Southampton 2 v Charlton Athletic 0

Another defeat and another defeat at St Mary's. Sounded like a stroll for the home side last night listening to the commentary. Southampton now move within two points of Huddersfield with a game in hand. A south coast one-two for promotion is looking very likely.


From a Charlton perspective, Chris Powell will be disappointed he wasn't able to get a second successive performance from his side and he now faces an uphill task of trying to motivate them for the trip to Oldham on Saturday. Th season may effectively be over but Powell needs some more performances before we wrap up.  If he doesn't get them it will look like we gave up in March after dropping off the pace and then threw the towel in after securing our League one status following the Orient match. Fourteen of this squad are supposedly out of contract in the Summer. It certainly doesn't show.


I was disappointing that Michael Stewart didn't start last night and he was introduced only after the game was lost at 2-0. The formation was also bold with a 4-4-2 but we could obviously have done with another man in the middle as we were up against it. Powell has a few games to experiment and he should take them. He also needs to show a ruthlessness in terms of sacking players come the Summer that I still question a former PFA Chairman has.


Meanwhile, I am staggered that the club has sold 6,253 season tickets and is effectively ahead of last year's total for the same period and therefore on target to out-sell last year's season starting total of 8,769. Huge credit must go to Rick Everitt and the committee who set the policy here. They have a proven track record of calling this right and the discount on last year's price clearly did it for most. The club appears to have decided that prices will now increase by £15 or £25 which will satisfy the early purchasers and still represent a discount on last year's price. Personally I will wait until I am, hopefully, moved to buy mine during the Summer.