Monkou

Why are home goals more valuable than away goals? Or are you just cherry picking the stats that look worst. Two can play that game - 8th in the league and a cup final - lets see if we manage that next season. By "this squad", you mean Shane Long, and the sporadic availability of charlie Austin, Rodriguez and Gabbiadini? Is that really so strong? Are they really up to filling the boots of Mane and Pelle? The only bright point for me about next season is that are deluded fans are going to get a big shock.

If he improves on what Puel achieved last year I will be absolutely amazed.

Stupid, but sadly expected decision. The club and most of our fans are so far removed from reality its unbelievable. We are becoming a laughing stock. This is nothing other than the board making a scapegoat of Puel to mask the fact they sold 2 top international strikers and and international defender. Add in the fact that we lost our best player for almost half the season, and that we had to play over 50 games with a small squad and it´s a miracle that we did as well as we did. The stupidity of selling Mane and Pelle and then blaming the manager when we do not score many goals is mind boggling.

That is the minimum, rather than the maximum. What I was wondering was whether Spuirs would give a bigger allocation to try and fill the ground. Imagine if they gave us 10k tickets...

Does anyone know what the arrangements for away fans will be at Wembley? It would be great if they gave us a huge allocation for that game.

Of course it is disappointing when top players leave, we all want to see world class players at st Marys each week but consider for a moment how we manage to attract these players in the first place? Players come to Southampton because they see it as a good place to develop, but in general they see it as a stepping stone rather than the final destination. If we start playing hardball and not letting players go to the clubs they want, in the long term our recruitment will dry up. We have had a revolving door since we came back up to the premiership and overall the results have not suffered, is it really worth risking that in what would probably be a futile attempt to break into the top 6?

When does that bet expire? Beginning of next season?

This is probably just concept work and anyway amounts to little more than an overdue refurb of the hospitality product. If this is actually the genuine 10 year plan for st marys then it shows categorically that the club has zero interest in expanding the ground, which in my view is absolutely right. 32k is more than enough, and from a business perspective, much better to be selling out every week than getting 34k in a 40k stadium.

The next step is doing it for 90 minutes. I agree we have played some excellent football at times recently but we still drift in and out of games. Can´t afford to keep letting teams get back in.

Agree with the general sentiment here and was arguing the same to the Puel out brigade earlier in the season when we were struggling. With a small squad we were always going to struggle with the thursday/sunday schedule and sure enough we did. We have also had more than our fair share of injuries to key players and lost 2 international strikers over the summer but despite all that, many of us could see that we were playing well and that things would improve. If we can keep this squad together, something that looks more possible than at any time since we came up, and if we get a bit more luck on injuries, and considering a kinder fixture schedule next season, I think we could have a really strong season.

Palace, Sunderland and hull (less sure about the third one). I think it will be a low points total that keeps you up this season. 36 might be enough.

Actually, I think that is exactly how it should be. If there was ever a need to allocate less seats for a game than there are season tickets (an FA cup final maybe) then it is right that the premium season ticket holders would get priority. Loyalty and support are very subjective terms anyway. If someone lives in Carlisle and goes to a few games up north, are they more Loyal than the saints fan in China with a ton of replica kits who stays up till 5am to watch us on tv and never misses a game?

People only going to away games are not putting any money into the club, I am not sure why they have this enormous sense of entitlement. If the club have set aside a few hundred tickets for that group then fine, but be grateful, don´t keep slagging them off for not putting you above home fans in the pecking order.

If anything he actually comes out of this well. Just the gutter press trying to make a story out of nothing. Accidents happen to everyone. If the police press charges for dangerous driving then it becomes a story but until then, this is a total non story.

I am not sure what the complaint is here. Of course some people will miss out and of course they will be dissapointed. I Live in Madrid and have only been to 2 games this season, so will have no chance unless I pay for someones club wembley seat etc. But thats fine, there are finite seats and it is only right that regular supporters get priority. And as for the away games not counting, that makes perfect sense to me, from a SFC perspective. When you go to a home game you are financially supporting the club. At an away game you are supporting another club. From the clubs point of view, it makes sense to reward people for helping to fill up st marys.

18,000 are club wembley, which means there is only 72k available to sell - 36k each. So it looks like either the organisers take 10k tickets for sponsors etc, or saints have taken 5k for the same. I would guess it is the former.

Was watching in an Irish pub in Madrid. Mainly Liverpool fans and heard a few mentioning how much noise the saints fans were making. Great stuff, well done to everyone who made the trip... sure it was a night to remember. Question is... can you do it on a Sunday lunchtime at stoke?

This only serves to amplify the importance of both the win on Sunday and also our failure to get the 2nd (and 3rd) goal against Liverpool.

I assume this gets cancelled if (now looking very unlikely) we have early rounds of Europa league. Good news though. Our pre season itineraries have showed a real lack of ambition while other teams have been making an effort to get a foothold in new markets. I hope this isn´t too late.

A great servant to the club and a true saint. Was as much a part in our recovery as Lallana, Lambert & Kelvin. Seems he wants one final challenge in his career and don´t blame him at all for that. Hopefully he will play for us again before he leaves and if he does I hope our fans give him the send off he deserves. And if some idiot (sadly we have our fair share) near you starts booing him etc give them both barrels please.

Simon Charlton. Not a glamorous player but always gave 100% for saints. He was also the first saints autograph i ever got.

click bait thread if ever there was one. Annoyed at myself for contributing to it. The answers of course are 1) He wont, obviously, so its irrelevant, but the chances are we would end up with someone very ordinary. 2) He wont go in the summer either, so equally irrelevant, but we would almost certainly go for someone from Europe that most people had never heard of. Eddie Howe? What are people on. The stupidity people who spent the whole summer saying things like "going to be tough having lost 2 class strikers", "Not sure we´ll cope with the amount of games" and "be happy with mid table this year" and yet are now calling for Puel´s head for getting us in the top half with a league cup semi final is staggering.

He came into someone else´s team, lost 2 quality international strikers, had to contend with 2 games a week pretty much every week so far and still we are 9th in the league with a cup semi final to come. In that time he has given debuts to some of our most promising youth academy players who were overlooked under the last regime. Before the start of the season most people were at least pretending to be realistic about this season. The consensus, apparently, was that we would struggle with the weight of fixtures, having lost our two main strikers and that a mid table finish with a cup run would be a decent season. Now suddenly people are saying he is not the guy for the job. Lets give him this season and the next (3 transfer windows) and see how he does. I think he´s the right guy, but whatever you think lets not write him off in december of his 1st season.

Or just grow up and watch the game?

Thats an excellent set of data, please keep it up. I think most fans expected this year to be tougher, with the Europa league campaign and losing 2 quality strikers, but progress has been good and looking at the fixtures leading up to xmas there is no reason we should not be maintaining a nice steep gradient between now and then!