Ted Bates Statue

We had Sam McQueen as a perfectly good understudy, but you know how that ended up. I believe Matthew Targett was sold to fund the transfer of one of our strikers - Che Adams possibly. I'd be happy to have him back. It does look like the purse strings are tighter now. Not sure if how much is down to FFP or Sport Republic going in the other direction, having blown the bank to prop up Nathan Jones.

I'm so sorry to hear this news. I am an occasional reader of the UI and would read Elijah's posts with interest. I was going to sign up to express my condolences. I had no idea he was so young. It is perhaps a small consolation that as his last memory of seeing Saints in action he was able to experience the elation that we all felt at the last home match and at Wembley. My best wishes to you and your family. PS - I was interested to see that you were name-checked as the creator of 'On The March' and that Branfoot cover. Tried searching for it earlier without luck. If you have a google drive account maybe worth scanning and uploading past issues as an online record of the news and views of the past... just a thought.

I've used Pepipoo forums in the past for legal traffic and parking issues, maybe try posting on there. Funny how some people enjoy chatting shit about football on forums, whereas others prefer to help people not get screwed over by private companies and overbearing local authorities.

I'm not a fan at all but going by our 2nd, 3rd and other custom shirts in recent years, wacky designs are very much in fashion and they will be around for a while yet. Reminds me a bit of the crazy goalkeeper kits of the 90s that must have been designed to make attacking players cross-eyed as they bore down on the opposition's goal.

Can we at least get the super league clubs to stay out of the domestic cups? They are always so worried about fixture congestion so they could just sit them out to piss around with more Champions League fixtures instead. League Cup is already downgraded to give a Europa Conference place and a poor league season can't be saved by winning the FA Cup, as Ten Hag and Wenger have shown in recent years. After the excitement of winning 'lesser' trophies like the JPT, playoff final and coming so close to winning the EFL trophy, I would be well up for something similar to the Full Members Cup: all the fun of a knockout tournament without sovereign wealth funds or oligarchs pissing in everyone's bonfire.

His angle was that he was very happy at Saints, but in the unlikely scenario that Liverpool would came calling, he would be off. I think the difference is what riled people up over Lallana, who was naively suggesting he could stay for his entire career. And I suspect the club was quite happy to profit from both. I'm looking forward to this blowing over, only for it to resume with a vengeance when he does his big 'sorry not sorry' interview with Adam Blackmore where it was entirely Les Reed's fault. I'll settle for him helping us stay up, not like we have any control over the decision anyway.

I have been thinking about recording matches off Radio Solent (or at least the online broadcast) for a while, to listen to them as podcasts when there's nothing better on the radio. Wish I managed to do it for the playoff matches. Sky broadcast doesn't quite capture the excitement for me when watching the footage back. Take for example the footage of AA's goal at Wembley when they're blathering on about the Gray family for most of the minute's build-up as we moved the ball up the pitch. I trust Blackmore and Tessem didn't make the same mistake. I might try and give it a go next season, although I highly doubt they'll be anywhere as exciting as some of the matches this season.

not sure it can be called 'popularising' when it's only one member carpet-bombing the forum with the phrase

One of the top results when searching this is a Bristol City forum thread with the first comment, "About damn time". It's from 2013. I thought with the EPPP and catchment areas becoming obsolete, this wouldn't become an issue. Obviously not the case. Not that it really matters when Chelsea can hoover up whatever academy talent we have, wherever we are.

Perish the thought that Sir Les Reed might just have twisted the situation to his own benefit, using his friendly mouthpiece Jeremy Wotsit (?) in the Telegraph. Lallana handled his departure so naively but there are two sides to each story and I suspect the truth might be somewhere in the middle. Still, it provided Saints with a useful scapegoat to distract the fans from the fire sale.

Not at the time. A bit of google has enlightened me. What a character - although I already held that view as of yesterday. I particularly liked this internet thread about him which starts off branding him a Walter Mitty type, and then ends up with the thread getting locked after eventually reaching a consensus that aside from some literary embellishment, he really was legit SAS and he really did fend off some pirates by throwing a fridge at them. I need to know more about this chap, is that his spare leg and was his mate who delegates all the celebrating to his glove puppet there as well?

We don't have enough full match replays online. I know the club have uploaded a very select few like 4-0 v Coventry, 2-1 v Inter Milan but it's barely anything. Sunderland seem to manage to put every single one of their matches on youtube, so it's a shame there isn't more of Saints available. I definitely need to watch this and home v West Brom again. I'd also quite like to re-listen to the Solent commentary afterwards.

To all of you above - fantastic photography. Excuse me while I lower the tone with my digital dross. I did wonder what the owner of this suitcase was planning to do with it once he got to Wembley, but he kept everyone refreshed (including a few Leeds supporters) on the Bakerloo Line carriage I was in with Carling and Frazzles so I'm guessing that the plan was to empty it there and then. Cheers to Big Phil. Picture at Full Time:

Looking for train advice - I usually drive but looking at taking train up from Basingstoke to Paddington around 11. Am I being vastly over-optimistic? Surely wouldn't be rammed as most would be heading into Waterloo.

No thanks

I was so concerned about this happening to me that while queuing on the Monday morning, I changed all three of my Saints account listed addresses to my desired postal address. That's including the incorrect billing address - mind you, it was wrong before anyway, but what's the bloody point of asking for it if nobody pays any attention to whether it's correct or not!? Thankfully they got to the right place as of today.

I wouldn't consider myself to be a fan of Russell Martin's methods, but don't mistake a noisy minority for the majority. The phrase "lunatic fringe" springs to mind.

Hat-trick by Ademola Lookman for Atalanta, who was a Saints transfer target while Hasenhuttl was manager.

You were certainly on the right lines. Hope you get the tickets you're looking for.

Finally got my tickets but this was driving me nuts. Not even a member, but had the same issue selecting friends and family with the option greyed out. To get past this I had to attempt to pay for both tickets in my own name, then it told me no (unsurprisingly) and after that message I was able to make the desired selection. Finally! I took the day off for this

What a piss-take. Sat through 1hr+ in the queue. I got in at 12:20, plenty of time to wait until half past twelve as a non-member, but no "buy tickets" button ever materialised. 20 minutes elapsed, now I'm at the back of the queue again with two and a half hours to go. FML. You have my sympathy, the only way I could be angrier about this is if I spent a bunch of money on useless memberships.

I've got the jitters about tickets running out now but lacking confidence in the website. I would buy a membership but someone on the Ugly Inside bought his yesterday and it didn't get processed despite purchase history. What's the point of buying one if you meet the criteria and it doesn't give you the desired priority?! Hoping there are still at least Cat 4 and 5 tickets by lunchtime as those are what I feel I can afford after all the admin fees have been liberally applied over everything.

Damn millennials and their over-exuberance.

Funny how all these cringy millenial fancy-dress types usually seem to be quite a bit older than the demographic Saintsweb expects them to belong to. Must be the stress of glory-supporting a team like Southampton rather than Basingstoke Town, Salisbury or whoever the fuck they're supposed to support instead, bearing in mind the invisible and unspoken catchment area boundaries. Speaking of Adam and Jo, the comment that springs to mind from them is "If you have a ticket and you're not prepared to scream your head off for 90 minutes, give your ticket to someone else." I only read about what it was like against for example Norwich in 2005 so would be nice to see the stadium rocking. What are we supposed to do, treat it like the snooker? If we lose, at least we can't blame ourselves. I can't be arsed to turn up early though, hope all those meeting the bus don't run out of puff early after half time if we haven't yet scored.

This is a distinct possibility, no matter what league we're in. Might as well aim for misery on the moon.