Saint Kent

I had thought for a time that if one subscribed to the FPR avoidance conspiracies then Alcaraz's "high" option price and a Soule (or any other) purchase from Juventus could be akin to the Arthur/Pjanic Barcelona/Juventus deals at eye brow raising prices. Book the profit this year and amortise the purchase over the length of the contract will help postpone a FPR issue to another day.

Saint Garrett -great. It's johnakclark@hotmail.co.uk

Saint Garrett - I'd really really love one if someone takes a pair off you. Happy to meet outside/near ground. Can't work out how I can message you to exchange mobile numbers without sharing with the vast Forum community!

I'm really keen to buy a single ticket if anyone finds they have one spare.

Never lived near Southampton (grew up in Hampton in old Middlesex) but my boyhood idol was Ron Davies and from pretending to be him in the junior school playground it was an easy extension to supporting the Saints and use a Red Rover bus ticket to watch all the London games as a teenager. Had a season ticket from late 90s until Covid - with my son (poor lad) whose only link was that I always took him but it's ingrained in him too now. So many great memories inc many away games around the country but the traffic from West Kent round the M25 and down the M3 has become so bad now that I can't see us buying season tickets again. Well - unless we can regularly produce entertaining positive football and it's a long time since we've seen that. Glimmers of hope now though that attendance won't result in a really flat Sat night and depressed Sunday.

There's always a degree of sadness when a player who does care and has contributed over the years moves on, especially if it's not the case that it's inevitable because of their age/legs have gone. Yes he's been frustrating at times but Nathan has given us some good memories and I wish him every success at his new club.

SoFarewell DiegoAs you pass through The Pearly GatesYou can expect A sharp clipRound the lugholeFrom The Hand of GodEJ Throbbed

Has anyone got their refunds for the matches which nobody could attend last season yet? I went into my account to request a refund rather than a credit ages ago and thought that the club was supposed to contact me but zilch.

I wonder if Bielsa thinks he can get Lemina performing to his potential again? He broke through under him at Marseille.

Interesting. For periods yesterday I suspect that our Final Third Pressure stats fell right back as we were under the cosh. Reliant on counter attacks then. First half was a much better reflection of our pressing. Do you know what the y-axis - overall success rate of pressure - means? Presumably regaining possession in the final third or something - not wins!

I know it's unlikely but if anyone has a spare ticket please let me know

Didn't Ralph say in a radio interview that Lemina had strained a stomach muscle

I don't think we differ in that your team is your team and always will be but why do we go to matches rather than just look for the result? My son and I have had season tickets since the 1990s - I do a 7 hour 200 mile round trip and his is even longer. 3 seasons ago we'd be going to Newcastle, Sunderland, United, City, Liverpool, most midland and all the London away games. We no longer go to away games and will probably give up our season tickets yet continue to be "supporters". The experience just isn't the same any more. As a Saints supporter it's not about the winning - football is always a triumph of hope over experience and rational expectation, the emotional link has gone now though. We've had our downs but within seasons like the Great Escape we had our highs, the atmosphere at the Cardiff Final was electric. Now there is no sense of bonding with either the players, who largely use as a stepping stone, or with other supporters when the match day atmosphere is so flat. And very importantly there is no alignment for supporters with the club and its owner. In the current Premiership world Saints supporters don't in reality expect us to get into the Champions League or win a major trophy. That ship sailed unfortunately with the passing of Markus who might have backed Cortese and kept Pochettino and the players together. He mixed an investment with a passion for seeing where he could take Southampton. Kat and Gao are here as investors though. It's to be expected that our owners aren't fans, they want to maximise returns on their investment. For Kat it was maximising the proceeds of the disposal of a top 10 club. For Gao - I don't think he's ever told the supporters what his aims are so I have to surmise. He's paid top dollar, unlike Markus who didn't have to pay much and so could expect a great return if he took us up a few levels. Given what he has paid/borrowed Gao's maximum return is likely come from repaying the borrowings and receiving dividends covering most of the cost of his shares. If we are relegated so he can more easily sell the better players he could well cover all his cost in less than 12 months. He then has a free "option" to receive future income either from taking us back up to the Premiership or running us as a self funded profit centre, developing and selling on players with potential. There may be another "option" through development of land. The important distinction is that whilst Rupert Lowe and fans' aims were aligned - to achieve the highest position we could through a self funding model (and we can't criticise someone for choosing not to put more of their own money in), Gao's aims as an investor (which is his only relationship with the club) are different from the supporters. In the current world only London clubs (with their huge potential fan bases), Liverpool and United (with their global fan bases from past glories) and City (with Sheikh Mansour's backing partly because they had the Commonwealth Games stadium and a large fan base in a large conurbation) can really expect to win the League/qualify for Champions League. History supports this. As a rational investor Gao won't put in more money to see his return come through regular appearances in the Champions League like Kroenke does at Arsenal. He wants a self funded club which returns him his (high) cost asap - ergo sell most of the valuable players. He has to pay some attention to fans so managing to do this with minimum adverse reactions is sensible. In the Championship gate receipts are a far more important source of income once the parachute payments have run out. And so we are forced to conclude that he won't be too unhappy if leaving MP in charge results in us being relegated. Les's (bonused?) swan song can be to realise the max income from player sales. Then Gao's important decision will be to find a new chief executive who can identify the manager/transfer committee/players for a self funded Southampton FC which looks to maximise its profits, possibly through returning to the Premiership so it can be sold on again or possibly as a player development profit centre. So what can we supporters who are expected to continue to turn up to provide Championship gate receipts do? Probably nothing but it might just worry the number crunchers if they are assuming gate receipts of £xm in the future and have to start questioning that assumption. It probably won't deter the owner though, his modelling will still show a better return from getting his cash back this summer. Which brings me back to why I won't be renewing my season ticket. The owner and the supporters no longer have a common purpose. The players are clearly no longer bothered - did we see a fraction of the passion Newcastle's players showed on Sunday? The crowd feeds off the players efforts so the atmosphere is flat. Is this what I want to give up so much time and money for? I love football, the emotion and the skill. I can get the skill on TV, sadly I can't get the emotion from Southampton any more.

I've tried for 4 hours on my iPad from Australia and made 2 (very expensive) calls on my mobile but Ticket Office say they can't sell me tickets over the phone. There seems to be a software bug where you put tickets in your basket but it doesn't recognise you as having logged in. When you try (again) to log in it tells you that you're already logged in. It then tells you that you have no tickets in your basket. Clicking on the basket brings them up again but tells you that you're logged out. And so it continues. Issue seems to be that you can't access the drop down menu to show your supporter number against a ticket. Only solution I can think of is to phone a friend and get them to do it for you on a pc rather than iPad. Good luck if you're on holiday with an iPad!

just for the record I too am a lurker visiting the site several times a day to see what others think (and rarely agreeing with all the negativity). I don't post because of the pointless invective that seems to generate. I completely agree with the sentiment of the first post though - we've played some good football in periods so far and with time (which Puel should be given) I'm confident that we'll see the Saints march on. Getting a new system bedded in and tweaking the personnel to make it more effective can't be done overnight. The team and club have delivered enough over the last few years to deserve our support during a transition.

I've been following the Forum since its earliest days, often with bemusement at the extreme adversarial views and rollercoaster emotional response to results/events. All fans (especially those of us who attend every home game and many away) are disappointed when we lose and very frustrated when our better players leave but it's part of the package of being a Saints fan. I've therefore desisted from posting until now. Through bitter experience I've discovered what the process is if your away tickets don't turn up in the post so I thought I'd share it in case it's you next time. My ticket for Norwich didn't arrive by last Wed so I phoned the ticket office asking for help. I was told they couldn't do anything until I'd seen if the ticket arrived in Thursday's post. My postman comes at lunchtime so I phoned the ticket office at 2 pm to ask if they could now help. All I got was a recorded message saying that the office was closed for the day, something which hadn't been mentioned the prior day. I phoned Norwich ticket office (28 minutes to get through at 0845 rates) and a helpful man said that he couldn't issue a ticket on the day on the basis of my printed receipt showing the seat number issued by the Saints. He had to have authorisation from the Saints ticket office. He said that the office should open at 0930 on Sat (Fri being a bank holiday of course). I had to leave before 0930 on Sat to get to Norwich because of the usual sod the customer rail service over the extended holiday.I was told that I could ring the ticket office from the train to get them to contact Norwich to authorise a duplicate ticket. I decided to not travel because I'd have to shelled out £50 in train fares and left at 09.00 to return at 22.30 with (to my mind) no guarantee that I'd be admitted to the ground. Saints ticket office and customer services refuse to refund me because I could have travelled and they would have sorted a duplicate ticket. They claim that emails are monitored out of office hours although the email I sent Thurs afternoon was never replied to. As an aside isn't it infuriating that the ticket office is a premium number and you often have to make several calls before you get through but you get charged for each call because you wait for an assistant before eventually getting a message saying everyone's busy, please try later. So the message is - if your ticket doesn't arrive you can be certain that if you call the ticket office on the Sat morning whilst you're travelling then they will answer the phone and make arrangements with the away club to issue a duplicate ticket. I'd be very interested to hear if it doesn't work for you.