight.

Why? Unacceptable to whom? Will it mean the end of the season? Automatic relegation? It seems Dune you couldn't buy some perspective so I won't ask you to try and find some. A betting man would suggest a draw as the form choice to extend our 4 game unbeaten run in the league.

One of the most sensible comments I have read on hear in a long time. We are a club with Premier League facilities but with a squad being built to win league 1 maybe next season not take the Premier League by storm in August 2011. It's this 'big club' mentality that keeps many fans away as they can't support their club for some reason or other in League 1 of the CCC and IMO the disappointment comes most vocally from those who stay away even acknowledging the presence of the usual boo boys. Queens Park's home ground in Scotland is Hampden Park and yet all those international facilities doesn't give them automatic bragging rights or the ability to beat even the mighty Annan Athletic.

Quite, the club should start up a Radio Station....Oh? Solent uses football to fill it's scheduling on Saturday afternoons and the occassional midweek evening slots beyond that it's core customer base have no real interest in football as you have just admitted you only listen for the sports bulletin. Why offer you a service when they have listeners who tune in all day. Saints fans did themselves no favours by having anachronisms like Clive Foley talk to the likes of Julian Clegg during our period of administration. Probably had the stations producers running for cover and saying no more if this is representative of Saints fan base. Anyway, you have the internet, SSN, forums, the Offical site, Saints newsletters, the Echo, what exactly do you want to hear on Solent? A bit of controversy and some ex-player or directors(s) slagging us off and making silly statements and demands?

Using my comments for a quick and easy +3 to your post count and still no opinion on the MLT 'made up story' affair? You'll be joining the all the other undesirable sweaty middle aged men in Thailand next, for your annual bar trawl.

Early start Tame?

Of course it was saleability from this over reaction which I'm sorry to have to rain on your parade has had the opposite effect for the 'naive businessman'. The attached link shows sales of Hard Back Non-Fiction (seems ironic) books as at 5th September and MLT has slipped from 11th to 15th. To put that into context the Times bestsellers chart listed his book of having sold 1,280 books as at 31st August so hardly rushing to re-stock I would have thought. The average selling price of under £13 isn't great compared to an RRP of £18.99 and I hope He negotiated a percentage with Hiley and the Publisher as it hardly looks like a get rich scheme at this stage. Still he may have sold many thousands and still slipped down the charts thanks to books by Levi Roats and JLS. http://www.thebookseller.com/charts/96531-top-20-hardback-non-fiction.html MLT has continued to 'take le Tiss' since he hung up his boots IMO when perhaps he should have learned to put hard and work together. Why does he refuse to wear a tie on TV? Ego, arrogance, sartorial reasons, lazy or still taking le tiss? IMO MLT has damaged his reputation and can't live off his playing days forever just as other flawed greats found to their cost. BTW these posts don't give me any perverse pleasure but i think it's important people don't just assume a bit of controversy is actually a good thing. In the world of celebrity it may be but usually only temporary and it appears MLT doesn't even have that as a comforter.

No, Alana.

Or allegedly making up stories about betting scams to show us all what.........well what exactly? To inflate his ego or saleability or simply failure to put the words hard and work together - his words not mine.

I think that is the whole point GM33 was making and the glass will be half full to some but half empty to others and stats and %'s can be provided to back either view.

A point very well made. It would be interesting to know what our break even point is with regard to crowd numbers, bearing in mind I think last year it was generally accepted to be around the 18k mark but of course we don't have any debt to service unless the club need to repay Mr Liebherr. Does anyone know? Hopefully the number is nearer 16k so anything above that is in some part providing a transfer pot for next season.

Are you calling me a lady?

MLT confirmed Pinnacle considered and approached all managers with a Saints connection. Why? Not because they were the best suited to the task in hand but because of their 'box office appeal' and would attract the crowds back straight away. Really? It seems to me not only was their bid based on a foundation of false hopes and promises but their plans for the future were even more fanciful and ill thought out. MLT said that he did not even consider managers without a Saints connection!!! God knows what his player recruitment policy would have been. We had a lucky escape with Pinnacle and MLT even if we have paid a heavy price to the start of our season thanks to some rather inglorious timewasting IMO.

I did indeed see what you did there you avoided the question as normal by trying to undermine the poster's credibility. Keep up the good work as it is your's and indeed MLT's reputation that is suffering without a sound defence on which to pin your non-existent counter argument.

Oh the irony - both the missed and the delicious.

Disappointed MLT feels it is not necessary to explain himself to his adoring public just as he felt it was not necessary to give us an explanation into his decisions with regard to Pinnacle and why he supported the bid to the last minute and to the detriment of the start of the Swiss initiated rebuild . His responses so far could have been written by you and me based on our own limited knowledge and MLT has expressed his displeasure at Lowe for not owning up to his role in the demise of SFC, a view I agree with but one that works both ways and so MLT has still to explain his actions fully IMO and this is just another unanswered question about a strange confession.

I wasn't linking you to booboys but used your comment as a barometer to how easily one result can seemingly change a situation to desperate 8 games into a 46 game season. I apologise if I took it out of context and you are right i did agree with your analysis but not all your opinion and a loss against Yeovil although unwelcome will render the situation no more different than it is now with still over 80% of the season to be played out and the team still coming together. Unlike you though the boo boys may not see it that way.

With some gratuitous 19C baiting laced with a large dose of libellous comments because some people are unable to build their own defence. Is it a non-story though Trousers? Its just a saga with a new plot - why did professional football player make up stories in his book about a betting scam he was involved in? Was his life that boring that he needed to spice it up with lies? Are you expecting anytime soon for MLT to come out and say my publisher told me to do it or Graham Hiley made a load of stuff up because he got bored? Aaah, poor Matty and did you read it before signing it off or was that to much like 'hard work'? (To coin a quote of his ) It's a 'Tale of the Unexpected' if nothing else.

I can be whoever you want me to be isn't that the attraction?

Good analysis on Norwich but another club who went month's without a home win was Derby and who also had ownership issues but not I assume as grave as ours but unsettling nonetheless. Their support did not wane even though it wasn't until the arrival of Clough they pushed away from the CCC relegation zone last season. We can find many examples about clubs in our peer group who are better or worse supported than ourselves and in line with original post I think we should set our own standards as oppose to those of other clubs regardless of leagues and at the moment given our past support I personally wish we were achieveing higher gates not just this season but the last 3. Under new ownership and strong financial base that gives great hope for the future anything under 20k is a disappointment and an extra 2 or 3k is around an extra £100k I would estimate, taking into account bar and programme sales etc. That's roughly £2m over a season that you would hope would go straight in the transfer budget assuming Mr Liebherr maintains his father's beliefs and that you spend only what you earn. 18,000 may be ok or even good but measuring it by our own needs and standards then it is not quite good enough - a strong B and we need an A*.

I agree with the analysis but in line with Ron Manager's post above I prefer the siege mentality and when we are doing badly I feel I must be there to help man the barricades (so to speak) and wish others were not so easily put off by the dramas of folloiwng a league one team.

That's good to hear but the same old posters have been voicing their unrest about the team and the manager as they were last season. I have just read a post where I am told that if we don't beat Yeovil next week the situation will be desperate!!! Really? Only if the ambition was promotion and Pardew has been clear from the start that mid table medocrity is the target so where is the panic and unrest? Even in our loyal 17,000 home supporters the boo boys ply their self-fulfilling trade but the hard core away fans tend to be more appreciative, loyal and unstinting in their support that mirrors their own commitment to the team.

I don't think you have seen, let alone touched a ladies penis but you act like you're a man of the world.

I agree but 20,000+ should really be the norm given the average attendance in our Premiership days and trying to suggest we currently have fantastic support based on the fact we have new owners and risen from the dead when frankly we should be above Norwich and regularly beating Leeds. If we don't increase our support we will not have the amount of funds needed to significantly strengthen the squad to lift ourselves comfortably out of this league. 30,000 isn't going to happen right now but I think a comfortable average above 20,000 should if we are to repay some faith to Mr Liebherr. Reality is a 7-1 thumping like Norwich had to endure will wipe 1 or 2,000 off our next gate whether we are +5 or -5pts. People seem more interested in celebrating Pompey's apparent demise than celebrating we have a rebuild to support having resurrected ourselves from the mire Pompey are sinking into. Our attendance stats actually look quite poor whichever way you look at it.