The9

I liked the "Southampton Exodus" angle to the story of Osvaldo leaving on Sky Sports News yesterday, despite it being 1) A loan out, so he's still our player 2) A swap, so we have the same number of players as we had before the deal anyway 3) A player who didn't feature in the last 6 months anyway so had no impact at all on the first team in that time period.

Noted that after missing his pen last week, Lambert was off them against Man U earlier in the week, with Gerrard taking (and scoring) the one they were given despite Lambert being on the pitch.

Agreed with you up (other than Schelotto as RB cover) until the "BUY" bit. We're clearly using loans as some kind of interim position/FFP wage wangle, I'm fine with that as long as they're good enough. Ideally they'd be purchases, especially in the attacking positions, but maybe putting fourteen people on a pitch transfer window to transfer window without committing to long term wages is how teams who aren't in the CL are going to work in the immediate future?

I've yo-yoed like anything about sales of club and players over the past 2 weeks depending on the evidence provided (as well as being surprised how high our wage bill was, and then how much of it was non-playing staff), but my current position is "I don't Katharina is actively pursuing a sale but might consider one if we get an exceptional offer. I also think we might have been left holding the baby re: bonuses and the need to meet FFP, as well as subject to a lot of very good bids for players we'd rather not lose but probably had to in the longer term due to their wage expectations, and now we're being more savvy regarding player expenses, hence the loans". This may change tomorrow, depending on the evidence. But I think a lot of people have made their mind up now and are digging in.

"Snapback", you old fart.

Yeah, this is garbage.

Not when the Board knows he's told everyone he wants to stay and they don't make him an acceptable offer which "forces him to leave".

Usual story with the first home game, loads of people are away int the summer holidays or have made plans without thinking about football. Usually settles down in September. An interesting feature of the new system is that now I can see where the available seats are around me, I can play spot the plastic/football tourist and see if they do anything funny during the match. I doubt whether this will actually become a thing in practice though, Northam tends to sell out fairly quickly due to the proportion of ST holders.

I'd say they don't have to do anything. The ones who've decided they're selling the club will stick to that opinion and the ones who don't think they are don't need to hear anything.

Certainly knows how to wang a ball into the opposite end, and he can't be any worse than Kelvin Davis at kicking decisions.

He's not playing in the Premiership. Kicking is fine - when he concentrates. Best keeper in the Prem - when he concentrates. Guess what his flaw is?

Never going to miss another one-on-one he said. He was good for us for basically two matches around 6 years ago, away to Derby first game of the season and away to Reading when we won 3-2(?). Pace and nothing else.

Year 7 education there, people.

The cynic in me says this is negotiation material for his new deal.

Well that's just weird. We need an experienced centre back a lot more than we need another striker.

Typical Saints, post information and then do something to make it out of date immediately.

I think generally it's assumed that we'll only be allocating squad numbers to people we'll actually be signing, so maybe assume people think we'll be signing someone if they discuss what squad number we'll be giving them...

*Cough* "snapbacks" *cough*

You make a lot of inaccurate statements which you treat as fact, have you noticed?

Transfers take ages on FM - must be my processor.

£9.5m seems like a pretty reasonable early offer, we've got 3 weeks...

It's pronounced سفير سليتي تايدر Or I should say:

I think it's marginal, and whether they sign will depend on the amount we offer. I think what we've seen is the first period in which salary capping is affecting transfer decisions, and by next year clubs will be a bit more used to it and will have longer term plans. Starting to wonder how long it'll be until someone with a massive pile of cash signs up for a year's unlimited funding of a club, a ton of megabucks 1 year deals and stumping up the cash to pay the FFP fine, just to splash on a one season trophy hunt. Hopefully it'll make a mockery of the FFP rules, which are proving to be completely ridiculous in terms of players ONLY having the option to sign for the big clubs if they want to improve their wages.

Like that's ever bothered you before. I only remembered him the other week when this exact same conversation happened on another squad numbers thread.

Pretty much in line with the comments I've seen on some of the news sites from Inter fans - typically Taider "worth keeping but wasn't starting" and Schelotto "hasn't proven himself at Inter and not suited".