tajjuk

Sadly true, the likes of Barcelona work on control and passing under pressure, they play huge amounts of piggy in the middle style games where first touch, playing with head up and finding space is crucial. Typical english youth team players concentrate too much on fitness, strength and games, it's all about winning whereas the foreign players it's all about individual skill and mentality. Hopefully though the focus at our club through all youth teams is emphasising these skills and sharing ideas/linking/learning from clubs like Barcelona can only benefit our youth players.

I forgot Dyer, so have included him. Oddly 5 of the players can all play right wing.AM - Dyer, Lallana, Walcott, Ox and Bale. I'm only discounting them because I'm not sure what the club's philosophy of academy graduate would be but considering the 'Southampton Way' I would presume players going through the system before 16 is key to fitting this philosophy. As far as I can see the only academy graduate newcastle have in their first team squad is Steven Taylor. Utd have Evans, Cleverley (although was at Bradfords youth team at 12) Scholes, Giggs (although at City), Wellbeck and Sam Johnstone (sub keeper) in their first team squad. Liverpool have 7 but only 4 have featured. Depends where we are, relegation strugglers then a Bale/Ox maybe one or two seasons. Regular top 10 side, we can probably keep that player till he's 21/22, Champs league/euro challengers (Everton ish level) maybe mid 20's. Being in the premier league will massively help though, and then having talented players like that will progress the club at the same time. They will also command a much higher fee with top flight experience. At the same time we will have to follow the Newcastle recruitment policy to fill the gaps, by buying from lesser known leagues/countries, making full use of the EPL's draw (which we did with Ramirez). In fact I think by the signing of the likes of Mayuka and Yoshida show this. Mayuka is the cheap foreign alternative to the English Matt Phillips who would have cost us £8-10 million, the English equivalent Ramirez (there probably isn't one) would have probably cost £25 million plus.

Cole was the better player but only just at the time, however Bridge was stupid not to leave Chelsea earlier, he could have got a regular starting spot pretty much anywhere else and continued to have developed. Had he have done Ashley Cole wouldn't have close to 100 caps, however Bridge's career stalled and he went backwards sitting on the bench at Chelsea and Man City. I certainly think he still would be playing premiership football now if he hadn't chased the money. It annoys me that time and time again Footballers move to big clubs and end up sitting on the bench and not progressing, not heeding the examples of previous players. Walcott would be a far better player if had stayed with us for two more seasons or moved to a middle premiership club like Everton where he would have got more first team football. Having said that though as Bridge is going out with that Saturday's girl and is a multi millionaire he probably doesn't really care.

I wasn't saying no BTW in case it seemed like I was from the htread, in fact I'm more inclined to agree hence why I posted the example of holding onto the players we have already produced (although a little bit of stretch as it would have seen Bridge being a 'one club man' which these days doesn't happen often). However I think's it's going to take a while, and we will need a JWP equivalent potential player every other year I reckon.

Pretty much the title really. The club's stated long term aim is to have 50% of the first team squad made up from players from our academy system. Do you think that this will be achievable and will the squad be good enough to regularly compete in the premier league? If we hadn't lost any of youth products since the academy had been set up then (hypothetically) we would have (based against our current squad):- Key First Teamers:- Lallana, Bale, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain. Squad Rotation Players:- Baird, Bridge, Surman, JWP, Dyer. Back Ups:- Shaw, Reeves, That's technically 13 out of a possible 25 so about 50% (a little attack heavy though ), I'm also discounting the likes of Stephens, Blackstock and Best who were from other teams youth academies. (on side note in Wiki 'Southampton Football Club' re-directs you to 'Portsmouth Football Club' http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southampton_FC&redirect=no )

Lol, I'm not upset so don't need to put you on ignore. When they won the league in 1992 they spent £2.2 million, and recouped £1.8 million. They had finished 6th two years before that. Some of their best ever players like Cantona and Schmeichel were signed for relatively small fees. Ferguson was close to being sacked in 1989. Their average attendances were around 45k at the time. The behemoth they are now is largely due to the work done in the early 90's and them cashing in on the explosion of the Premier League. Good scouting and clever pruchases, good youth policy, sticking with a talented manager, investing in the club's infrastructure and making the most of marketing opportunities. Yeh they are a bigger club than we have ever been. but they hadn't won the league for 30 years and were not a top team in the 1980s behind the likes of Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal. but they maximised everything could off field and grew the club to massive results. It wasn't about mass player transfer of millions and millions. Look at Newcastle promoted in 2009-10, Spent £12 million (including Chiote and Ban Arfa) recouped £35 million from Carroll, finished 13th. Then last year finished 5th, almost got Champions League, spent £22 million (including Cabaye, Ba and later Cisse) recouped £12 million is sales. Championship to 5th Europa League in three seasons with a transfer spend of £34 million.

That Russian club will offer him £250k a week, PSG will probably also offer him that and at least a 2 year contract probably 3. That 'free' transfer will cost them pretty much £40 million, for a player who will be 35 at the end of it.

Proves my point exactly.

Man Utd didn't get where they did by spending "hundreds of millions in transfer fees" they did it by using their youth team and having stability and faith in a talented manager. Where utd are now is essentially due to Fergie and having the likes of Giggs, Beckham, the Nevilles, Scholes etc coming through the youth team and then supplementing those talented youngsters with experienced players. Something which pretty much is the stated ambition of this club. It means being better and improving, it doesn't mean we have to splash millions on player transfers, had we had this current regime for the last 10 years say we might have been able to have held onto our best young players and had the likes of Walcott, Bale and Oxlaide-Chamberlain in the team, who knows, but again it's the ambition of the club to hold onto our top youth players, run the club sustainably and develop the off-field assets, which includes potentially expanding the stadium. As for your 'history lesson', that just sounds like an 'I've been proven wrong statement so I'll say something to cover it up' statement'. I know why crowds are bigger but then your actual previous post you said this "So what did the Dell have to do with it. why are we going to tap into these tens of thousands of fans with nothig else to do when their team is away on saturday now when we've never done it at anytime in our history?" I showed you an exact point in history where we tapped into over 10k new fans. That gives credence to my previous point about their being potential to find even more fans, I proved my point, backed it up with some evidence and you conveniently ignored it because it showed you up. You had no point about the dell, I said the dell might have limited attendances which I admit I was wrong about, however I then illustrated that we have grown our fanbase over the years despite general decline in success, I used this as an example of why I think we can grow our fan base in the future. My original post was about our catchment area, and you pointed to previous history saying we haven't been able to 'cash in' on this catchment area even when we were doing very well, yet I pointed out that we have grown our fanbase despite being crap over the years and then you have repeated the same thing again, previously you were having a go at me for saying we were going to tap into £1.7 million people in Hampshire, which I didn't say but it suited your point to present it like that and you made some pointless references to Basingstoke and Fleet, when most of the population of Hampshire are in fact either near Southampton or Portsmouth. When I countered that comment by saying that all the people in Basingstoke we might loose to Chelsea there are loads more in Dorset and the west country without a top flight club you said this "Plymouth. By your rationale they should be utterly huge." Which again I showed was a stupid comment due to the differences between Hampshire and Devon/Cornwall as well as the state of Plymouth, so again you ignored it. There is literally no point in discussing things with you because whenever a point of yours is countered and show up you ignore it and move on to something else. Hence my "cherry pick" statement.

He's far too derogatory about other clubs and stresses far too much importance in the stature of Celtic and Rangers. If they were such global brands they would have for more money. They have some very passionate local fans and they both easily fill 50k against anyone but they are not Man Utd and there are not Japanese or Africans running around in Celtic shirts. He also completely ignores the fact the the major draw of the Premier League is partly due to it's competitiveness. Whilst yeh the title will be one of City, Utd, Chelsea, possibly Arsenal. There are no easy games, Rangers and Celtic have easy games all the time, the same problem is happening in Spain and Italy, they give the big clubs all the TV money and they walk over the rest of the league. Last year Real Madrid were champions on 100pts, Barcelona 2nd on 91 pts. Valencia came third on 61pts, a full 30 pts behind the second place team and 39 behind the champions! To put that in perspective, Fulham finished 9th in the EPL last year, they were 37 points behind City. In 2010/11 Wolves finished 17th on 40pts and Man Utd won the league on 80. A lot of this is due to the equal share of TV money.

Yeh he's not bothered responding to me since he said that my argument about our catchment area wasn't viable since we weren't able to fill our stadium when we were doing really well in the early 80's, despite ignoring the fact we have gained over 30% more fans since that period whilst the club's on field performances have not got close to the 83/84 season. Turkish even chirped in with the exact same point and ignored the obvious. He will cherry pick your posts for stuff he can take issue with whilst ignoring the things that make his points less valid, he's done a similar thing to you whilst trying to distract from the fact he hasn't really said anything new for 5 or 6 posts by making out your attacking him personally. I've noticed he does it a lot in other posts.

I think we should make it cheaper for people to bring their kids along, U11's should probably be free if with an adult and U17's should be about half the price they are with when bought with an adult ticket. The small dent in short term income would be outdone by the future gain.

lol, what a mong that man is - "'How can Manchester United's revenues be £320million and Aston Villa, who are completely useless, get £250?" A bit harsh on Villa there I'm pretty sure they would comfortably beat both Rangers and Celtic, plus they have a pretty big fan base despite not doing that well recently. It's funny because I commented on the FM forums in response to a post by a Celtic fan who was moaning that Football Manager gives Southampton a higher reputation rating than Celtic. I pointed out to him that just because Celtic get 60k doesn't mean any decent players want to play there. We signed Gaston Ramirez one of the most hotly rated youngsters in European football and they signed Newcastle's third choice keeper. About sums it up. 'There will be a European league because big teams can't keep subsidising small teams like Southampton for the next 10 years because they will go stale,' he said. 'Arsenal don't want to play Southampton or Swansea, but ask them if they want to play Celtic or Rangers. It's what the fans want to see. How are we being 'subsidised' by Big teams, also I'm pretty sure Arsenal welcome the 3pts they get off us every time! But yeh he's probably right though I'm sure Arsenal fans would be quite happy to play Rangers seeing as they would beat them about 20-0. Is it me or is the reason that games between Barcelona and Man Utd are special because of the fact they don't play each other every year?

Maybe on his own but his combination with Baines is deadly, best left side in the Premiership at the moment. yeh seemed obvious to me but then look at some of comments in this thread, Carroll is a threat yes but a lot easier to handle than what most teams have so far thrown at us. Also it's Diame that I think will be a big problem, you highlight our slightly lightweight midfield that he could bully easily if on song, however they do have the 5ft 9 Noble in there. I also think it's more likely jarvis cutting in from the right and crossing to the back post to Carroll against Fox that could be the worry, knocking it down to Nolan.

Well we found another 10k fans from somewhere by getting worse, how did we do that?. Also see my point about Liverpool, they were European and English champions in the early 80's, they played an excellent attractive football and had some of the biggest names around. Yet the current underperforming Liverpool team plays in front of much bigger crowds than their 80's counterparts. Liverpool fans are paying paying proportionally a lot more money to watch the game than they did in the 1980's and getting a worse football team in return. Clearly football attendances in the 1980s and the state of football has little relevance to now, and little relevance to this discussion. I'll freely admit I was wrong about the dell affecting attendances, I have no idea why we wouldn't sell out back then, there must be a lot of other factors at play, but obviously in the 30 years since we have increased our regular fan base by over a 3rd by being constant relegation strugglers, winning nothing and dropping down the leagues. So I don;t see how it's too much of a stretch to suggest we could find another 10k fans with a bit of success. Simply there is no real relevance between attendances in the early 1980's and now. Our own attendances prove that point entirely as does the Liverpool example I provided. You clearly chose to ignore that because it completely destroyed your point. I also don't understand your point about away fans, think you are talking to someone else there. I was talking about the potential of finding new fans, people choose football clubs to support for various reasons, but clearly a lot choose teams because they are good, hence the mass load of Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool fans that are dotted around this area who will never watch their team live. Maybe if we got a bit better some of those fans might switch or the younger ones might choose Saints in the first place and maybe might end up going to St Marys to actually watch the team they support. Currently they have a choice between supporting their local not so good team or their not so local but good team. If Saints got better we could be both. There is certainly a lot of people living near Southampton who are football fans and there is a limited number of options for them.

True and West Ham are no way as good as Everton, nor have the players that compare with Baines, Pienaar or Jelavic. They are drilled and organised but I can't see them over running teams, they more grind teams down. If we can starve them of the ball with our passing, and cut out the stupid defensive errors we can get a result and particularly if we compete for the second ball well (as Carroll will win headers). They lack invention and have looked a bit plodding and predictable at times. Norwich who have defended pretty poorly this season defended quite comfortably against them although it was at home. It all really depends if our defence is up for a scrap and doesn't give them easy chances to score, if we make West Ham work to get chances I think we can outplay them. Some big 'ifs' though.

Have to take your word for it as I was even 1 at the time, also there are no records of our attendances. Liverpool though in the same season regularly failed to sell out Anfield and they won the league and the European Cup that season so it doesn't really show much. When they played us at home in 1983 their attendance was only 26331, yet home to Man Utd the same season the attendance was 45122. Yet last season they had one their worst seasons for ages and sell out Anfield pretty much every game. So Liverpool at their best didn't sell out yet they do now. We had more fans in league 1 turning up regularly than we did when we were almost winning the league. Clearly what happened nearly 30 years ago doesn't really have much relevance now. Almost a good point though

Pretty sure Vaz Te is injured, nor is he any good anyway. It's also not like you get much of a surprise element from Carroll either , I think our defence will be happier defending against Carroll than the likes of Van Persie or Aguero or having the Arsenal midfield run at them. His record of 6 goals in his last 45 premier league appearances isn't exactly terrifying form.

Yeh because the size of the Dell had nothing to do with that Seriously grow up, you run out out of any viable points and just resort to some sarcasm.

I didn't say "1.7M who were definitely closest to Saints", I merely stated the population of Hampshire to illustrate it was a highly populated area. I could include say Dorset which has a population of around 700k, far enough away from London for you? Think there is enough there to balance out the 30k people in Fleet who are 5 miles closer to Chelsea Anyway most of the population of Hampshire is clustered around Southampton and Portsmouth and the M27, North Hampshire is quite sparsely populated hence the massively rural areas and the very small towns like Basingstoke and Andover so I am in fact very much right. Yeh they do over a much much larger area, with a much lower population density as both counties are mainly rural, you are trying to compare one of the most affluent counties in the country with some of the most densely populated areas with two of the poorest and rural. Devon is the 3rd largest county by size, it's nearly twice the area of Hampshire, yet has half the population. That's why it's a stupid point. And as I said the main issue is that Plymouth are in League 2. Was I comparing the North West and Hampshire?, no. I was comparing distances between football clubs. Yes a demographic is relevant but I wasn't commenting on the demographics, however even if people in the North West are more mad about their football then they are in Hampshire why do Bolton and Wigan struggle for attendances? Also on Demographics Hampshire is richer than the north west, in theory the average fan in Hampshire has more cash than the one in Manchester or Bolton. To answer you second question quite a few, personally I agree with others on here, if we had a 40k seat stadium I reckon it would currently sell out for games like Spurs, Utd, Arsenal etc, probably about 8 or 9 of our home games would be sell outs, some like Wigan would be down at 28k, the rest would be somewhere in between. But that's up to the club to see if that's viable and worthwhile. To be fair Spurs and Chelsea are at 99% of attendance pretty much every game. They usually don't sell out because of away fans. However look at Sunderland. The capacity of the stadium of light is 49,000.00. Their last home game against Wigan this season had an attendance of 37, 742. 77% of capacity. Attendance against Man Utd earlier this year 46, 452. I bet they don't regret building the stadium so bi though.

Demographically they are. Both rural, both rely on the tourism for their economy, both have an 'older' population, both have problems with house prices not matching wages due to holiday and second homes. Both have lower average incomes compared to England as a whole.

Good point, always forget that Plymouth is just in Devon. Devon and Cornwall are still pretty similar though.

Fleet? With it's massive population of 30k, not really relevant and it's about 5 miles in it. i think you are somewhat clutching at straws here. Also yes Basingstoke is closer to Reading, but then I have just been told off by suggesting Reading are a similar sized club to us, but I will certainly not say they are a bigger club. Is everyone in Basingstoke a Reading fan? or are they actually Chelsea fans? I was talking about competition from bigger clubs, Reading are not a bigger club. Stupid point, have you been to cornwall?, not that many people live there (population of plymouth is just 71k, the population of Winchester is 40k by comparison) and they are spread out , it's very economically poor, the transport links are poor. Oh and they are in LEAGUE 2. Bored. Again you have missed the point, it's not a comparison about where the club currently is now, it's about the potential if we continue to improve. We potentially have a large catchment area however to attract more fans we have to become better, which means regularly in the premiership, then getting into Europe, getting some star names etc etc. I used the likes of West Brom, Fulham and Wigan because even if they improved in a similar way they would still have trouble attracting more fans because they are competing with already established big clubs. No I didn't, I merely compared distances between various football grounds around the country, your point about 'demographics' is not relevant to my point and I'm not sure it's true but that's not what is being discussed. To answer your question see my very first post, you'll notice I agreed with the poster at the top of the page, a couple of seasons of european football or at least in and around the top 6 or 7, i.e something close to say Everton have been over the last few years. I would then think you would start to see some of those Man Utd Chelsea kids at SMS.

FFS, I didn't compare us to the North West of England I pointed out there are a lot of clubs in a small geographical area and some of them are huge like Liverpool, Man Utd, man City and Everton, it therefore makes it tough for clubs like Bolton and Wigan to attract new fans because they are so close to these massive clubs, similar problems for the likes of Fulham and West Brom. It's a problem we don't have. Secondly I'm talking about potential to grow, to attract new fans, to get the kids growing up to not support Liverpool or Chelsea, doesn't happen overnight, we need to grow as a club, improve, get into Europe, have big name players. That's why kids support the likes of Chelsea or Arsenal.

A huge statistical analysis there I have loads of mates who are Liverpool fans that all live pretty much next to Southampton, doesn't mean it's a catchment area for Liverpool. Like I said lots of potential to tap into fans if we grow as a club, remember we haven't been in the prem for a while, nor have we ever been that big a club. If we want to pick up new fans some of them will be glory fans. It's true don;t delude yourself, we are a slightly bigger club but not by much.