Wes Tender

I look forward to seeing the analysis on Match of the Day. All I have to go on, is that on the Radio Solent commentary, Dave said "Nigel Adkins has appealed for a penalty. It's been given"

Pundits are just as capable of getting it wrong as referees. On Match of the Day, the ex-striker Dublin thought it was correctly disallowed, whereas the ex-defender Lawrenson stated that never in a million years was it a foul and that the defender went over like a leaf in the wind or words to that effect.

You've only got to go back a match or two to when a poor refereeing decision deprived us of two points because Ramirez's perfectly good goal against Arsenal was disallowed. Therefore, if this penalty award was wrong (and not having seen it I can't comment either way) then the situation has evened itself out. I'm pretty sure that we have lost points this season because of dubious refereeing situations that have gone against us because of other team's players feigning fouls and I have been an advocate of us becoming a bit cuter ourselves in response. I loathe and detest this type of cheating, but don't see why we should suffer the possibility of relegation just because we have been too honest and allowed cheats to enable our rivals to prosper at our expense.

A great win and two places improvement on our position at Villa's expense. I breathe a big sigh of relief as that last 10 minutes seemed to last an eternity and I was expecting the usual Saints disappointment of losing two points right at the death. Partly the nerves were jangling because we had Fox and De Ridder on the pitch and I just don't think that they're up to the standard required. I hope that Shaw and Ramirez are OK, or we're going to be in deep trouble with an increasing list of quality key players suffering injuries. Signing a CB or two, cover for left and right backs and another pacey wide player looks to be an imperative if we're serious about holding or improving on our league position. It was good to have Clyne back and it seems that the pairing of him and Puncheon on the right ran Villa's defence ragged all afternoon. Shaw had another great game at LB, but Ramirez didn't appear to have been as effective out wide. But him playing there enabled us to play Lambert and Rodrigues together up front and Dave Merrington was full of praise for what an exciting prospect that would be whenever they play together in future matches, as they seemed to be a good foil for each other. The defence has become yet more solid and comfortable together, even with the switch necessitated by Fonte's absence and Boruc also gains confidence and composure and made some vital saves. The midfield pairing of Schneiderlin and Cork is our engine room and when both give their utmost, they are hard to get past and command the midfield, providing the telling passes to the attack. Davis is an able and experienced deputy for either and a good substitute to bring on if either of the other two need replacing or back-up. A bit disappointing that we weren't able to put one or more goals past them from open play, but we deserved all three points and should gain confidence from the win and the clean sheet. We have some difficult matches to come and could have done without these additional injuries, but we have enough about us to inspire confidence that we are good enough to beat those teams around us and could gain some extra places upwards with some quality additional signings in this transfer window.

So I agreed with a post which suggested that journos who had predicted that Shaw would sign for Arsenal should at the very least admit that they were wrong, the same with Lawrenson with his opinion that Ramirez would never sign for us and I'm faced with a diatribe about out how these journos operate. I have a pretty good understanding about how they work, thanks. I repeat, I only suggested that they should have the decency to admit when they were wrong, or at the very least learn from their mistakes and be a bit more circumspect the next time. But I won't hold my breath. Regardless of how they obtain their information, if they present it in such a way that they infer that it is a done deal, then the end result when it doesn't happen, is firstly that they will look like idiots and secondly that as a result of them constantly getting it wrong, nobody will give their predictions any credence. I'm old enough and have seen journos getting enough of their predictions badly wrong in my lifetime to take the second position, that most of the stuff they write is made up rubbish. In the same way that they will gladly accept the plaudits when they get their predictions right, they should likewise accept the derision when they get them wrong.

Liverpool are competing at the top of the Premiership? When did that happen? I must have misread the tables. If it weren't for Suarez's goals, they would be considerably worse off and he has been with them for some time now.

Come on Mods; Ban Barry Sanchez. Maybe he is justified in posting every other response on this thead in defending himself. But he has no excuse in posting every other response to the one about Les Reed and other threads. If you won't ban him for some reason, offer to refund him his £5 (or I'll refund it to him) and restrict him to three posts a day. That way, he will post only three times and although they will inevitably be longer posts, they will also be much easier to "skate" over and the impact they have on other threads will be minimal.

That was a very creditable attempt to speak English. I'll try to understood what you were trying to say in order to answer you. It can't be the fault of your Nexus 4 (phone?), as presumably that is only capable of text recognition, or maybe even voice recognition; who knows? It is patently not capable of correcting grammar, or was the grammar correct and the phone buggered it up? As I say, who knows about these things? I do know what the Treaty of Rome was all about when we applied to join the Common Market, as I campaigned for it as a Conservative. And the sort of changes that have been forced on the British people since without their consent, were not proposed at that time. Had they been, then I'm pretty sure that entry would have been rejected. In fact, I recall well enough that it was actually denied that what we were joining was anything other than a trading block and that we had no need to worry about loss of sovereignty. But even as a Thatcherite Tory, I did not approve of the changes brought about by Maggie at Maastricht and felt strongly that the electorate should have voted on it then. Regarding Dad's Army, if you voted in the original Referendum, you can't be much younger than me. What's your favourite television programme? All our Yesterdays?

We joined a trading area. The name Common Market ought to give you some clue as to what was intended at the time. Since then, the entire basis of what it is and what it stands for has altered and we, the electorate, have not been consulted as to whether we wanted that. Believe it or not, there are people to the left and the right of most parties, so as well as lefties in the Tory party, there are those to the right of the Labout party. There are even nutcases in the Labour party whose natural home would more comfortably be the Socialists Workers Party. Sent from my desk computer using two finger typing.

No it isn't. It's saying that we are fed up of being one of just two net contributors but not having a say on how our money is spent commensurate with what we put in. Your analogy saying that if we leave it will make us the equivalent of a team relegated to the Conference League from the Premiership is what is so laughable. If you want to employ a football analogy, us leaving will be like Barcelona losing Messi. He will always find another team really pleased to have him, whereas Barcelona will find it hard to replace him. In the same way that Europe will find it difficult to find another mug like us to pour money down their drain.

This is the sort of extreme arrogance that has caused the electorate to grow to detest their elected politicians.

I'm in total agreement with you on this. It was entirely justifiable that we were given the opportunity to vote on whether we wished to join the Common Market and as you say, there was little reason for concern following that, apart form the iniquitous subsidies that were paid to peasant farmers in France and Italy to produce butter mountains, wine lakes and the way that our apple orchards were put out of business by subsidies to the french and our fishing fleets were decimated by the Spanish, etc. It was purely a trading agreement, without further political implications and with no loss of sovereignty for our Parliament and interference in our legal processes. But the significant changes brought about by the Treaties of Maastrict, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon have totally changed what was voted for in the original Treaty of Rome and yet although other member states have been allowed to vote on them in Referenda, we haven't. It is a disgrace. The usual arguments are trotted out in a vain effort to pursuade us that it would be a disaster if we were to leave. We would find that we would be unable to sell British goods to Europe for some reason, although they will expect to continue to sell us their Volkwagens, BMWs, Renaults, Zanussi fridges and washing machines., their French cheeses and wines, their Belgian chocolates, Parma or Serano Hams, etc. They predicted that we would be isolated by not joining the Euro and thank God we didn't, as that has been a disaster. And yet although we are not part of it, they still come to us begging for us to fund the ailing economies of the Greeks, the Spanish and the Italians who are suffering because a policy of uniting such disparate economies under the umbrella of a single currency was sheer lunacy. I voted for entry in into the Common Market under Heath, but I certainly didn't vote for anything that has followed. I vote Conservative at Parliamentary elections and have voted UKIP at European elections. The political system is such that a party has a manifesto on a basket of policies, some of which a voter supports and others that he doesn't. Yet the party elected to govern can then claim that it has a mandate to pursue all of those policies in its manifesto, or to ignore some of them if they feel that it is expedient to do so. This is not what I call proper democracy. We had a referendum on electoral reform, but are not allowed one when we lose sovereignty to Europe, so that they are allowed to pass laws that affect our everyday lives and the people who pass those laws are not elected by us. It's long overdue to call time on the whole affair and get out and take our net contribution into their coffers with us, to reinvest in building up British industry. We can then retake control over our borders and immigration policy, our territorial waters, our legal processes and the sovereignty that we lost.

Well, if they did, they would have egg all over their faces. They wouldn't want to look like misinformed idiots, would they? It's a bit like Lawrenson stating that Ramirez wouldn't ever be playing football at Southampton. I don't recall him ever admitting that he was made to look like an idiot either.

Because there is bad feeling between our chief executive and the Echo's Editor, there is bound to be a suspicion at least that there is an agenda that has arisen from it whereby the club, or at least our chief executive and decisions that are made by him, are not always shown in the best possible light. It would be in everybodys' best interests that a line be drawn under this mutal bad feeling towards each other, but I suspect that the egos of Cortese and Murray won't allow either to hold out the olive branch. To a certain extent, the club holds the whip hand, as it has other media outlets where news can be disseminated, whereas the Echo's circulation relies quite heavily on papers sold to Saints fans, who might boycott it if they feel that their beloved club is portrayed in an unfavourable light.

I'm delighted that he has made a verbal commitment to pledge his immediate future to us. But I really do gain a lot of satisfaction when considering all the tosh emanating from various Red Tops about how it was a done deal that he would be off to Arsenal or some other glory team during this transfer window. Those journos really do look like idiots now and their credibility will have been severely dented in the eyes of those naive enough to believe that everything printed in those rags must be true. So when rumours surface in these rags that Adkins is about to get the bullet, we can now refer to the erroneous reporting of Shaw's departure and say that they didn't get anything right there, did they?

So Barry can't be arsed to justify why he has started a new thread instead of adding to an existing one which would have been an appropriate destination for his comments. Come on Mods. Close this one and issue Barry with a warning to behave himself and stop annoying other posters with new unnecessary threads (trolling)

What are you wittering on about? You don't appear to have responded to my request to justify why any comments you have made on this thread couldn't be added to the other thread about us sourcing players from Italy. Come on Barry, give us your reasons, or stop posting additional threads for purposes of self-glorification.

Feel free. Go through all of my posts and try and find one where I have given any credence to rumours or conjecture about a player from media reports. You won't find any. I reserve my comments mostly for when things actually happen. I'm a bit of a killjoy that way, not commenting on things that might not come to pass.

Who slavers over positive reports but dismisses negative ones? Posters might offer opinions about whether they rate the players that are rumoured to come here, whilst others suggest that players of a certain calibre would be unlikely to come here for various reasons. But I can't recall anybody believing that just because they read about in a newspaper or on a fans' forum, heard it from a taxidriver/office cleaner/friend's dogwalker's brother etc, that it must be true. And as an aside, is it coincidence that your wife also wrote crap as a journo, or is it a family trait?

Ah! So everything written in the media is the absolutely irrefutable truth, eh? And in another thread you labelled others naive if they believed that we might achieve some ambitious targets. Mind you, believing this is more likely to label you as gullible as well as naive. But please don't believe that many others on here are quite as susceptible as you when it comes to believing rumours, conjecture and innuendo.

I had suspected as much. Your head being melted probably is the reason that some much rubbish finds its way from there onto here.

I just wonder what points he can make on this thread that would be inappropriate on the other thread you mention. Perhaps Barry can explain it to us. Otherwise we shall just have to conclude that his ego got the better of him and he wanted to stand up and shout "hey, look at me!"

Yes, a very good summary.

No, it's called being circumspect. Accepting that although something might be unlikely, that there is always an element of possibility. You're the one clutching at straws in a vain attempt to justify your position. quote Barry Sanchez: Name an academy better than ours in terms of the quality and number of players produced in the last 5/10 years that are playing at the very top level. I bet you can't. Therefore I think it is an entirely valid assertion that we currently have the most successful academy in British football. And we have no need to sell the players we produce. Granted that it is unlikely that we will keep players whose heads are turned by the offer of mega-bucks from the top glory teams, but then we are in a strong bargaining position to screw those clubs for an amount that we cannot refuse. And having received that payment into our coffers, we are then able to spend it on some top quality replacements.