The Chapel is the home end in the sense that it is a) an end and b) only for home fans. Like The Kop. They are comparable, as any honest Red will tell you. The silence on the Kop can be deafening. As for making the away fans nosier, have you had problems with intrusive questioning from visiting fans?
Do we? I don't think our talent is better than that of the teams around us. It's not something new either. VVD was pretty much single-handedly carrying the team for the first half of the season. Look at the players we have lost or have gotten old/injured and the players brought in to replace them. Has there been any spot on the team that actually improved in the last three years? We have a really ****ty team. I think though, that we can be less ****ty than one of 5-6 other similarly ****ty teams and that's all we need. But it's not going to be easy.
Overboard or not is a debate I can accept exists. I cannot accept that a debate exists in relation to whether they're better than the squads of the three promoted sides. And yet we'll currently below all three of them, with five draws out of five so far. If we can't beat any of them at least once, we don't deserve to stay up. One match left.
Also, this should be a really difficult season to get relegated, because there are a lot of rather bad teams. It's not small accomplishment to be sitting in the drop zone given that, which suggests that -- while I think that the manager bears a fair bit of blame -- our team is at least a bit ****ty.
Maybe it's just me, but I think there is more going on than simply a bad spell. I don't mean we're certs for relegation, albeit I do have real concerns that we may become so. For me there seems to be something just not right, and I'm not sure any of us - and I include myself - have really properly defined what we mean. I've trawled through some crap years n my time. My Saints following goes back to the late 1940's, while my properly seeing and supporting them started in the late 1950's when I was glory hunter - Saints were pushing for promotion from Div 3 South! I've seen some good football that struggled to bring results - we would have gone straight back into Div 2 in 1967 but for having such a potent attack. I've seen us battle our way through the late Bates era and get some success on the field, even if we were unloved by many. And of course there was the golden era of Lawrie. More often than not we've been humdrum. Yet fans still turned up. We cursed our inadequacies; we were saddened by the Blackburn exodus, but we weren't ready, as far as I can remember, to throw in the towel. The wonderful gallows humour of the final game in the Championship at Nottm Forest before we set off into the bleak unknown is a moment I treasure as a fan. We were screwed. Our club was about to go to the wall and our great rivals were lording it in the Prem. Yet we sang. We applauded our players when they came to us at the end of the game. Then we all know how it panned out. JPT; double promotions; serious PL team. But we know we are Saints and it can all go tits up so why does this feel so different? The money involved? The knowledge that relegation would be catastrophic? Possibly, but there is something else. A distrust. A belief that this time we're being shafted by the very club we love. I have no evidence. How can I have? I'm just a thick punter. But this does feel different to '74 and '05/'08. Maybe you're right, FLT, and we've developed a sense of entitlement. I don't think I have. I just know, as someone who lives in a so-called "hot bed" of football that I have always been proud to "come out" as a Saint in the more than 4 decades I have lived here. And suddenly I don't. As I say, maybe it's just me.
We have to support the team to get out of this mess. The issue for many fans, me included, is that the team I support keeps its best players on the bench when we’re firmly in the **** Unless MP changes towards a more creative formula fast, us fans will be like the band playing while titanic sank! I’ll always support the saints...... but MP picking the right 11 would ****ing help
I am a massive fan of the fact that if we get a draw this weekend, we probably overtake Huddersfield. Taking that round of matches as the final one in a group of four rounds of matches, we'd have started four points behind them, and through getting four consecutive draws, we'd have reeled them in and overtaken them. Indicative of both how poor we all are, and how MP aims to guide us to safety.
My biggest gripe isn’t the not cheering (though they should if they care) but the negative atmosphere they create with the groaning.
How many saves did either of the keepers have to make to be honest. For some reason we are incapable of heading and at least making the goalie save it. Most go over the bar. Thats in most games not just yesterday. Also against a team that had a height advantage anyway, why would you try and score with a header. Baffles me completely?
100% we should be trying to rouse the team not scaring them. Forget the 'why should I try to rouse a multi millionaire' line too. We choose to go to the game, we go for the team not for the players. The club is bigger than all of them.
One of our best managers was Lawrie Mac, in my opinion anyway. Didn't we go down in his first season? Just saying
Hard not to agree Lambo. I cannot think of another club that has thrown away so much of what it had in so short a time. And by thrown away I mean sold off at a massive profit. Since promotion we have seen huge churn in players and staff and replacements that have been of a lesser standard. The only constant has been Les Reed. Make of that what you will. He has earned a lot of my trust over the good years but the past two have inverted more and more of it to the point of outright suspicion now. Culminating with this latest transfer window. Something somewhere is certainly amiss.
