Pre-Season Part 1 - The Chuckle Brothers are Dead

Why-deeeeee-dooooo-daaaaht, Quaaaack

And so the season ended and we could all get on with our lives.  All was quiet aside from the sound of people hitting F5 on their keyboards in the hope that the Newsnow Southampton portal would throw up some news about a signing, rather than a guess about where Luke Shaw was off to.  We had the usual ‘release list’ of players who are out of contract.  The names fell broadly into one of three categories

1 Had their moments for Saints but not good enough for the Premier

Richardson, Butterfield, Seaborne, Dickson.

2 Some promise shown as a youngster but not enough to warrant keeping

Reeves, Hoskins

3 Why the fuck did we sign you in the first place, give up, get a proper job

Forecast

We are seen as one of the major players in the Premier League regarding player movement both in and out.  It seems that the media want to sell all our players and they also link us to just about anyone whose agent wants a transfer bonus.  In amongst all the hype and bulshit, we’ve signed one player so far in Dejan Lovren, a big centre half who is a Croatian international.  His arrival sparked the usual rash of ‘how did Southampton sign him?’ patronising outrage from fans of Liverpool and other medium sized clubs.  Hopefully we’ve got a good one and let’s face it, we needed more quality at centre half.   He comes with the reputation of being a decent ball playing centre half but looking at the disciplinary rap sheet – he appears to have a bit of the hard man about him with 3 red cards in 17 games last season.  Hopefully his signing will prove to other potential signings that we are a club going places and to look past the 14^th place from last season.

Lovren’s name was in the press in relation to a move to us but only fleetingly which is a bit different to the case of Victor Wanyama.  Picking through the rubbish, it appears that we had a bid accepted by Celtic, then agreed terms with the player and then his agents asked for an extra million quid – at which point we left the room.  Anything that’s happened since is his agent desperately trying to drum up interest by using the Saints bid as a stick to hit Celtic with or to flush out other clubs.  The bit that made me laugh was the agent bemoaning that Victor was stopped from moving to QPR last summer which says it all really.  QPR were near the top of the agents fees table and we were bottom which tells you everything you need to know about the agents priorities regarding Wanyama’s career.   Bringing it up now when QPR got horribly relegated (which I dare say, would have happened with or without Victor Wanyama) just makes it look even worse.  If I were you Victor, I’d get another agent who at least gives a little bit of a shit about you and your playing career.

We have also seen the release of the fixtures and this is always hilarious as all the ITK-ers tell us the day before what the first game is and I’ve never known them to be right.  So, it’s not the predicted Arsenal away, it’s West Brom away.  Before anyone gets too excited that we have ‘winnable’ early games, let’s remember that in last years corresponding fixtures – Baggies away, Mackems home, Norwich away, Hammers home and Liverpool away – we got a grand total of 2 points so you certainly can’t take anything for granted.  However, it can’t be denied that we certainly need to have more points than we head from the first 10 games last year.

Some of our players have been away playing internationals in tournaments and I think it's safe to say that the results have been iffy.  Maya has successfully qualified for the World Cup with Japan but they went to the Confederations Cup and got humped in all three games, conceding shedloads of goals though to be fair, not all of these were Maya's fault.  Gaston was also at the Confeds with Uruguay and whilst the team did well, finishing 4th, Gaston did next to nothing.  Hauled off at half time in their opening game, he was then gifted a start against Tahiti who were a collection of waiters, postmen and electricians etc and did nothing.  It was 6-0 when he was taken off and his replacement Luis Suarez scored twice in 5 minutes.  As for the English, well Clyney and JWP were with the England U21s and U20s respectively and the U20's 2-2 draw with Iraq was as good as it got.  JWP fared the better of the two playing in all three games but aside from the experience gained, it wasn't great.

I’m writing on the day the new kit for 2013/14 got released and my opinion is that it’s better than last years’ effort but it’s still pretty crappy.  It’s a standard Adidas template kit which we’ll share with Bristol City amongst others.  The only differences will be the sponsor name and the badge.  I assume that the template was used rather than an original kit to cut costs so how can the club justify a hike from £42 to £50 (nearly 20%) for a home shirt and £30 to £40 (33%!!!) for a kids shirt.  Like I said last year, I’m not getting too het up about the predominantly red stripeless design as it’ll be gone in a year but the cost not good bearing in mind it’s a template.  My advice is as always – if you don’t like it, don’t buy it and hone your parental skills to the max and try and convince your kids that they don’t like it either.  I never for one second considered buying last years efforts as I thought they (especially the white one) were complete shit and whilst I prefer this years efforts, I can’t see me spending £50 on either of them.  If my soon to be 9 year old son wants it then let’s hope Grandma and Granddad are reading this.

Talking of the boy and his birthday (he doesn't know yet so don't tell him) – and this is huge news for you fans of the Chuckle Brothers... I have had to give up my perfectly positioned with perfect view from the half way line row Q of the Kingsland Stand as the boy is now (in my opinion) old enough to get a season ticket for so we (me, my dad, my son) are now in .... THE FAMILY CENTRE!  Part of me is thinking ‘shit’ I have to say but looking back, it’s where I started in the Chocolate Boxes in the Milton Road End of The Dell so I guess what’s happening to me here is what happened to my Dad in 1975.  I am sure there will be some interesting characters around me and my only regret now I’m moving is that I didn’t get a photo of the legendary Chuckle Brothers.  If you are the poor unfortunate who has shelled out a fortune to sit in the Kingsland Premium seats and you are in Black 30, Row Q, seats 777/8 then they are behind you.... have fun!  I wonder if the sound of a high pitch whiny 'why-deeeee-dooooo-dahhhhht' or someone making duck noises through a rolled up programme can be heard from the Family Centre.  I assume not though and so to me – The Chuckle Brothers are Dead!