PokingFun

The whole mood has gone from optimism to vitriol with one stupid decision by our chairman.

Barnard off as well now and three game ban

Fook me, Alan Pardew must be ****ing his pants tonight and rightly so. Shameful decision making at the club. Ridiculous.

Why are we playing Guly at left midfield, was he not a centre midfielder for his previous club? Also, why is Barnard on the bench when he has been arguably our best player this season. Fookin madness!!

Odds are not usually a great indicator in these markets. I have seen loads of these betting markets where odds-on favourites never end up anywhere near the club they are supposed to be nailed on for. Surely, it is one thing for Cortese to sack Pardew when most thought he was doing a decent enough job, but to appoint someone like Paul Hart has to be sheer lunacy not because he has links with Portsmouth but simply because he does not have the right credentials for the job if Cortese is looking for someone as a long term appointment that could succeed in each division as we go up the leagues.

Because he is a fan and is entitled to his view the same as everyone else. I'm certain that his view in the article is no different to that of the majority of Southampton supporters. There is no story here other than a fan saying the same as most other fans.

To be fair there are only a handful of people p*ssed off with the start of the season. It was pretty obvious that this team will be there or abouts come May when you look at the chances we have been creating this season. It was only a matter of time before we thrashed someone and that came against Rovers. I was not worried about the start at all as I could see we had firepower. Seems an odd decision with the timing of this.

Then why mention it? ;-)

This was in response to Alpine's comment about Antonio / Papa loans - looks like I missed off the quote! Oops! Yeah but you are looking at the negative that we haven't signed them (which might be for reasons out of our control) while not acknowledging that they added value to the set up when they were here. Obviously loans are a bit of a gamble as they can go back and leave a hole but equally most of Pardew's loans have been shrewd signings that have filled the obvious holes when we haven't been able to make a permanent signing. After all, most of Pardew's signings have been permanent as far as I can see and most of them have been excellent additions for this level.

RIP Markus, we will forever appreciate the day you walked into St Marys and saved the Saints but more importantly I wish your family the very best wishes for the future. I hope that Saints can achieve the objective you have set out and make you and your family proud of what you were building here in Southampton.

Just back from the game and following is my assessment: Davis - Solid as usual not really much to do overall Butterfield - Solid and effective Dickson - Nightmare, concerns me at LB and prefer Harding for now on balance - may need time but we dont have that available Fonte - Usual calm and assured self Seaborne - Hoofs it far too much and distribution is poor - Jaidi definitely better in my opinion Lallana - didnt see much ball 1st half, great goal and always a danger Wotton - Solid, didn't see much from him Hammond - Seemed to struggle a bit, poor touch at times Chamberlain - poor distribution first half but kept going, will improve with experience and took his goal well enough, has a lot of pace Puncheon - frustrating, but showed some good skill and touches in second half although passing poor at times Barnard - worked really hard, no joy from referee at all, I think he should play up top with Lambert Harding - much more effective at both ends of the pitch than Dickson, should start Saturday Lambert - Hit the target with his first touch and seems to give the team a lift with his presence Holmes - merely a cameo for Lallana Saints were fairly dominant in possession but there is a worrying lack of chances at times. I'm sure it will improve when at full strength. All in all a reasonable performance in the end but a little nervy at times.

Henderson in an interview with the Pink was suggesting that the lad has a very big future now he is around the frst team.

I'm assuming he has a notice period to serve from a previous job?

I'm not sure why we need a CM so desperately now. Hammond / Schneiderlin are more than good enough. By all accounts Lallana, Puncheon, Butterfield, Wotton could play if necessary down the middle in the odd game. Up front we have 3 very good forwards so could even do a 4-3-3 if it came to it in some games. A top drawer CM would be nice but it will not be a reason for failure to now get promoted with the squad that we have available. even if we sign no-one else I would definitely expect to get promoted. I don't care whether 1st or 2nd either. Would even take a play-off victory.

The main problem with signing new players is that: 1) to sign them quickly they need to be available ... E.g. Dickson (Out of Contract), and there aren't many OOC players we would realistically want as they are OOC for a reason which is usually that their club don't want them; 2) Any player we are looking at is likely to be of the quality where other teams will also be looking at them and negotiating for them so agreeing deals can be complicated; 3) Even if we agree terms with a club, then we need to agree terms with the player / agent and get a contract signed. Anyone that works in business knows how difficult contract talks and getting them signed can be. It is rarely standard and straightforward. All these things together = the reason why we rarely see ink on paper much before the beginning of the season. I would hazard a guess that activity elsewhere in L1 in respect of signings is due to players being signed elsewhere that would not get in our team given our ambitions. Once the PL teams have completed their work, this will filter down to the CCC and then onto lower leagues. The chances of us attracting CCC standard players from decent CCC clubs are quite limited I suspect as most won't want to drop down regardless of our ambition and there are only going to be a small amount of players in L1 of the desired quality we need to STRENGTHEN the squad. Losing 15 squad players only to replace them with new squad players is something to be avoided. Also, who knows but there may be a couple of young players in the academy ranks that AP feels can provide strong cover and learn from the 1st team players quickly. I still say let's wait and see, but even if we start the season with what we have I do not think we are going to be weak by any stretch of the imagination. Even at RB Harding could do the job assuming we have not signed one by then. By the way, I'm not saying we shouldn't sign new players at RB, CM and CF, but if we cannot get the right quality needed then we should keep our powder dry until the right players do become available.

It's nothing to do with "Whiter than White" ..... the guy is simply a businessman and will make decisions based on business judgement including such things as cost / benefit analysis of certain initiatives balanced against the possible reputational damage for the club. If the Echo are the mouthpiece of the club then I guess they might have been a little slower to publish an article without consent in the knowledge that it would upset the club. They printed a story without considering the consequences themselves and therefore had the supply line cut.

But the fact is we got rid of all players of PL quality at the time, presumably because we could not afford them (?) .... GB replaced them with new players who cost £7m between the whole lot and got to the playoffs which was a decent achievement in a competitive league. Then when we didn't go up he had to sell players again to keep the club going (including SJ coming in for KJ who got 20+ goals). I still say GB did a reasonable job given what he had to contend with during his tenure. The drivel about Pearson keeping us up is annoying because regardless of Pearson being in charge, GB had us in a better position when he left than where he finished. FWIW I think Pearson is doing OK at Leicester but he only got them to the CCC playoffs so does that make him an underachiever as well (?)

He had to sell Bale, Jones, Baird, Lundekvam was spent, Oakley was always injured, Prutton (?), Pahars was always injured, Fuller (did OK), Higgy didn't want to stay and also Theo left. Sorry but the £7m spent was funded solely by having to flog overpaid wasters or our best young talent quite frankly and he brought in far more than he spent so to say this is ridiculous. Its as simple as this ..... Saints fans like every other team's fans had expectations to go immediately back up which really doesn't happen that much unless it's a team with stable finances that don't have to flog the premiership standard players. Why can't our "fans" move on from this complete nonsense. GB did as well as any other "reasonable" manager would have done. To argue the money angle again is simply wrong. We sold Bale (£10m at the time?), Theo (£12m at the time), Jones (£6m) - Stern John got 20 goals for us incidentally so that was a **** signing too! Anyway, I have to go now to do something constructive like make myself a cup of tea .....

If we get to the CCC next year then expect the price hike as it will happen. Cortese will set pricing at the upper end of where the competiton do in the CCC because he will do the research and act accordingly. His view will be that we have a product that is on demand and will price it as such. He will not need to give the tickets away to sell them or retain L1 pricing.

But Lallana scored 20 goals from midfield last year .....

There is no evidence of that under the new regime though. There have been some rumours already it is just that the sources that were once very widespread are now closed somewhat which suggests the current management concntrate on control rather than leaking their business.

Simply put, Abramovich courts publicity, Markus does not. Therefore, RA goes public whereas ML does not. All evidence points to a VERY WEALTHY man regardless of whether he is a billionaire or not. After all, he must have spent the sum of say £15m or so anyway just to move us out of administration? That would surely not be the actions of someone who does not have a pot to **** in?!

Steve, come on, surely everyone knew that roughly they would have to put aside between £350-£450 for a ST regardless of when the announcement came.

Or maybe not pre-prepared and simply stating the truth. The cost of staff to administer the scheme plus getting a finance house to fund it could well be too high. You don't think the club themselves would fund something like this if they are sensible and well versed in business do you?

In fairness Nick, this is probably nail hit firmly on the head. In the current economic climate, there are going to be plenty of people who will happily default on paying for the footie instalments when it comes to a question of that versus the bills! Anyway, there is a form of instalments available at a surcharge and its called purchasing a matchday ticket every game rather than a season ticket! There is always that choice available.