Wes Tender

I'll willingly comment. Statistics can be used in a variety of different ways to draw the different conclusions desired by those who quote them. In reality, it is a bit futile comparing all of these clubs as if some sort of level playing field existed between them, as there are several factors that need to be taken into account when assessing each one and their attendances. For example, a club with very limited capacity can charge a higher entrance fee to matches, because once the stadium is full, it is full. Demand exceeds supply. ST uptake is generally higher when such a club is reasonably successful, as that guarantees a seat at every home match. Where stadium capacity is large, no such necessity exists to buy STs to guarantee a seat and in fact there is a probability that match prices would have to be reduced to an optimum level which would encourage the increased attendances to make the best return financially. Other factors to consider are the number of rival clubs in the vicinity and their success relative to your club. There is always a percentage of plastics who will switch their loyalties, even to clubs that are supposedly sworn enemies, if that rival is doing better than your club. Such a situation is going to happen here, where Southampton will acquire some of these plastics who supported your club when you bought success and your inevitable decline following your financial car crash will mean some of them switching to us. As has already been pointed out, attendance levels also have to be viewed in the light of success or failure of the club around the time of the new/enlarged stadium being built. You counter the stats given from the year before with stats that show the picture 5 years before and after the event. Well, a ten year span is a very long time in football and although averages are generally more accurate with a larger number of input figures, in football there are changes that occur that can skew these averages significantly. For example, ten years ago, who would have thought that Wigan or Blackpool could have been in the Premiership? Or that Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday would fall to the third division? Indeed, before your lot started spending money you didn't have, who would have believed that you would have got into the Premiership too? But regardless of pfc123's desire only to make comparisons between us and your shower when there is a level playing field, i.e. when you have a stadium of equal capacity, that isn't going to happen within a very long time span. As somebody else astutely pointed out, it is a chicken and egg situation unless somebody buys you with considerable wealth behind them. This Russian outfit haven't the wealth or the inclination to pour money into building you a stadium, because they have no guarantee on current attendance levels that you will fill it. And attendances will not be increasing without success in the league, something else that you will not be achieving unless you revert back to type and spend more than you earn again on the quality players that can help you manage it.

Quite. For crissakes there has even been a futile attempt at justifying this belly-aching by saying that we don't want to go the way of the Skates, when there is no evidence that we are being run beyond our financial means.

We didn't survive and prosper under the previous couple of regimes. But presumably now that they are gone, had we not got ML and NC, you are absolutely certain that anybody else would have been capable of making us prosper. Just as Coventry are prospering under that shower that wanted to take us over, eh?

According to this article, his manager thought that they might have expected to keep him and there is mention of a couple of the other top Dutch clubs being interested in him, but they thought that they might not succeed in signing him. No mention of us at all, so perhaps as much a surprise to their fans as it was to us. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11906_7017924,00.html

here's his Facebook page if anybody cares to welcome him https://www.facebook.com/pages/Steve-De-Ridder/269235015466

It only needs Amar Jemal to sign and I'd say we had the complete squad.

That looks like a superb signing. His close ball control, liking to run at defenders, speed, awareness of his team mates and shooting look good on those clips. OK, so on You Tube they naturally only show the good bits, but what good bits! I'm loving the way that this got under everybodys' radar; not a sniff of it. And if several other European teams were after his signature, it does seem credible from those clips. We'll have to wait and see how he does over here in the second, but we might have unearthed a real gem.

You're so reliable. One can always rely on you to come out with the alternative view that isn't shared by the majority. Especially when that view is against Cortese. And of course, he was not being fined for wanting to better himself, was he? He was fined for a breach of club rules by talking to the press. Do you believe that either there should be no rules, or that players who breach them should not suffer the consequences of disciplinary action? If your inference is that as a result of discipline being meted out the boy will sulk, then perhaps we ought to get rid. But really there is little foundation for either of the possible outcomes that you forecast in your second line.

Seen on Sportsvibe: http://www.sportsvibe.co.uk/news/football/arsenal-told-to-pay-12m-for-english-starlet-9404/ Spelling error spotted; they missed out the "h" in whiner.

No. Two or three is what it says. There was obviously a guess made as to whether there were two or three and you have chosen to believe that it was two. I don't see that Rallyboy has indicated where he is from, so you are again guessing that he is not from Gosport. So from your assumptions there might have been 1 out 49, or alternatively there could have been 6%. You can see from your reckoning how the people who have run Pompey can get it so wrong financially these past few years. But the telling point is that even if there were only three Saints fans there, it is surprising that there was not one single Skate. This is something I've observed in my travels around the area, that when your lot were buying the FA Cup at the expense of the taxpayer and local charities, Skate shirts were fairly widespread. Now I only see a few and they probably mostly belong to people in the care in the community scheme.

The Echo are only reporting the story that was printed in the Mirror and the Sun, so typically they are not privy to factual information that they have gathered themselves. As to those other red top rags, they are hardly known by reputation to be the fount of all truth. Somebody illustrated quite succinctly on another thread recently, how easy it is to take a conversation and to fabricate quotes made up of something said which was taken out of context. I'm rather relaxed about whether the boy stays or goes. On the one hand I'm sure that he would provide some entertaining football this coming season, but on the other hand, if we get £10/12 million for him, it is eminently possible to argue that 3/4 players bought in to replace him would add substantially more to the team. The lessons for him are there to see, that were he to go to one of the glory teams now, he would in all probability be a bench-warmer for a couple of seasons, or even loaned out for a season or two. How would he view his move then, if he was playing at the level we are now? He has seemingly been ill-advised by his father or agent, whose judgement is called into question and this even raise doubts as to whether his, or their own interests are paramount. From the club perspective, if this is all true, then Cortese has handled it well. I am confident that if Chamberlain is to go, Cortese will get the very best price for him and tie up sell-on clauses that might benefit us well financially in the future. The club has the whip-hand. We don't need to sell the family silver to stay afloat like we used to. If those wanting his services don't pay our asking price, then we keep him, simple as that. And I'm quietly confident that with the facilities we have and the reputation for bringing on promising starlets, we will soon have others as good coming through, but by that time, we might be back in the Premiership ourselves.

The yellow bit is the fruit. But according to the definition, it would be the "tree" that is herbaceous. In common usage, if people are talking about bananas, they are referring to the edible yellow fruit, not the "tree"

The fans are a fickle lot. A succession of man of the match performances and they would mellow very quickly. But whether he has that in him remains to be seen. Not on the evidence I've seen from him so far.

No they're not. Courgettes are green, whereas the parsnips are cream coloured and the banana's yellow. Also one's a fruit and the other two are vegetables

Must be something about Nigels involved with us.

Agree with everything you say

I've got two tickets. It's a great format and there should be some good football to watch, together with some drama if any of the matches end in penalties. Good value too. It should give us some indication of what our preferred team is and where we stand against some quality opposition.

Are we losing £7 million a year? It might be that in a particular accounting year our outgoings exceeded our income by that amount (and you'll have to put some moron posting in The News right; he seems to think it's £26 million) But just because outgoings exceeded income on a balance sheet doesn't mean that money is lost. For example, money is being spent on improving the training facilities. Is that money lost? Money has also been invested in getting us out of the third division, the successful achievement of that goal which will result in extra income being generated in higher attendances. Money is also invested in improving the academy set-up, so that in the future we can benefit from cost savings from using our home-grown players. In the same way that some of your posters in The News couldn't grasp why your situation was different to that of ManUre, I'm sure that they believe that our situation is just the same as the Skates' but on a smaller scale. The fact is, we are well run financially and well able to cover the comparatively small amount of investment that has been made in our future. If they wished to sell us, the Liebherrs could recoup most of their money through selling one or two players. So the Dragon's Den people might well consider us a good investment, or would you say that Markus Liebherr is not as canny as them when I comes to turning a profit? Wealth wise, he was wealthier than any of them, so I suspect that he knew what he was doing.

Yes, that is really high quality trolling in those threads. Excellent work.

Each to their own. In my own case, I knew from yesterday that the seat next to mine was still available at midday when I renewed my ST. Naturally as I was buying a new ST for my son, his having lapsed last year, I wanted to ensure that I had the best chance of getting that seat. I believe that had I left it until even tomorrow, it would have gone and either we would have had to sit in different areas of the block, or both had to relocate elsewhere. Now, I like both where we are in block 42 and have formed friendships with others around me. But I see that this sort of consideration means nothing to you, but as I say, each to their own.

Somebody else earlier has given a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why they felt it was important to get their ST today if possible, but it appears that in your opinion, they are idiots. They might well have wanted a specific seat that they knew was available next to them or close to them. It might have been in a favoured part of the ground, in a stand they like, close to fellow fans that they get on with. It has been explained that they did not wish to run the risk that that seat might well have gone by tomorrow and that they did not wish to go through the rigmarole of relocating somewhere else, away from friends, and acquaintances that they like and had grown used to. I realise that none of these considerations apply to you, as you are just happy to be there, anywhere in the ground, wherever there is a spare seat.

Agreed. And posting wind-ups on the News page is the modern day equivalent of poking the lunatics through the railings.

Yes, there are the other blocks in the Northam towards the Kingsland corner. But once 42 is sold out, then those wishing to be in the Northam then go into the other blocks. Yes, ID is only really needed as proof for concessions, as proof of age or disability.

Most of the seats in the Northam have been taken by ST holders, or at least most of the seats from halfway up block 42. I didn't have a look at the lower down seats on the screen, but there were only a few isolated singles in block 42 top half according to their booking screen.

What do you mean why? It isn't far for me from West End and I went there reasonably early, hoping to get the seat next to mine, which had not been taken by its former holder by midday yesterday. Having gone there, I could have gone back home having seen the queue and spent one and a half hours or more apparently on the phone, but until you are actually in the queue, it is hard to gauge how fast it was moving. My son is not an existing ST holder, whereas I am.