franniesTache

Which would suggest the actual sale numbers are lower than expected, or they'd have held off on people buying extras until after it had

I see that they're now letting people buy more than one season ticket in the Northam Wall. It's almost like we don't have enough people who want to stand all game, if only someone could've predicted that... https://x.com/SouthamptonFC/status/1785351406675001836

Probably still one of the best away ends we've ever had, the place was rocking from start to finish and if i remember rightly didn't we drink them dry before half time? 🤣 I still maintain had it not been for the rain it would've got very nasty outside, combination of some really angry saints and some very game derby wouldn't have made a great mix (and they'd already tried via the pitch). First leg was a bit of a farce, Billy Davis just told them to kick us off the pitch and deliberately tried (and succeeded) in injuring Bale.

Speaking personally i'd have loved to do that, but the club have given us no choice. They're going to have zero tolerance on standing elsewhere and have raised ticket prices.

£70 worth of club tat, really they should've named it the @Turkish package

Renewed mine this morning and the cheeky buggers add the silver "bolt on" as default online and you have to remove it if you don't want it. Can see a lot of people paying an extra £70 by accident because they don't realise they have to take it off. Really shit that from the club, hoping people will make a mistake so they get more money

yup exactly that, the focus wasn't on one in particular. I loved the Milton when i was a nipper but the Milton was never THE home end it was just another part of the ground (and don't forget the Archers lot called the fans in the Milton Milton Muppets). I don't think in my life we've ever had a "Kop" and fans have always moved around depending on various things (age, type of support etc.) The single big focus point end isn't really a southampton thing, same way our away support has always been more lots of small groups of mates rather than one big group. No idea why that is but i do wonder if it's to do with how the city itself is set out geographically, growing up i can always remember a lot of rivalries between different parts of the city (Swaythling and Bitterne for example), and some places can feel pretty remote and different depending on where you lived (Thornhill and Millbrook can feel miles apart and even have slightly different accents).

I don't remember any debate amongst those round me in block 5, pretty much everyone looked at the ground design and said the northam is behind the goal and next to the away fans we'll move there. Same was true of my brothers lot who were under the east, they looked at st mary's and choose the itchen north because of it's location. You're right though there weren't forums or social media so it was mostly done in the ground/pubs rather than online. The funny thing is in all my time going (from the early 80's) Saints have never really had one single end, it's just not been our culture. Different parts of the ground have served different needs and had different types of people in them, the milton was much younger than the archers or under the east and probably the most similar to the northam now. Under the east was always more of a "lads" culture, as was the split stand archers back when they had the cage, and the west stand lot were much more of the dressers/casuals. It's actually something that i liked about st mary's as it was before, you could have different pockets of groups with different ways of supporting saints, and slightly different cultures (arguably that changed massively post covid as the itchen north back them northam-lite) which this "northam wall" will kill off by design. I'd personally be amazed if the northam wall doesn't ultimately lead to us having our own form of the tinpot "ultras" other clubs have now, i really, really fucking hope that's not the case but it does seem to be the way things are going

we all decided on where we would go, the archers moved to the northam, under the east to the itchen north and the milton to the chapel (as a rule), it was actually pretty easy and most people were happy. Though a lot of people (myself included) mourned the Dell, as nice as St Mary's is/was it's never had the soul of the Dell due to the fact that it's a bowl and the seats are much further away from the pitch and the noise not so held in the ground. As for the route i did feel for pubs like the Fitz that lost most of the revenue that kept them going, in fact a fair few of those pubs have no gone completely as a result of the dell closing.

Probably think i'm dull at aways these days, tend to drink nowhere near our fans, turn up before kick off, watch the game, don't really join in with many songs as i hate the constant dirge of pompey/library songs, then go back to the pub. I think i've spent more time talking to home fans on away days than our own fans in recent years.

Yeah at a few away grounds, main takeaway for me is that it hurts like fuck when someone sends you over one of the barriers for safestanding, way more than it does going over a seat (i may not have been fully sober) Having been to most away games for the last few years i have no faith in our support not being embarrassing dins, in fact at multiple aways this season i've moved away from the library bantz weirdos, and the less said about the noddies that started doing "the poznan" at arsenal away the better We were actually looking at block 48 as it's small and self contained, but the club aren't doing the cheap season tickets in there, same as they aren't in 38, so it'd mean paying more to stand there sadly

Yeah but football is meant to be the working man's game, and to increase prices during a cost of living crisis by that much is a joke. It's just another example of how they want private school kids from Trowbridge over nippers from the Northam estate. To be honest the one that really stinks is completely getting rid of the cheap tickets in the chapel, they could've at least offered one block in the new banter wall at a similar price so those people could still afford to go

It was us outside the pub mush, full consultation, just as the club wanted it. We were told what was going to happen, and how the fans were going to be ignored, doesn't get much more elite than that Anyway the pricing seems pretty shit to me, they've effectively dropped prices in six blocks for early bird then increased them everywhere else and dropped the genuinely cheap prices in the chapel. Proper "dead cat" behaviour to hide that they're screwing 90% of the match going fans. Assume that's aimed at me, it has nothing to do with "gawping at away fans" for (i actually find that embarrassing) instead it's that I dislike the culture in the northam because it's really fucking noddy and two bit, and for the same reason i disliked the new arrivals to the itchen north and turned it into a creche (hence why we moved out of block 1/2 into block 3). I do however want to stand and this takes away my option of standing without being next to a collective who i find annoying and means i have to put up with shit songs copied from other clubs, no sense of humour from our fans, people taking football far, far too seriously and repeated songs about the skates. Splitting two sections actually has the benefit of allowing two cultures, which satisfies more people. But i guess calling folk nimbies is easier than understanding that

Because i'd really like people from other cities to not look at Sotonians as yokels, because I don't want to give the skates fodder for calling us "church mice", because i'm proud of where i come from and proud of how we're seen in the country. It's bad enough that our away support sings about libraries and the skates non stop, but to have a banta wall that trudges out equally brainless shit that makes us look small time and for away fans to think Sotonians have no fire would annoy me.

Or maybe the club could actually talk to the fans and understand that there's different cultures and different wants from different sections of the fans, instead of lumping them all together in some braindead idea based on a "myth" of a "kop" end that has literally never existed in the history of our club and doesn't work at most clubs that have it in english football.

it's going to be next level shit, the away fans will be hurling abuse at people in the chapel who don't want to be next to them. They'll also think our home support is shit because the acoustics mean the BANTA wall noise won't travel to the away end. The BANTA wall itself will be full of muppets singing about the skates for 90mins and we'll probably end up with god awful fancy dress ultras, prices will go up elsewhere to pay for the mouth breather section and piss off long standing fans and everyone will want it changed again by about the middle of next season. The club have properly fucked this one up, they should've kept the ground as it is but put in safe standing from block 3 round to the kingsland north (including away fans) Instead they're going to make the atmosphere worse because they don't understand what creates it in the first place

Install running machine type floors into the stand so they're forced to get their steps in. Plus it would also have the benefit that the "limbs" would be amazing as you could speed them up when we score to catapult people out of The Northam BANTER WALL(tm) As for our illustrious leader Phil Potts plan I personally can't wait till the Skates come to St Mary's and give grief to the folk in the chapel and kingsland and are completely incapable of hearing our numerous songs about them from the other end of the ground. The good news though is the hilarious banter will now been done by people who are standing up, and the rolling joys of songs about bit part players who are roundly useless when they actually come on (ole, ole) will make the upheaval well worth the cash It's exactly the same as it is now, except you'll have a barrier infront of you.

I'd argue with the financial implications for both Leeds and Leicester it's probably safe to say they're both more desperate than us to be honest

But how else would we broaden our reach to the MASSIVE catchment areas without it? Surely you can't be saying you only want the support to come from, and represent, the city it's in? I thought with your woke sentiments you would encourage more TV and more fan experiences, so our overseas, druid and northern (basingrad) friends can really feel the special atmosphere of singing about pompey and shouting pork all game whilst wearing a VR headset?

plus billy davies will target our best player in the first game of the play off semi's, injuring him so he can't take part in the second and taking the advantage away from us. Once we've lost on penalties we will have to leave the ground into a biblical downpour, but fear not next season the Saints will go WILDE

You do realise that adverts are targeted based on your search history and internet browsing right? So either you or the mrs have been searching for those kind of outfits...

£15 tickets would've meant the club lost around £48k for one game (based on the £30 we charged). This was at a time when the club were making redundancies and had about a £90m loss for the season before. You can see why that would be deemed unacceptable to Saints to be honest.

Saw someone describe Martin's style as propaganda football, as in "All possession with no penetration. Basically just propaganda football" and i can't think of a better description.

I find it mad how we've got this far into the season - with only three away games left - and people still don't understand that the 10% of allocation rule is for clubs that have ground capacities below 20k. The rule for away allocations in this division is 10% of capacity up to 2k tickets. So far any ground over 20k you only have to give 2k, unless the club decide to do otherwise (which we have for most games). Just because we gave leeds 3k tickets doesn't mean they in anyway to do the same for us.

3k definitely won't rock up as they've only given us 2k which is the minimum needed to be given (despite us giving them 3k at £30). There's no way i'd be going personally if i hadn't already bought train tickets, absolute disgrace of pricing