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Surely not an evening for picking holes in the semantics of women's football or the minutiae of commentary? A nice thing has happened. Crack a beer and celebrate us winning something, FFS.

Can't say I blame anyone, given the notoriety of Spurs' forwards for giving our back line a hard time. Also haven't seen much in pre-season to suggest we've matured in defence or eradicated the daft errors. I don't think it'll be doom and gloom all season. We've a few promising players which I think will come good. But it's a bloody difficult start.

Or perhaps people that would've posted in this thread became jaded by the vocal minority that only intend to scoff, or to keep needlessly commenting on the amount of activity. If it's not for you - and that's a collective 'you' - fine. We get it. But coming back again and again to tell us is pretty tiresome. I'm really looking forward to tonight, and will crack something decent if we win. But what's the point trying to converse about it on here when it'll be derailed within a few posts?

Yeah, after reports from other matches I was anticipating a 'pre-season friendly' atmosphere. It was anything but. Don't know whether the Friday night element helped. Either way, our group had a cracking time. Was nice to have the England Band working with the fans, rather than trying to overrule them. Bizarrely ended up only two seats from my brother, despite buying separately in the random allocation. Seemed to be about 1k to 2k empty seats, which was a shame. Was an empty set of 6 or so in front of us. I guess some speculatively bought tickets; it was only £15 pp in our section.

If you click onto the Football homepage/landing page of any website, funnily enough you'll see literally everything relating to football. The separation/segmentation you describe if available on just about any relevant news site I can think of. Want to see content about a specific League? Cup? Team? All possible - and then you can indiscriminately click through subsequent links to your heart's content. Is this just a misunderstanding of how categorisation works? Lack of Internet savvy? Or is there a more pig-headed stubbornness at play?

Of the 24 things you can currently click through to from the OS homepage, 4 relate to womens football. 4 mentions of the womens team on Facebook from about 30 posts this week. We've tweeted about 70 times this week; there's 10 tweets directly or tangentially linked to womens football. It's 4 from 36 on the BBC Football homepage. 6 from 26 on the Sky Sports Football homepage (albeit 3 on Bronze - and 2 link to the same interview). And let's not ignore that on virtually any website worth its salt you can filter news, and/or view by specific league. If we're going to talk about things being "forced" upon us, shall we at least speak in facts?

As opposed to the men's game, where most only tend to know so much about it (and have heard of XYZ player) because year-on-year there's ever more coverage and reporting. Not sure this is the slam dunk you think it is.

The Premier League record is held by Beckham with 18; JWP needs 5 more to beat that. At 27 and fit as a fiddle, who'd bet against? Craziest thing is that 8 of his 14 in the Premier League have come since 1st November 2020.

Only remember a single lad trying his luck in darting towards us; their fans were placed directly opposite, so it was a bloody long trek round. He made it about halfway before bottling it (or the stewards catching him?) if memory serves. Anyway, yes - I've rounded up a small group for this one. Keep meaning to head over to Totton for some matches but life's been conspiring against. Seemed worth the extra effort given where it's being played, the opponents and the situation in the league!

Changing work circumstances mean it wouldn't make sense for me to renew. Albeit even before that I was wavering on whether it's something I *need* any more. Have had my seat from the first season I was earning enough to pay for it outright (2010/11, I think?) so it'll be a bit of a wrench to start with. Though saying that most of the people I used to go with dropped off long before this season.

Wait... So Matt can hold and express any opinion he likes on any subject (which he's perfectly able to, of course), yet nobody is allowed to have an opinion on that? That's not free speech. This situation hasn't occured because of a supposed 'cancel culture' - it's consequence culture. Say whatever you like. Just don't be surprised if people have something to say in response.

Tiss is exactly the type that pisses and moans about lack of free speech, even whilst utilising that platform of free speech. Then throws toys out of the pram when anybody dares exercise their free speech to question him. I'm not gonna lose any sleep about how he chooses his time, and don't really pay any attention to anything he says any more. But if you position yourself as a relentless contrarian, expect to meet opposition.

In fairness the Kingsland North and Itchen North were pretty decent last night (certainly much better than during the Coventry match). Granted, West Ham's lot looked and sounded pretty disinterested. But stick enough vocal fans in the corners and the 'pincer' effect of it is surprisingly effective.

The 'fear' has pretty much gone. Even with Wolves, I felt we were more out-maneuvred than played off the park. Under no illusion it'll last forever, of course. But yeah - it feels like there's a lot more value to the ol' season ticket at present! Richly deserved after several seasons of dross at home.

I'm not sure why his final season for us is so often written off. Plenty of occasions in that year where he became our de facto leader. Virtually ever-present (only Bertrand made more league appearances), and chipped in with 6 vital goals at a time when we were incredibly goal-shy (Austin was top scorer with 7). He gave everything that year; was far more gritty and combative than he's given credit for. Particularly in the second half of the season.

That you don't know it's "you fat bastard" probably says a fair amount. We've an OK variety of songs; not the best, but far from the worst in the league. There's precious little novelty of chant at any top level club these days. It's a bit rich opinining about relative intelligence when it's routinely only Northam, Itchen North and Kingsland North that make any sustained noise. Perhaps the intelligentsia elsewhere fancy piping up and schooling us with some scathing wit and originality?

Would personally argue that this season is showing they're quite different instruments. Overall it's just nice to have options and a little more depth. Redmond has been far more likely to contribute assists, whereas Elyounoussi possesses the greater goal threat. (0G, 5A for Nathan in the PL; 2G 6A overall. 3G, 1A for Moi in the PL; 7G 3A overall).

It's not the first time he's said it. This from April 2021: https://www.kicker.de/hasenhuettl-erwaegt-karriereende-mein-voller-ernst-803616/artikel.amp

Having read my post back a couple of times I can't see where I claimed it was? Nor did I suggest it as an option; much less a piece of piss. I'll boil my point down: unless a sizeable portion of those currently in the Chapel fancy permanently relocating, it's not the hard-and-fast answer it's being presented as. Simplest solution would probably be for the club to just enforce a switch. Run a survey to gauge how many people it'll hack off, and if it's proportionately less than the number moaning about where the away fans are you've got a relatively easy win.

All of the "just take over the Chapel" talk completely ignores that season ticket holders have been getting first dibs on cup tickets. So even if the displaced Northam fans do want to descend en masse upon a certain area of the stadium, it's somewhat dependent on how many ST holders take up their own seats. I also think some are conflating the topics of cup allocations displacing fans and the lack of a so-called 'Kop', when they're two separate things. The latter isn't easily solved with a 'move, then' attitude either. Unless you can arrange block-for-block swaps between Chapel and Northam, I can't see either group being particularly happy with a blend of the two ends.

To be fair I still seemed to manage to book myself a £10 ticket? Couldn't see how to do it when adding my entire lot, so added mine to basket first, then went back and added the rest.

Waited until today to get tickets, as a few of the group aren't ST-holders/members. Incredibly the site is struggling to load anything past the Match Tickets - First Team page. can't be more than a couple of thousand people on there, surely? The current system's even worse than the one we had previously.

Er... No. Just from memory, they: * Listed Tella at CB in the starting lineup graphic * Claimed we regularly play 3-4-3 * Pre-red card, consistently mixed up Tella and Valery * Didn't know Ward-Prowse has had a solid number of cameos at right back * Didn't know whether we had any substitute full backs on the bench And my absolute favourite - when referring to Ward-Prowse's birthplace, said there can't be many from Portsmouth that have done well for Southampton. During a bloody FA Cup match... 🤦‍♂️

Would be fun if we announced a signing at this 4pm Solent presser.