Nordic Saint

Read your own post, you smug buffoon.

I didn't think there was anyone more stupid on here than Always, but then you turned up: a semi-literate idiot.

As usual, you are wrong. Even if St Mary's still had the same capacity as Leicester's stadium, which it doesn't, we'd still only have the 21st biggest capacity of English football clubs' stadiums. in the case of the Dell it was much worse than that. Yet, in all measurable terms of fan base on social media etc, our support is much bigger than that, usually placing us in the top 10 or 11, in spite of our lack of trophies. There are very few clubs - perhaps only 5 or 6 - who would get gates bigger than ours if they'd had our history of underachievement and disappointment, with only major 1 trophy to show for more than 130 years of competition and 14 semi-finals.

Neither did Puel, with the sale of Mane, Pelle and Wanyama.

I hope to be pleasantly surprised. I was unenthusiastic about the appointment of Pochettino. I was very enthusiastic about Koeman and very unenthusiastic about Puel and didn't expect him to last more than a year. I don't want to say I was right about Puel because I warmed to him as a man and thought he deserved another season. I feel Pellegrino would be very much a case of out of the frying pan into the fire but hope that, like Pochettino, he proves me wrong. What concerns me though is that since the departure of Paul Mitchell, the standard of our recruitment both on and off the pitch has not been very good.

And lost 0-6 at home to them. We might just as well have kept Puel. Their teams scored the same number of goals last season and both struggled to score any at home but Pellegrino's finished 9th whereas Puel's finished 8th. Puel's overall career record is much better though.

Ultimately, our set up meant that Koeman had to leave a year before he'd planned to. He probably knew little about it before he arrived as he'd never worked in the Premier League before and I doubt he'd ever heard of Les Reed. The same would apply to Pochettino.

Howe should be the England manager. As you say, the job he has done at Bournemouth is remarkable. Sadly, he's made it clear he won't come here. He has had a closer view of the managerial setup at Southampton than most.

I think when Old Les has got rid of staff, they have little desire to come back to the Club. Perhaps, if Les retires, a few of them might, hopefully starting with the return of our black box, Paul Mitchell, our Academy coaches, Dodd and Williams, as well as Sammy Lee.

Saints' support is greater than the confines of St Mary' or the Dell ever allowed and the modesty of our fans means that potential will probably never be realized. 30,000 + average home gates in every top flight season at St Mary's would probably be similar to Everton's 36,000-38,000 in a bigger capacity stadium. The Club price the tickets to just flll the stadium and that's what they do. Cue one of the 'ever so umble' lot telling me that we are a really, really small club. (with the 11th biggest home gates in the Premier League in spite of our small capacity)

Like most English people I'm not very interested in ice hockey but I decided to look up the Montreal Canadiens. They have won the Stanley cup 34 times, more than any other team in North America, making them the ice hockey equivalent of Real Madrid. The Ottawa Senators have never won the Stanley Cup, making them the ice hockey equivalent of Saints.

Our North American friends who never go to games seem to believe that we get 'hysterical'. You can certainly tell they've never been to St Mary's

Quite the reverse. Old Les is going to wait until we are past caring before appointing someone totally underwhelming. We'll all just shrug our shoulders and get on with it. Saints fans are no more difficult to satisfy than any other set of football fans. In fact, many of our fans have very low expectations, considering we get the 11th biggest gates in the Premier League. Avoiding relegation or even getting relegated and finishing in the top 8 of the Championship would satisfy them.

He really is a very unpleasant old man. No wonder everybody leaves.

A fair summary of the situation. The main criterion for the new manager is going to be that he is prepared to do as someone who was once voted the worst manager in the history of the Premier League tells him. So, that rules out the best candidates.

Puel wasn't an ogre. He just found out Clasie wasn't very good. If he had been, we'd have sold him by now.

His apologists say we need to give him more time because he missed pre-season training in 2015. But, nearly all of our new players miss pre-season training because we leave it to the last minute to sign them, and to compound the problem, they are often injured when they arrive.

Saints' average Premier League home gates iat St Mary's: 2016/17 30,936 2015/16 30,751 2014/15 30,741 2013/14 30,212 2012/13 30,874 2004/05 30,610 2003/04 31,699 2002/03 30,680 2001/02 30,633 Imagine how much more the demand would be if we ever won a trophy.

Except the man Rogers fell out with was Old Les. The rift started back when Rogers opposed the premature sale of Mane to Liverpool. Krueger seems to be opposing the sale of players too and it looks like he is beginning to assert some authority at the Club.

Yes, good luck to him. Barnsley is a good club and I hope he does well there.

Mane would have stayed for another year, which is why Gareth Rogers fell out with Les over selling him to Liverpool so soon. Koeman would also have stayed for another year. I'm not sure that the sacking of Dodd and Williams from the Academy coaching staff was a good idea. I take your point but we could hang on to players and staff a bit longer than we do. Unitl now, we seem to have sold most of them as soon as we got an offer. But, to be fair, it appears Ralph is trying to stop that.

Old Les again? Interpersonal skillls really don't seem to be his forte, do they?

Dael Fry would be a good signing, well within our price range. I see he's on the subs bench for England in the U20 World Cup Final. Centre back is a position where youngsters take time to develop and at 19 he's very much 'one for the future'.

1. Last season we had the 2nd highest average home gate in our entire history. 2. Our fans were magnificent again at Wembley. 3. We had our 4th consecutive top 8 finish. I don't care about the points total. Where the league table is concerned, it's only the position that counts. 5. It sounds like Ralph Krueger is starting to assert his authority as chairman and attempting to stop the sale of our best players. Ralph comes across as a man of principle and it will be good to see him take more control.

Fonte seems to have been a lot more 'professional' than van Dijk. Fonte has just played his 23rd game for the European Champions, Portugal, and they kept yet another clean sheet. The only negative rumours we heard about Fonte were the usual ones Les Reed's PR team put out about nearly every player and manager who's being sold. We could have kept both Koeman and Fonte for another year if we'd really wanted to. And if Les, your 'old mate', is choosing the new striker, he'll probably be overpriced, injury-prone and not very good. Paul Mitchell was the man who found the good players and managers.