VectisSaint

But only a silver bullet would have any effect

Another so-called fan who just does not understand. Its not a case of wanting to see the team win wvery week, its a case of just getting more and more fed up with going to see a team that you know have little hope fo winning. True supporters don't just feck off and support another team. When you hve Saints in your blood and have supported them for 40+ years you don't just go and support someone else, but you do exercise your right not to go as often as you may have done in the past. Simple really. Its not about winning every game, but it is about having the wherewithall to win at home more often than not. Winning = bums on seats, simple fact, understand it and you will understand why we are in the predicament we are in. Understand it and realise that something needs to be done to sort it and you will start to see light at the end of the tunnel. Accept it and just continue to attend games like a sheep and nothing will improve. This is not a pro-boycott post, nothng of the sort, just common sense that you need to do whatever it takes to win games at home, whatever the style. Take a look at Leicester's attendances in League One, in a stadium that is a carbon copy of our own. 21-23k for their first 3 games. WINNING.

Leicester are averaging about 50% more than us in their 3 home games (21-23000). Just goes to prove that it is winning that puts bums on seats. Whatever style of play, people go to watch when there is a feel good factor and the team is picking up points regularly at home. It will be interesting to see if these attendances hold up if Leicester start to drop down the table, but frankly thats highly unlikely while Pearson is in charge.

Look I know its not really post match reaction, but I am feeling just a tiny bit happier this afternoon. I think it is something to do with seeing the Man City score. Life could be worse I suppose. But if we had won then I think the weekend may have been perfect. 6 ****ing nil

I thought we kicked towards the Chapel in the 2nd half because it was down hill. This was one of Burley's ideas after he had forgotten to provide any pre-season stamina training to the team, and was trying to make up for this by not kicking uphill in the latter stages.

That is blatantly unfair, and you must retract this statement. You forgot Wilde!!!!

Then we get Scooby posting straight after you to give us the balanced view we all needed. I suppose you mentioned idiots, and Scooby thought it was his cue.

You and I will have to agree to disagree then. I think you are lumping 2 different aspects together. I believe quite strongly that there are only a few, maybe counted in the hundreds who are actively boycotting simply "because Lowe is there". They have the right to do so, but I am sure the numbers are very low. There are others who are probably saying, oh I'm not going because Lowe is there, but actually would not be going anyway because they are of the type who only go when things are going well, and are looking for an excuse to look big to their mates or whatever. The Lowe "experiment" though is another matter. There were clearly people willing to give the experiment a go, including me, I was so anti before the season, but the idea makes some sense, and like many others I would like to see it succeed. But the bottom line is that everyone can now see that the experiemnt is not well thought through, and hasn't allowed for the fact that you need some experienced players in the mix with the youngsters to have some hope of success. Youngsters are also very much affected by confidence. Their confidence has been badly knocked and now they are finding it tough to even pass the ball to a teammate at times. The result is that we cannot buy a home win, and so all those who at the start of the season saw some small signs of recovery have now seen that it was a false dawn and have drifted away again. However you dress it up, and whoever is playing, wins at home = bums on seats. It also means atmosphere, its a chicken and egg situation, but I firmly believe winning a few home games on the bounce will start to bring the crowds back, then the atmosphere will improve. But make no mistake, continue not winning at home and things will continue to spiral and we will be in League One before we can say "Lowe Out".

Apart from a few who think boycotting the club because of Lowe, I don't really think anyone seriously believes staying away is going to help the club. And the Lowe boycotters are really a very very small number, in my opinion. But I don't understand your comment about fans not paying because they are not seeing winning football. It has been ever thus. The problem is that over the last 3 years or so we have become so poor at home, that people are losing interest, a phenomenon unknown to Southampton supporters over the past 42 years that I have been involved. We have always, always been a team that has won more than its fair share of games at home, I don't ever recall a mentality where people did not go to a game on a Saturday without expecting to win, or at least get a draw. OK, sometimes it went wrong and we lost, obviously, but by and large we always knew we had a chance, even against whoever were the big teams of the day. Indeed when Man U, Liverpool or Nottm Forest (at the time) came to The Dell we all knew that there was every chance we would turn them over. But now, over the past 2, probably 3 seasons, we have become a team that is scared to play at home, unable through poor tactical understanding of the various managers and poor players to overcome the stifling tactics of very mediocre teams. People have turned up at St Marys, week in week out, to cheer on their team, but slowly more and more have realised that we have lost the siege mentality at home, and away teams now know they can come here and at worst pick up a point. It was dire under Burley, it got worse under Gorman/Dodd, and was just beginning to pick up under NP. I like the ideas of JP, but after 4 home games this season we have picked up 2 points. There is only so much most people are prepared to take, and yes you can call them fair weather fans if you like, but there has never been a period in our history (in my lifetime at least) that you can compare with the last 2 years. Even in the Branfoot era we managed to win/draw more games at home than we lost, and even then there was at least one exciting player drawing in the crowds, at least when IB agreed to play him. I admire people who are so dedicated to the cause that they will continue to attend games at all costs. I felt very much the same when we were relegated the last time, and attended much more regularly during our 4 seasons in Division 2 than I ever did before or since, but then it also coincided with the time when I was single, footloose and fancy free and had a bunch of mates who never considered doing anything else on a Saturday afternoon, or even when there was a midweek game up north for instance (Leeds away in a blizzrad sticks in my mind). But people need to understand the world has changed, football has changed and whether you like it or not, football has become part of the entertainment business. Our customer base has become disaffected, coupled with other factors at the moment. What we are seeing now is the core support, as it has probably always been, about 14000. Only success, on the field, will start to fill the stadium again. Wins = bums on seats, there is no other recipe. The core support like you, will continue to attend and bemoan the stay aways, but in the end the stay aways will come back when things improve. How we get to that stage is a difficult question. Lowe has his plan, but it is clearly not working at the moment, Crouch had his plan, at least it gave us some breathing space and kept us in this division this season. Wilde had his plan, which backfired spectacularly. Maybe JP can turn things around very soon and get his team picking up points regularly at home, I truly hope so, otherwise we will be relegated, and I suspect that will happen before Administration. But, for sure if we are relegated, we will then go into Admin as well. Losing/drawing consistently at home will mean relegation, and will mean dwindling crowds. Thats a fact, and the sooner people come to terms with that the more chance we have of doing something about it, or getting something done about it. That might mean Lowe having to realise that he must bring in an experienced player or two to help the kids, and understanding that he or Wilde may need to stump up some of the money for this themselves, in order to avoid a bigger financial catastrophe.

Well we've got another 5 minutes, so we can talk about another 10 doughnuts...

By the way, the OS now unreachable in the UK as well. Hope someone at Verio Europe is working to get things back online...

Mark Dennis sounding excited quite often, we seem to have had a lot of chances, but lacking the final touch. Barnsley not really showing much as far as I can hear, KD has had nothing to do. But at the end of the day 0-0 against the Tykes is poor. A draw today and the home crowds will dwindle still further.

Mark Dennis, don't fancy your chances if you tell him he's a joke

May be, but thats not likely to be anything to do with the OS, more likely to do with a DNS server somewhere not working properly. It was unavailable in the UK just before kick-off, but came back on about 2.55pm.

The OS is working fine, and has been since just before the match kicked off. Try going to the home page http://www.saintsfc.co.uk

If you are so fecking moronic to not see that your question is negative then God help you. You know fecking well how you phrased your question. So don't come the innocent. You have no interest in Saints winning, you want to see us lose, you can't even be fecking bothered to look at the league table to see who is around us. FFFFFFS.

Simple question, simple answer...We were still playing the first half, it was 0-0 and you have your usual negative slant on things. I know you want us to be bottom, but a simple check of the league table would show you that Forest were below us so the outcome of our game does not decide who is bottom. FFS.

Nice positive post Alps. I think it would depend on how Forest get on since they are below us on goal diff.

So it seems its Mark Dennis, are you going to tell him he sounds like a moron? You might not live to regret it

Mark? Dennis, Wright, ??? Not exactly a natural radio voice

Planning to be available to play midweek against Rotherham (though personally I would suggest not playing him in the Cup and save him for the League)

Don't disagree with your sentiments, but you need to brush up on your history. Muhammed was born around 570AD, might be a clue there that Moslems have not been fasting for longer than Christianity has existed.

Every HOME game should be a MUST WIN game. If we drop points away so be it. We need to win at home to move us up the table and make people excited to come to games again. I predict 2-1 Saints

Only in your dreams. You seriously think 30k will turn out for a game in the CCC, just because you cut the ticket price to £12. You are seriously deluded. If we went on a run of say 6 home games, with 4 or 5 wins and the others draws, coupled with some half decent performances away from home, and as a result we were in the top 6, you might, just might get back to 22-25k, even at that price. Reduce the price to £12 now and I would bet that it would attract perhaps 2k, maybe 3k people on top of what would otherwise come along.

Sorry, but I think your plan sounds good, but in practice I don't believe it would have the impact you suggest. Decrease the ticket price by £6 and you may get a few hundred more through the gates, but that would not match the decreased revenue. I really don't believe many people are staying away only because of the price of tickets. They are staying away because we can't win a game at home in the league consistently, and this has been the case now for well over a year, it is not a new phenomenon this season. Our home form is appalling, and people get fed up seeing us consistently lose.