MANY readers contact us and ask why, when they click on one of our stories, they can't always see it or are asked to subscribe.

With the start of a busy summer and a new era at Saints, as they embark on a Championship journey again, I wanted to explain.

First of all, we regularly offer limited-time offers that discount the cost of the digital subscription, which currently is £3 for three months.

Details of our current £3 for three months digital subscription deal.

I quickly counted up the number of stories published by colleague George Rees-Julian and I so far in May, and counted a total of 218.

It is almost 1,000 new stories we have published since the beginning of 2025, averaging around 200 a month. Some take more time than others.

But if you did subscribe at the current price of £1 a month and read 10 per cent of those stories, it would be at the cost of around 5p per read.

To put it another way, the £3 offer makes it 25p a week - what could you buy for 25p? Not even a chocolate bar at the newsagents!

What do subscribers actually get for their money? First and foremost, it is unlimited access to all of our stories, including gated stories.

A lot of our best features, analyses, interviews and exclusive news stories are gated only for subscribers, who have unlimited access to our site.

The reading and scrolling experience itself is also much better, as subscribers access an advertising-light version of the website.

Subscribers also have access to our exclusive mobile application, which is 100 per cent advert-free and I personally recommend it to readers.

Despite the sports journalism specialism largely shrinking across the regional press, we've continued to provide the same in-depth coverage of Saints, attending every first-team game as well as many academy and women's matches.

Just last week, we filled a newspaper, hopped into a car and travelled to Manchester and back in a day for the Premier League 2 play-off final.

The insight we get from senior staff at Saints and the exclusive interviews, some of which are still to be published, make it all worth it.

That's the crux of the issue; it's not free to provide the coverage we do, but we will continue to travel all over the country (and to the continent).

We want to provide the coverage that you want to read and I am open to hearing from you, but the positive feedback we've had has been amazing. 

Every subscription makes it a little bit easier for us to continue what we do. You can still read the website for free and I’m not going to hard sell.

You don’t have to subscribe to visit our website, and our live match reports and reactions are enjoyed by many.

But understandably, the amount of stories you can view without subscribing is limited – and that number reduces if you view more of the top stories.

So I thought I would write to explain what it's all about and point you in the direction of a good deal that is currently on - but I do get it.

Whether you choose to subscribe or not, hopefully, you enjoy the season ahead more than the last and continue to follow it all with us.

Alfie.