pap

Last days of Rome.

Blimey, The timeframe was interesting. When I first read TDD's post, I assumed the plans would be dated on or around the turn of the 20th century, not the 1930s. In the end, looks like the plans were unnecessary. We ended up dismantling most of the Empire after the war anyway ( The Road To War : The Origins of World War 2 claims that the British Empire was in pretty bad shape leading up to WW2 ). Personally, I've never believed that the term "special relationship" meant much to the Americans.

Winchester is 12 miles north of Southampton, and as far as I'm concerned, represents the North-South border.

I know that the missus has a soft spot for Southampton. Her pre-season prediction for Saints was promotion. I am slowly trying to brainwash the youngest on the school run. It is not working. She is a feisty one.

There are a couple of other threads going on at the minute, one concerning our potential peak and another about empty seats.. I think there are too many Sotonians sporting shirts from different teams. In my era, loads of the kids were Liverpool or Everton fans. I'm sure loads of kids who went to school in the nineties are United fans. Sometimes, there is a good reason for them supporting another team, but mostly, there isn't. They're even more annoying in the Facebook or Twitter age, almost crying because their Premiership behemoth accidentally got beaten by one of the smaller teams. It's all a bit tedious, and the resurgent Southampton will need their turncoat bums on seats in the 90K mega-stadium. Is there any way we can get these people back into the fold and kill two birds with one stone? My brother claims to be a Villa fan, but over the years I've chipped away at him. He goes to see Saints more than Villa now, so even though he hasn't officially declared himself a Saint, a bit of guilt does work. Perhaps it could be applied to a wider audience.

He's hit the post there, then.

I honestly hope we do, mate. Problem is, footy clubs aren't as rational as other choices we all make - and one of the key strategies that other businesses might use, nicking customers off the competition, is a bit trickier in the footballing world.

They were all Towers in the wall, iirc.

I'm not suggesting for a minute we can't sell 32K seats in the Prem. We've done it before and should we secure promotion, we'll do it again. The OP was asking about the potential peak of our achievement, and I said that absent a large increase in fans, our peak will be the occasional entry into the UEFA league. When you look at the teams that go beyond that, as in teams that regularly get into the CL, they are characterized by having huge fanbases, having (or trying to get) huge and impressive stadia. Then you look at other clubs who have peaked, such as Wigan or Blackburn. They will not rise any further because they simply don't have the numbers. Ultimately, the growth of any business is dependent on the customer base.

There are a number of limiting factors that'll need to be addressed if the club has any ambitions of say, consistently compete in the Champions League. If you look at all the English clubs that have qualified for the CL in the past 10 years, they're all based in major population centres and all have a pre-existing massive fan base. I know that people. myself included, bang on about Southampton's catchment area - but when you consider that the whole Hampshire has a population of 1.8 million, and a good number of those don't support Southampton, a major challenge will be finding the fans that'll underpin the continuing success. This is a contentious suggestion, sure - but I think the club should market itself to glory hunters as a second team that they could go see every fortnight. Given our present success on the pitch, now would be the perfect time to do it. I know that people have a strong sense of affinity with their first choice team, but I know loads of people that support other teams that have a soft spot for Southampton. Unless we dramatically improve our numbers, I can see our peak being mid-table Prem, perhaps sneaking into the UEFA League during the good years.

Yeah, have to say that I wouldn't necessarily level all of those criticisms myself. The Pardew sacking in particular has turned out to be a very good piece of business in hindsight. Not really bothered about the car parking either. I do think that the debacle with the Echo was completely unnecessary and does the club, the city and the fans no favours. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the boycott start when the Echo published a story about the club improving the training facilities? The Echo wasn't telling Saints fans something that hadn't already been reported elsewhere. Second, with the boycott in place, the relationship only got worse, with the Echo reduced to regurgitating crap we've all seen on the Internet. Finally, whatever you might think of the Echo, it is Southampton's paper and ends up in a lot of Southampton houses each and every night. The fallout between the club and let's be frank, the only daily newspaper in the world that gives a genuine crap about it, is an unnecessary black mark on Cortese's report card.

I think the best policy is to give your kids a name that won't sound out of place in a professional environment. I'm personally not fond of this actually calling your kids things that are already diminutives of other names, like "Alfie" or "Jamie". Call them Alfred or James officially, then just make sure everyone else knows them as "Alfie" or "Jamie" in a personal capacity. Having a couple of names on the go isn't a bad thing. We were torn between two names for our first daughter, and before she was born, we didn't know which. As soon as she was born, we knew what we were calling her. Do what feels right at the time. Just don't give your kid a name they can't live with :-

Anyone else find it weird that Islam forbids the depiction of Mohammed Ali, but has no problem calling loads of its sons by that name? Especially as the Qur'an has this to say about the matter :-

Today's mission in the car. Get back from the gym before the guitar solo in Freebird finished. We failed. The version I've got doesn't even conclude with a big rock ending. It just fades out. Makes me wonder whether they're still playing the solo in some studio somewhere. Has to be in the top 10 longest guitar solos.

So you'd think, although the missus is quite secure with her gingerness, so it's not really a problem. She came into the office yesterday saying gingers should be given Disability Allowance on account of their low threshold to the sun's effects. Yes, I told her we live in England.

From Ammar Jemal's account on the Internet, he personally caused the collapse of at least one deal during the transfer window. There have been rumblings from other clubs and agents about him being difficult to deal with, or Saints making "derisory offers". That is a potential concern, but we've concluded other deals very professionally. My personal view is that Cortese is Marmite, players/clubs/agents will either love him or hate him. We fans have got to assess him over a longer timeframe. While you could argue that he has been petty ( Echo boycott ), vain ( macho programme cover ), money grabbing ( car parking fiasco ) or downright baffling ( at the time, sacking of Pardew ), he has brought success to the club. I would rightly credit Nigel Adkins for nearly all our success, but at the end of the day, Cortese has to be credited with looking at a field of candidates, including some big names, and saying "Nige is the man". I wish the club would do more to get more people in St. Marys. Kudos to each and every one of you that goes to the home games, but I wish we had more - parts of the stadium look barren. The club could do a lot to help that by reducing prices - surely its better to have 30K paying slightly less than 24K-25K. If they were smart, they would sort out existing season ticket holders with a wee rebate. That said, I think Cortese has done an excellent job. He has made some mistakes so far, but how many of us would fly straight all the time if we suddenly became chairman of a football club that I'm reliably informed is "by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen"? Ain't easy. I would have had dogsh*t through my letterbox and "cock p*ss pap" sprayed on my car in the first week.

I think we need to give KP a bit of kudos for playing as a Championship striker at 38 and being that high in the pecking order for selection. Relatively few outfield players last as long at such a level.

I do find the whole ginger thing interesting. True story. My aunty got married to a Sotonian with a ginger father. For years, she avoided having kids because she was afraid that one of them would turn out to be a Ginge. She even had a name decided for a girl. Had she spawned a ginger daughter, her plan was to call her Kerry, so she could call her "Carrot" when my uncle wasn't around In the end, my cousins were both born with brown hair - so the plan was never implemented. My missus is ginge too. Neither of our kids are ginge, but unless they born uber-ginge, uber-pale and uber-freckly, I don't think I would have been that bothered. Personally, I think most ginger women are awesome, and the most beautiful ones are hauntingly beautiful, just like this ginge from True Blood :-

You could certainly derive this from the evidence. However, non-gingers should shoulder some of the blame. Years of comparison with Ronald McDonald and Duracell batteries take their toll.

Big actual lol! Very pleased not to have been quaffing coffee when I read this. Buying a new computer keyboard in a rush is never a good thing.

I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake. Now it's time to erase that mistake.

Weird, as my missus always claims that redheads are dying out. Still, given her historical reliability in claims of any nature, I am happy to accept this new evidence.

I saw an excerpt from this book on the Interwebs. This focused solely on the concept of diminished expectations. Namely, that we'll go any watch any old shyte because we've been used to watching any old shyte for a long time

Prune the hedges of many small villages.

Love it. Four different scorers, once again demonstrating the attacking options we have at our disposal. Glad to see Rickie get another goal, even if it was a pen. They all count toward the golden boot. Very odd being a Saints FC fan right now. As a nipper, I expected us to battle bravely against relegation, to use a Football Manager "start of season expectations" example. The relegations were not fun at all, but the resurgence up the leagues has been nothing short of remarkable. This team, and the way it plays, is bloody awesome. A lot of credit has to go to Nige for the way he likes his teams to play, and the performances he is getting out of his players. Long may it continue.