The9

A fair point.

Seems a pretty good indicator to me that he's already well beyond the "should he not recover" concerns.

When it comes to "I was first" claims, it is the only thing that matters.

Thing is, there are plenty of Saints fans who don't think Ramirez has been as good for us as expected, it takes a special kind of stupid argument to manage to isloate yourself whilst being on the side of the (likely) majority.

He also piggy-backed onto one of the biggest stories in the World Cup by pulling Chiellini's shirt over the bitemarks, cunningly raising his worldwide profile in case we want to sell him. Above and beyond the cause, I'd say.

Your basic maths says that Lovren will be back first (and was, on Sunday), then Ramirez, then Schneiderlin. So far we've seen no evidence that this is not the case. So why are you whining?

We're not likely to be making £750m in shirt sales even with a higher profit margin, so I think Man U should be pretty happy with their record-breaking deal. I'm also not sure that the £750m isn't inclusive of all the recharging for sponsorship, player image rights, cost of shirts to club and everything else that means it's not £750m profit, but you can guarantee it'll be considered £750m profit as far as their ability to spend money under FFP is concerned.

The name-calling is pathetic for any player. I think the stats above somewhat masked the lack of effectiveness of Ramirez. Lallana's role was to get the ball in tight or difficult positions and get it somewhere else where things could be created - he wasn't an assister or a goalscorer, whereas Gaston is seen as a direct creator. To me Ramirez looked better at keeping the ball in the dribble and had shown improvements in strength and decision-making over the previous season. He was used sparingly because of his previous tendencies to give the ball away or get muscled off it, but didn't do those things anything like as often when he played - but he still didn't have enough impact on the vast majority of matches for my liking. I do (still) think that with a run of matches and a run-maker in front of him he can improve a lot, but I was saying this a year ago and he's still not done anything like enough to justify a starting position when we have Steven Davis doing a lot of the creative stuff with a much more consistent workrate. Which is not to say Ramirez doesn't work back - he does, he just doesn't close down all over midfield as much as some of our players who specialise in that. I think I saw a stat saying Steven Davis was our top assister last season as well, which says a lot about the system - and that system has gone, so maybe different kinds of players will fit the new one better.

The nearest sports shop to my home is probably SportsDirect (either Eastleigh or Whiteley), and they stock Portsmouth shirts. This is only because Sondico is Mike Ashley's latest "pet brand". I say "stock" not "sell" because as a quick check online will show, they still have every kit in every adult size for £9.59. Saints choose to control their distribution to online and two stores in Southampton (no idea if there's still one on IoW?) and I don't see how them (e.g.) selling Saints shirts in the one private sports shop in Winchester would help matters, other than to maybe annoy some locals who don't want to pay a likely £5 mark up from Wild's. There's clearly a financial reason they want to control supply, and as we've now done this under Lowe, Wilde, Crouch, Cortese and the current lot, I'd think that was pretty sound financially. If plastics want a shirt, they can get one through the post.

And that one's down to the previous Chairman.

It wasn't really very well "hidden", tbf, and given that he planned on spending Liebherr's money, was why Cortese voted against it. We've benefitted quite nicely from the other top club initiative to allow them to stockpile academy players from pretty much anywhere, though.

Quick reminder of how Gaston was injured last season, the "wastrel"...

eg Andrew Surman?

I don't think he's looked remotely solid at any point whilst playing for anyone since the Olympics, and he was utterly dire in the World Cup.

He played on both sides in the World Cup - he had the pleasure of being in the sun for both halves of the Netherlands v Mexico water break match where most of the crowd on that side were hiding in the shade.

The second page is the best bit.

I disagree. I think the balance of knee-jerk spuds who will believe everything they see in clip form and reasoned posters is pretty much exactly the same as it has been for years. We still have an infestation of The Stupid mixed with a few who can sustain a reasoned argument. I think our sponsoraship deal should be increased, but the practicalities of doing that were pretty evident when we touted ourselves around in winter 2012/13 and Cortese ended up backtracking into another year of aap3 due to the lack of viable options.

When as we all know from the BBC in Belo Horizonte, it's actually something nearer "FONTch".

I'm speculating here, but I suspect he may still have had to train between matches, as opposed to sitting on a beach somewhere.

He's been "Koo-mun" for as long as I can remember in Ronald and/or Erwin Koeman terms, which is about 1988.

I would like to complain long and loudly about writing on pigeons. That just isn't on.

I'll try and find the one I used - mine's already updated with the fixture changes. Hmm. Can't find where I got it from - do you want it for Google calendar or Outlook? EDIT: Try this one: http://www.feintzebra.co.uk/premier-league-fixtures-2014-2015-calendar-for-ios-outlook-google-and-more/

Highly unlikely given that there's no reason he'd want to play in Championship when he's first choice at Saints, and there's every possibility we'll be losing Lovren, the covering players aren't quite up to Prem standard, and we would want some stability in the centre back positions. Makes no sense for us to let both go and build from scratch.

He was a squad player, I'm pretty sure we need to have enough midfielders to give us substitution options. I wouldn't count Forte or Barnard as "losses" and equally I wouldn't really count Sharp or Mayuka as "gains" unless they prove they have value, but Guly definitely leaves an attacking midfielder sized hole in the squad and we haven't signed anyone to fill it, nor is there anyone obvious from the Academy on tour to step up. Only idiots sign players who aren't better than your starting XI to sit on the bench, so you'd expect we'd be signing at least 3 intended starters to in Lambert, Lallana, Guly's positions. That's without considering any others leaving (Osvaldo, Schneiderlin, Lovren etc) or the need to actually improve the squad over last season's side which was obvious last season even before anyone left.

There's a quote command for this. You seem to raise your voice a lot, then. There's a quote command for this. If you put all the quotes in quote boxes, you don't need to italicise anything. So, no need for any more bold or italics. You also seem to have used underlining for emphasis above, I'd stick to one or the other. HTH.