Ted Bates Statue

He's regularly linked to Arsenal - assuming you consider that a big club.

That actually looks rather good if the final kit looks like that. I've looked at Palace's sash kits with envy and they manage to pull it off successfully even with a sponsor on the front. Nice to see that we can do it too. Didn't think UA were capable of it.

So Peru away it is then, spoiled by a fake company logo. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt until I see it. Could be ok with black shorts.

We've been leaking money for most of the last ten years, with the occasional fire sale masking the lack of owner's cash injections that other PL clubs usually take for granted. Luckily I think we have enough cash in the bank for now, which might not necessarily be the case for other clubs across the board.

He didn't. He said 77 million Turks can settle in the UK.

If you consider the context, would you say a ~£50 replica shirt with a big advert for Gao's money laundering vehicle on the front is also tacky? As ever, if other people want to mug themselves off paying for the prestige of our glorious and historic football club's crest on random crap then I'm all for it. Someone on a budget needing hand sanitiser or loo roll probably isn't going to be relying on the Southampton FC online shop.

At the time I too agreed that £8M was a very good price for him and his long-term worth was reflective in that he went to West Ham rather than Man Utd and moved on quickly. Unfortunately Virgil got injured and we took a step backwards. With either of those two perhaps we might have won the League Cup. Time has shown we have still failed to replace him and although the pace is not the same in France I find myself wondering if he would come back as a coach. At our low moments I wonder maybe HCDAJFU as a player still. As others have said, did he try and engineer a better deal at potentially another club? Yes - that's why you hire Jorge Mendes. Was he forced out? Well, he didn't play a single minute of European competition, what do you think? The truth is usually found somewhere in the middle when there are two opposing versions of events. Anyway, water under the bridge and I'd be happy to see him return sooner or later.

I would agree that a lot of those projects were necessary, and based on my experience there, overdue. I was amazed to see on Google Maps that the school looks identical to how it did 20-30 years ago. Compare that to others, it seems like St Mary's were really playing catch-up. Personally speaking I felt like the school layout gave the wrong impression. The brown uniform for starters, as already mentioned. I always thought the blue 6th form uniform was brought in as a trial before rolling it out across the rest of the school, so I was a bit surprised to see it was in existence for at least the whole of the 80s. Yet they persevered with brown for decades. What I found worse though was the playground location helped make the whole place like a prison, especially with the window protection everywhere. On the other hand, from the meadow side it looked perfectly fine, but it's a bit pointless when you (and more importantly, prospective parents) hardly ever see the school from that side. Maybe if they could have put a 5 a side pitche or two down where the main pitches are, they could have then landscaped the front and made it look a lot more welcoming. Unfortunately they clearly never had the funds to even consider that. Until I looked back at the photo archives it never fully dawned on me how small the school was. When I was there it seemed to be accepted that most would go to sixth form elsewhere, but across the board I now see they really struggled to attract pupils, with a few exceptions such as the empty prospect of going grant-maintained and allowing girls to join. Maybe Coronavirus was a factor but I should imagine that Ofsted report turned off any remaining prospective parents. Even if it wasn't meant to take place, it's hard to ignore how damning it was. Anyway, that is sad news and it feels weird considering that until a few days ago I'd not really paid very much attention to the school in the last decade or so. As a boy who hated PE, I felt they played a blinder with their sports curriculum with Mr Richardson, Mr Shiner and Mr Keenan taking skiing at the dry slope in the winter term and kayaking (and raft walking...) on the Itchen in the summer term. Unfortunately that left me even worse at football than when I joined, but hey ho, I actually looked forward to those lessons for once. I can't say I liked all the teachers there but considering how small the school was, I think they did a decent job on the whole and for the most part, punched above their weight - similar to what I look for from the football team nearby, funnily enough.

This is probably perverse thinking, but trying to see the positive aspects for Saints. Looking at how other teams have been outstripping us in commercial income terms, assuming we do actually play at neutral venues in the short term, we are probably less badly affected than other teams might be. Before this, quite a few teams in our league were dwarfing us in normal matchday revenue (e.g. West Ham, Spurs, maybe Brighton from memory) and that is no longer available to anyone in the short term. And the teams with lower revenue than us are looking at the relegation trap door. As for television money, we've featured relatively little due to being bang-average on the pitch. Last year we received the equal lowest facility TV payment on par with Huddersfield, don't know if that's changed much this year but wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't. Granted we were always highly unlikely under the current ownership to spend much at all this summer this summer, so in these circumstances I would imagine our focus would be particularly on offloading some of our surplus players. I would be personally surprised if we were to recruit anyone at all - maybe a loan or two to fill the gaps. Putting those factors aside, at least we're still in the Premier League - from the top of the Championship down, there can't be a single team that will be happy with its lot in any of the divisions below. If some of them were worried about following Bury, a lot more of them will be now.

Interesting how players at relegation-threatened clubs seem to have a much greater risk of contracting coronavirus.

The notion that the players feel less comfortable at home has come up a few times from different sources (e.g. the topic of walk-on music) although I'm inclined to agree with the points that Noodles makes. I could see Nathan Redmond being less relaxed about playing at home as he had a lot of pressure on him when he joined the club. Possibly the St Mary's crowd on a whole is being compared to our away contingent, which is much better, but that's no different to other clubs. As far as I'm aware there only needs to be a majority of 14 required for a decision to proceed with games at neutral venues so the bottom six can moan all they want but presumably all the other clubs have an interest in finishing the season, whether it be for prize money or European qualification. Therefore we can expect the Premier League to finish.

And how long do clinical trials usually carry on for...? Usually several years, as Trout-Tickler said.

During lockdown I've had enough time on my hands to look up some of the schools where I mis-spent my youth. I was only at St Mary's for a couple of years before moving elsewhere but still I'm surprised how the Brother Jack case seemed to have completely escaped my attention. I would be interested to know what the final outcome was, as apart from pre-trial news, there are zero indications online of what happened. I still have a clock that he helped me assemble - the only DT project that I managed to finish. Some of you might find the photo archive accessible via this link brings back some (hopefully better) memories: https://www.stmarysindependentschool.co.uk/old-simmarians/ Looking through the photos, what struck me is how many of the teachers would have stayed on basically for their entire careers. Some of them even had hair once upon a time.

When leagues around Europe are binning off their top division, how deluded do you have to be to think that England's third and fourth tiers are going to bother to finish their seasons?

Forecast and Pulis signed in our 2008-2009 relegation season. It was fairly clear they were useless from the outset and it was at the time suggested that their presence was partly due to other factors. We were looking for a new manager and it was suggested that the Pulis deal involved his father joining, although not quite sure how much logic there was to that as Stoke had just won promotion. At least Paul Wotton turned out to be relatively useful, not to mention Schneiderlin who was widely acknowledged to be too good for us at the time - supposedly we had some sort of secret loan arrangement with Arsenal which also obviously turned out to be false.

Couldn't verify this anywhere but heard on the radio recently that Southampton have the current record for most Cup upsets against higher-ranked teams (equal with Millwall)

Normal behaviour by the standards of our ticket office.

I take it they weren't singing, "Oh ho ho Jack Stephens, you know... better than Cannavaro" then?

I can't predict the future bit no ****ing way is £40 worth paying for a game of this calibre.

I beg to differ, they are far more listenable than most commentary teams who are usually too busy getting excited over the opposition to pay Saints any attention. Also they are head and shoulders above any local radio commentary I have had the misfortune to hear which is usually amateurish at best, and nails-on-chalkboard irritating at worst - case in point being Solent commentary for all the other clubs' coverage.

That can't be right. Our support in the lower leagues would never have stooped to such depths.

Having to collect mine at the ground as it didn't arrive. Bought it last Wednesday when they went on general sale.

Just need Hasenhuttl to be 'too demanding' to receive a new contract. Great to see us clearing our 'log jam' of defenders Bring on Total Football ™

Anyone looking for a ticket for tonight? Not sure I'll be able to go... Pick up from Teddington if anyone's interested.

It was discussed on Radio Solent as well. Merrington's opinion was that Abrahams is probably the preferred like-for-like Kane replacement because Ings is better as part of a front two.