CWD

Gareth Bale?

Neville Southall?

Alright then.... Craig Mickail-Smith

Bang on mate. Well said.

I like all of those. Particularly the black one.

Let's think about this in terms of AOC's development. The kid has had one season in professional football at the age of 17, and has shined against the likes of Dag&Red and Hartlepool. Next season with Saints he has the chance, at 18, to play against teams such as West Ham, Cardiff and Birmingham week in week out. A move to the Premier league and he'll have to move away from home, most likely up north to Liverpool or Manchester, and play maybe 10 games at most in the season. Staying with Saints is a natural progression for him at such an early stage of his career, and I think he should stay. Certainly at least until January.

Roberts is very underrated in my opinion. He had by far the best set piece delivery in the league last year. We should throw money at them for Pilkington. Would be a quality addition.

Spot on. I can never understand people saying they would not want promotion, even if we came straight back down again we'd make a huge amount of money

Just seen that Andy Reid is out of contract at Blackpool. HCDAJFU

I mean... our financial situation... which is superior... to the majority of other NPC clubs....

Wouldn't call it a disappointment, but certainly I think with our financial muscle that play-offs should be our aim. I'm sure Cortese will want top 6, in fact I seem to remember Pardew saying something about aiming for promotion from league 1 followed immediately by a play-off challenge in the NPC being his/NC/s aim. I may be wrong about that though.

It'd be some achievement if West Ham won the play-offs as well as getting automatic promotion

1st Leeds 2nd Ipswich ------------------- 3rd Burnley 4th Leicester 5th Saints 6th Birmingham ------------------- 7th Blackpool 8th Middlesborough 9th Hull 10th Cardiff 11th Blackpool 12th Reading 13th Watford 14th Crystal Palace 15th West Ham 16th Nottingham Forest 17th Huddersfield 18th Coventry 19th Doncaster 20th Brighton&HA 21st Bristol City ------------------ 22nd Portsmouth 23rd Derby 24th Barnsley Assuming Swansea and Hudds win their respective play-offs. I can see West Ham struggling, as well as Forest being surprisingly poor after a fe seasons skirting with the play offs.

Of course it's fair! That's the rules of the league ffs! All teams know that when they begin the season. I presume you were pleased when we were beaten by Derby in the play-offs then? And will support the 3rd placed team should we finish 6th next year?

What do you mean?

ffs we'd almost managed to move on for a minute there!

For the first time, I kinda feel like the derbies will be like any other game this season. Of course the week leading up to it will be massively exciting/terrifying, but it isn't going to be like the last few years where we have build-up threads months in advance! In the grand scheme of things, it's 2 games in a 46 game season in which I fully expect us to finish above them.

I don't go for all this '3rd place deserves to go up' rubbish. 1st and 2nd deserve automatic promotion, and 3rd - 6th earn their place in the play-offs. The play-offs are brilliant imo, and make the season much more interesting. For example this league 1 season would have been over weeks ago if it was just the top 3 who went up. Also, people should remember their comments about this should we finish 6th next season... I like Huddersfield as a team and a set of fans, but I'm a Southampton fan and for that reason I'd much rather have a smaller, weaker team promoted to boost our challenge next year. I also want to sign some of their better players like Pilkington and Roberts

and mine!

Ok, if money wasn't an issue you could have any 4 players who have been mentioned on this thread, who would they be? Assume that we don't sell any of our current assets. I'd say CMS, Pilkington, Ambrose and either Greg Halford or Wes Morgan.

Any thread involving multiple uses of the word 'wristslitters' are always classic.

Haha yeah that was brilliant

If any of you are like me, the euphoria is starting to trickle away as the depressing thought of a whole summer with no football looms. So, just for a bit of fun, let's have our own Saintsweb awards! I'll kick things off: Thread of the Season - 'Time to accept we will not be going up automatically' by delldays Over to you. Let's keep this friendly

I have an accumulator on Forest, Huddersfield, Stevenage and AFC Wimbledon to be promoted. So make it happen please!