ant

Surely there's an option in the admin panel to disable all images which could be used while a game's on? Doing so would cause a significant reduction in bandwidth load on the server and I doubt anybody would moan if the site became usable.

Spot on, cheers fella! We must have posted a couple of fair shouts for goal of the month already

Resolve, determination; ruthless.

Getting involved on Twitter might help ease your pain. The Official feed updates with important incidents more quickly than the BBC Sport website and there's plenty of banter to be had with other Saints fans on the #saintsfc hashtag (bit like the match threads on here but without the crashing). That's if you have Twitter already of course, probably a bit much to learn how to use it and set up an account for one evening's use!

Er yeah, except Connolly plays for us.

If it wasn't all that funny when he broke back into the first team then it certainly isn't now. As Connolly says, he's been fit for bloody ages - not to mention currently in some of the best form of his life. Daft chant, he doesn't like it, yet a pocket of mongs will continue regardless. *shrug*

Pretty much sums it up for me. Of course there'll be leaner times than we've experienced in the last 10 or 11 months, but right now it feels brilliant to be a Saints fan. In a way I guess that's amplified by how lean recent times have been - we know to lap this up while it lasts. Nige is a great fit for where the club is currently at. He's astute and switched on - can even forgive him for his cagey, cliched comments as it often helps our cause. He knows he's doing it, as evidenced by his self-referential refusal to use the phrase "in the building" during recent interviews

Just to clarify, it feels exactly as good after a f*ckton of booze. However shortlived this feeling may be, come on you reds!

Yeah sod it, let's soak up the small glories - we still know there's a fair chance this won't carry on all season! Wasn't going to bother doing much today but I think it's beer o' clock and time to head out

Sorry to disappoint. COYR! Hope we can capitalise on this excellent period of play.

I thought the pre-season coverage was pretty good and worth a few quid. Kept me going through the summer drought of football at least.

Fair enough, I must admit I only had the highlights to go on in that Bournemouth game. As you say though, if you're going to take a lower-key role in the team, you have to make your contributions count and often he does. In a round about way that's what I was trying to get at - glossing over his misgivings, he brings an awful lot to our attack even if it's not constantly evident. It's incredibly early in the season of course, but the fact that he's sitting deeper has so far meant that we appear to be lumping it up to him less often, forcing us to play the fast, efficient ground passes that I think are one of this squad's biggest strengths.. His fits and bursts of activity certainly don't hurt either! Quite, it could be similar. His fitness and physique have taken a turn for the better in the past 12 months though which makes me think it might be coaching or self-discipline that have brought about the changes in playing style rather than age or decreasing ability. It could be argued that he's a better footballer now than when we signed him.

Completely agree, The9. Rickie's not only taking on a different role but flourishing there, in my opinion - his pass for Lallana's goal against Leeds got me all sorts of excited. Intelligent footballing brain, great confidence when holding and distributing the ball, quality set pieces... granted this is an extremely hyperbolic statement, but are his attributes starting to remind anybody else of a certain club legend? Obviously not on anything like the same level, but... It frustrates me immensely when people berate Rickie's perceived lack of effort (normally hear this bullsh*t from the stands). How many goals did he create by tracking and closing down last season? A fair few - our first against Bournemouth away comes to mind. I'd say that he and Connolly have a potentially great partnership in the making.

Check out the Hants Police Twitter feed if you want facts - http://twitter.com/#!/HantsPolice They've been updating regularly and have confirmed no trouble as yet.

Exactly. Looking at the videos posted on Youtube, half of the time it's groups of kids milling around while a few smash the hell out of windows and grab what they can. It doesn't take many people to make a huge mess. I don't think I'm going to be able to stand by and enable actions like that. It wouldn't take many people feeling the same way to make a difference. IF it happens of course.

Lots of rumours and nonsense doing the rounds, hopefully most of it will blow over without incident. I'm buggered if I'm letting mindless degenerates attack our city though - if a big enough group of anti-rioters got together it'd be a piece of **** to rush them out. A large group of Turkish shopkeepers managed to clear their road of rioters in London simply by chasing them...

Goodbye Alex, goodbye affection, goodbye media circus. Hello Schteeve, hello loadsamoney. On balance I'm happy with the way things are unfolding. Time will tell, but right now I think Arsenal have managed to mug themselves.

Didn't quite a few people on here suggest that we were a 'second half' team last season?

Fair play - there's a couple that could do with being added mind. Also worth pointing out that @officialsaints generally follow our verified first team players as there were fake accounts for Rickie Lambert and Adam Lallana towards the end of last season.

Well from a Southampton player point of view there's: @RadhijaidiOff @Ryandickson23 @jackcork1 @stief87 Staff includes: @jordansibley (club spokesman) @MrSimonWilliams (communications officer) @Cornsy69 (performance analyst) @TomCoull (cameraman) I don't really follow many non-Saints affiliated football personalities but I'm sure there's some gems.

Was that not partly because people were trying to dive out to the north car park before the game finished and access was temporarily closed off? But yes, I completely agree - apart from anything else when you've paid that much money to see Saints play, why risk missing any of the action? Bloody hell, that "we all love Leeds" got boring quickly! Fair play to them for keeping it going though, our fans seemed pretty disinterested in trying to match it or drown them out which was a shame. However as you rightly say our support was fantastic other than that. My take on it is that we're finally back in the same league as Pompey, so of course there's going to be an initial excitement about it - the chants mentioned were contributed to particularly vociferously. I doubt the fact that the game was televised dampened that spirit. Personally I'd rather 90 minutes of raucous atmosphere exclusively consisting of anti-skate songs than a deathly silent St. Mary's. It really was only about a quarter of that amount of time anyway! Not to mention the fact that ours is a 'real' rivalry so isn't it OK to mention it? Most of the derby teams in this country sing about each other. To me it doesn't have the same tinpot feel as Bournemouth trying to get in on the act last season.

Not only fitter but sharper, I thought. There was a good pace to our buildup which left Leeds looking flat-footed. Whichever methods the coaches were using in pre-season it seems to be paying off. Would appear that this sports science approach really works to each player's attributes- got to be better than just sending them all off to do thousands of laps of the pitch.

Any suggestions? Yes - Google On a more serious note, First Row Sports normally has multiple links to streams of all televised games.

Great post on the whole, but thought I'd pick out this line as I read it with a wry smile on my face. Undoubtedly true in my experience - I lived in Southsea for just over a year (girlfriend's fault - she was at the sh*thole's uni) and used to get some pretty hefty abuse in Fratton when getting off the train after a Saints game. Pompey fans walking around Southampton might get a double take but little more. I do think it stems from them being in our shadow for many of the pre-'05 years. Time to nab superiority of league position back

If it's pure spite we're extolling here, I hope you don't manage to make it to the match then. Bloody hell!