saint1977

Sounds like a brilliant day out WS. Not doing too badly today so far, it’s on R5L Extra for anyone driving. Commentators were saying that the club have won 19 out of 21 of the last games in all formats. Amazing form and resilience. About time Rasmus/SR went and had a look at the set up and culture for Saints, Hampshire are everything SFC isn’t at the moment. Squad depth is the best since the Nicholas era and some of the youngsters are really showing their talent in the ODC. Prest has had the headlines but Currie looks a great prospect and Turner has some proper pace. Organ been around in all formats and progressing nicely with bat and ball. The leadership comes from Barker, Brown and Gubbins, another reason SFC needs to learn from Hampshire. Ben Brown I think has been a key extra ingredient and not just with the gloves and bat either. Gubbins over last couple of years as well. Vince has set a great culture and even with him in the Hundred you can see the good habits carrying on.

I’d heard this in the Midlands as well. He’d be expensive as a total package but a lot cheaper for SR than relegation. The side are nailed on to go down without reinforcing the back line, player sales or not. Bednarek can always loaned out if we can’t sell, longish contract so a good 12 months in another league might increase interest again. Mings won’t take any shit in the dressing room, and JWP, Oriol and KWP need some support in there. The fans forum showed how soft the club has become and 2-3 bastards needed by the end of the window to provide some backbone and leadership to the talented younger recruits. A few of the dubious characters might decide they don’t fancy being in the environment with someone telling them to pull their finger out and their agents might finally get them moved on, to help pay for it. Another aggressive player needed in the frontline in a similar mode. Time to put a few permanently in the u23s until they leave, the club is too nice and it’s about to be in a genuine relegation battle this time.

Best places I’ve been overseas - Barbados x2, once for the Test match in 2004. West coast stunning but south coast beaches lovely too. Harbour Lights a great bar and some great eating places in St Lawrence Gap. - BVI;the Baths is my favourite beach in the world, great for snorkelling - Vilamoura in the Algarve is good, quality golf courses and tonnes of places to eat - Lanzarote nice if you avoid the busier resorts, Costa Teguise has good beach and facilities. You will get English but not the idiots and more of a mix of nationalities. All year round too. - NZ amazing country, South Island has the best scenery, North is more sub-tropical - Australia is fantastic. Sydney is like a computer-generated city and I love the ferries you can catch everywhere - Closer to home, Belgium has some wonderful cities for a weekend eg Antwerp and Ghent, you can have a great 2-city weekend crossing the Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo.

Hope so, because that gave me no sense of how the men’s first team are going to pull out 6 months of the worst string of performances in the club’s history. Pity about Blackmore’s filibustering, 3 or 4 decent Qs asked that either weren’t answered, or blustered or laughed off. Fair play to Rob, his Q about resilience got right under Ralph’s skin judging by his remarks. Semmens even worse than Ralph, that last comment about ‘the players are only into it if you are’, even that got heckling from an audience who were the football equivalent of a dead sheep. What will the little darlings do when they have 40k scousers, Mancs or geordies bellowing at them? Squad are treated like weaklings hence they play like them and fold at the first sign of adversity, if that’s the culture set by the CEO. Can’t see how this will be turned around anytime soon - SR needs to have a big clear out of the club leadership group. Get their own people in and inject a bit of energy as well as structure. The current group looked beaten tonight and lethargic - if that’s what it’s like inside SMS and Staplewood then they will fall a lot further than the PL. If Dragan sees that back, he surely can’t be happy? Energy between Semmens and RH notably a lot cooler than previous forums, even when there had been a poor run before those as well. Manager will be gone very shortly.

Lots of filibustering to reduce number of questions asked from the floor. Last couple of questions on mental resilience understandably, which wasn’t really answered. Semmens - yes, they are 5% off but why? Yes, Brentford was shit Ralph. Blackmore doing my head in.

The club have learned their tactics from the government eg ‘save big/Austrian dog’ so this is their equivalent of Channel 4 privatisation and a culture war to distract from the shambles on the pitch. We’ve criticised the boardroom darling (Ralph) from the stands and suggested he should be sacked in the morning. ‘We March on’ you know, to the Championship it seems. We therefore must be punished (as if 5 years of gutless and pathetic home league displays weren’t sufficient) and warned off similar behaviour. Never mind that McCarthy and Stephens were given long, costly, unnecessary and unjustified contracts that the board were too embarrassed to announce, and the first team manager has all the tactical and selection qualities of George Burley, a few people standing in block 1 and the odd hand gesture at opposing fans represents a far bigger problem. I never knew SMS was such a hotbed of football violence to rival Old Firm, Millwall etc. Still, if the cost of living crisis gets any worse, the problem will resolve as there will be no fans at all in blocks 1 and 2. If Leeds do score 2 or 3 early goals, even these tactics won’t work and can see the atmosphere getting toxic.

This really sums up the frustration for a lot of supporters and no doubt the players as well. No excuses when the club has been in the PL for a decade. AA is a chase and shoot striker from flick ons and through balls on the last shoulder, he will never be a hold up and bring others into play striker. Only an imbecile who doesn’t know anything about the game would play him as a lone striker. The same imbecile who thought a RWB not good enough for the squad at Championship side fighting relegation could play CB at one of Europe’s top sides and a winger who has been dreadful with no defensive qualities also in the last year of his contract at LWB. Even George Burley would have thought twice. The Mara signing looks more and more bizarre within this context. SR have to get the Adams sale and twin striker/main striker and 10 purchases spot on and both players need to have an immediate impact. Not a situation for ‘one for the future/cheap gamble. Although potential targets can’t fancy Saints much after Saturday’s stuffing and RH’s management style doesn’t seem to be getting rave reviews on the player/agent grapevine from what we can gather.

Good post. Frustrated like everyone else is at seeing another League Two level performance on Saturday and I can’t imagine SR were impressed either. As pathetic as the defending was, it doesn’t help that the ball kept on coming back and didn’t stick at all in the forward areas. However, let’s see what the rest of the window brings. Ralph has to go though, now. Four or more goal defeats to Villa, Chelsea, Leicester, City, Spurs and lost to relegated Watford at home and Burnley in about 13 games. I probably missed another one in there somewhere although Brentford away should have been far more than 3 if they’d wanted it. We could sign Messi, Henderson, and Jorginho on deadline day and still look as disorganised and disenfranchised with this manager for the rest of the season.

Just concentrate on The Hundred if you are a cricket fan and enjoy a few nice days out which don’t involve Premier League football. By all means watch some local football in non league. Dont give Ralph any more encouragement. Total charlatan, today was a 7th choice ex-full back not good enough for Birmingham, a striker who can’t hold the ball up and a CB who clearly can’t stand being at SFC. Second half there was no focal point at all. It would take SR sacking him this weekend to cause me to take any interest in this season at all. Five years of Pellegrino, Hughes and this twat. Ralph is making a great effort to topple Branfoot (yes, I lived through that time) as the worst ever manager. Needs a Benitez figure to instil some organisation and football expertise into the squad and help the new owners.

Hasn’t been a disaster yet but Adams clearly should have started, anyone with football knowledge knows that. Doesn’t need hindsight. Bazanu decent, Djenepo surprised me, Lavia and Aribo good. To concede two goals like that with this formation is unacceptable however, and when will the club get it through their skulls that Valery is hopeless whatever the formation? Bednarek all over the show as always, clearly doesn’t want to be at SFC. A worse second half though and this could be a few unless Ralph’s new coaching team can get control of the tiller. Add a couple of strikers and a new, better manager might get some results out of revised squad

Hardest season to predict with the age of the signings. They could be fresh, resilient and free from the implosions of the recent past or 2008/9 again. Could be 15th and above trouble with some surprise wins or gone by the WC in November. Part of the problem is that the squad is certainly stronger but hard to say if the first XI is improved yet. With a couple of hefty signings at striker and some express pace/strength at 10, which the club seem to working on bringing in, the picture could turn for the positive. Difficult to see sufficient finishing and craft in creating chances to stay up as it stands.

Back on the OP title, Suella having another obsessive moment about civil liberties and diversity (see the Mail front cover) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-62416220 I’d have thought a sixth interest rate rise in a row, energy bills soaring to levels not seen comparatively since the 1973 OPEC oil crisis, industrial unrest, chronic national housebuilding crisis, climate change, China et al were more immediate issues but hey, apparently not. Absolute loon. Fareham - great advert for your town.

I would suspect that’s why Starmer has ruled out rejoining the Single Market in the short-term to bring back some of the Red Wall seats as Wakefield has done in the by-election. I’m a Lib Dem voter so I don’t know the strategy of the Labour Party but it appears to me in the last 12 months he’s had a broad theme going on about patriotism and we know how nationalism was behind Brexit, and the fear of a Lab/SNP bunk up drove the 2015GE result. Living in a Lib/Tory marginal our letterbox had a letter from Cameron pretty much every day for 6 months ramming this down our throats. We didn’t buckle but enough voters did. Just think about the cost across multiple marginals and where the money was coming from…. New Labour weren’t overly friendly on migration either which probably helped for years with the economically left wing and socially right wing people that moved back to them post Thatcher. Corbyn was an escape valve for the old left and younger activists but they’ve seen electorally it won’t fly bar one offs like the 2017 GE and even then they couldn’t beat May’s dreadful government (although still better than the garbage that came next). From a Lib Dem perspective, interested to see if Tiverton and Honiton is a one off, SW used to be a Lib Dem yellow wall. Now, what would be a smart thing to do is get back to the tactical voting of the late 90s and 2000s which stopped after the Coalition with a lot of Lab-Lib anger across and within the parties. It’s a bit like Saints, those parties can’t compete with the shady money of the Tories/Newcastle Utd but can out-think them. LDs focus spending on Tory marginals, Lab do the minimum and vice versa. I can never foresee another coalition but enough collaboration to get this rotten English nationalist tree stump out of the ground.

No doubt that Crosby is a very controversial figure in Australia with links to tobacco and reliant on the dirty money of which the Tory party is a great source of https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/3677378/australian-political-wizard-lynton-crosbys-company-made-handsome-money-during-uks-2015-election/?cs=7484 Yet more overseas influence in UK elections and referendums along with Putin and Russia. He is just trying to grab a last pay day on the Tory account before being shut out by the new leader, likely Truss who has her own strategy networks. She won’t want Crosby’s half baked kite and not enough time for Boris to push it through either.

That doesn’t make it much better - the man (Savile) was truly a vile predator, a bully with overpowering resources to litigate, and shouldn’t be used to have a pop at other posters or anyone else, however much we don’t like them or their views. There’s plenty of organisations that should have done better at the time - BBC, political parties of all types (Cyril Smith with the Libs as well) yes the CPS, newspapers, charities, NHS. I just hope as a society that his type will never be allowed to flourish again, and we will have the checks and balances to challenge them, but sadly that is probably an erroneous hope.

Not the first to post this on here, classic Tory social media, but I’ll embarrass everyone who keeps on bringing this up by posting this yet again. And I don’t even like Keir Starmer or the Labour Party FFS. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-jimmy-savile-s-close-friendship-with-margaret-thatcher-8432351.html When you’ve dug yourself into a hole by repeating trolling, stopping digging further. Savile was 100% close to the Conservative Party and there’s plenty more evidence of that. For balance, I’d do exactly the same if people were posting nonsense about Edward Heath and Conservative figures.

Broadly yes, and with the UK context I’m fine with it because whilst I can agree/disagree with each of the main three parties, I don’t feel that they threaten democracy and are not extremists, even if some of the rhetoric gets that way at times. In the States, in recent years this has changed. Trump and the current batch of Republicans are totalitarian and facist white supremacy driven, very clear from the events of the inauguration which was a violent coup attempt from Trump’s scum followers. You’ve only got to look at the volume of Nazi and other far right symbols the mob were wearing eg Proud Boys. They present a serious threat to internal US freedoms, and global stability. Another reason why NATO needs to really step up the heavy weapons to Ukraine, imagine how Donny will rally for Putin, who owns him. Biden ain’t all that but he isn’t a despot. And Trump is senile and as dangerous as Putin. The West, especially the media, has to grow a pair and call out Trump and the Republicans for what they are, until the latter dumps Trumpism and reforms into a centre right democratic body again.

Interesting article in the FT quoting the CBI on rebuilding supply chain links with the EU as anti China language ramps up in Tory leadership contest and security concerns. Anyone with a brain would rejoin Single Market but everyone in the main two parties is too afraid to upset a few bigots in Stoke https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-62356181

Smart finish too. In the same game, Tino Anjorin on for Hudds and catching the eye with some direct running. Wouldn’t have thought ready for SFC level yet but clearly one for the future SFC hierarchy keeping an eye on. Scott Twine not a bad sub to bring on - scored tonnes for MK last season and some spectacular ones as well.

Billy joined from Sussex, medium fast low-80s bowler, decent limited overs performer. Pretty sure people posted on here at the time that he is a keen Saints fan?

Very much my thinking as well. I’m fine with things being private if the expertise is there to deliver the services more effectively and where customers have choice. Even the most ardent Thatcherites admit utilities has been a disaster and even before Ukraine was a disaster for individual households. Our core infrastructure should not be subject to free market gambling and in funding the pension schemes of other nations’ eg France and Netherlands. The railways can be renationalised bit by bit as franchises end. The people who believe there is material difference between sectors efficiency are MPs and media barons with limited multi sector experience. Effectiveness is down to individual organisations, sometimes different within organisations. Public pensions are a bit more expensive but that’s more sustainable for the economy and health services longer-term than a few executives skimming off huge bonuses to tax havens. The Cameron and May governments tried to make more public listed firms more transparent and to put shareholder breaks on boardroom behaviour but found that their party donors weren’t keen so it never really went anywhere. That and with Brexit, the elites driving it had a dream of a Singapore on Thames, which was never going to happen as it’s not what the Midlands and North voted for.

Loads of examples. Take the East Coast Mainline, financially works far better as public owned. There’s a reason Maggie didn’t privatise the railways https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/04/east-coast-mainline-fury-reprivatisation-plan then https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/east-coast-main-line-renationalised-public-ownership-rail-virgin-trains-franchise-failure-lner-department-transport-a8414056.html Failure of the Conservative Barnet ‘Easy Council’ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/21/former-tory-council-barnet-votes-to-end-mass-outsourcing-of-services This is a more balanced article talking about the Carillion and Interserve failures but also some examples of where outsourcing can be more effective https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2019/02/coming-home-local-government-insourcing My conclusion - public or private should be an objective and business-led decision on best provision of service delivery, not opinion based, which unfortunately most politicians are. The last article makes a good point about why more local and regional organisations aren’t outsourced to so there’s more accountability and money kept in the local economy rather than a faceless corporation where an MP’s wife is on the board.

There was also Man U home. He definitely settled and got better after Xmas, Tadic was flying in his first season which didn’t help Sadio but you could see the potential that emerged. He still ripped Arsenal a new one in the League Cup game and it was only really the Sheffield Cup game and MU where there was moaning on here. He allegedly had some falling out with Ronald about timekeeping etc.

If he did that in the middle of Gunwharf Quays or Commercial St in the town he’d be nicked for public disorder/D&D if he kicked off. He’d probably get filled in before that as well. Seen people kicked out of SMS, Etihad, SJP, WHL, Villa Park, Goodison for much less than that. If the stories are true about intimidating other Portsmouth fans, especially younger ones, that is totally out of order and pathetic. I’ve been told by loads of Pompey fans I know that he allegedly stinks of BO. Trouble is, their club have allowed him to build up this super fan image and now he thinks he has the run of the rust shed. Clearly from Saturday’s puke-making display he does.

Well, we knew the Brexiteers were mad, Owen Paterson confirming it, although the Randox saga showed he was bad as well. May was a buffoon for that speech in 2017 red lining Single Market membership before the negotiations got going properly. Even Cummings and Banks thought it was stupid and extreme.