Nordic Saint

Once they have proven their worth to us, which they have, pay them the salaries that Spurs and Liverpool would pay them (in spite of all the money they also have to spend on new stadium development). The cynics, and I assume you are one, Verbal Kint, always tell us they only leave to get bigger salaries. If we are to build a team and a club, it's better to spend money on keeping the good players here than on speculating on a bunch or new players who may be nowhere near as good, and who will take half a season at least to settle in.

Good post, Batman. Some might still try to ridicule you for being ambitious, but after what Leicester have achieved this season, it's getting harder for the naysayers to do that. If we had invested in keeping Lallana, Schneiderlin and Clyne and if we invest in keeping Forster, Mane and Wanyama, which admittedly won't be cheap, good managers will want to stay at the club and we will win trophies. With the amount the club has coming in next year, there will still be money to spare.

Congratulations to Leicester's owner, manager, staff, players and fans. They've done a fantastic job. This is a a tremendous season for English football. It's so much better than the dark days of the 80s and 90s, when Liverpool and Man United predictably won the league every year, and crowds plummeted. Now, the huge amounts of money EVERY team gets mean there is a level playing field again for the first time since the 1960s and 70s. 4 different teams have won it in the last 4 years and another 4 could win it in the next 4, including Saints. Really looking forward to our next 2 games and to next season.

Congratulations to Leicester's owner, manager, staff, players and fans. They've done a fantastic job. This is a a tremendous season for English football. It's so much better than the dark days of the 80s and 90s, when Liverpool and Man United predictably won the league every year, and crowds plummeted. Now, the huge amounts of money EVERY team gets mean there is a level playing field again for the first time since the 1960s and 70s. 4 different teams have won it in the last 4 years and another 4 could win it in the next 4, including Saints. Really looking forward to our next 2 games and to next season.

It would be great if this summer we invested in keeping players. I know it won't be cheap but, like all the other Premier League clubs we've got 200 million coming in next year, so we can afford to invest some of it. I'm fed up with the excuse that we have to sell players because other clubs will offer them better wages. We've made more out of the transfer market in recent years than any other club. There is no need to buy 30 million pound players but there is a need to keep them. Mane is improving all the time. He already has 13 goals this season. He'll probably score 20+ n4ext season. and that could take us into the top 4.

He is awkward, not as good as Clyne, but he is improving so he might just make the grade as our regular right back. If you were to ask which of our recent buys we should offload, I'd put Clasie and Juanmi ahead of him, and I wouldn't have done that last summer. His big problem is his tendency to drift infield and leave his wing unguarded, which Clyne never did. But, on the plus side, he is very unpredictable when going forward and can open up opposition defences as he did on a couple of occasions against City.

Mane has been utterly brilliant for us. I don't think I have ever seen a player run as much and work as hard as he does for us in my whole 50 year history of watching Saints. The only other player who'd compare is Kevin Keegan. He's improving and so he'll be even better next season. If we could even hang on to him until January before the owner needs to sell him, she could make another 10 million. If she cashes in in the summer, she'll lose that and we'll lose one of the best players we've ever had.

1) Don't sell Mane 2) Don't sell Wanyama 3) Don't sell Forster 4) Don't sell Fonte 5) Don't sell van Dijk The Leicester model is not about buying; it's about not selling. If we could invest in getting Chambers back, that would be a good summer for us.

If only we'd kept the great Real Madrid striker we'd have gone up to the top flight in 1949. Instead we kept him in the reserves where he scored 62 goals in one season and then released him. What might have been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabino_Barinaga

He seems to be MOTM in every one of Boro's games nowadays. Maybe we need to reassess him. I must admit I never rated him when he was with us, but now he looks like someone we really need right now: an attacking midfielder who creates and scores goals consistently. http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/middlesbrough-fc-man-match-vs-11265929

http://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2016/apr/29/mauricio-pochettino-extends-tottenham-contract-to-2021-video Some stability would be good. It can be done.

A season in the Championship? Nobody at the club would be stupid enough to bring Pardew back even though he'll be available in the next few months after Palace sack him.

Our most important players are always the ones there will be transfer speculation about, as they are the ones other clubs want to buy. It's not their fault that they are good players. It doesn't make them any less loyal than the players other clubs don't want so it's unfair of some of our fans to turn against them before they've even been sold.

Townsend would probably be the most useful of the 3 but on their current form, Mane,Tadic and Long are ahead of all of them.

Excellent point. He is obviously a lot more useful than Oxlade-Chamberlain. W really don't need another attacking player with a double-barrelled name, who almost never scores. We've already got Ward-Prowse. Let's hang onto the better players we've already got, who do score goals: Tadic and Mane.

It's just an objective and very comprehensive statistical analysis of their passing, not an opinion. It includes every aspect: percentage completion, assists, key passes, length of passes, crosses, through balls etc. And, Clasie, surprisingly, comes out as a significantly worse passer than Wanyama and Romeu. Fans tend to watch players subjectively. They have their favourites and their scapegoats, sometimes based on things like physical appearance, media reports of what they've said etc. The statistical analysis is a bit more objective.

Romeu. At least he can tackle and do some defensive work. Contrary to the myth, passing stats for Wanyama, Romeu and Clasie actually show that Wanyama (rating 6.98) is the best passer and Clasie (6.70) is the worst. I think some people notice Clasie's passing more because it's all he does, whereas Wanyama and Romeu do a lot of tackling and intercepting as well during a game. Fans of Clasie say he makes telling passes, but that appears to be a myth too as I can't recall him having a single assist all season. Complete analysis here: www.whoscored.com/Players/90802/Show/Jordy-Clasie www.whoscored.com/Players/71714

Jos, N0. 26, in familiar pose last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXlIMLM1nRM

I think some fans don't realize how difficult it must have been for a defender to play alongside those three and still look good. Clyne and Fonte were just 2 patches in a leaky sieve. You could put the best 2 defenders in the world alongside Hooiveld, Fox and Davis, and you'd still have a terrible defence.

It certainly showed when Fonte was out for the league cup match v Liverpool. Imagine half a season like that.

Steckelenburg (since his shoulder injuries. Yes, I know he USED TO BE good, long before he got injured and came to us), Targett (he even looks a defensive liability in the U21s), Caulker (washed up because of his heavy drinking and other issues), Martina (he's just not a defender), Ward-Prowse (Very overrated. He's a waste of space in most games), Yoshida (might just scrape into one of the bottom 3 teams but he's basically an average Championship level defender).

If you count Mane as a striker, and I do, then the only one of our midfielders any other team in the top half of Premier League would want in their first XI is Wanyama. One or two of the others might be of interest to one of the newly promoted sides, but that's about it.

That is an excellent point, SaintTex. Half of that team are barely Championship standard, let alone European class. It would be great if we didn't plug gaps with cheap options like Steckelenburg, Martina, Targett and Caulker, next season. Playing such poor players in so many games not only saw us fail to make the Europa League group stage but also cost us a top 5 finish this season.

So 8th place it is then. We really should have beaten Everton. Let's not slip up against Villa and Palace, the 2 worst teams in the league on current form.

We wish. Probably the best young striker in Europe on current form. I expect he's already out of our price range and will go to a bigger club for a huge fee.