kitch

If you think this forum is bad, you want to see the bed-wetters on social media. Saints fans on Facebook - replying to stuff the club or various news sites have posted - nothing short of embarrassing. Half the ****ers can't even spell!

Risky, but I like Sean Dyche.

I'm guessing they want to fill out the rest of the ground and have the only empty stand as the one that isn't facing the cameras. (assuming it's filmed/broadcast). There will be some financial/image reason as to why they've done it. Personally I think they'd be better off just opening the whole thing, try and spread the atmosphere a bit rather than having one silent stand (that isn't the Chapel).

Signed for Wycombe permanently now: https://southamptonfc.com/news/2017-01-07/dom-gape-southampton-wycombe-wanderers-transfer-announcement

On the flipside, we can get Osvaldo back now....

+1.

The only bump with this is that I've also heard one or two players talking Puel up, though that's in interviews and phone-ins. Austin was singing his praises a month or so ago. Said he's very quiet to camera and one to one, but is anything but in training and on the side of the pitch. Certainly, I've seen him up and about and positively charged, as opposed to Koeman who seemed to have a flat battery. I'm not sure what to think, but my gut feeling (and I'm in the 'Remain' camp) is that it's probably true. There's too much to make up, and if it is true, then keeping him and EB on until the end of the season is risky business. It's been up, up, up since 2009. There was bound to be a hiccup somewhere along the way. Hope it's just Chinese whispers and there's nothing to it, but Puel needs to get this shown on the pitch.

Boufal vs. Sunderland for me too. I loved J-Rod's against Bournemouth, but Boufal's was sublime. It was also the winning goal. Close, but of those two it's Boufal. The remaining two were good, but not amazing, for my money.

Spot-on there.

The railways were a MASSIVE deal. They changed so much about the way people lived their lives, not just the way they got to work. Utterly fascinating when you get into it. The fact that we wouldn't have had The Dell if it weren't for the railways is just a tiny piece of a much bigger jigsaw!

We play like I play on FIFA 17. Too much passing, nothing going on up front, defend like hell and too often make a mistake that lets another team score with their first shot. I can't change the way I play, for love nor money. Try as I might, it's still the endless dross that becomes so boring, I get bored watching myself play it. That's how we play now. Sorry lads

Didn't know that, cheers! Found some pics on the DNSR here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/91463401@N08/sets/72157667823506732/with/26800669321/

Ok, so possibly 99 out of 100 people will find this pretty boring, but I'll share it anyway just in case the 1% lurks among us! Being originally from Eastleigh (now living in a PO postcode, but Stubbington's a nice place - honest!) and having a family who pretty much originate from there and Southampton, it was likely in the event that I was the focus in an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?", that you'd have quite a lot of railway-based history. And you would - generations of my family have worked on the railways in and around Eastleigh and Southampton. I'm not much of a train buff myself. I enjoy the Watercress Line and all that, but I couldn't tell the difference between different steam engines. Apart from Mallard. Oddly, however, I quite like disused railways, and tracing old routes that no longer exist. I quite enjoy local history and changing landscapes, so it probably stems from that. And the railway links, of course. So, potentially mind-numbingly boring fact no.1 - Rivalry: We're back in 1834. Some top hat-adorned gentlemen formed the London & Southampton Railway Company, one of the intentions of which was to build a network of railways around the Solent. They'd opened the main route from London to Southampton in 1840, and it was a roaring success. They wanted to build railways in the area quicker than their rivals would get a chance to, so formed plans to cover the south in their tracks. One of the most obvious routes here would be to link the two biggest cities (may have been towns back then, I'm not sure) together. Southampton (because they'd just built a railway into it anyway), and the hive of scum and villainy on the opposite side of the harbour which faces Gosport. A station was built at Eastleigh (then Bishopstoke Junction, as the town Eastleigh didn't really come about until the railway moved in), and the line was constructed south-east through Botley towards Fareham. The site of Fareham station seems a bit daft, if you're looking at Google Maps, because the track comes out and immediately has to turn sharply left to begin to head around Porchester Harbour. Would've made sense to position Fareham's station further north, making the route to Portsmouth more direct. Only, it was never going to go to Portsmouth. Why? Because Portsmouth's residents didn't want a railway company whose name included 'Southampton' heading into Portsmouth. So, the decision was made to take the line to Gosport (which Portsmouth still referred to as 'their' station, despite having to use a boat to get to it because of their pettiness) instead and the line was completed in 1841. That's why if you look at Google Maps, the route naturally flows into Gosport, and the Portsmouth bit looks like an afterthought. It only got extended to Portsmouth in 1848, just after the London & South-Western Railway name was adopted, and 'Southampton' was dropped from the company's title. The extension along the water through Swanwick, Sholing, Woolston etc came even later, in 1889. So, around 45 years before the young men of St Marys church began kicking pigs bladders around, the rivalry was very much there! Potentially mind-numbingly boring fact no.2 - A Small Valley: So, the L&SWR had a monopoly on the area. They were building railways at a rate of knots, even to complete ****holes like......well. They were knocking them together quicker than anyone else could get a chance to challenge them, and it was working. That didn't stop another band of top-hatted gentlemen deciding they could get in on the act, though. The fact that a network was already in place was irrelevant in the name of competition! And so, in 1873, and act of Parliament was passed that allowed the gentlemen to get their shovels out, and begin building the Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway. They'd had ideas about doing this almost immediately after the L&SWR had formed their network out of London to the South, but hadn't managed to get their ideas approved until the '70s. The 1870's, that is. So, plans afoot, they cracked on. They begin constructing a line out of Didcot, through Newbury and down towards Southampton. 'The Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway' name, then, was quite a good one. The line would go south through Newbury, Whitchurch, Winchester (a second station, not Winchester's main station as that was L&SWR), Twyford, Allbrook (where it would cross over the normal route still there today), Chandlers Ford, cross through Lordswood and through the sports centre site all the way through the edge of Shirley before heading up an embankment in Hill Lane. The Southampton station would be of a pier-type, and be located roughly where Mayflower terminal is now. It didn't get that far. The line was opened in 1882 as far as Newbury, and then extended through to Winchester (Cheesehill - now Chesil) in 1885. The Chesil Street multi-story car park now occupies the site of the station, and the tunnel that served it is still there. The council use it to store wheelie bins! However, money had now run out. Nobody was using the new railway, as it didn't actually go any further than Winchester, and if more people used the regular L&SWR line through Winchester city centre, the fares could be lower as a result. Thus, the DNSR couldn't compete. Didn't stop them trying though. They bought a load of land in the Milton Road & Hill Lane areas, and knocked down houses that stood in the way of the proposed route. They built the embankment in Hill Lane (still there today) and had every intention of following their dreams. Having spent £100,000 already in the Southampton area (Winchester council invested £15,000, and Southampton £70,000!) the company ran out of money. The existing line was struggling for the aforementioned reasons, and in the end a deal was struck to connect the DNSR line to the main L&SWR line just south of Winchester, north of Twyford. Great Western Engines would actually run the line with their coaches etc, but weren't allowed south of the near connection at Hockley as L&SWR didn't want GWR engines on their laaaaaaaaaaand. So, they used to disconnect before venturing onto L&SWR tracks, which, they accessed by a viaduct. The Hockley viaduct, was the last piece of the railway built, and you've probably seen it quite a few times already, just next to the M27. So why's this relevant to Saints? Well, all the land in Southampton that had been purchased for the new railway was flogged off in the late 1800's, to try and recoup some of the lost investments. One of the pieces of cleared land, was in a small dell, and was purchased by a recently formed football club, who moved in in 1898.

HAHAHAHA! That's the first time I've heard that!

Not Tadic! Either JWP, VVD or Bertrand for me. J-Rod's done fairly well in the past for us from the spot too, IIRC.

He's basically been here 5mins. If we'd had no positives since the start of the season, then maybe I'd also be thinking of wetting my bed, but there have been plenty of positives. Easily enough to give him a full season at the very least, possibly two. He's clearly a clever guy, I reckon he knows what he's doing too. The only problem I think is that our attacking players struggle to play in the defensive systems he operates in. Koeman played quite defensively, but looked to hit the opposition quickly on the break. When Puel wants to break, it seems the solution (one of his words) is to try and pass it forwards. I do that on FIFA17, and I get bored watching myself play! My only concern is that the last manager who tried to pass it around without an end product was Roberto Martinez (to my mind). Now, he couldn't set his teams up to defend, and Puel is good at that, so it's not a mega-worry. It does sit in the back of my mind though. But he has EASILY shown enough to be given a full season at the absolute minimum. To even suggest it's his fault at this stage, to me, seems crazy. Besides, it's probably in his contract that we have to have a **** end to the year. It's standard procedure.

I think it'd be a nightmare. The only reason VVD looks immense when he charges forward sometimes, is because he's a defender. You don't expect him to do that, but where Romeu fills in for him quite fluidly if he charges forwards, he gets the option to do so. I think he'd be blowing out of his arse after 60mins up front, and though he's the best player we have and very good attacking for a centre-back, I don't think he's as good up front as, I dunno....a striker. If all else fails and you're 0-1 down with 5mins to go, by all means send him up there and play hoofball, but we just get little snippets of him there. We've no idea how he'd perform trying to get into/create space, his finishing when pressed etc. It's not like he went up there last night and Shlong went back to defend, it was just an extra attacking option at a time we needed it (and he got it spot on). I think of VVD as my wife's Ford S-Max. It's a big people carrier with the 2.5T engine from a Focus ST. It's big, it's heavy, it's actually very, very good across a wide range of criteria and it costs a lot to run. And lots of other people want to buy it from us (I'm lying about that bit). But, it's not a sports car. It might go OK, for an MPV (0-60mph in 7.5secs or so, 220bhp for all you car bores), but it's still not a 'fast' car. If I rocked up to a sprint at Goodwood in it, I'd get slaughtered by a Clio. It seems like it's fast when you're expecting it to be just a 7-seater MPV, but in the league of fast cars, it wouldn't work. If I was running a team of race cars in some sort of endurance event, and with 10mins to go all my sports cars were running out of fuel, I might send an S-Max out to do the best it can, but I wouldn't do that all the time, especially when it's so good at what it's employed to do, like ferry kids around or go to the shops. Or play in defence. Ooops, the acid's wearing off. Bare with me, I'm off to the fridge....

Can't agree with that (but then we're all allowed different opinions). I thought he showed fight, was composed on the ball and kept possession well, and showed a range of passing quality that others were struggling to achieve. Neat, tidy, one of the only ones who tried to go forwards with the ball instead of ****ing sideways or backwards, and I think he's another player in the Davis mould, where it's not immediately obvious how important he is. He doesn't dictate the flow of the game as much as Davis, but I think he did ok tonight and though he has had some blunt games since the season started, he's doing ok. I honestly thought he was one of the better ones tonight.

**** poor. Before they'd even scored I was thinking if we went through, it would be by luck not merit, and that we'd have got knocked out at the next round anyway. Though PEH and Davis did well enough, showed some grit. Yoshida had a good game, made an important (not that it turned out in the end) block and nearly had a hero moment. Cedric trying to do what he could. Bertrand had an off day, and I thought Romeu was in fits and spurts. Redmond? **** knows, but he must have something on Puel. When Tadic came on I said to myself I bet he take Sims off, not Redmond, and behold! Seriously, Redmond was hopeless. Didn't seem to have a clue, which is gutting as he looked bright at the start of the season. I like CP, I'm sticking by him for now, but we've seen some seriously dross performances recently and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned slightly. There are no easy games any more, and we don't look like a side that can score enough. Up until tonight I thought all this talk of needing a new striker was just daft, but it's true, we really do need one. Either that, or way begin to play to Long's strengths more as the poor bloke barely got a touch of the ball.

There's me thinking you were a Saab fan

Didn't the team get booed off at half time last season again Everton? We went on to lose 3-0, but I think we were 2-0 down and half time and playing really badly. Was only watching on telly, but it sounded like booing at half time. Have never experienced it at the actual ground.

Good performance, did what we needed to do. All the defenders played well, including Rom and PEH. Reed and J-Rod both looked bright when they came on, as did Long. Redmond had a shocker from where I was sitting! I'd have taken him off for Long instead of Boufal. Another tough one against the dugout boys next time around, but I agree our lack of scoring is beginning to worry me. Not on the the basis of that game, as we did what we needed to do, but in general.

Losing Les Reed (and to an extent Ralph Krueger) is one of my bigger fears. I just hope the 'system' is ingrained in the foundation of the club now, and that it's more than just one man (i.e. Reed). We can survive player and managerial departures, but there's going to come a point where the wrong person goes. I don't know who that person is, but I suspect it's Les Reed. But then, if you can set up a self-sustaining model where the model repairs itself by adequately replacing (or bettering) anyone who leaves, then it's a very, very good model indeed. I really hope that's what it is, because personally speaking I love the way the club goes about its business, and in the world of Premier League football, where for most simple minded fans (and indeed some clubs) the solution always seems to be chuck money at any problems. I love the fact we don't, because the amount of money in the game almost makes me sick. Worst case scenario, the wrong jenga block gets pulled and it all comes crashing down one day, but I can honestly say I've enjoyed the last 2-3 seasons more than any other I can remember, including 2003. I just hope there's more to come.

Spoke to a guy who know who's a Wanderers fan, and he rated Gape highly. Jason McCarthy was rated very, very highly by the fans too, apparently.