Wes Tender

Huff and puff as much as you like to avoid the main issue, as usual. Which is that it is unfair that there is a cap of 3000 on the percentage number of away fans that can attend a stadium which gives an advantage to the bigger clubs, because they will have a lower percentage of away fans in their stadium than they will have as a percentage on the return fixture. If you can't see that, then I really can't be arsed to argue the toss with you.

No impact on Southampton? So Arsenal can have 10% of our capacity, but we can only have 5% of theirs. Chelsea can have 10% of ours, but we can only have 7% of theirs? But what did I expect from you anyway? To recognise that it was only just that there be a level playing field whereby every team could have 90% of the stadium for their own fans and that the rival team could have the other 10%? Where did you get the notion that home fans would have less of a right to go to matches than the away fans? As it stands, the fans of smaller clubs have less rights than those of the bigger clubs, as per the illustration I have given. As you say, fuc k those big clubs and their unfair advantage they are given by the football authorities.

It really is very simple. Because they have much bigger grounds. Why should they have a greater proportion of seats at our ground than we have at theirs? They would retain 90% of the seats. Do you think that they deserve more than that?

But it isn't, is it? Its a guarantee of 3000 seats allotted, where a visiting team under certain circumstances might wish to have that number increased but cannot. Distance prevents us taking up a much larger allocation to clubs like Man United, but what about us wishing to take many more to the London Clubs? Or indeed clubs closer to the big Manchester clubs wishing to have a larger allocation than 3000 seats at matches there? As I said, United can fill 10% of our ground with plastics, whereas we or neighbouring northern teams can only have 4% of Old Trafford. 10% across the board is fair and if the visiting club don't require that quantity, then so what? But if they required more seas than the 3000, it is patently unjust. Let's look at it the other way around for some perspective. We are only allowed 4% of United's ground capacity, so in the interests of fair play, say they were only allowed 4% of ours? Can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth there would be if only 1280 plastic Mancs were allowed to our home match against them?

Who cares what difference it makes in practice? The level playing field is to have both clubs offering the same percentage of their capacity, not having some arbitrary "whichever is the lower" cut off total.

I agree. 10% of the capacity or 3000, whichever is the lower enables Manchester United for example to take nearly a tenth of our ground, whilst only allowing us 4% of their ground. Regardless of whether we would take 7500 seats or not is irrelevant, it isn't fair.

£20 million is patently absurd, considering the number of high-profile clubs interesting in buying him and how wealthy they are. If a bidding war ensues, he ought to go for at least £30 million, with potential to get most of it up front.

Naturally they are not A+ players until they leave us to play for a glory team. Thus Schneiderlin, Clyne, Alderweireld, Wanyama, etc could become A+ players almost overnight by the simple expedient of a decent move elsewhere, to one of the three A+ teams above us. (Well three at the moment. When we replace Man Utd, they will become a B+ team and we will progress to A+ level).

Let's judge it only on who the so-called pundit is as to whether it is given much credence. It is only Mark not very Bright. He fudges around believing that we had the best defence earlier in the season and doesn't realise that we currently have the best defence in the PL. So he goes on to list the key defensive players and omits Alderweireld, who is miles better than Lovren who he mentions as one of the key players we lost in the Summer. He obviously based his assessment factoring in the dip in form that produced the five losses, mentions that we have lost when we have played the top teams and largely ignores the recent upturn when we drew with the league leaders and beat Arsenal. I don't know what his assessment is of the other teams, but logically any team below us currently must be marked B+ or lower. He says that if his old team Crystal Palace were in our position, he would give them A+, thereby ruining any notion of impartiality by admitting bias.

Agreed. Long was often in acres of pace out on the right and the few times he actually got the ball, he made good runs towards the byeline or into the box and should have had at least the one penalty, if not the two. I had a great view from the Chapel/Kingsland corner and that foul was definitely in the box. The linesman on that side and the referee were both totally inept for much of the game.

I have appealed a parking ticket in Southampton and won. Across the road from Debenhams in East Street there is a single yellow line with no sign giving time restrictions. I thought that on a Sunday it would be OK to park there. The Council's lawyers pointed out in their defence that it was in a restricted zone, so the signs at the beginning of the restricted zone should have been noted by me. I claimed that in most other places parking was allowed on a Sunday and that it was unreasonable for the Council to expect motorists to read those Restricted Zone signs whilst concentrating on their driving. Although that was 7/8 years ago, the Council still have no sign there, probably because they derive a significant income from fines levied against those who do not appeal, although if somebody did appeal, surely the Council ought to be reprimanded for not signing it after an appeal. There is such a sign (Restricted Zone) outside Royle Jackson Ltd, so anywhere on that Industrial Estate is outside those restrictions and the signs on the road give the parking times. I often park there on a single line on a Saturday non-match day, as the parking is free and unlimited. If you look at the Google Earth photos of the sign outside Stricklands Garage around the corner, you will see that it says that on the single yellow line, parking restrictions do not cover Saturdays or Sundays. I haven't seen what they say when the flap is lifted, whether that is to the effect that there is no parking on match days, or whether there is just a blank. If there is just a blank, then what is a motorist to deduce as their rights? I suggest that your wife appeals, that no mention be made that you were attending the match, and perhaps she could say that she had parked there previously on a Sunday without any repercussions and did not therefore see what was different that Sunday. The signs had not indicated anything different when she parked.

As a Saints fan, I'm surprised that you thought that you could get away with parking there on a matchday. The entrance to the road is closed off and stewards only allow certain cars through. If you could claim that you live a fair distance away and had no knowledge that there was a match close by, then you might get away with it, as the parking tribunal which hears appeals is somewhere up North and wouldn't have the local knowledge. But as a Saints regular, it would be easy enough to check with the club whether you as a fan should have known better, so I expect that you are on a hiding to nothing.

Really? You'd really say that despite the level of possession we had, we were lucky too take it to a replay? I don't think that even a neutral would think that, except unless he was particularly short-sighted or lacking in intelligent objectivity.

Saves me typing a summary, as this is pretty well how I saw it. When you say that the ref was sh*te, there was a decent enough shout for two penalties, one for handball. And the linesman on the Kingsland side 2nd half made a couple of bizarre decisions too. We had numerous chances to have scored, but tried to walk the ball into the net rather than shooting whenever the chance arose.

It should have been at least 4 more goals from us with better finishing. We cut them apart with relative ease and defended with our usual steely resolve.The Arse fans and their deluded grumpy manager might have felt that they matched us apart from a great save from Forster and Gardos getting away with a yellow instead of a red, but that overlooks how poor their defence was, or alternatively how good our attack was. No doubt the Arse and their apologists in the media will point to their long list of injuries, whilst ignoring the key injuries that we had, but realistically Arsenal have two teams of top quality players and it would have been difficult to identify a weak link in their team and bench. One wonders what we could have done to them had we had Clyne and Schneiderlin available, but Wanyama was immense and with back-up of Reed and the perenially reliable Davis, our midfield was again excellent. Defensively we would have had Clyne ideally, but our makeshift alternative defence is still very solid, with Gardos having a good game up until his substitution alongside the solid Fonte and Alderweireld we had little to worry about. Bertrand made some good penetrating runs up the left flank, and linked well with Tadic, who looked more his usual self. J-WP grows in stature game by game, but his finishing was lacking today when gifted chances that he really should have tucked away. Up front, Mane is becoming a real handful, with three goals in three matches against quality defences, all great finishes. I hope that his injury isn't too serious. Happily we have Mane mark 2 covering for him when he is off to the Africa Cup. Pelle was close to scoring three times today and with the confidence he would have derived from netting, he might have fared better. But nevertheless, he was still a handful for their defence, winning most of the aerial duals and holding the ball up for others to join the attack. I think Koeman's substitutions were spot-on today. Reed gave us extra bite in midfield, Yoshida for Gardos was seamless and Long added bite to the attack with his pace against tired Arsenal legs proving vital to the closing minutes, we really didn't look as if we would concede anything. Results elsewhere have gone in our favour and we find ourselves just a point behind United who we play next. Psychologically, we have the upper hand, especially as United play on the back of a draw against Stoke. Third place is our prize if we can beat them. Few would have predicted 4 points from the fixtures against Chelski and the Arse and with the other wins since our blip, confidence must really be high. When Rodriguez and Cork are back, it is an interesting problem for Koeman to decide what to do about them.

Mal Pope, the films producer: One can expect a bit of hyperbole from the producer promoting his masterpiece, but calling Swansea a worldwide brand is stretching it a bit far, even for him.

No, Lou. I'm from West End, Southampton - via several other places, but not America

I think that you are right about the basic difference in the mentality towards success that exists between us and the Yanks. The analogy is well known that in America, if somebody sees a Rolls Royce on the street, their response is to vow that one day they will own one. Over here, the response is to go and key its paintwork. But one can't generalise to the extent that all Americans think one way and all the Brits another. Witness the response on here to hearing about how the Americans are celebrating our success story and contrast that to how some of our own fans receive the news, trying to denigrate our success as being nothing very spectacular by comparisons to Norwich and Swansea. Those misguided Yanks, eh? They've obviously chosen the wrong success story to feature. Mind you, much the same denigrators had indicated just a few years ago that when Cortese had laid out ambitions for us to one day play in the Champions League, he was seen as barking mad to believe that we could usurp any of City, Chelsea, Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Everton or Spurs. Yes, it is only halfway through the season, but the upward progression towards that goal appears to be continuing; we march on. I celebrate our climb from the depths of the third division to the giddy heights of the top few in the PL and welcome the recognition of it by the American Sports stations, but I accept that there are those on here who are only happy when they are looking for dark clouds rather than silver linings. Apart from any other considerations, we will raise our profile considerably in the States, which already has ownership of clubs in the PL. It might occur to those owners that there is a viable alternative to just throwing money towards buying the best players by developing their own through investment in their academies. Alternatively, it will do us no harm in the eventuality that the Liebherrs give up on owning us, as we will be seen a shrewd acquisition with the infrastructure we have in place already.

Tadic is the better player for me. Once again, Lallana doesn't last the full 90 minutes, although he was decent last night when he was on the pitch

Bought three tickets this morning and nothing left except singles anywhere in the stadium apart from the Chapel. I have a sneaking suspicion that had Cortese still been here, the ticket prices would have been much higher than they are. It just goes to show that the policy of selling at a decent price produces a capacity crowd, therefore good support and spin-offs for merchandising and concourse sales.

All very well to suggest that a player should have some sort of post-match retribution imposed on him by a panel of experts if he is proven to have dived to gain an advantage, but what if that dive resulted in a penalty being awarded and its conversion meant that his team gained points they would not otherwise have had? Surely then, that point/those points should be taken away. Otherwise there has to be video evidence to back up the award of any penalty during the match, in which case the referee could penalise a player immediately the cheating occurred.

Well done, Huffton. Now kindly point out where Nick suggested that you had insulted other forum users.

They're playing the game in the Saints' Bar?

I'm not to sure whether you're just on a wind, up, had too much of the sauce over Christmas, or whether you're just being a bit stupid.