The9

I would say for the entire season he wasn't playing as a striker, including the 4-5 months where he was meant to be the only one in the middle up front. As for "produced few opportunities", it helps not to be ambling around on the half way line when your colleagues are crossing the ball into the box for you.

Mourinho's "first team squad" is no different from ours in terms of size, he just made a bigger deal about who was in it. Our "first team squad" from last season barely contained 20 players who'd have been in contention at any given time, we just had a lot of young players with a handful of appearances each. For reference, here's Chelsea's reserve team from March 2005 for a match against Spurs reserves : Chelsea: Lenny Pidgeley; Dean Smith, Steven Watt, Nuno Morais, Sam Tillen; Anthony Grant, Danny Hollands (capt); Filipe Morais (Philip Younghusband 80), Filipe Oliveira, Joe Tillen (James Simmonds 90); Danny Woodards. Now either Mourinho's 23 didn't include any reserves and they were additional to his "I only need 23", or those players are part of his first team squad... It does raise the question of why you'd want to have a reserve team of whom maybe one or two has ever got near the first team, but that's another issue, and it's not like they'd be struggling to pay them.

No, we're a League One club.

Interesting, as Holmes was our best player last season for the brief time he was fit and losing him had a massive impact on our results in September/October. He's not slow either, and gets plenty of crosses in. Even assuming we shed all the out of contract players I can see Gillett ahead of Wotton and even so his kind of play-breaking will be useful at this level, as long as he sticks to 5 yard passes when he gets it. I'm not sure why anyone thinks we need a big donkey number 9 when Euell (should he accept a new deal) was perfectly capable of doing that anyway, and made a big difference when he first started playing there. I'd take a fast finisher over a big donkey any day, as lower league defenders expect and comfortably deal with stuff in the air - but the reason they're in the lower leagues is because they can't cope with skilful players with pace moving the ball past and around them. We're going to be about the same standard but in a worse league, and a few wins will do wonders for the confidence of the kids. Can't really argue about the frees or the lower league scouting though, but I'd suggest we'd have things covered, it's just too obvious not to be doing it.

Clearly the oldest football club in the world, Sheffield FC.

Yep, Feyenoord. Also, bloody July 18th, I'm on holiday. Ar5es. Missed West Ham last year too.

Might be an idea to remove my "signing" from the list so as not to confuse the stupid... especially as I'd probably fail a medical at the moment!

Mawhinney interview on BBC Sport in which details of changes to the HMRC/CVA process is discussed. Too late for us I suspect. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2009/06/mawhinney_tackles_the_big_issu.html#089221

There's a LOT of money in some of those leagues for big name "profile-raising" players as local leagues try to compete with the Global Branding Monster that is the Premier League. Denilson also had a trial with Bolton according to Sky Sports News...

Funny you should say that, given that he would have gone for nothing (except compensation) last season if anyone had wanted him when his contract expired, and we probably gave him a really low money new deal due to the lack of interest. So he probably didn't cost us much last season and we got £400k that was otherwise not going to exist if we'd just released him, or an amount subject to the always dubious compensation tribunal if someone else had bettered our contract offer. Pretty good bit of business, I'd say.

It's very similar to a McLaggon, except with less accuracy. FWIW I'm not remotely bothered that Dyer's gone, he had plenty of chances to prove he wasn't a lightweight flash in the pan, form player who couldn't or wouldn't defend. He stood on the ball or ran into his opponent more times than not, and once he got to the first team he always seemed out of his depth. Shame really, I thought he was better than Walcott the first time I saw them in the same team. I think both McLaggon and Thomson have the capability to have more auspicious careers than Dyer, though well done to him for putting in enough effort to get himself wanted by someone in the CCC. I suspect he'll be out of the starting line up there soon enough though now he's got a contract. Dare I say well done Wupert for offering him any kind of deal last season when his contract expired ? Thought not, seeing as no-one wanted him on a free - one deal that worked out well for us, for a change.

Don't let us stop you going ! Last season's tour of Hampshire was quite entertaining, and given the timescales I'm not expecting much more this season. I've only seen Woking and Eastleigh "confirmed" (not by Saints either) so far. By some miracle the Eastleigh game DOESN'T seem to clash with a pre-existing plan or holiday I have, so I might actually get to go - bizarrely for the first time ever.

I don't see how giving people a single place to state their prejudices is a problem? "Unity" isn't dependent on everyone having the same opinion.

Despite the obviously ironic intention, I think it actually gives people the opportunity to put their money where their mouth with as far as criticisms go, at least that way when something goes wrong and people start whining about it, the others can point out that they "didn't say that before things had gone wrong". No, wait, that IS completely worthless. It is a slightly amusing joke though.

That badge is frankly horrible, the kits are not Nike current styles (next season's Man U Nikes have a stupid chevron on them, FWIW), we're in the third tier so they wouldn't make a new style for us anyway, we have an Umbro kit deal until 2013(ish) and flybe as sponsors for at least one more season as it is. In addition, not a shred of evidence for the whole name/badge change nonsense. Other than those minor details, great stuff.

Weird how history warps people's recollections... "couldn't manage talented players" ? Did alright with Bridge and Niemi didn't he ? He also turned a lot of reasonably talented underachievers who've done next to nothing since into players who overachieved and outperformed themselves week after week, led by the twin overachievers of Chris Marsden and James Beattie. If you're referring to Fernandes I'm pretty sure Gordon didn't drop him in central London drunk off his face with his car either, and the Delgado thing was at least partially the club not having the infrastructure to accommodate him, and the player himself didn't help matters. They were a "team of triers" who were 4th in the Prem at Xmas 2003 as well, and strangely only seemed to stop trying when they found out he was leaving (I'm guessing that was right before the Boxing Day match at QPR against Fulham judging by the performance)... and strangely those players then didn't try for any of the managers that followed at Saints, until they left the club. Some no longer seemed fit, many were suddenly "injured" for Sturrock... and so on. With the exception of Davies who needed a side built around him, Bridge who mostly benchwarmed for a then-stellar Chelsea side, the already-successful Delgado and, bizarrely, future South American Club Champion winning Kleber Chala, few have had as much success elsewhere as they did under WGS at Saints - certainly none of the "regulars".

Bwuh ?!!? Well, we'd have Rasiak up front cos he was already signed by Lowe on loan to buy, and a soon-to-be-criticised Burley in charge, but what makes you think Lowe 2006 didn't already have the cost-cutting plans of '08/09 lined up for 06/07? It was already obvious that with the parachute payments running out our income was going to take a huge hit, and almost all the contracts were Lowe-negotiated since relegation thanks to the post-Redknapp Burley cull of '06, and hopefully would have been relatively prudent for our income.

Funniest thing I've read in ages. Maybe it was also them who told Crouch about the Administration Points deductions in 1996 to allow him to advise Askham and Lowe on the right structure for the club to stop us having points deducted too..? Damn I wish I had that kind of 20/20 foresight.

Agreed. How long did you last, again ? ;-)

A fair question; I'd have probably thought they were being ridiculous given the lack of crossover audience. The branding and the fun day made it clear it was more than just bands (which were pretty diverse as it was) - and also I gave more than a fiver in change over a couple of occasions for absolutely nothing, and bought about 4 items of soon-expiring merchandise (grey kit mostly) just for the hell of it, so I might have just bought a ticket to Stamp Aid ™ and not gone. That there was a crossover suggests it wasn't that bad a plan... I did at one point say I wouldn't chuck anything in the buckets because it was "pointless", then still did it anyway. It's not supposed to be a rational thought process, this football lark, is it?

Personally I decided in (very late) March '08 that I'd be stuck with whatever garbage we were going to churn out in 08/09, no doubt it'll be the same for me next season until I get into a position where I either can't afford to go or can't afford not to be somewhere else. My waning commitment to the on-pitch product was reflected in only going to Swansea, Cardiff and Forest away (after the "easy" pre-season games), and I can completely see why people would not want to go if they hadn't already stumped up and wanted to see a winning team or glamorous opponents, but still not stepping up when the existence of the club is at stake, still nothing? Then I'm going to question it.

I think people showing that actually they basically just couldn't be arsed would have sent a worrying message to investors who would see the brand loyalty and inelastic demand of football supporters as major selling points of the business. I'm not sure I'd blame the fans who went either.

There could well have been up to 20,000 Saints fans who only want to watch us play big Premier League teams there, only the club database could tell us that. A Northam/Chapel ST worked out at £16.50 a game, that was alright even to watch the anticipated "kids in relegation battle" scenario (we didn't really get that either in the end). Eastleigh FC was £10, 4 divisions below and with crowds of a few hundred, I'm not sure how much cheaper it's supposed to be. Not sure whether you meant specifically that I helped organise it, but I didn't have anything to do with it. Equally, obviously with me having attended and 200,000 others off the membership list not having done so, I must have found something important to care about they didn't.

Presumably then you also think the Save Our Saints campaigns in the Echo, Saints OS and any other outlets were "misguided", as none of them have done anything - even though all of them combined have probably helped the club's profile, and some of the interested parties in taking over the club attended some of the events ? Really though I think all this debate boils down to is if people are personally comfortable with their contribution to the existence of the club over the past days, weeks, months and years. Anyone who isn't should be glad someone else has (hopefully) bailed Saints out so they get another chance to support however they see fit.

No, not ironic at all. That's two of those today... It's all for the greater good. Oh damn, there's the irony. :mad: