SaintBobby

Me too. We need to play much better than that to get near the play offs

That was a totally dreadful second half performance. I think Cortese will lose patience with Pardew before long. Not saying he should, but he will. An utterly embarrassing 2nd half effort against a truly uninspired and limp Argyle team.

Good first half display. Not enough height up front though. Puncheon doesn't look totally fit to me, so we aren't really showing bags of pace either. 6.5 out of 10 so far

Good first half display. Not enough height up front though. Puncheon doesn't look totally fit to me, so we aren't really showing bags of pace either. 6.5 out of 10 so far

How many do you think the club should have ordered? And in which sizes? A few points here: 1. I understand it is a "complex" shirt, because of the sash. Am not totally clear on the production process, but in essence, the "printing presses" can run off 5,000 Stoke shirts, 3,000 Sunderland shirts, 2,000 Exeter shirts and, if you want to run off another 1500 (old) Saints shirts, they could add this to the end of the run. 2. The sash requires a separate run-off and callibration 3. Initial early sales were not great. If you pre-ordered the shirt - in any size - you got it. No problem. Sales then surged and an additional order has been placed....but Umbro arent about to stop running off Milan/Barca/Santos (or whatever)etc etc shirts for a League 1 team unless you are willing to pay a HUGE premium for them to do so. 4. The club should be restocked by early-mid September. And will not take a major revenue hit for being out of the stock for the first few weeks of the season, however annoying it may be for us fans.

Ohhhh pleasse.... Has anyone clarified yet whether this is a problem with Nick Illingsworth's credit limit on his Mastercard rather than the onset of the holocaust?

This is a great product. Im London-based and take the train from Clapham Junction to Southampton Central. I'd rather read the programme on my iPhone on the train down than buy a hard copy at SMS at 2.55pm. Sure, theres not a hell of a lot in it of massive interest - but at £29, it's about the price of a Saturday newspaper. Im signing up (if it works!)

The claims are clearly libellous. On cross-examination, the bold initial claims turned into something much less dramatic. But probably still untrue. Abysmal behaviour.

Possibly a slight exaggeration....

I think it's an accepted (i.e. accurate) generalisation that older folk tend to purchase a disproportionately high number of newspapers and visit a disporportionately low number of websites.

The banning of the Echo may be petty. And/or it may be a sound business decision. Local papers everywhere are in serious decline. Local sports news/gossip is vital to them. However, this means football clubs are owners of a crucial news source and they may wish to control it themselves. A website can't replace a local newspaper - especially for older readers - but if the club want to develop the OS as the "go to" point for official and breaking news, that's fine by me. Of course, it may turn out to be the right decision made for the wrong reasons.

I didn't know that...wish him well.

Quite probably. If we play well, get a bit unlucky, but still secure say W 1 D 2 L 1 and then sign 3-4 really good players on August 30th (example: Vassell, Stock, Danns, Antonio), then I reckon I would feel the same way. Yes. FWIW, in reality, I reckon: a. Our record in August will be better than this b. Our signings will arrive earlier than this c. Our signings wont be as good as the 4 I listed

Not me. I expect us to win the league (or at least come second) even if we play badly against Plymouth and lose 3-0. Norwich lost their first game 7-1 at home last season and stormed the league. It's hard to see what could realistically happen until about game 7 or 8 at the earliest for most people to change their initial position. Basically, I think the evidence I have to base my prediction on now isn't going to be out-trumped by 90 minutes of football next week.

I think we can be sure that AP is going to deepen the squad. He has said so in an interview this evening, I believe - that we need 2 or 3 more players. He is addressing the central midfield problem - witness the trial for Carter. Ok, he hasn't solved it necessarily, but he is clearly addressing it. Also, while it would be ideal to sign players earlier, let's not throw a hissy fit about it. If the new players all arrive on the last day of August, that's not ideal from a footballing point of view, but it's not a disaster either. The deadine for new signings - or judging whether and how many new signings we will make - is empahtically NOT August 7th.

Gees. If you're predicting play-offs, we probably are nailed on to win the division. Mind you, no team has ever entered the play-offs and been odds on to win them, so that should mean you think we'll still be in League One for the 2011-2012 season. I dont. I'm confident of promotion - probably as champions, but maybe as runners-up.

What's your prediction for our finishing position this season? Would it be reasonable to assume we will end up about ten places higher than this, given your prediction for last season was about ten places too low?

Don't agree on the club's brand being worth zero (outside of Hants). Also, it's worth quite a lot inside of Hants. Sure, Saints aren't Coca Cola, but then I guess they don't have a squad of IP lawyers or brand managers either. If they believe the branding is being used in a way that is bad for the club, they should stop the branding being used. This might be petty in any given instance. But it isn't definitionally petty.

Lol, I know. that's why I added the :-) or should it have been a ;-) ?

Wasn't at all what I was expecting, but I quite enjoyed it. It's an alternative to the official programme rather than a fanzine, really. Probably not really opinionated/mocking/radical enough for my tastes, but could find a mainstream audience amongst the fanbase. In the "where are they now?" section, saying that Claus still "pops up in the papers" and suggesting the reason for the Bridge-Terry fallout is only "alleged" was a bit anodyne for a fanzine, I thought. Read more like something on the OS! I'd think most hardened Saints fans would have found the 20 question quiz a bit easy, but maybe we're not the target audience. A few typos/errors - but no worse than many official programmes. 1. "Ricky (sic) Lambert needs no introduction" 2. Wasn't Chris Marsden's wonder goal v Ipswich, not Leeds as suggested? Wish you every success though and hope you make it a regular thing, I'd definitely buy future issues - and for a quid it was a bargain. It was well laid out, nicely presented, unpretentious and did pretty much exactly what it said on the tin.

You're still really sore about that Wycombe result aren't you? :-)

You're not just leaning on that "plenty of games still to go" crutch are you? :-)

Protecting your intellectual property doesn't mean banning everyone from using it in any circumstances. Popular, mainstream bands like Coca Cola or Guinness are utterly ruthless though in shutting down the use of their imagery on unofficial sites. I think they are right to stop Saints Trust using the logo. Nick Illingsworth has every right to express oppositional views about Cortese/the club management, but in turn Cortese has every right to stop him using the club's official branding.

Ok, I'm definitely going down the conspiracy theory route then....

It's annoying. I don't think we're going to get him and he's just the sort of player we need - pacey winger who can also play up front. If we can get better, great....but no one leaps to mind...