franniesTache

Yup definitely me mush, i'm going to get top boy to organise the dance routines and have our mayor get the glue and macaroni banners made up, we can also make sure every song mentions the skates and we do organised hand waving to show people through the medium of mime what libraries look like. Also we're really hoping we can get as many people from Salisbury, Basingrad and other places that aren't Southampton involved in large numbers, as they won't care about making our city look tinpot as they're not from it. It'll be top notch BANTZ and not utterly fucking cringeworthy and embarrassing shit that makes you want to boot the people doing it in the face repeatedly.

nope bunch of dins starting an ultras group https://saintsarchive.com/the-1885/ Genuinely going to be embarrassing as fuck but i guess it was always bound to happen. That combined with Northam wall is going to add to me binning it off to be honest.

It's going to be laughably shit, I can't imagine how bad our support will be doing "ultras", genuinely can't wait to see what god awful shit they come up with to embarrass us so I can laugh at them. Hopefully most of our normal fans will reject this shit completely and give it the full abuse it deserves.

I think the really important questions are, will it look good over a grey hoodie? Is it easy to clean when i spill my spoons breakfast down the front of it?

Doesn't help that there's train strikes that day to be fair which means you're either looking at bus replacement for large parts of the journey (and paying the extortionate trains prices anyway) or driving up.

Be careful organising meets at the football on the internet mush, the old bill will have you up on conspiracy charges and you'll be facing a 5year stretch

Yeah he was definitely a cult hero by the end of his career, but that was mainly based on the fact that he clearly fucking loved the clubs and city, was a Sotonian lad and got away with ABH on the pitch most games, to add to @Miltonaggro and @Noodles34 ones him seeing if he could launch Paulo Futre into orbit at Upton Park, or going straight through the back of Steve Bruce at the Dell stand out. Also his goal was probably one of most "connected" fans/players goals i can think of in my long time going, up there with Le Tiss closing out the Dell, and Marian scoring against the skates at St Mary's. The split second of absolutely silence when it went in, followed by someone at the back of block five shouting "it's fucking franny" and all hell breaking lose will long be one of my favourite Saints moments ever. But despite all that i can also remember his name being booed when he was in line ups and general groans around the Dell when he did something shit (and outright abuse when he gave away another goal).

he was great at booting people off the pitch, and actually a half decent man marker. Basically as long as he was nowhere the ball he was a good player, but he'd cost us a goal or two a game and probably score his share of own goals along the way (his diving header own goal "for" Bolton sits in my mind). Franny was also great as that sort of player you wanted on the pitch to wind someone up so they got sent off or taken off, remember him doing a great job of just niggling Cantona all game until he lost it completely.

Yup it's all really a non story but the fact he claimed to be George Weah's cousin made it more than it was. And then a generation who i'd hazard never saw him play (i mean most saints fans didn't as there was only about 15k there that day) have turned it into a far bigger thing than it ever should've been due to social media. And now you see him regularly voted one of the worst players ever to play in the premier league by fans and journalists who have absolutely never seen the time he was on the pitch and judged it on a story about a phone call alone Wouldn't say he was alright, but honestly not the worst, don't forget we had players like Frankie Bennett back then who'd come from being a waiter in a bournemouth hotel (i think) and Tommy Widdrington, who's only moment of note was accidentally scoring off his arse. Like i said before i honestly don't think i'd count him in my top five worst Saints players, maybe not even in my top ten. Trying to think who the "top" worst five would be and i'd probably have to go with 1. Lee Todd 2. Sergey Gotsmanov 3. Nigel Quashie 4. Callum Davenport 5. Olly Lancashire/Franny Benali (yeah i love him now but anyone that says they loved him as a player is lying)

As someone who as there that day I've long thought the Ali Dia thing was a massive storm in a tea cup, if you take out the phone call then it's basically just a trialist who played for us because we had injuries who wasn't that great and happened to be brought on for Le Tiss (and how different the story would've been if he'd scored, which he came very close to doing). In my opinion he doesn't even come close to the worst players i've seen play for us, Lee Todd wins that one by a country mile, in fact as far as i can tell most people who talk about him being our worst ever player weren't at the game, didn't see him play and base the entire thing on the story rather than reality.

I want to get promoted because i don't want people i know to lose their jobs. I hate the premier league with a passion, it's rigged to money, full of plastic cunts from nowhere near the cities "their" clubs are from, annoying overseas "fans", a media that talk shit and only care about the rich clubs. The away games are dull and played out at corporate soulless bowls, and once you're up you're pretty much just killing time before you go down again. The only positives are if you do well you get a european trip, and you have a better shot at the cups (though probably won't win them because the money clubs have them sewn up too). And then add to it all the fact that if you do have the nerve to do well you're gutted by the vultures around you. The positives of staying down is the league is genuinely competitive, there's nearly always a new ground to do, and we potentially have a derby against the skate cunts to look forward to. Anyway this is all by the by because i think we'll probably lose in the first game of the play offs and won't go up.

Great opportunity to expand the Saints Gulag out the back

Can you imagine how shit our version of "ultras" would be? A bunch of nippers, most of who aren't even from southampton, and who's idea of terrace culture was taken from a tik tok with badly painted signs jumping up and down in replica kits singing songs they'd nicked from Rangers or Man City that had been adapted to mention the skates 🤣 As much as i can't stand the idea the idea of ultras i'd almost like to see it to give me something to laugh at

Wiltshire is full of Druids so surely they'd be Druid Cunts As for the game it's hard to predict the outcome i think, we probably should've lost to Preston at theirs and their form has been really good the last few games, we have also dropped off a bit and are at the stage where people can figure us out (play wingers and press the backline) which has meant we've reverted to the same style that meant we were losing a lot at the start of the season. Saying that though we've got Downes back who's probably the most important player for the team, Brooks looks good, and hopefully KWP will be fit. If i had to stick my neck out i'd say I think we'll probably get a draw in this but honestly wouldn't be surprised if we lost it too (now watch us go out and smash Preston completely out of a nowhere)

Funnily enough Saturday's game showed me why i don't think moving the away fans will help the atmosphere. The set up of St Andrews was similar to what's being discussed for us, with the main home end with safe standing opposite to the away fans. You could see the fans clapping (and presumably singing) in the Tiverton end directly opposite us but you couldn't really hear them as the sound didn't travel, whereas the brummies to our left and right made a proper racket when they got going. Unless we have similar either side of the away fans at st mary's the atmosphere will actually be worse than it is now.

I've been going since the early/mid 80's and can remember it being sung by teams other than us pretty much the entire time i've been going. It's obviously more associated with us than others but it's never really been "our song". Then again loads of clubs used to sing you'll never walk alone too, but don't anymore. Funnily enough it actually reminds me of the old version of OWTS that was done on the milton road terrace in the late 80s, the one where you'd hold the note of each word until your lungs nearly burst before speeding up. Haven't heard that in years sadly but used to love that as a nipper.

I'm completely the opposite to that, that's why i'd prefer the itchen north to be over 25, so all the little try hards can bugger off back to the Northam and do their shit bantz there instead. As for having an end that generates real noise it's never really been like that for saints, even when we had the Milton the noise was different to the west terrace or under the east. Maybe the bikeshed would be the one example of a noisy end we had but that was pretty short lived in all honesty. What will happen with "The Red Wall" is that it'll be 90mins of dogshit anti pompey songs and OWTS that will make me want to stab myself in the ears with blunt objects. Much like our away followings are at the moment to be honest. Maybe if they made the back rows of the chapel safe standing then i'd be in favour of the northam as a home end, because i'd be far enough away from the "bantz" to not care, but at the moment the away fans provide a nice buffer to the cringe

Only increase come from gaining seats beck from segregation, though presuambly you''ll still need that elsewhere, the whole thing is a nonsense though, it's really only "fixing" a problem that doesn't need fixing. They should just keep the layout the same, make it safe standing from the itchen north to the kingsland north, keep one block of the walk up pay on the day only, make the itchen north over 25's only. The idea that making the northam and "end" will help atmosphere is weird too, for a start we've had amazing atmospheres in the past with the ground as it is, plus I don't actually believe we have the extra 6k noisy fans we'd need for it to be filled, so it'll just end up with the same amount of people making noise anyway. It's all pie in the sky b*llocks based on some fantasy of what creates an atmosphere that hasn't existed for a generation in the game, and arguably has never existed for Saints as a culture anyway as we've always had small groups split to different parts of the ground (archers, west stand terrace, under the east, milton, northam, itchen north etc.)

Can't believe that lad didn't take you up on using the shortcut through st mary's to be fair, you were just trying to be helpful 😉

The one who's idea it is

honestly it's such an incredibly shit idea, shame the ego of one man is going to make the ground worse for everyone

Coca Cola competition was where the Bradley Wright-Phillips money came from, that team was fucking awful in terms of actually giving a shit though. Remember losing to Watford away in the cup 4-0 where the only player that looked even remotely interested was Surman.

Still think the rain at that Derby play off probably prevented some serious crowd trouble, there were some seriously angry saints fans that night and some very game Derby fans. Had it not been sheet rain i'm not convinced that combination would've ended well

Everyone know what the score of this will be already. It'll be Southampton 0 Hull 4, of course. Hopefully i'll make it for happy hour and still see the flag day, though i might be anxious.

That's exactly the reason why I want Leicester to beat Leeds. I still feel like we have a loss or two in us before the end of the season and having Leeds drop points is far more important than some batshit idea of us catching a team who are 90% promoted already.