JackanorySFC

At a national level Pardew rarely gives any tips, off record quotes etc whilst employed. I say rarely - to my knowledge never - but he may have done in a previous life. Sam usually talks on the record so this almost definitely wouldn't have come from him, however the owners and their Cheif Exec on the other hand......

The Chelsea scouts at nippers games at Southampton Tyro level crack me up. Whenever watching my nephews play it seems every other game there is a Chelsea bod in full Chelsea tracksuit watching. The Saints scouts are far more discreet, I assume this is because now we fall in the 60 mile radius thing from Cobham, Chelsea have to make a show of being able to tap up Southampton youngsters so make their scouts wear all the gear?

Agree re the Navigator, rip off now thanks to a lick of grey paint ffs.

Heard a brutal stat recently: With the extra money Sky are putting in next season, EVERY club in the Prem could fill their grounds for free next season and not see a drop in revenue. Scary stuff really. For me more than £600 is too much, I miss 2 or 3 games a season as it is. If they went up to £700 I'd just get U12 tickets to every game and jib in, ultimately costing the club £300 from this season.

2nd youngest, Theo is the youngest ever player (about 150 days younger than Shaw would've been if he played) and youngest ever goalscorer. Pretty sure Theo also holds the records at U17 & U19 level too. Sorry to be a pedantic b****** btw....

It was Matty that kept bringing Benali into it, neither Frannie or NC had mentioned each other at all before this. The club merely clarified their position on the court case. Personally I hope Frannie wins as from the here say I've heard it sounds like he has a decent case, but that's got nothing to do with it, Matty kept bringing Frannie into it so the club simply said it was a legal matter and won't be commenting further. Come on mate, even you must see Matty's completely ballsed this one up?

Sorry mate but with the best will in the world, you aren't going to get TV cameras/ radio mics etc in that meeting. It seems to have been planned as a private, 1-2-1 meeting to clear the air (old fashioned but the right thing to do imo), after the meeting Matty could have said what he wanted and/ or released a joint statement with the club.

If Matty agreed the meeting with NC on the basis that it was confidential etc then Matty just needed to straight bat those questions with either no comment, or "things could be improving on that front, I can't say why but hopefully soon you'll hear some positive news at last". Instead he carried on going on about it and, if you are right, played right into NC's hands in a very nieve, actually stupidly obvious way. I have to say it looks the opposite, like he wanted to engineer a break down in the meeting to try and paint NC as the bad guy but it seems to have back fired imo.

I'm firmly in the camp of those that grew up with Matty as their hero (I've got the Junior Saints birthday cards signed by Le God himself to prove it too) and the bloke can do little wrong with me, supported him in my local in Botley late last year in one of his "an evening with..." nights and it was a superb night, great anecdotes and not many references to "politics" etc. However, I'm starting to think the unthinkable, basically Matty's mugged himself right off over this, should have kept it to himself, clearly that was one of the conditions of the meeting and, if anything, it does look a little like he's engineered it to break down in the hope it makes NC look bad. Really bad form from Matty, I'll defend that man to the hilt, he defined by childhood and was a key reason why I fell in love with football, but on this front he looks completely in the wrong and it's all his doing.

Agreed the inflatables thing is cringworthy, however if the barmies are going to do anything brown envelopes are a decent shout. If 2 kids holding snotty hankies can get national coverage at MP's first home game I'd hope a few '000 brown envelopes (cheap and available from any Post Office/ work stationary cupboard) would get decent coverage and hopefully touch a nerve with the twitchy ***!

No chance - give him absolute dogs abuse for 90 minutes. He's getting really precious these days, I think as many references to him being a crook, taking bungs and sending us down as we can think of. Some sort of song saying the only good thing he did was ruin the skates could be decent too. I want to open the papers up the following morning and read about how vile our supporters are and Redknapp sounding off about it too. Good. He is a disgusting human being that has got away with murder for years, he's getting both barrels off me, in fact I think I'll move down from my ST seat in block 2 to be close to the dug out before KO just to let him know how much I despise him.

Nice one, I'll bare that in mind, hopefully see you before then for the full heads up pal!

Got one along, enjoys digging me in the nuts if I forget my box the sick f***! The others don't like the sound of it (love "boxercise" though ffs), oh except 1 that went, loved it but had to stop going as it was too aggressive compared to his regular martial arts and was giving him bad habits. Got a grading in March, can't wait to get me sewing kit out ;-)

We do that at the beginning and end of our lessons usually, our motto is "always forwards", easier said than done in the last 2 minutes of a 2hr beasting! Look forward to catching up soon actually pal, my mates are bored to death with me going on about it, f***ing addictive stuff, love it!

From one hand to hand combat student to another, I doff my cap sir.... (To keep on topic maybe our support should take mass lessons to ensure we can self police?)

Absolutely addicted mate, going tonight for defending bat attacks. Just in time for Newcastle away too, if I see our baby beating hordes swinging lumps of wood/ metal at young mums in a mist of red smoke I'll be ideally placed to neutralise the threat accordingly. I may have to call upon your help if I get carried away and forget to scan to ensure I don't take a sly one to the neck. However I doubt it as I am now, 11 weeks in, a human nuclear missile when provoked.

I have my own version of justice, one of which is innocent until proven guilty and grassing up a young lad on the basis of a blurry camera phone photo of a kid walking with his hands in his pockets for an incident that not a single other person seems to have witnessed is not my idea of justice. To each his own (as I said earlier) but personally I despise the OB, I have my reasons for that and no, I don't have a criminal record. If I saw a doris take a slap to the mouth whilst holding a baby (and personally I don't think this actually happened) I'd restrain the attacker by going for his joints, eyes, b******s, nose and throat until he was no longer a threat, scan to ensure his pals don't go for me and get the f*** out of there - certainly wouldn't film it on a phone and tweet about it later in some desperate attempt to get a couple of retweets ffs.

Credit where it's due fella, excellent blog that. You're right, not massive exposure for the pair of them yet, but with the modern manager's obsession with Pro Zone, Morgan especially will be on a lot of clubs radars in the summer. Both seem happy here though, as you mention in the article they could/ should be the bedrock of this side for the next 5+ years

I liked him, he replied to my letter re Safe Standing pretty much straight away and said he would support it in Parliament based on the feelings of his constituents. Only done what loads of people do all the time (passing points between a couple), never wish bird on any non violent offender, absolute waste of money imo. Round here though it's never Tories vs Lib Dem, it's Tories vs everyone else. My old man (staunch Labour) told me as such when I turned 18, either go with my heart and vote Labour, or go with my head and vote Lib Dem to keep the toffs out. Since then I've learned to think for myself and look after my own and my families interests more, and unlike most mental Tory hating lefties that would refuse to vote for the Tories even if Cameron allowed them a seat in the cabinet, I've grown up to be pragmatic and move my vote around. The By-election will certainly be interesting anyway...

To each his own but I'd personally never help the OB (seen them happily lie to stitch football fans up with my own eyes) or grass on a fellow Saint.

Because more ABC1's read it than the DT, TMS, GDN, & INDY combined according to both the audit bureau of circulation and national readership survey. Newspaper snobs crack me up, absolutely hate that a paper they happen to avoid is read by 7m every day, a far bigger chunk of that ABC1's than these snobs assume anyway. On that note, even if you were not completely wrong with your snobbish assumpions of Sun readers socio demographic status, football is a working class sport surely our chairman grovelling to mike (and even as a massive NC fan I know he eat big humble pie that day) was a good thing as clearly the working classes that visit St Mary's or can't afford to do so as money is tight in a labour voting working class port city like Southampton (which has more Sun readers than Echo readers) all read the rag that's the Sun so what a great way to get our comms out to the great unwashed Spellins for subs btw...

Cortese definitely does care about the press, well he cared enough to be driven to the NI offices in Wapping to have a 1-2-1 meeting with Mike Dunn (Sun sports editor) to convince him to stop calling us South Coast Club etc. Source? Me, I was in the newsroom when he was given a tour after leaving Mike's office on amicable terms. Ever since that meeting every official club exclusive press interview has gone through the Sun. Why? Because its by a mile the most read and most influencial (sorry newspaper snobs but that's a fact). An intelligent bloke like Cortese recognises that.

Probably the opposite in management which, I think, proves my point. He was training with inferior players and expected similar standards to those set by Fergie and Cloughy. Players at those clubs weren't of the "United mentality" which made Keane's blood boil and led to him falling out with players. The same character trait that made him a great player at great clubs led to him being a bad manager. Similar to Hoddle imo, he couldn't get his head around why players didn't have the same passing/ vision in much the same way Keane couldn't understand why a pro footballer wouldn't dedicate their every waking moment to being and improving at being a pro footballer.

Didn't mention him being anything other that what you've described - I don't get your point???? Don't think I mentioned him in the context of wanting to be his mate, have him over for tea or to phone up and discuss X Factor or anything? He's a winner, and plays for a club full of winners. Unlikeable yeah, so what? You think Keane gave a s*** what people thought of him when he dragged United through to the European Cup final in the 2nd leg of the Semi in Turin even though he was banned for the final? He couldn't give a f***, he just wanted his club to get to Barcelona. His job was done then, didn't see him being mr "I'm everyone's mate, pass me a kit for the photo session with the cup" like John Terry? Players like Keane, Neville, Scholes, Schmeicheal (sic), Giggs etc put the effort in 100% of the time, on and off the pitch, they are at the end of the "Cup finals" of smaller teams every week, just as we thought we "arrogantly" were in the lower leagues. Football needs winners like that, winners don't need mates or people on noddy forums wanting to be their mates. FWIW as I mentioned in my previous post I think this squad is a lot better drilled in that respect than the squads of the 90's and 00's. We go for every game and win the games against teams around or below us far more consistently whilst still putting up a quality showing against the bigger sides.

The Sun have absolutely no knowledge of this and my mate there laughed it off. Nigel's reputation is completely impeccable and that ridiculous last paragraph re Laws would be easy to checked through the Court order. Have to say I genuinely laughed at the "pick yourself up Colin, you're an absolute f***ing mess", whoever made that up is wasted making stuff up (if that makes sense).