Lighthouse

Good fucking grief.

It's not tongue in cheek, people are genuinely upset by this nonsense. At a guess, I'd assume because McC has had injury issues and was playing with strapping/injections against Liverpool.

No, he's dropped because he's a bottom half Championship keeper and our fourth choice. I know EVERYTHING needs to be Martin's fault but Christ, he's being criticised for dropping Joe f**king Lumley.

No Wood because Bednarek and THB are better. Armstrong or Archer isn’t much of a choice, I’d go with Archer personally but they’re both Championship strikers.

Well… that’s a list of footballers, I guess. Being asked to throw the ball out to a teammate who’s not within three feet of an opponent is not an ‘Ederson impression’.

As pathetic as the play acting was, I do wonder how monumentally dense, even by footballer standards, you need to be to go head to head with another player in 2024 with VAR. It's up there with Stephens against Chelsea as the most astonishingly brainless thing I've seen in football.

I was responding to a post about what's best for Israel and their border security, how have you missed the point that badly?

Whenever I’ve been there’s generally been an excellent selection of different food vans, some fairly decent live entertainment and the beer prices are reasonable enough for what they are. The fan zone is certainly a lot better than the one van serving slabs of salmonella-riddle shredded newspaper patties in a cardboard bun that we used to have, followed by a plastic bottle of warm Carling when you got inside.

People don’t choose their residence based on public holiday bus schedules. That’s a minor inconvenience if you haven’t got a car but that’s all. Trains have reduced service on public holidays too, so I’m not sure I understand what you’re suggesting.

I'd definitely agree it'd be great if we could have a small platform behind the Kingsland however I disagree with your overall point about there needing to be expensive improvement for the area to be viable. Outside of the central bus terminal on Above Bar and perhaps Central Station, SMS is maybe the best connected place in the city for bus routes. There are four bus routes along Northam Road, passing the stadium directly, two more within a five minute walk which route up through St Denys, and a further six if you head south to the Itchen bridge. https://images-bluestarbus.passenger-website.com/2024-10/Bluestar_Unilink_Southampton NETWORK MAP MASTER_Oct 2024.pdf It's already a very well connected and convenient part of town to live in.

I disagree entirely. In the chaos that ensued following all the 2014 ISIS takeover of Iraq and Syria, Israel came out of it almost unscathed. A civil war between hardcore Sunnis, Turkish backed sepratists, Kurds and Iran backed Shiites suits them just fine as there's nobody organised enough, with enough spare resources, to cause them any real problems. Israel's biggest threat recently came from Hamas, who ruled Gaza with absolute authority and relative stability in the years leading up to 7/10.

If you're on a thread about stadium expansion, which is nothing to do with the manager, and are repeatedly refusing to accept the business decisions being made because you want every decision to be centred around Martin, it's clearly gone well beyond a rational dislike. You've said we're in freefall under a useless manager, you clearly believe we're going to fall far enough that people stop going to Saints games for a sustained period of time. There's no reason to think that at all.

Which is precisely your problem, you can't get it into your head that this issue is nothing to do with your hatred of Russell Martin. This is a long term decision which wont be completed for years and wont pay itself off for probably more than a decade. The status of on employee wont even come into the discussion of stadium expansion, they will be looking at our long term prospects as a football club. As much as you want to insist we're going to plummet down to the lower leagues with Martin clinging on til the bitter end, that isn't going to happen. If he's not gone this season, he'll either get us promoted next season or be sacked.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/besucherzahlenentwicklung/verein/180 Last time we got relegated, despite a much longer absence and the 'novelty' of the Championship, our average attendance was only 23,600 and stayed fairly consistent the following season. Last season it was 29,300, which is all but a sell out when you factor in some opponents bringing very small away followings. Clearly something has changed. Your 24,000 figure is plucked from thin air and everything we've seen so far indicates that actual attendances will be far higher, even if we don't come straight back up.

You guys are getting a bit sidetracked here. Saints are a top of the Championship and bottom half of the PL sized club. We've shown over the last few years that we can sell out St Mary's consistently in both leagues. Talking about this seasons form is like saying you shouldn't book a holiday in Mallorca in June because it's forecast to rain tomorrow.

That's an absolutely nonsense argument, so have Redknapp, Pellegrino and Selles. Say what you want about Martin and SR, there is no reason on Earth to think that Graeme bloody Souness would be a good DoF. Brighton, Bournemouth, Villa, Forest and all the other flavours of the month seem to agree on that unanimously.

I’m not saying there wasn’t but there’s a big step needed from there simply being a business case to someone actually putting it into action. if the last few years have shown us anything it’s that our attendances are robust enough to withstand some sustained periods of poor football and relegation to the Championship. People who own football clubs won’t make short term, rash decisions based on volatile indicators like current form or league position. Decisions will be made on long term investment returns and the increased asset value of a larger stadium.

Clearly there’s a case now for expanding the stadium that wasn’t there a few years ago. When we’re consistently selling out whilst playing this badly in the PL and basically sold out the home end in most of our championship matches, it would seem like we’d be able to sell a fair few more tickets if we had the seats.

Nobody is dismissing Souness’ views on football, he’s a decent pundit who’s well worth listening to. However I wouldn’t want him as sporting director of my football club any more than I’d want Paul McCarthy as director of my record label.

Complete conjecture, you’ve no reason to think Souness would be much better than anyone. We could be fighting Pompey for relegation this season, having finished mid-table in the Championship last year and been forced to sell anyone half decent in summer. SR are getting it wrong, no doubt, but this is far from the worst that things could possibly have been.

He’s the age Fergie and Bobby were when they retired. Not exactly fresh ideas and building for the future. Who decided they were the only two options?

He’s a decent pundit but why anyone thinks he’s qualified as a technical/sporting director/DoF in 2024 I’ve no idea. He has no experience of that kind of role and hasn’t managed a team at all since being sacked by Newcastle 18 years ago.

What on earth makes him qualified for that? He's 71 and hasn't been involved in football management in any role for coming on twenty years now.

If anybody wants to watch a pungent mix of compost and horse manure being regularly turned over…. You can finish that joke yourself.

That’s when Countryfile finishes. HTH.