Stud mark of doom

Anyone else enjoy “shhh”ing Nunez from their Sofa, as he inevitably missed the shootout penalty last night? Ps - Also enjoyed the commentator suggesting ‘their difficult game at the weekend’ might have played a part in the result. pps - have to really work hard for any enjoyment this season!

In terms importance of game, last minute timing, and quality of finish this might only be second to MLT’s last goal at The Dell? Watched it from the East Stand - the ball seemed to be ‘radio controlled’. Great commentary too - the ball is already half way towards the goal before he starts saying “is there one hope left…”. I’d forgotten it was Branford era. The Dell was fooking great!

33 years ago tonight.

Who remember’s Crouch failing to take the ball to the corner flag just before the equaliser. How did Redknapp manage to get a side with Philips, Crouch and Beattie (until he sold him) relegated?

My guess is we think he’ll be more pissed off having to sit on the bench with no hope of getting on - and hence want to leave - than he will being free to do his own thing each match day.

From memory, that week we were on TV live twice - the sheff Weds cup game on the Sunday and then the Saints 2 (Wallace 2) Liverpool 0league game on the following Friday (the eventual top 2 in the league). And that meant live for the nation with only 3 other channels to watch, so would have had a huge audience. Getting into more suspect territory here but I think we might only have been on live TV twice before that ever - the FA cup final of 76, obviously, and the previous round of the FA cup v Blackburn in 84. (If this is right - we didn’t concede a goal in a live TV match in any of the first four games, despite only one at home.)

We’d need c30 points from 20 games - ie minor European qualification form. Realistically, no chance. So planning for a promotion push next season seems the right plan - lots of good suggestions above. I’d be very happy to finish on around 25 points. But - SR’s record at appointing managers (not to mention timing of then getting rid of them) is truly abysmal. interesting that two of the relegated teams from last season are doing well but the wheels seem to have come off at Luton. From memory, there was not much between all three last year and I thought Luton put up a much better fight than we currently are. Anything to learn there?

Fair enough - sixties was too early for me. I started with FA cup win, promotion and Keegan. Happy days. I think I am influenced by what came before. I thought Nichol was terrible at the time but (and I think this is a common one) he was very good. Similarly Puel. I always liked Ralph - I thought he was a huge improvement on his two predecessors and his teams could play good football if sporadically. The same comments apply to Martin.

Seems quite harsh to characterise the 2010s decade as “some pretty poor performances and plenty of defeats”. That must be pretty close to our best decade in recent memory - some truly fantastic sides and probably never really going to last in reality. i enjoyed Ralph too - we were mad to replace him him Jones/Selles. He produced results on a shoestring for several years. last season was really enjoyable - and what an ending. Great memories. This season I think we should have quite a few more points than we have got. We’ve been pretty good for large parts of most games. Far too many mistakes but I find our football good to watch generally. We’ve had considerably worse in the past - branfoot and the post Burley period spring to mind.

Alan Shearer Obviously quite good for us but also had some spells without scoring and was learning the game. I recall thinking we’d got a pretty good fee for him (may have been a record for an English player - branfoot claimed his replacements Speedie and Dixon would get more goals than him). Literally as soon as he joined Blackburn he was incredible - scoring brilliant goals often from distance (something I don’t recall him doing for us) and kept that standard up for a decade or more. I think he scored more goals for Blackburn in the August after signing than speedier and Dixon did jointly in their entire saints careers

Haven’t watched many non-saints games in the prem for a while - I even lost the lifelong habit of watching MOTD last season. i did randomly watch the whole of this and at half time (0-2) I was thinking both teams were light years ahead of us. Spurs second half performance was reassuring. Can’t imagine the premier league seems boring for Brighton supporters.

Re cancelling the last train - pretty sure the rail operator is required to pay for your taxi home

1 Keegan 2 Lambo 3 the best of the rest

In more promising news my latest attempt to transfer does seem to have worked. Not sure we did anything different to the numerous previous attempts which were randomly cancelled, but now at least it says transfer “completed” for the first time. Lets hope we don’t get another random cancellation just before they get to the turnstiles…..

Any other season ticket holders who are on holiday having difficult passing their ticket on? I’ve transferred our two on twice - and they have been accepted at the other end by the person I want to give them to. But then a few days later I have got an email saying the transfer is cancelled (now twice). Helpfully the email from the club notifying me of the cancellation says I should contact….. myself. any help much appreciated!

3-0 HT is not as cut and dried as it sounds. Im old enough to remember us losing twice in a row from 3-0 up at half time (tranmere and Birmingham I think?)

Tbf, he did take the team from near the top of the league to relegation in less than a season - despite having the England striker up front and being able to sign another striker for a whisker under the British transfer record. Lawrie’s first season makes Selles and even Jones seem quite good. Maybe they would have won the cup for us in 2025 and taken us to runners up in 2033 if we had cut them a bit more slack? Not a serious suggestion re the recent two - but an interesting point that there is not a cat in hells chance Lawrie would have survived his first season these days.

Absolutely brilliant stuff - probably the best ever post on this site by some margin. Having spent over 50 years following saints and read lots of books on our history, there are even a few new things in there for me.

Opening discussion this morning - Me - we’ve lost the lead Wife (half asleep) - can’t you stop going on about it? Me - eh? I haven’t mentioned at all it since we walked the dog yesterday. Wife - oh, I thought you were talking about saints again

Best case outcome would mean promoted 29 April (2 days after Stoke game, with Leicester failing to win at Preston) champions the next day - with Ipswich failing to win at Coventry Saints receive a sporting round of applause from all sides of the stadium as they present the trophy to the crowd in advance of the Leeds away fixture. COYR

We now have 55 points - 5 points more than at the same point in 2012, when we were in the top 2 all season. We might need 100 points for top 2 this season!

6 o’bloody clock! Is this fixture sponsored by SCC traffic wardens department? They are going to have a field day with parking tickets on places you can normally always park for a match. looking forward to having to use up annual leave to attend a home game.

Thanks for that - I suspect I’ve been to over 1000 matches over almost 50 years I I can’t recall it ever happening more than once in a game - and probably at most once a season too

Yes - the Lino was next to it when the saints fan were calling it out, but this was obviously a joke, as we were suggesting an infringement by our own player. The Hull crowd were making loads of noise about it over the other side - it was a bit weird that the ref jogged all the way over to check twice in quick succession, finding no problem either time. Hardly critical stuff.

What was all that nonsense from the Hull fans continuously claiming the ball wasn’t in the quadrant for our corners? And then the referee going over - twice on the trot - to check this crucial fact and that it was, clearly and obviously, all fine before allow the corner to be taken. lovely touch from the saints fans loudly trying to get him to come over and check for our own corners a few f times after that 🙂 And, of course, the icing on the cake was us scoring the winner in time added on for corner shithousery from the Hull supporters. 🤣🤣🤣