stthrobber

We were talking about TSW on the way home yesterday evening and were highlighting the fact that nearly every thread on this forum descends into negativity either between posters or about the club and its players. We have to be realistic that the better our team does, then the big clubs will look at our players and make bids for them. Very few players will ever see playing for Southampton and coming 8th in the PL as the pinnacle of their career. The days of the Matt Le Tiss one man club are long gone. Of course Lallana will want to play in the Champions League against the best players in Europe, of course he will want to win things because he's unlikely to at Saints, and that goes for every single player with ambition. If any of our top players are sold this close season then I wish them well, they've given a lot of pleasure this last season in particular. If clubs cherry pick our players, then naturally we will cherry pick players from smaller or less successful clubs than our own. The board has big decisions to make, we are 27 million in debt thanks to Cortese's generosity with the Liebherr estate, so they have to weigh up what is best for our club and the players in question There is no blame to be attached, its just the natural evolution of the PL and whatever happens now, is happening because we've done well for a club of our size

I think the whole debate would have been nullified if Subway had just given their customers the choice of eating halal products if they want to, and those who want a bacon sarnie the option if they want it. The problem in what is effectively discriminating against eaters of non halal products is that they are seen as pandering to Muslims and the those that raise concerns are then labelled as racist. I don't eat Subway so I don't give a toss either way, but those that do should have a choice, then the problem doesn't appear.

I was sat with wifey in the West Stand and it was very strange not to be with the Saints fans, but overall I thought the boys outplayed Swansea, and deserved the win. The bloke behind me commented to his son how Shaw was skinning their boy. The one thing that annoyed me was Clyne not doing likewise. He always seemed to cut in, but had the pace to skin their defender. The one time he did, the cross he put in nearly resulted in a goal. The Saints fans were awesome today and it was a great sight when they were all waving their scarves I didn't really see the goal from where I was, but it was greeted with complete silence by the home fans. They didn't react at all where we were. Not even a swear word, just silence. Not a great performance, but a professional one with some excellent individual displays. We are very blunt up front though. I don't think Sam G is ready to be a first team regular just yet. Overall though, a good day out

I think peeps are being a tad harsh on the purpose of the page on the OS. This was a player who had his heart set on playing in the World Cup Finals in Brazil and who was in with a pretty good shout of making the squad along with some of his Saints FC team mates. That dream has now been shattered, so whilst the messages of support won't heal his ACL, they will provide a crumb of comfort to him. There is a worry that he might not recover to be the player he was before the injury. The fact he's on more a week than I get in a year is neither here nor there if there is no chance of realising your immediate dream.

Same here, I've tried Firefox, IE11 and Chrome, I've tried enabling pop ups etc but I just get the same as you.

Liz was here under Lowe's regime and then I think she went to Fulham after Saints

I think Bern was on here. He was sadoldgit as I remember. I think he was last living in Beckenham last time we had any contact.

For some reason, West Ham lingers in my memory, but it certainly was a very hot day. I can remember chatting to Rich Ember and Regan Atkinson. I think Ted Bates was quite infirm and was possibly in a wheelchair when he arrived. I can't remember who chaperoned him, but my feeling is that it might have been Lawrie Mac. Saintslist was great in its day, and when I modded the list for years, I think back to all those things that we thought were important at the time, but really weren't. I think I took it far too seriously at the time. As someone mentioned anonymity earlier, well, Saintslist had its anonymous members. There was one bloke who referred to me as the "Blakey" of Saintslist (referring to On The Buses for younger readers). He was on the list for about a year using the name Kaleid Amia. Lots of people thought he was an Asian listee, but in fact, the day he left the list, he let the cat out of the bag, and his name was an anagram of I Am A Dalek. Quite funny.

I was on Saintslist when it moved to the Uni server. That was in the olden days of 14/28k modems and a phone line and trolls were kids toys with ginger hair hanging off a key ring. I remember a Saintslist get together in a pub just around the corner from The Dell near the old cricket ground where I met many members of the list, and if memory serves me right, Ted Bates came along too. Dave Currie and I became very good friends for many years, but I didn't know he'd gone back to Scotland. We lost touch some time ago. There was a crowd of us that regularly used to meet up at the Varsity for lunch before a match. Me and wifey, with DC and Beth, Minty, Matt Mullen, Jon Short and a few others. They were happy days and I'm still on Saintslist (just about).

I do seem to recall Walcott's dad stirring things a bit to get Theo out of Saints after relegation. We weren't really in a strong position then, but we are now. The only problem that I can see, is that whilst Cortese would have played hardball, we don't know how the new regime will react to big money offers. Realistically, players will always aspire to be playing at big clubs where they stand a chance of winning things, but what we have in our favour to offset that, is that 4 players from Southampton have been called up for the England squad, so the players know, they can achieve international status whilst at Saints

I take your point but you shouldn't have to buy spares and extras to make a phone better. I've taken Suharis advice and looked at the HTC One. It's a possibility

Well I've had an S3 for nearly 2 years and I'm growing to hate the bloody thing. Poor battery life, unresponsive and slow and the keyboard is so sensitive that I always type the wrong words. The bluetooth is unreliable, I'm constantly having to pair it with my car which is a pain in the arse when I've driven off only to see it hasn't connected. I never once had such an issue with my old iPhone 4, so I might be happy going back to an iPhone when upgrade time is due. I also get a pretty poor signal at home, but whether that's down to poor coverage by Vodafone, or the phone I'm really not sure, but it does annoy me when we go out to restaurants and my mates are quite happily looking up stuff and I've got no signal. Maybe I'll bin Vodafone too

I read the start of this thread because I was in the market for a new console. The things that influenced my final decision were, price, size, power. I was advised to wait until the Titanfall edition of Xbox One, but on the basis that the game might kick start the consoles sales I chose to buy the PS4. It sits nicely on top of my 360 and when I've finished playing my remaining Xbox games, then I'll get rid. The resolution and graphics are outstanding

Lallana was largely anonymous and was not making any impact, therefore it was on the cards he would get subbed. The fact is the we were a striker light because of Dani's ban and there weren't too many options available. We have a very good first team squad when fit, but overall our squad players are Championship level at best. Had Gaston not suffered the injury and gone on to score the winner, would you still be complaining? I think some of the armchair tacticians on this forum who aren't employed football clubs needs reality check

I guess it depends on how you define legend? For me it would be a player who in each period of our history rises up above all the rest and stands out, and that for fans of other clubs and pundits alike, the player that they think of when Saints are mentioned. For all the plaudits Kelvin Davis has received in this thread, Rickie Lambert is the stand out player who has become synonymous with our rise from League 1. He's scored consistently up until this season, and transformed himself from an also ran, journeyman striker into a top notch professional who scored on his England debut whilst playing for Saints. In my book that makes him a legend. Adam will achieve that status in time as long as he stays with us, and indeed is one of a few players who is fast building a national reputation, but for me, in the last 5 years, it's Lambert that has cemented his status as Saints legend.

The Dutch stream only seems to show Newcastle/Arsenal here????

I think this is a little unkind, but is generally the view that most people will hold about Lowe. He realised we didn't have the means to compete with the likes of Man Utd etc in the transfer market, and he wanted the club to live within its means which people always despised him for. Therefore the only way we were going to get good players at the club was to develop them ourselves, but when that happened, we didn't have the financial clout to keep them and therefore the likes of Bridge, then Walcott, Bale and the Ox were sold because we needed the money and the club was never in a position to turn down silly money for young players. I can't say what would have happened if Lowe had the financial backing that Cortese does, but I suspect that some of those players would have stayed. As far as the Academy goes, I think Lowe deserves credit. There were several other things that went on that I won't give him credit for, but bringing in people like Huw Jennings, Georges Prost and Matthew Crocker were all good decisions

Yes, when people in the media talk about our youth system, it's not unusual for them to refer back to the likes of Shearer and Le Tiss and the Wallaces amongst others, but those players came through sporadically, and what makes the academy so special now, is the fact that several of its proteges were in the first team squad yesterday at the same time. I'm not sure about how the system works for attracting youth players now, we used to have a catchment area that we could draw from, but there is no doubt that the fact that so many talented players like Lallana, Shaw, JWP and Chambers have come through the academy, and are also getting noticed at England level too is testament to the work that has gone in to the academy as well as the financial investment, and like it or not, Lowe must take some of the credit for that.

I think quite simply, that Cortese has been able to invest heavily in the first team as well as the Academy, which is something Lowe couldn't do because he didn't have the cash. Having said that, let's not forget that what Lowe put in place all those years ago was never going to bear fruit there and then, it was always going to be investing in the future, so I think there's a hefty dose of Cortese reaping the benefits of those that put the original plans in place, but where he scores heavily is that fact that so many of them are actually in the first team and on the fringes of it, whereas before they never really got anywhere near it. Sadly for us, in the past, where they did, big clubs came a knocking, and our dire financial straits meant we weren't in a position to say no to them.

Well Steam has patched my game, but I haven't tried playing with a joystick yet. I started with one, but it wouldn't fire so I've been using keyboard and mouse. Still haven't changed my opinion. It's crap

Believe me, this game is a real pile of cack. Very poor graphics, dreadful voice acting and it looks like it was supposed to be for a console. No joystick support but it will work with an Xbox 360 controller. It's as if Egosoft took everything that was great about the other X games and binned them in an effort to create mediocrity

I've never seen Wellbeck do anything in an England shirt to suggest he could be a world class player. Poor first touch for starters. He reminds me of George Lawrence or Paolo Wanchope, or Bambi. Sturridge might score goals for Liverpool but again I've not been impressed with him for England. I didn't see the point of bringing Lambert on last night as much as I want to see him play for England. There was no service to the front men. England never looked like scoring

If the future is Wellbeck and Sturridge, then we are stuffed. Nice to see the recognition for JWP and Shaw though. Barton is still a complete d1ck though

I had a hamster a few years back that I called "Matty". He didn't do much, but when he did it was brilliant.

As a follow up to this I had an engineer round who advised that certain boxes with built in wifi will freeze with certain routers. I don't know why they allow this if they know there's a problem, but he changed it for a box with a wifi adapter so hopefully the problem will be cured now...and Sky are apparently working on a bug fix.