Match Day Thread Southampton v Watford Saturday 10/11/18 3pm

I work harder getting up the stairs in my new town house than the saints FC team do on the pitch. I have now completed my move to Northampton !

 

From the moment that the Saints defences at the Emirates and at St Mary's were broken at the end of the second week of August, only a rapid retreat to Staplewood could have saved our team who had entered the Premier League season at the appeal of the Chinese Emperor Gao; but this strategic fact was not immediately realised. The Canadian high command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the teams of the north and south were under their orders - destroy the original pretenders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Mark Hughes' red and white army of over 38 games and the abandonment of the whole of the Premier League. Therefore, when the force and scope of the Citizens penetration were realised and when a new Spanish generalissimo, General Pep, assumed command , an effort was made by the the Saints to keep on holding the right hand of the pitch, which was to have advanced across the Ethihad in great strength to grasp it.

However, the City eruption swept like a sharp scythe around our right and rear of the defense o. Eight or nine armoured divisions, carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units (called an attack Mark Hughes), cut off all communications between us and the main Management team watching on helpless from the sidelines. It severed our own communications for passing and shooting, which ran first to our defenders and afterwards through the midfield, and it shore its way up the byline to our goal. Behind this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of pathetic attempts of interceptions and foot dangling, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the midfield of Saints they left behind, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other areas of the pitch and comforts which they have never known of their own.

Thus it was that the port of McCarthy's goal was kept open. When it was found impossible for the defenders of the Saints to reopen their communications to the rest of our team, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The entire team were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to continue to dangle legs at their opponents and send invitations for them to waltz through on goal. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air as well as on the deck.

When, a week ago today, I asked the Not606 forum to fix this afternoon the author of the poisoned chalice of a match thread as occasion for a statement, as in a nil nil with Bournemouth a week previous, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest sporting disaster in our long history. I thought - and some good judges agreed with me - that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked within St Marys like lambs to the slaughter, mugs upon paying hard earned cash to expect to be entertained. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the Saints first team and the whole of the Southampton way would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of ideas and communication. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the Forum and the wider Southampton area to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain fart of the management team, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great Saints teams in the later fixtures of this season, seemed about to perish upon the pitch or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity of seeing actual football goals going in the opposition goal at St Mary's.

That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow, which might well have proved final, was yet to fall upon us. The king of the saviours had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this ruler and his government severed themselves from Everton last season, who rescued their miserable fans from extinction in thebattle of last year, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality (in terms of actually playing good football, the fans might well at the outset have saved not only Everton from wasting even more of their infamous war chest, but perhaps even Saints. Yet at the last moment, when Hughes was already defeated, Big Fat Sam called upon us to come to our aid, and even at the last moment he came. He and his brave, efficient backroom staff, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the half way line.

Last week we saw the enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous little nippy players, was thrown into the battle . Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, City began to fire with cannon precision upon our area by which alone the **** defending could not arrest. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels; they sent repeated waves of hostile intricate wing play, sometimes more than 100 strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single area that remained. For 90 minutes an intense struggle reigned. All their armoured divisions - together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon our ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix of incompetence.

The whole question of home defence against the Watford invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this stadium incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this season - Shane Long is overdue a goal. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive display. We have our duty to our fans. We have to reconstitute and build up the Southampton Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Lord Cockwomble. All this is in training at Staplewood; but in the interval we must put our defences in this game into such a high state of organisation that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realised This I say is reflective of a 4-4-3. On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the Forum, to enter upon this subject in a secret session. Not that the opposition would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail our secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy; and Watford would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the Forum by members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded int he name of Fair Play.

We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other teams, but also against our own subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should they garnish to much power. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which have been made by the Muppets Les, Ralph and Hughes. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do about replacing them just now. If parachute payments were attempted and fierce fire fighting attendant upon relegation, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the slightest sympathy - the fans, the cash cow, the ****ers that got us to where we are today. The gravy train of the EPL has given us the powers to put down fan activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the EPL, without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out.

Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of Watford on Saturday, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long seasons of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against defeat, still less against serious hammerings, could have been given to our team. In the days of MP1 or Ginger Ron, the same wind which would have carried their transports across winning line might have driven away the blockading feeling of our constant defeats. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many continental owners and management teams. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of our formation and tactics, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous manoeuvre. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye and better tactics than last week.

We must never forget the solid assurances of accuracy and power and those which belong to air if it can be locally exercised and nulify the threat of Troy Deeney. I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our home stadium, to ride out the storm of Watford, and to outlive the menace of Deeney and the other small pacy homophobic dude, if necessary for the entire game, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of Mark Hughes's red and white army - every man of them. That is the will of Southampton and the fans. The Not606 Saints Forum and other Ides, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of the EPL and many old and famous teams have fallen or may fall into the grip of the greed of the EPL and all the odious apparatus of EPL rule, we shall not flag or fail in our objective of hanging to the ****ing thing by our foreskin.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in any stadium, we shall fight on the pitches and transfer window, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our area, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the St Mary's pitches, we shall fight on the training grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this team or a large part of it were useless and overpaid, then our empire beyond the EPL, armed and guarded by the Champsionship, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. One thing is for certain, no matter what happens on Saturday by 5pm, we will always have our Southampton.

 

Already been done......look above.

 

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@fatletiss time to move

 

My prediction: 0-2.

 

Same here

 

WE MIGHT WIN ON THIS THREAD!

 

I’ll do a house swap , teenagers getting stabbed to death on my door step every week is getting boring now.

 

I think we'll beat Watford. Because I've done the match thread.

 

I can just imagine you and Jonny getting wasted together at the bottom of your garden....

please log in to view this image

 

I cant see nothing!

 

Did you put Tom on ignore?

 

I’ve had to relocate to the garage these days now the winter is drawing in, though it has got power and got fridge full of beer, the only problem is I end up hot boxing myself.

 

I did!

**** it mine can be deleted then and I will duck out of the match thread reading for a week or so.

I don’t wish to disturb the self entitled cry baby so best I don’t engage.

Laters folks...

 

Nice OP though Billy, Mods should move it to the other thread.

 

The full Midlands Massive is coming down this weekend, all six of us to celebrate my 60th birthday and a win. Watch out Oxford Street....party time!

 

I know why Tom is doing this thread.

Someone said to him "Surely you saw the cars stopping in front of you - you must have seen that Mondeo?"

Tom: "WatFord"?

This game will be like Tom's driving, it will sneak up on us from behind then BANG we win 2-0!

(Sorry Tom, but as you said, no people were harmed in the humour for this thread )

 

I've never taken speed or read War and Peace