Lighthouse

A bit of a classless time to throw in a dig at the manager. Whatever the case, this looks like an awful injury and every time I've seen someone go down with an ACL they've been screaming in agony. Wish the guy well, an awful time in your career to have it happen.

No, you can’t. For all the complaints about the ref and VAR, we did get two penalties and couldn’t find the net any other way. France scored two decent goals which we failed to keep out, they deserved to win.

Morocco have just won a group containing Belgium and Croatia, before knocking out Spain and Portugal in succesive games. We may have the best collection of players but we were not the best team in the tournament.

TBF most Pompey fans can’t spell ‘FA Cup’.

Because I’m not awe-inspired by a manager who managed to beat Iran, Wales and Senegal (without Mané) and was down to the bare bones of only having Kane, Saka, Foden, Rashford, Grealish, Maddison, Bellingham, Rice, Phillips, TAA, and Walker to build a team around? He’s done the same as the last two tournaments, win the bog standard games when we’re clear favourites and lose to a team of comparable talent which played better.

TBF that applies to all but eight or nine of the 110 plus English FL teams and 200 plus nations out there.

He’s been blessed by incredibly fortunate fixtures and wasted by far our best two chances to win a major tournament for several decades. I don’t think he’s a good manager.

No, this has been my opinion of him pretty much since he was appointed. No manager since Sven in 2002-06 has had this much talent available, the difference being he had to get past Ronaldinho, R9, CR7 and Deco to get to a tournament final, rather than Hojbjerg, Vestergaard and Mykolenko.

I can’t say I’m in any way surprised, Southgate has never done anything other than beat vastly inferior teams with far worse players at major tournaments. As soon as we come up against a team of similar talent, we come unstuck.

It was a foul but that doesn’t make them cheats. I think T-Rex arms should have got to that, personally.

Have we been replaced by someone else, like Italy, for this game?

Proper blizzard up at Ewood.

Like most teenage boys, we’re really struggling to deal with Abrar.

It says something that Perisic’s eight year old son has more class and respect that a team full of Argentine adults.

I’m going to say France will beat Argentina in the final and see how that ages.

And then in the Poortvliet season we were about 13,000 home fans on average, which is a massive difference from 25,000. So all we’ve really proven is that attendances will vary, depending on multiple factors and isn’t necessarily tied to the league we’re in. Having Lowe in charge, Poortvliet as manager and playing a bunch of kids, in administration turned away a much greater number of fans than simply the brand of the PL.

Some of the big teams had big followings, others not so much but point taken, let’s say the average away following was 1,500 instead. That still leaves an average home attendance of just under 25,000 in the Championship and 27,500 in the PL. So a difference of 9% on average. The BIB just doesn’t work, you’d need over 8,000 ‘big gamers’ to turn up for more than half our games for everything to even out.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/besucherzahlenentwicklung/verein/180 According to this, our average attendances are around 30,500 in a PL year, compared to 26,400 when we were promoted. The main difference there being away fans; any of the ‘big six’, plus Leeds, Newcastle, West Ham and a few others will easily bring 3,000 down here. This compares to sub-1000 for an average Championship club. If we’re talking just the home end, it’s probably 27,500 now compared to 25,500 in the Championship. Then there might be 500 away fans in the home end because they couldn’t get tickets, so the difference could be as few as 1-2,000 Saints fans over a season. 2,000 fans out of 27,000 is 7% and even that is eroded by the fact that some fans will make a bit more effort to go more often in the PL.

I can categorically say I’d rather be in our position than Millwall, who according to Wiki are competing in their 94th season outside the top flight, in the last 96 years. They might make the playoffs, they might even win them, or they might fade away and finish 14th whilst we comfortably avoid the drop. Personally I’d rather have been saints over the last five years than even Norwich/WBA/Fulham, finishing top two in the Championship. Winning the league just because you were relegated last year has a faint whiff of being held back a year at school. You might be one of the smarter kids in your class all of a sudden but it’s not much to brag about.

Yes but that was one game in a season of absolute sh*te. My personal memories of that season are mostly dreadful, I remember going to Hull and watching us get stuffed 5-0. Frazer Campbell looked like Romario that day.

Surely this is fake news? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-63874001?fbclid=IwAR1ES3iFOGUKgb5wIwZYGhmg0Amlop-5H_E6IOE-qZkoXoRHcZYgTLfR6ew

I've read that three times and I'm still non the wiser as to what you're implying.

Agree with the first bit but I can’t say it’s depressing, personally. Targets like this are always going to be a bit of a long shot for Saints.

You’ve got to love Portugal having an absolute worldly with Ronaldo sat on the bench and his replacement bagging a hat trick.

I think the man who’s just scored his 16th goal of the season in all comps, aged 21, is, was and always has been out of our reach. Likewise Gakpo.