Nordic Saint

If that happens, the owners will have hit their target for this year: to use as little as possible of the club's income and make a profit from the transfer market whilst just hanging on to Premier League status.

We now have arguably the weakest squad we have ever had in the top flight and if we get relegated, I can't see us doing very well in the Championship next season without a few better players being bought.

Like nearly all of our fans, I think he's done a great job to get our awful squad to play as well as he has. We should consider ourselves lucky to have a manager like him. Appointing him is about the only key decision our club has got right in recent years. Each of our managers has been handed a weaker squad than the previous one as our best players have been sold off and either replaced by players who are not good enough for this level or not replaced at all. Most managers would struggle to get our current squad into the top six of the Championship.

"Southampton may well have a few regrets at selling him for just £10million." Yes, the club's transfer activity in recent years seems to have been run by clueless morons. https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2019/02/25/report-dusan-tadic-wanted-by-bayern-munich-after-southampton-exi/

All Saints' fans share your view. We think Ralph is an excellent manager, and I don't think we've lost our "sense of realism". He has got a squad which would struggle to get into the top six in the Championship putting in exceptional performances against good Premier League sides. Our issue is with the owners and the board, not with the manager.

That's not going to happen. He's already told the German & Austrian media he will leave if we are relegated. http://sportwitness.co.uk/ralph-hasenhuttl-tells-german-media-hell-leave-southampton-relegated-wages-manager-revealed/

The prayers are not working. Ings just seems to limp from one injury to another. So, I guess it's down to Shane Long and Charlie Austin, when he's fit, to score the goals we need to stay up: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/17453108.southampton-striker-danny-ings-could-be-out-until-tottenham/?ref=rss

It seems very likely he asked the club to buy a striker and a right back in the transfer window and they didn't. So, you can't blame him for that.

They were so noisy, it was like a home game for them. It's the same when they play here. You rarely get fans that noisy nowadays.

With up and coming players like Adams, who is 22, the longer you wait the more expensive they become. He's going to cost a lot more in the summer than he would have done in January, especially as our reported interest in him will have raised his profile more. The same applies to Maehle, who is 21.I guess if the club had no money in January and is hoping that player sales in the summer will bring enough in to buy them, we may still get them. But, we're going to have to sell our better players in order to raise that sort of money. As for the club's massive Premier League income, none of that seems to be released for buying players any more.

Oh dear. Always Mk II: https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/member.php?681-brmbrm

I wonder who made this comment this month? "If I were on their money, I wouldn't give a rat's arse what my own mother thinks let alone someone on a forum."

If only we had Jay Rodriguez. I'd happily trade both Long and Austin for a striker with his ability.

No more unfashionable than Leicester were when they attracted a wealthy Thai owner or Wolves when they attracted a wealthy Chinese owner or Brighton and Bournemouth when they attracted owners prepared to put some of their own money into their football clubs.

That means Hoedt's team has conceded 23 goals in the last eight games he's played for Saints and Celta, with no clean sheets and no wins.

A free meal?

Fonte is having one of the best years of his entire career. His Lille team has won every game this year and will be in the Champions League next season while his Portugal team is in final 4 of the European Nations League.

Nice theory but in practice it's just not going to happen. The players the club will sell will be our better ones because they are the ones other clubs want. They should be able to find buyers for Bertrand, Lemina and possibly Hojbjerg in the summer. I guess the dream for the owners would be Redmond continuing his good form to bump his transfer value right up. We'll be stuck with the worst players until their contracts expire and they are released.

What I recall some people here saying at the time he left was that Spurs' had hired him to get them into the top 4 and that he had no chance of achieving that. Now the goal posts have changed and they say he has to win the league or even the Champions' League or he is a failure. I liked him as a manager when he was here and I still do. Our owner's lack of ambition drove him away. I like our current manager too but the owners' lack of ambition will probably drive him away too. That really doesn't mean we should hate them for moving on. We should appreciate what they did in their time here and understand that talented people have ambitions too. If they hadn't done a good job here, they would have been sacked like the other managers have been recently.

This is what a normal Mario Lemina season looks like: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/mario-lemina/leistungsdaten/spieler/170934/plus/0?saison=2015

The problem is the longer Dave Watson coaches them, the worse they all get.

Fonte captained his Lille team to yet another victory today, winning 2-0 away to Guingamp, to keep them in 2nd place. They have won all eight of their games this year. Fonte is having possibly the best season of his career and looks certain to be playing in the Champions League next season, as Lille are 12 points clear of the 4th placed team, so we might see him back in this country.

Err, except we can't because they have Jamie Vardy while we have Shane Long. Anyway, in spite of the fact they have much better players than ours, Leicester are now in the bottom half of the table and may yet get dragged into the relegation battle.

I certainly don't hate Gao: in fact, I feel a bit sorry for him. Kat has taken him for every penny she could get and he is in way over his head. Over the last few months he has had to sell off most of his shares in Lander Sports cheaply in an attempt to raise enough cash to pay back the loan he took out to pay her. Kat has been utterly ruthless in her pursuit of cash and has made more money out of this football club - so far around quarter of a billion pounds - than just about any other owner in the history of football. Charging the club she owned interest for loans was plain mean and just another way she found of siphoning money out of it. There is nothing wrong with having a wealthy Chinese owner as Wolves have found out. The problem is we don't have one: https://www.forbes.com/china-billionaires/list/#tab:overall

Two very evenly matches sides.