Ted Bates Statue

Yeah, it's like Liverpool take our best players and then Leicester attempt to troll us in a different way, by taking our dross to see if they can do any better. Puel ❌ Vestergaard ❌ Bertrand ❌ Nope, nope and nope again. Says a lot that half of our recent defence (and Janny B) can't get anywhere near the matchday XI at other clubs. Just Jack Stephens doing the business for Bournemouth.

Always felt after Koeman left that we were about five years from a relegation battle, momentum sliding after Liebherr's takeover. The reality is that it can come from nowhere, a perfect storm of complacency and poor management. There are few teams in the world where the fans are satisfied with one's lot in the long-term. In the PL that would be Brentford - years on the cusp of promotion to the top flight coming to fruition and continuous improvement every season. Man City also - plucked from mid-table obscurity to dominate, but still unable to claim the Champions League trophy. And that's about it. Arsenal's PL drought may reach 20 seasons, Man Utd have been drifting for a decade. West Ham have had it good lately, making a better fist of Europe than we did, but it's never long before they find something to have a whinge over. Leicester, even under the stewardship of Rodgers until recently, look almost as dead and buried as us. And then there are dozens of teams similar to us that demonstrate that we have no divine right to competing with the top 20 sides in the land on a regular basis. Coventry, Sunderland and Derby to name just a few. There have been a number of mistakes by Saints this season and it is disappointing to see us go down, but I don't fear for the club's future like I did when we were owned by Gao. I could be wrong, Solak could be the equivalent of Saints go Wilde... Now, Everton could be in really deep trouble should they go down, and they've frittered away hundreds of millions and getting very little out of it in the last ten years or so. Our club may be in a rut, but if we do take an opportunity to re-build the team and our optimism, hopefully it won't be long before we get a team that's playing with confidence again, hopefully in the top division and competing for the cups, surprising the bigger sides, bringing some of our youngsters through - and maybe one or two from elsewhere! Starting with the manager, it only takes an appointment like Cooper at Forest, Carrick at Boro, Silva at Fulham to transform a team from being in the doldrums at the lower end of the table to being on the edge of promotion. Up the Saints.

Southampton match centre does my head in with these VAR calls - so often seems to give the wrong verdict when updating the score.

Guessing it would have been done for one of the mid-late 80s matches, shortly after Channon left them? In which case he probably had more of a connection with them (and Alan Ball) compared to the youthful side coming through at Saints. So at that snapshot in time, I can understand if he felt a bit of affinity with Pompey. Anyway his son used to write for Saintsforever, so make of that what you will - I highly doubt it was an act of rebellion against his dad!

Hard to take seriously someone who claimed that we were hoping to replace Hasenhuttl with Nathan Jones, I mean what kind of basket case club would do something like that?!

Yes, see John Boy Saint's comments on the first page. The individual decisions in themselves seem fine, but it's a question of what the ref chose to let go. I can only imagine Fulham felt similarly aggrieved to lose their heads recently.

Dodd got frozen out by Redknapp if I recall correctly and went on loan to Plymouth Argyle. Baird was in the midst of a bizarre wilderness spell between the FA Cup Final and his emergence as one of our best players in the Championship, and barely played a minute in 04/05. That aside, tombola sums it up perfectly. Defensively we were disastrous, and a prime reason why we could only manage six wins all season. When you can only manage six wins it's hard to justify that we were good enough to stay up, notwithstanding the goalscoring talent we had up front.

Good to see none of the Big 6 have betting sponsors as their main shirt sponsor. Therefore it would only affect fodder clubs who don't really matter, and Newcastle who don't need the money anyway. And it's years away from happening, so no excuses to not find deals elsewhere (from other sponsors, or on other parts of the kit). Another morality win for the Premier League 😇

You better believe it, pal

"Saints Go Wilde" on steroids

Match day 30 and back then we rounded off a 5-game unbeaten run winning 1-3 at Middlesbrough, to give us 27 points from 30 matches. So currently, we're four points behind our worst PL season. We would go on to only win once more that season for a total of six wins. Even if we do go down again, I would like to think that we can do better and at least surpass the 32 points total that we got that season.

Late response to this thread but in light of the recent Mitrovic incident, finally someone has uploaded footage of Prutton's 2005 sending-off to youtube. Judging by the title and further comments, the uploader isn't much of a fan of him. Not sure it was that much worse than Mitrovic but it certainly provides a precedent. Reading the match reports from the time, you would have thought he shoved the official to the ground like Di Canio. He wasn't exactly chasing the ref around so much as practising his French with the linesman as he left the pitch.

For the same reason we are told by the forum's pathological optimists that we should go "all out" and get one of the following names who have popped up on here this season: Thomas Frank (the original heir to RH...while he was still managing in a lower division) Poch (for old times' sake... despite him ditching us while we were still a top 10 side) Thomas Tuchel (similar to Poch, he wasn't interested 7 years ago) Brendan Rodgers (criticised us for lacking ambition as, yet again, a top 10 side)

I lol'd at the chap who looks a bit like Jonah Hill wearing the white shirt right in the middle of the third image. Must be taking in the sense of occasion, but looks utterly spaced out.

Can't be easy telling the world about how you almost broke the only football club you ever played for. I can accept him writing whatever he wanted for his book as far as I'm concerned, like that throw-in betting story which may have been the first step in tarnishing his reputation for some. Certainly seemed to have been told with a lot of artistic licence. The trouble with the crowd that he's now firmly embedded in is that they don't want to hear nuance and backtracking, because let's face it, conspiracies are much more fun to discuss. Same with a lot of so-called right-wing journalists who are often much more centrist than they let on, but balanced views don't pay for their lifestyle. Tucker Carlson on Fox News is the latest, "hates Trump passionately" as confirmed by private messages from the defamation case, although he gets paid very well to say the exact opposite on camera.

Still probably thinks Micky Fialka was legit. Legend on the pitch but I'll have to agree to disagree with him.

As much as I like to look at percentages, the thing with soothsayer websites like fivethirtyeight is they tell you which way the wind is blowing, and not a lot more. 2017-18 we were dead and buried, but over the space of two matches, suddenly we weren't (but the groundwork was prepared by appointing Mark Hughes some weeks earlier). We have improved since Selles and we are making slow but steady progress on catching the teams ahead of us. I think we actually have a good chance of catching a few teams napping, and could crawl out of the relegation zone in the next 3-5 games. I expect there will be some low points and we will slip back into the bottom 3 thereafter and end up with an eventual points total in the mid-30s. Whether that's enough to stay up is another matter. I do agree that it is important to win our six-pointers, although I expect us to be topsy-turvy in the way we have been picking up points. It at least will be interesting, whereas we were really going down like a very damp squib under NJ. I like to think of the analogy of two men being chased by a lion - the survivor only needs to outrun the other guy, not the lion. I remain hopeful we can outrun three other teams come the end of the season.

Happy to take the point, although it seems mental that such soft penalties can get awarded. The ref had a good view so there must have been 'sufficient' contact, but I would have been fuming had it been the other way round.

During the recent satirical comparisons between Hasenhuttl and Branfoot while the former was still in post, I delved into the results of the early 90s and saw that in 1991-1992 we ended the season winning 9 out of our last 13 matches, yet finished only ten points clear of the relegation zone, having been shit for most of the season. Perhaps due to the man in charge at the time, it doesn't warrant a mention in the same breath as other great escapes of that decade.

Unusual lapse in concentration from our former U21 keeper Harry Lewis.

My personal rule of thumb is I reckon that for any team if 50% of the transfers work out, then it's a decent transfer window. Definition of 'work out' is going to vary hugely according to individual interpretation but 'doing a job for us' would do for me. Extra points if it meant a sale for profit but it's not really the sole aim, is it. If it means we need to sign a Billy Sharp for 6 months to get promoted but he barely features in the league above, the ends justify the means. Same as Danny Fox to cover the 12 months before we decided Luke Shaw was ready. What it definitely doesn't mean is 'Moi is still here after 5 years and used by many different managers, so he has been good for us as we slide down the league'. As long as there are enough decent signings over a sustained time period, that is what gets teams through tough times and fallow periods. Our problem as others have pointed out many times already is that the recent substantial investment has followed an extended period of existing on a relative shoestring. The fact that we've relied so long on defenders who get nowhere near the matchday XI at our competitors (Vest, Bertrand, Bednarek; Stephens the only exception) supports this. As I said before, perceptions may vary but if we were to look back over the last 20 years, I reckon most of us would be unanimous on the successful windows where we beat the 50% rule comfortably. At a guess, maybe 3 times... when Liebherr took over and we signed Lambert et al, again when we got promoted to the PL and signed J-Rod and Clyne and then when Koeman joined and we signed Pelle, Tadic and co. We did sign plenty of forgettable players in that time, but the sheer number of good signings carried us through for years. Since then, however, it's been a bit of a slide with the occasional individual bright signings like KWP or Ings being seen as good business rather than transfer windows as a whole. Even Fergie made signings that didn't work out, but there was sufficient quality over the years that the Djemba-Djembas get forgotten about. And I only have to look at the transfer spend of Everton or Villa to know that however much they have splurged over the years, it's not really been working for them. A manager may be responsible for moulding a team out of individual players, but it is coherent recruitment away from the touchlines and press conferences that will really determine the fate of a football club and not very much else. Now it's easy to say this while we're bottom of the league, but I'm not sure we've been doing that recently.

Many people would describe Will Still as young, hungry and guaranteed to improve. High praise if you feel that applies to MLG He is a West Ham fan who used to play FM, as a kid. One to watch, definitely.

Continuing the 2004-2005 comparison, as reviewing against any other season is a bit depressing right now. Match day 26 featured an infamous 2-2 draw against Everton, versus our 0-0 against Man Utd. Match day 27 was a 0-0 against West Brom, in comparison with our 0-2 defeat tonight. That gives 20 points after round 27 in 2005, so we are still +2 points up over that season, at this point.

4-2-3-1 doesn't seem like an outrageous suggestion to me.

Agree with both of the above two previous posts. The concern for me is that if teams don't fall away, the required points total would end up being in the high 30s. I think we can achieve 35-ish, but so can a lot of sides whereas in recent years, you would expect a couple of teams to fail to reach 30 points. I'm not saying it's going to be us (it's the hope that kills you), but I reckon at least one team is going down with a higher amount of points than normal.