By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions. We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
Bournemouth's derby could be an FA Cup Final v Brighton. They are far better than Saints and Pompey. Bournemouth are currently 20/1 9th favourites to win the Cup while Saints are 125/1 and Pompey were knocked out by a League One team.
We were living in a bit of a fool's pardise after last season's play-offs. We were 9 points off the automatic promotion places. The fact that the only 2 teams anywhere near Premier League quality, Ipswich and Leicester, both did the double over us, with the latter beating us 9-1 on aggregate, and one of the other better Championship teams, Sunderland, beating us 5-0, should have prepared us for what was going to happen this season.
It's been widely reported that Newcastle want Ramsdale. The only question is when the deal will be done. Quite honestly, I wouldn't blame Ramsdale for leaving now. He's by far and away our best player, and the only one who could play for a top 6 team now, but being in such a terrible team here must be soul-destroying. He seems like a decent bloke and I wish him well. It's a shame he couldn't have been with us when we had a better team.
We're already relegated so the only difference it will make to us is that we'll let in more goals in the remaining games and the owners will be made fully aware that we can't start next season with Bazunu and McCarthy as our goalkeepers, which if Ramsdale isn't sold until the summer, is what's going to happen.
When theatres are advertising new plays, they cherry pick the best bits from what are sometimes very bad reviews. So, if a reviewer writes, "This play was absolutely awful. The other actors were so bad that they made even the terrible Fred Brown's performance look outstanding," the theatre will advertise, "Outstanding performance by Fred Brown!"
Saints could advertise, "Southampton FC, the Record Breaking Team! "
If the TV programme, Record Breakers, was still on, they could've been our shirt sponsors.
Presumably, there's some agent involved who's sending all these young Brazilian players to Sport Republic. Göztepe seem to have done particularly well out of the arrangement. They've got the best one of the lot, Rômulo Cardoso, the big striker who's their top goalscorer. I don't suppose there's any chance of us getting him?
So, if you worked in the ticket office and wanted an easy time, you'd price the tickets as high as possible, sit back and relax. Job done. Your wages would still be the same.
This is not a normal season. In fact, it's the all-time worst season any team has ever had in the top flight of English football. Out of interest, to see if we could break any other records, I looked it up and discovered that 120 years ago Doncaster had the all-time lowest points total in any division, which was 8 points in the Second Division. We still need another 3 points to do better than that. But, that is being unfair on Doncaster, as there were only 2 points for a win back then.
How many fans left our last home game, a 0-5 defeat to Brentford, muttering, "I'm stuck with a season ticket so I'll go to the remaining league games, but there's no way I'm going to fork out any extra for a cup game"?
Official attendance at the Sheffield United v Cardiff FA Cup game last night was 6,126, presumably based on the number of tickets sold, but it didn't look like that many turned up. They are having a great season too and are currently 3rd in the Championship, only 1 point behind the leaders.
Everton do have a massive fanbase and are in a ground that's too small for them. When I started watching football in 1963, they were not only the the biggest club on Merseyside, but along with Man United, one of the 2 biggest in the country and they could get gates over 70,000. They probably still could.
Sheffield United are a similar sized club to us.
Here is the all-time attendance table for comparison:
The expected small gate for the Swansea cup game is a combination of Saints having the worst Premier League season in history, the high ticket prices and it being seen as only an early round of the FA Cup, a competition which has lost its appeal. Losing our last home game 0-5 to Brentford was the final nail in the coffin for any fans considering buying tickets for this one. As if that weren't enough, the freezing weather and flu epidemic are going to keep any remaining fair weather supporters away. All in all, a 'perfect storm'. The attendance for our league game against Swansea last season was 30,279.
This cup game, albeit against higher league opposition, doesn't appeal to Swansea fans much either. They have sold 600 tickets.
And the FA Cup is our main focus now as we have nothing else to play for, which is why teams often reach cup finals in their relegation seasons, as Wigan, Portsmouth, Brighton, Middlesbrough etc did.
We'll all be there for that one. It will be another 30,000+ gate, like all of our league games, because season tickets are sold out.
It's not only us. When Derby had their Premier League record lowest points total in 2007/08, they also had one of the highest average attendances in their history (32,000+), because their season tickets had sold out after the high of winning a play-off final at Wembley.
Edozie, who is better than Sulemana and Cornet. The last game he played for us was our biggest win of the season: 5-3 at Cardiff. We could do with him against Swansea as he scored the last time we met them at St Mary's and won 5-0.
Yes, but our heads of recruitment then are now the directors of football at Newcastle and Forest.
For a club our size, getting the recruitment of players and managers right is all important. We can't afford expensive errors and we have made a lot of them recently.
It's not just about how much you spend. Take a player like Ola Aina at Forest. They got him on a free transfer and he has been brilliant for them this season. They also got one of the best central defenders in the world, Milenković, at the peak of his career, for just £12 mill, and, of course, one of the best managers. That's down to great recruitment, not how big or rich the club was.
Ipswich could well stay up. They have been making some very good buys in the transfer market, including goalscorers like Liam Delap.
It seems that nowadays, the heads of recruitment and directors of football, who choose the players and managers, are even more important than the managers. Ipswich, Forest, Bournemouth and Newcastle obviously have good ones.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
