franniesTache

No no no, that's not how you play football! You don't win the possession battle by getting it forward quickly or passing through the channels. Jesus it sounds like you need to go to one of Martin's Re-Education Camps so you can learn why you're wrong, and why the right answer is to pass backwards and sideways giving the opposition the most possible time to reset their defence.

Must win game and we have to be attacking and threatening, so I assume that means Martin will drop all of our strikers to the bench for it. I think we will start well, lots of passes around the midfield and defence but nothing really threatening leicester, and somewhere around the 30th minute we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. The players heads will drop. The half time whistle will go with Saints 1-0 down Due to the queues at the bars at half time we will still be drinking our pints when the game restarts, we will not have made it up to our seats when Leicester's second goes in. Saints will then continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. Leicester will score their 3rd about midway through the second half after Martin makes four bizarre changes that completely changes the shape of the team. For some utterly bizarre reason, like prisoners overcome with Stockholm syndrome, those remaining fans will clap the players off in an almost masochistic display of celebrating failure. The board will fail to sack Martin, people on here and on social media will talk about how much they "like him" despite him having the worst start of any Saints manager in living memory, and claim they believe he will turn it around and is learning, despite absolutely no proof of that happening. WE MARCH DOWN!

Cracking ground, one of the noisiest in the league and proper old school support instead of noddy shit. Saying that the away end is proper shit, the city is a dump, there's nowhere decent to drink and the subways are sketchy as fuck.

having been in the Northam Wall this season that lounge actually sounds pretty attractive to me, at the very least you'd be sure of the fact you'd not be surrounded by people in replica shirts singing songs about pompey at a hundred miles an hour.

Original sale to Gao - on paper - was actually a really good deal. Gao had a lot of money to invest, both in the club and the city of Southampton, and early doors put a lot of money into expanding business interests and setting up football related businesses in China that would've tied revenue back to both the club and the university. Had the long term plan worked it would've pumped a huge amount of money into the club and local area, but the leaders of China at the time effectively pulled the plug on money leaving China and going into foreign sports, and football in particular. Kat herself plugged the gap that was left with her own money on more than one occasion, and a huge amount of the reason for that gap needing funding was the financial problems we'd been left in due to mismanagement and overspending before. Of course none of these facts fit the narrative a lot of our fans have about the mad midget being a genius who was good for the club, and the Kat and Gao were the devil incarnate ruining her dads legacy. It actually annoys me way more than it should when people attack Kat, her entire philosophy was about protecting what her dad loved, all her decisions were made with the best interest of the club and city at heart, and her nipper is a proper Saints fan. She should be held in the same regard as her father, but instead dinlows idolise someone who's ego was more important than the long term future of our club.

The fact people credit the mad midget with business acumen is beyond me, it shows how little most know about what goes on behind the scenes at the club. I know people like @Turkish know the real story about that time period but lets just say the dismantling of the squad and a lot of the long term problems we still see now came from him running the club well beyond our means or ability (and him using it as his own personal fiefdom is well documented). I always find it ironic too that the same people who talk up the mad one are the same that slander Kat who arguably did as vital a job in saving the future of our club as her dad (she just didn't do it in public or ask for any limelight)

Hold on that can't be true, we've been told for years we need to expand the stadium and that our "catchment area" takes in the enterity of Aampshire plus most of the English Channel, when you factor in the dynamic pricing model for tickets and the long planned ground breaking aquarium stand (so our Agnatha, Chondrichthyes, and Osteichthyes friends can watch the game) we will be without a doubt the BIGGEST club in world football, and Cortese will give up his price job at AC milan; Inter Milan; Juventus to lead us to a new era of domination, the likes of which this sport has never before seen.

No place for Sammy Saint in that line up? Disgraceful if true

My prediction (there may be a pattern forming in these). My group will badly misjudge the amount of time it takes to make it from the pub to the ground and arrive 5-10mins late during that time saints will have looked pretty good but created no real chances. Somewhere around the 11th or 12th minute we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. Around the 15th minute we'll give away a stupid free kick as one of our players tries to make up for a wayward pass in the direction of our goal and Arsenal will score their second from the free kick. The players heads will drop. Shortly after, around the 18th or 20th minute mark Arsenal will score their third. We will leave for the pub at about the 25minute mark. We will reach the pub about the same time the half time whistle goes. Saints will be 3-0 down. Saints will then come out after the second half and continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. This won't look terrible for the first 10mins of the second half and some hope will creep in. Arsenal will score their 4th about midway through the second half after Martin makes four bizarre changes that completely changes the shape of the team. We will continue to plod on, creating little to no chances until they get their 5th in stoppage time. For some utterly bizarre reason, like prisoners overcome with Stockholm syndrome, those remaining fans will clap the players off in an almost masochistic display of celebrating failure. Martin will come out after the game, say that he's hurt but we played some good stuff, he will go on to blame the players, himself, the tea lady, the fella from the echo who looks like his about to carry out a bombing raid on germany, Sammy Saint and Buddha himself. Everyone will expect him to be sacked as he's clearly not good enough, Rasmus instead will give him a spot on his next Ted Tour to talk about how Stats are more important than results in modern sport. Inspired by the Ted Talk and convinced Martin is some unique genius the social media "influencers" will double down on the fact that they "like" Martin by staging a sit in vigil in the Northam Fanzone. Burning candles and incense and chanting Martin's name to the Buddhist "OHM". Martin will turn up with a vat of poisoned Kool Aid and as Saint Rob and his ilk draw their final desperate, wheezing, breathes, finally realising that they believed a marketing lie and it's too late now. And as their eyes slowly close forever, the last thing they'll see is Martin's pre-prepared powerpoint on why his tactics are right and it's the rest of football that's wrong. We will continue to March Down

I've started calling it JFK football. Back, and to the left.

Can anyone explain why so many people say they like Martin? Seriously all i see is people saying "i like Martin but..." followed by a list of his failings. The bloke struggled to get us promoted, and arguably only did so because he changed his style of play which was the thing that held us back. He has then started the season with a nigh on suicidal system that has seen us ship goals and create nothing, then blamed the players/himself and ignored what needs to be fixed (which is obvious to everyone). He's also shown complete arrogance in refusing to adapt, and changes his team every week so there's no consistency. So what the hell is it people like? Because at this point in time i'm starting to thing the only thing it can be is "the idea of his football", as there's pretty much nothing else there to enjoy than some conceptual philosophy.

It was obvious before the start of the season he wasn't good enough, we should've sacked him the day after the play off final. Instead we offered him a new contract. The bloke is so far out of his depth it's a joke, and his style is suicidal. What we need is a manager with a bit of bollocks and nastiness to him, someone who knows how to shithouse a win and isn't just there to placate a bunch of nerds by winning the stats "battle" or trying to play football like Barcelona when we have the ability of Bromley.

Also Adkins to relative unknown Pochettino too. No idea why it's happened but since Ralph a section of our support seem to have developed a cult like view of managers where you can't possibly criticise them our call for change, it sometimes feels like some people support the manager more than the club itself.

the redundancies at the club that see loads of normal sotonians lose their jobs?

Our next few games are Bournemouth (a) - think they'll beat us comfortably Arsenal (a) - yeah we lose that Leicester (h) - a decent chance at a win but probably a draw City (a) - um.... Everton (h) - the one i think we're most likely to get something from of all of them Wolves (a) - on a bad run at the moment but their starting 11 is still better than ours, maybe at best a draw. That puts us mid nov' with most likely 3 points, and best case 5pts. Also I don't think i'd be shocked if we still only had a point at the end of that run of games. If i'm honest i'd probably say Martin should have until Leicester game, after that it's the international break and if we're still on 1pt after it i don't see any way we can't sack him Though the fact that I can't see us getting much out of that run shows why Martin isn't the man for the job. Realistically we should expect to beat Everton and Leicester, have a good go at Wolves and fancy getting something out Bournemouth. But i wonder how many here would believe that now? And if you don't then how can you think Martin is the right man for the job?

I hadn't realised that in the last two games bournemouth have played a Russell Martin side the scorelines have been 4-0 and 5-0 in their favour. One of my cherries mates pointed this out, and also pointed out a third of those goals had come from mistakes his sides had made passing around at the back. So my prediction is... We will pass it around a lot at the back, look pretty good for the first 30mins but create no real chances. Somewhere around the 31minute mark we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. We will then come out after the second half and continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. Some time mid second half we will concede goals 2 and 3. The full time whistle go and we will have had 70% possession and zero shots on goal. Martin will come out after the game and say how well we played, how he's learned a lot, and how we were the best side for 30mins which counts for a lot and how brave the players have been.

Indeed, genuinely makes me want to stand in silence when they keep singing about those lot all the time. I hate them as much as anyone and even refused to visit my brothers house when he lived in a PO postcode but i'll save my hatred for when they can hear it.

Counted 7 songs about the skates in the first 14minutes of the game on saturday, which isn't exactly encouraging me to stay. Does anyone know why the hell we're so fucking obsessed with them these days. There's always been the odd one or two but it's in every single song now

One of my favourite Saints games that, I was stood at the back of block five that day. Remember the tannoy telling everyone in the Archers to sit, and from then on it basically became a standing stand as everyone ignored the tannoy. The one thing that was different about the Archers to the new Northam is that you had the away fans next to it in the east stand, and they were also "penned in" by the under the east lot on the other side. So effectively you had something identical to what we just lost, where the Northam played the role of the Archers, and the Itchen North played the role of under the east. What we've got now is actually more similar to when the away fans had the archers and the "main" home end was the milton the opposite side of the ground. Something which our fans moaned about as it damaged the atmosophere. A small group of very vocal people wanted it yeah, but a lot of people also didn't. Unfortunately the club didn't listen to the people who didn't and forced it on us anyway. I really think the club have fucked up here, they should have done "the wall" but also had some safe standing at the back of the chapel too so there was a choice.

Two strikers? No, no, no, no, no. If you did that the passes might go forward, and the players might actually shoot. What you need to do is drop Archer completely so we can have more players in the midfield to pass the ball around to. A perfect formation in football is 5-5, with none of this stupid shooting stuff. We might even be able to get to the mythical 90% possession if we do that, and as we all know THE RIGHT (tm) way to play football is to pass it around the midfield as much as possible. I know that to be true because Saint Rob our leader told me.

We will pass it around a lot at the back, look pretty good for the first 30mins but create no real chances. Somewhere around the 31minute mark we will give the ball to one of their strikers who will score. We will then come out after the second half and continue to make 3million passes across the midfield and defence that go absolutely nowhere, and our strikers will be permanently bound to the wings and create nothing. Some time mid second half we will concede goals 2 and 3. It's at this point i'll leave for the pub. The full time whistle will sometime around the point we're reaching the pub, we will have had 70% possession and zero shots on goal. Martin will come out after the game and say how well we played, how he's learned a lot, and how we were the best side for 30mins which counts for a lot.

To be honest the club should've been brutal and got rid of him in the close season and got in someone who would've given us a fighting chance. His style of football has absolutely no chance with the squad we have, and all we're really doing is acting as an advert for Martin to take a job somewhere else. But instead of doing that SR gave him a new contract, and have basically repeated exactly the same mistake they made with Ralph where it was clear we should've got rid of him sooner. I also think this squad doesn't necessarily have to get relegated, it's got a fighting chance if we change our style based on who we're playing (and get a bit nastier). Even in terms of goals that's arguably of Martin's own making, if you're strikers are pushed out wide you're not going to score goals, and our midfielders don't push on enough to make up for their position. That's tactics and on the manager. As for citing the "unbeaten run", we did it in the championship against worse teams and were effectively flat track bullies. It also made no measurable impact on our league position. Anyway this is all moot as i don't see SR getting rid of him until it's far too late (if at all)

You say that but that was definitely sung, as was live round the corner, in between songs about pompey. And it's exactly crap like that that means i'm not going to be able to stick it out in the "wall"

I'd be interested to know where you sit/sat in St Mary's because i'd say it was fairly equally split for those that wanted the away fans moved vs those that didn't. Certainly no one around me, and no one i knew, wanted the away fans moved. I personally still think the club's big mistake wasn't creating the single home end, but instead it was taking away the choice of others standing elsewhere. Had they done the big "end" but also had say the back five rows of the Chapel standing too it would've improved massively, but instead they lumped everyone into one place. Obviously though i'm not naive enough to think the purpose was about atmosphere, I think the bigger reason (which the club won't publicly say) is that it was about moving what they saw were "problem areas" like the Itchen North so they could open up more blocks and bring in more revenue. Saying that we are where we are now, and if we're going to have an improvement then people need to stop singing about the Skates all the time and actually "support" the saints instead. Because one thing i noticed was that there was very little actual support of the team (outside of OWTS)

It's just so fucking dull, feels like every song is either about them or mentions them. Makes us look small time and obsessed. Because the club haven't put in proper rail seats and instead just hooked in some scaff they got on the cheap from Trants you lose space infront of you, that means that it feels really claustrophobic, and i'm not entirely sure how safe it's gong to be if we score a big goal. Can see a lot of people going over the barriers as they're at a really weird height. Also, and i'm not sure why because it's still one person one seat, it feels like you're all ontop of each other, it's a completely different experience to somewhere like the new spurs stadium where the seats going back into the "rail" giving everyone more room