Nordic Saint

He is an inspirational captain and he has been fantastic for us. If anyone has tried to generate team spirit as players have been bought and sold around him, it's him. Why do fans talk about him like this? Our players have access to the internet. They are human and they will naturally be curious to see what is said about them so they must know that the fans just view them as commodities to be bought and sold. We show them very little loyalty.

Fonte is hardly the type of player to sulk. Some of our fans have no appreciation for what a great club servant he has been for us. It seems the only person people are devoted to now is Les Reed. Our players know they will all be sold anyway as part of the club's 'business model' and many of our fans will turn ahainst them as soon as there is a transfer riumour 'leaked' from the club.

That was exactly the same in our first away game last season, at Newcastle. When he plays, every manager knows all his team have to do to create chances is attack down our left flank.

He got the job because he was the candidate who seemed most likely to do exactly what Les Reed wanted. Reed is literally gettting more hands-on. Never one to miss a photo o[pportunity, he was shaking the hand of every player as they got off the coach at Old Trafford.

He probably saw a few cameraman waiting outside the bus and had to make sure there weren't any pictures without him in them.

Fans are not asking the club to spend more money than they get. We just have the modest ambition of wanting them to keep our best players and managers for at least a year or two longer before they cash in on them, so that we have a team which is used to playing together, has built some team spirit and might actually win something, and we won't have to wait until several games into the season to see a full-strength team. As it is, most of our best players are sold as soon as we get an offer for them from a rival club. I do not believe for one minute that players like Mane would have sulked, gone on strike, thrown tantrums etc if they weren't sold 2 years into their contracts. That's just PR bullsh!t from the club to appease the fans. Most of us know that they'll already be planning to sell Van Dijk in the next summer transfer window and Hojbjerg in the one after that, the same as they were planning months ago to sell Mane and Wanyama in this one.

It's very clever. It forecasts which players Liverpool, Spurs and Man United will want to buy in 2 years' time.

And you seem to forget that the club will receive around half a billion pounds in PL prize money out of which to pay those contracts over the next 5 years unless they sell so many of our players that we get relegated.

True. That's why Man United want to replace him with one of the best defenders in the Premier League, Fonte.

The club's policy is to try to sell all of our best players for a profit at some stage, usually after they've only played for us for only 2 years. Fonte has been watching this going on around him for years as all of his former team mates have been sold off. You can't blame him if he wants to have some say in when they cash in on him and which club they sell him to. Les would probably sell him next year anyway and many posters on here would congratulate him for doing it, saying it was the last chance we had to get money for him and that it was a good bit of business. Personally, I wouldn't. We should stop selling our best players but everyone in the football world just sees us as a business now, including our own players.

I'd never heard of him until we were linked with him. I just looked him up on Wiki. Apparently he's got 2 caps for Morocco. It reminds me of the hype that surrounded Clasie just before we signed him, when people who'd probably never heard of him before and had certainly never seen him play started saying what a fantastic signing he'd be. To be fair, I'd never heard of Hojbjerg before either and he looks pretty good, although he has 21 caps for Denmark and is a year younger than Boufal.

I've factored into it the fact that either you really are an idiot or you're being deliberatley obtuse: "Watford have turned down bids of £35 mill from Man United and £37.5 mill from Shanghai Ighalo."

Yes, Watford have turned down bids of £35 mill from Man United and £37.5 mill from Shanghai for Ighalo and £25 mill from Leicester for Deeney. But, they have all of that Premier League prize money coming in so they don’t need to sell their players. http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/688014/Manchester-United-transfer-news-Louis-van-Gaal-Odion-Ighalo-bid http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/leicester-city-transfer-news-25-million-bid-for-deeney-rejected/story-29418736-detail/story.html

"The breakdown due to winning the euros" 'ITK leak' is the message the club want to put out there just in case they get a big cash offer for Fonte. Then the fans can all blame the player and say the club sold him reluctantly. There have been similar 'ITK leaks' in the last few years criticising nearly all of our players and managers just before they have been sold.

But surely even Kat and Les must realize that they need the shop window of the Premier League in order to keep doing that and that if they sell too many of our best players this summer, they'll risk losing it. Why the hurry to rake in all the cash now? Is Kat planning to sell the club?

It bothers us because we are strengthening our rivals, which will potentially cost us points when we play them. Fonte is the rock on which our team is built. He would fill the same role for Mournho at Man United that Terry filled at Chelsea. I cannot believe how much some Saints fans underrate Fonte.

You're right it was van Dijk and Caulker in the Liverpool game. But, the key thing is in both games we missed Fonte. We cannot afford to sell him at any price.

I agree. Selling Clyne, Wanyama, Mane and Pelle was bad but cashing in on Fonte would be terrible. Where is all the money going???

We won't face easier opposition than that all season. Watford are understandably one of the relegation favourites and erratic keeping from Gomes gifted us a goal. But, when they waltzed through the centre of the defnece for the opening goal, I thought this looks very much like when van Dijk and Yoshida played together in our 6-1 home defeat to Liverpool in the League Cup. We were very fortunate that Watford lacked the self-belief of a top team like Liverpool to press home their advantage but sat back like the relegation strugglers they are and decided to hang on. Our defence and the whole team badly missed the leadership of Fonte. If he had started, I doubt Watford would have scored. We also missed conventional central striker. Why Puel left it so late to bring Austin on only he knows. But, it suggests he doesn't know the players very well yet. When we face better teams who have players who will run at us more than Watford did, the lack of an imposing defensive midfielder like Wanyama to stop them overrrunning us is going to be even more obvious than it was yesterday. The positives were that Hojbjerg made a very promising debut and looks like a classy player and Redmond although, especially in the fuirst half not really looking like a striker, also showed a lot of promise in the 2nd half and took his chance well. Pied is an unspectacular but steady replacement for Martina. But, with Fonte, Wanyama, Mane and Pelle, we would have won that game at least 2-0. That was a game against very easy opposition, who came here with no real belief that they could win an away game against a team which finished 6th last season. The Man United game will tell us a lot more.

As I recall, Koeman was very positively received and his appointment certainly lifted fans' spirits again after the losss of Pochettino. An equivalent appointment this summer would have been Frank de Boer.

Carlos Vela was on loan at West Brom but they didn't think he was good enough for them and he spent most of the time on the subs bench so let's hope it's not him.

The lack of appreciation for the quality of Fonte from some Saints fans for our captain puzzles me. He wasn't 'a bit crap' for Portugal in the European Championship finals, was he? We are lucky to have one of the best central defenders in Europe playing for us and he's one of the main reasons we've done so well in recent years. I can fully understand why Mourinho would consider him to lead the Man United defence the way that Terry led Chelsea's. There are few other players in the world who could do it so well.

Saints have done worse. A season ticket was denied to at least one administrator of a messageboard which published views contrary to the club's own. It also appears that the club uses a PR firm to post messages on fans' messageboards as well as the comments sections at the end of Saints articles, in the form of ITK leaks. I expect a lot of clubs do it. It is a strategy in the modern business world, as exemplified by the fake reviews on amazon and Tripadvisor.

"Originally Posted by OldNick View Post Yesterday in the press Lovren and wife were mentioned and it said that Lovren was earning 16k per week. Considering we have been told that the players leave for massive wages (in football terms) perhaps we are not paying high wages as I had assumed he would have been on 20-30k at Liverpool Saint86 Saint86 is offline Registered Use We had the 14th highest wages in the league last season. From that you can take it as we are not paying massive wages. I hope the wider fanbase take note of this." The players are sold because the club wants to make money out of them. That's the way the business operates. Generally, if they are sold to a bigger club and get higher wages, they don't complain. But, the view that club's PR spin promotes through its ITK leaks etc that all of the players and managers who leave are selfish and greedy, would refuse to play if we tried to keep them and the club is letting them go reluctantly is at least 50% bullsh!t. Mane was sold because the club wanted the cash more than the player. Van Dijk and Forster or Bertrand will be sold for the same reason next summer, as it is club policy to cash in on 1 or 2 of our most valuable players every summer.

To be fair, it's not "the Liebherrs". That whole family business empire is distinct from Katharina, whose father broke away from the family business, built by his own father. The smaller Mali group of businesses he owned and left to his daughter has now been sold off by her, and all that's left is this football club. Markus wanted to own a football club. His daughter just got left with it. I think she knows her father had an emotional attachment to it and he also referred to it in his will so it must be difficult for her to sell it. Another way of looking at it is it's the only business she's got left generating an annual income. However, it is generally assumed she must have billions in the bank from busineses that have already been sold. Whether she really does, nobody knows, as Swiss banks are fairly secretive. None of the hundreds of millions of Premier League income the club has received over the last couple of years appears to have been invested in new players or the stadium and only part of the money received from the sale of players has been spent on replacements. So, it does make you wonder where all the money goes. Quite a lot must go on wages but nowhere near that much.