Daft Kerplunk

Well hopefully it hasn’t gone totally wrong, but maybe a little less arrogance which can easily lead to complacency and a little more substance being added to the claims of developing world class players, marching on to years of continuous growth, saying we’ve got he best midfield options in the league etc.

Maybe you can write another letter of complaint...it’s too quiet now Saints. You did as we asked, but now we’ve changed our minds

You have to hope that somebody is at least asking Les what the hell is going on, and what it being done about it immediately. Players don’t look like they care, they don’t appear to be fit enough, we have signed a number of average players, the academy is not in great shape and so on. Les bangs on about his due dillience when it comes to signing players and managers but at the moment, all that looks like the absolute BS it is. The club has got complacent, believes its own hype and I doubt anyone ever can challenge Les. Maybe Chairman Gao might be asking some tough questions of the board.

The u16s are now the age where they would have been coached during Les’ version of the Southampton Way. I am sure that a few staff from the days when Southampton’s academy was really doing well and producing the players that the club still use for marketing and the current lot claim credit for left to go and work for England, turning that lot around from the it was before...

It’s a fair point about winning in the old days but one big difference was that it didn’t cost what it does to go these days. Me and my mates could make a decision to go based on having a few spare quid and it was comparable to going to the cinema. Very different to nowadays. This means the relationship between the team and the paying customer is very different.

It’s the Southampton Way. We make world class unadventurous players. It’s what we do.

Big blow this. Hope he’s back for the next match

Maybe the club will unleash a new batch of academy players that nobody knows about yet because Les has been keeping them ‘secret’ from England u-17 selectors etc.

If you know sound levels don’t work like that, you’ll know that an iPhone app won’t give you an accurate reading so is not the best method. I may sound flippant, but I like football to be loud, not quiet which is what it has become. Our fans just don’t sing or shout enough. The culture is rubbish at St. Mary’s and plenty of football stadiums in the UK. And this series of posts sums up the fact that the fun police will spoil the effort the club have been trying to make for the players and those who prefer an atmospheric event. Who knows, maybe our fan base will have a massive change of heart and arrive early, start singing most of the time during a match, make it intimidating for the opposition and make it a loud stadium each week...led by all you moaning folk of course

Where does it say that 86 decibels is too loud for an entertainment venue or innapropriate? Also, your monitoring is flawed because anyone talking near you will also add to the volume, a plane flying overhead will do the same. A phone in a noisy environment where people are talking and shouting is a throughly innacurate measure. Sorry to let you know this. A workplace has regulations to wear ear defenders because the noise would be continuous, not for 5 minutes. Different kettle of fish. Do you take your app out at music gigs or the cinema or a pub and tell them to be quiet when any noise exceed this level? As for comments that it drowns out any atmosphere, the email back from the club shows that we (you and I) weren’t making enough as fans. I would suggest that those moaning about the noise levels are among the quietest fans and have contributed to the decline in atmosphere. The atmosphere before matches was reaching all time rubbish levels. Anyway, seems like the club are going to bow down to the 10 people moaning over the 32,000 that don’t.

Keep it loud. Music is great too. Bet the players love it and have a say in it as well. They need an atmosphere that is loud. All about opinions and I suspect that the complainers are heavily outweighed by those people liking it loud and then there will be a group who don’t care either way. As you were Saints, it’s absolutely what needed to be done.

Nothing so far suggests top 8 and barely top half but it’s still early days. Fixtures from now on will be extremely influential on the final outcome of the season.

Sh1te, but still our sh1te. #welimpon

At least he tried to do something different today and thank goodness we scored at home from open play again. 3 wins in 17. The rot goes back further than the current boss but maybe today can act as some sort of indication that the formation needs to be stuck with and give players confidence that they can score if they play the ball forward

Les is 100% unsackable so no point saying he should go.

Love how our academy success still comes across. Only problem is that all the players the club celebrates were products of the system before Les and Martin Hunter joined the club so the systems or additions they have put in place has nothing to do with them. It is really now where we see if the celebrated Southampton Way when it comes to youth players actually works.

One for the statisticians: if we haven't already, how many goals do we need to beat our lowest ever goal tally in a calendar year? I cannot remember us ever being so goal shy!

This surely highlights a problem with the Les method of recruitment where he and a committee pick the players to sign and then a manager/head coach tries to make them fit a formation of his choice, or one that they feel can get results. Les and the board have absolutely let Puel and MoPe down with regards to the attacking players (including midfielders who don't have the ability or confidence in their ability to play it forward) and because of the system employed to sign players, it is 100% on them.

How about some fans get together and start something? It's what fans in other countries and even ours do, today's visitors have fans who organise stuff. The club can't do it as it would be fake so that leaves the fans to do something about it. The club may be currently owned by Chinese business people and run by corporate drones but they don't own the fans, the city or the spirit of the club. That's ours and therefore we have to reignite it.

You sir have hit the nail squarely on the head with the above points, apart from maybe the adult only section - teens should surely be allowed. But it would be a very ballsy club to try these things without graphs, focus groups, data to show it would work first, especially as people who work in football, particularly those at the top never came remotely near football as it once was.

Regular working class English football fans not trusting their clubs leaders who are often privileged types is nothing new. The likes of Les and Ralph have been clever enough to get there (given they are from sporting backgrounds and not raised in boarding schools) but most of the rest are probably 'bred' for leadership as has always been the case in the U.K. just like banks and politics. A meritocracy is part skill and then a massive part hubris and self belief which certain sectors of society have been taught to have. It's always difficult to trust people who've had helping hands from the moment they were born although it doesn't mean they are ****, just that they've had more help and opportunities than the rest to get where they are even if they wouldn't have the self awareness to admit or appreciate their good fortune. For me, like the team, the board are as good as their performances with respect to their biggest and most important products, and that is is the first team, the academy, the stadium and thought leadership within the community that they represent. On these four, the first team is the trickiest as always under the spotlight but things are as a good as could be expected from a team like us, the academy is a long term project that produced better players under the previous leadership than this one so far if we are all honest, the stadium is what it is and is functional, not spectacular (a reflection of the city it is in) and then the foundation is the shining light of what the club does in the community although that is largely due to the people that work in it caring deeply about their community. Southampton FC have existed for 130+ years. This board is just a tiny part of that history and as long as they don't forget that and get ahead of themselves thinking they are some sort of heroes, then I'm sure they'll be fine. As for trust, none of the current board created Southampton FC and they don't (appear to) have any historical connection with the city or club so for them it is a job, and thankfully they all, apart from Les who is reasonably close to retirement need good CVs for better jobs should this one go wrong so they will want to do a decent job. Not a great job because they'll never care as much as we do, but safe enough so their reputations and future employment prospects aren't jeopardised. With this, they are largely okay compared to others in football, albeit still in it for themselves like most in our society.

Fair play to Les on this one. We did need a more creative midfielder, the forward line is still an area of concern in terms of productivity and the academy is set for quite a few dry years, if not more, but to sign a couple of top players in Lemina and Hoedt and keep VVD is major progress on previous summers. Hopefully the tide has turned.

Hopefully he will be back to playing quickly and stop being a moody pr!ck. Better in the team that out of it. I'm sure his team mates will accept him back in no time. Doubt we fans will ever be as forgiving but if we get £100m from Barca or PSG next year all will be fine!

Good to see the old academy is delivering finance for the new edition

Our midfield options are apparently 'strong and deep' so I guess that means the very necessary creative midfielder who can pick out a pass through the lines or to an team mate in an advanced position is off the agenda!