Ted Bates Statue

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.

I'm not fussed about the opinion of a club that had an open top bus parade of the last time they held us to a draw... David Norris Day 🤣

Hope you won't be too disappointed at this @Noodles34. Do the likes of Sammy Saint, Mary Saint and Mahamed Mahamed pay for their tickets? I suspect not, and that's crucial revenue the club could be missing out on. Cortese wouldn't have stood for this nonsense.

No but I've got the next best thing. Looking forward to see all of you in the 1885 squad decked out in the new uniform. Having said that, not sure why RM is pictured in some degree of pain from getting pelted by several footballs, hope it isn't a bad omen.

I managed to buy a ticket around midday, having checked the website on the off-chance some spares would pop up. I'm guessing there might be a few here and there for people who bought in haste before they realised they couldn't make it and asked for a refund or something, so those currently without might benefit from doing similar over the coming days. I managed to get mine near back of Chapel block 15, so assuming some of the usual lot make it, there should at least be some decent noise in that corner win or lose, for the last time before most of them presumably migrate to stand in the Northam.

To paraphrase Kevin Costner, if you talk about building it, MLG will come. Same time next year then...

I'd rather have a solid back if all they can manage is stripes on the lower back. Wonder when the last time we had stripes on the back? Guessing Koeman era, maybe.

Obviously I didn't press F5 in the correct manner. Now where are those stadium expansion plans? We definitely have the catchment area to handle it.

Did anyone manage to buy tickets for the home leg today on general sale? I was on the website from 9:30 and absolutely nothing came up for me, but apparently they only sold out over an hour later.