oldskoolsi

Unless he used pool knowledge to deliberately bounce the bottle off the advertising boards and hit someone, claiming he threw a bottle at the fans is a complete lie.

At the risk of repeating myself I never said anything about there being a homophobic society. I simply believe that there are likely to be gay footballers, some of whom would like to be openly gay but, for for a possible multitude of reasons, are scared to be.

I never said anything about large numbers. However I do believe that, purely on percentages, there are some gay footballers. I only know of one english footballer who came out and he killed himself. Whether all gay footballers want to be publicly gay, I don't know but don't think all want to be privately gay. So why are they?

What about the ones who want to be openly gay but are afraid of the backlash? Until people in general and footballers in particular feel they wont be abused for their decisions it's not exactly a fair choice.

The fact it's still referred to as coming out is part of the problem. It implies that gay people have to make a big show of announcing their sexuality. Why should people have to make this big announcement that they are gay?

People keep saying he should have stayed with us as he would have got games but with CLyne in such great form last season how many would he have played. He wasn't guaranteed first choice when he left us.

It proves he's gotten off to a better start in pre season for West Brom than he did for Liverpool.

Those who are calling this troll bait statistics i think are that Swansea, West Brom, Leicester and Newcastle all came top in or close to their 'home region'. I would be disappointed that Southampton aren't top in ours, although if it includes the whole of Hampshire, it's understandable.

My comments were not so much aimed at the people who are angry at his comments, although it is rather pointless. It's the same as reading Heat magazine and *****ing about them. However that is the way of the world. My comments were more aimed at those who were moaning about him not doing his job properly by not watching premier league matches. Just by getting a thread on here moaning about him as a pundit, show he is doing exactly what a pundit should be doing. He's got peopled reading/listening to his comments and talking about them whether they agree or not.

If Sky wanted him to watch all the premier league games they could easily put it in his contract. I doubt hardly any, if any at all, ex pro football pundits watch all the games. It's not in their contract and they don't get paid to. From listening to a range of them, I can't think of any that sound like they watch every game rather than just the ones they are payed to watch and those on TV. Most pundits are hired for their personality rather than their knowledge and personality amongst ex-pros, especially in front of a camera, is very rare. On a show like Soccer Saturday which goes on for hours, the ability to talk twaddle at least semi entertainingly and have an opinion on everything, no matter how ill informed, is much more important than being able to say someone's name right. It's what has made the show a success and Merson's 'moron' schtick has been a part of it. And until every pundit is entertaining and informed/watches every game, there will always be a place for him. I can't see that happening soon so it's probably not worth getting your knickers in a twist.

Those complaining that he said he hasn't seen Saints play should remember that at 3.00pm Saturday he is usually watching other games. Should all pundits watch every single premier league game. This was one of our first televised games this season so it's not surprising this is that was the first time he'd seen us.

Sort of a a defector from years ago (in that he managed Saints and now doesn't). However i'm too cheap to pay to start a new thread so i thought I'd post this here as I haven't seen anything else about it. Never realised Wotte was working for Scotland. It will be interesting to see if he had an impact north of the border. He really didn't have one here other than helping us get relegated, into administration. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/30129770

Absolutely not. Football has never been about who laughs last, laughs loudest. It's about taking every opportunity to lord it over other teams when you can as you never know when you'll get the chance again.

If you'd spelt choice correctly, I would be posting this all over facebook.

I have watched that video far too many times, I quote my favourite lines from it like a cult movie. Most of them come from Channon. "Will he be on this video?" "Right poser was Charlie" "The grappling hooks weren't bitin'" "Kick me arse out" "Who cares?" etc

Claus managed to make a career out of holding onto shirts.

I never said Saints players couldn't play for England. I simply believe that good Saints players who play for England are more likely to leave or leave sooner than good players who don't play for England. Hence why I'm not bothered if players go 'under the radar'.

I screwed up big saying all. I should have said all bar Matty (and Rodriguez). Anyway here is a list of players who have played for England while at Saints. Shearer (joined Blackburn) Flowers (joined Blackburn) Le Tiss Bridge (joined Chelsea) Beattie (joined Everton) Crouch (joined Liverpool after relegation) Lambert (joined Liverpool) Rodriguez Lallana (joined Liverpool) Shaw (joined Man U) How many of those were already on their way before joining England is debatable. All who left joined bigger clubs. It's nice for players to get the recognition but I have little passion or enthusiasm for England. Ideally I would like to see a return to the culture that players from any club can play for England. However, with Champion's League money, that will never happen. I would much rather see a great Saints team than a great England team and the easiest way for that to happen is to keep our best players. We will never compete with the big clubs on wages and I do think that at England camps our players get to see first hand what it is like playing for a big club and 'get their head turned' easier. So yes, until wages and champion's league football stop having an impact on player's decisions, I'd rather we didn't get too many into the England team.

As a Saints fan, I'm delighted Clyne never played. For the past 25 years, every single Saints player who has played for England has been signed up by a bigger team. In an ideal world players will realise there is no need to leave Saints if they have England ambitions, however everyone knows that not to be the case and it is more likely for a player to leave after playing for England while at Saints than it is for someone to make their England debut after they have left Saints.

Sounds like they did the champ manager option of getting the board to look for a team to send out players to earn work permits at and this was the best of the bad bunch.

Yup. Those were all the players we wanted to play for England and were considered irreplacable, who then played for England, left with rumours of being tapped up whilst playing for England and were replaced by cheaper players, who after 5 games seem to be as good as the players who left. The benefit of hindsight.

I think 4th could be genuinely up for grabs this year and wont go to Man U or Liverpool. However I don't think we'll get it.

Sky did it, so why not the beeb? I can expect them to give up a couple of minutes on MOTD when they gave up a couple of minutes on FF. As for a weekly updates, maybe not just on Franny, but *if* BBC had got involved it could've turned into that mountain climbing thing they did with b list celebrities a few years ago and gotten a lot more attention. As for Koumas and Walsh, I'd like to to think when they came here a sticky thread would've been made here to make people aware, certainly local rags getting involved, possibly local radio and TV. Hopefully Franny attempted to do so at each club he visited to make people give a toss.

But they already did something about it on FF. So that wont work. They could have even made it a cross-BBC charity fundraising initiative by haivngh weekly updates on MOTD and/or FF.

Better than Match of the day, who didn't even acknowledge Benali's effort. Although I just watched the Saints part so they may have done so elsewhere.