Danbert

GO boil your head

Okay but in the last two seasons we've been the big fish in the small pool nicking the other clubs best players - from the end of next season we can expect to risk losing our best players to bigger clubs as some of them will have made an impact on the Premier League.

Thought he was key to the pretty football we played at the start of the season and a successful start to life in the Championship. I accept he's past it but I think we'll miss him.

What I was thinking was if we're to be run along sustainable lines and if we're successful other clubs will covet our prize assets. If Adkins was linked with a team like Liverpool it'd be a huge step up for him - two years ago the guy was managing S****horpe. If Rickie gets linked with an established Premier League outfit or a club that plays silly money it's going to be his last chance to make that kind of a move. It would be naive to think that we won't become a selling club again.

At Norwich, 31-year-old Grant Holt has put in a transfer request, presumably because this is the only chance he's going to get to make an absolute packet, and Paul Lambert is being linked with moves away, just as Brendan Rogers, incidentally, has recently rejected an approach by Liverpool. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/18/grant-holt-norwich-city-transfer-request

No, no your being unfair. David in Sweden would thrill us all with some statistic about how many seconds it was since we had last introduced a substitute with a middle name beginning with L in precisely the 55th minute of a top division away game against Aston Villa.

What's the point we're so obviously going to get walloped anyway (again).

Woosh

"Would always take the police account's of these situations with a pinch of salt." This...

Completely agree

Personally, I view next season with trepidation. All the really **** teams in the Premier League (bar Villa) have now gone down - that's the only reason the promoted sides have done so well - now it's just the quality teams left :-(

Please no he's well past it

The oddest thing is why did Spurs sign him if he wasn't good enough to make our bench in the Championship?

Yep, and he's done the research to prove it.

Hell yes

Drugs testing to be stepped up at SFC

It's just a question of economics - the more it costs the wealthier fans need to be, hence a greater proportion of middle class pawn sandwich muncher bring the kids types. I don't really see how you can get around that.

I've seen a number of people on here mention the fact that they will be going to fewer games next season as prices are likely to become prohibitively expensive. I would have thought that this effect would outweigh the tendency for existing fans to attend more games because the club is successful. The net result? Johnny come lately glory hunter prawn munchers taking the place of the real fan. Generally speaking, the larger the crowds and the more successful the club the greater the proportion of that club's fan base is made up of people with no real affiliation to the club and who are merely attracted to it because of its success. Hence Pompey's support next season will be reduced to the hardcore nut element, whilst Old Trafford is a soulless quiet stadium.

pride

"Also if they help Saints why we were one of three clubs, the other two who funnily enough have wealthy owners as well, who voted against the being introduced in the championship." I thought that was a very telling fact. The club's rhetoric is that we will be put on a "sustainable footing" in the Premier League. This is also something Chelsea have been talking about now for about 10 years. The trouble is, that once you start spending more than you earn it's very difficult to stop. If our overspending is to stop it has to stop now. Once we start paying wages that are unsustainable in the Premier League there's no extra income we can generate in the short term that will reduce those costs as a proportion of turnover. So I'm hoping, for the club's sake, that none of the fanciful Stalinist dreams on the 5-year plan thread get put into action. Financial Fair Play Regulations are a disadvantage to Saints in the Championship (as this means we can't take a punt on promotion). If we're planning on a sustainable business model in the Premier League then clearly they'll be an advantage to us as they'll make it harder for other clubs with different business models to overspend.

In HIS OWN special way. Green biro anyone?

That was my one :-)

Sickening sob story needs your comments: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/may/03/jamie-ashdown-tries-save-portsmouth

Quite - not a good read at all

DID (!) they