The9

God, you lot are childish and tedious. Bit whoop, we've all spent the last 18 months telling everyone he spoke English.

I do not understand this obsession with Koeman. He's done little as a manager other than deliver near-success to clubs who've recently had it anyway, dismal failure at Valencia and AZ, and returned Feyenoord to their status as top also-ran in Holland with their success in line with their spending power. Difficult to believe he'd maintain our current style with his Ajax background either - though I don't know how his teams line up so this may be unfair. I don't think his name value means much, as he's hardly been recruiting top names to his former clubs. Anyone with Bielsa-esque methods with an ability to bring through kids is fine by me, so from the short list above, I think I'd prefer Yakin.

Well thank feck someone made this thread interesting. I'm completely open to offers, I started my supporting career with Newport County, dallied with previous offers from Liverpool, Everton and Watford when I was a young impressionable kid, made my big move to Saints in my early 20s and occasionally cast a glance in the direction of La Liga and Serie A.

England were not "forbidden from wearing poppies", they, along with everyone else are prevented from having "political, religious or commercial messages" on their shirts according to FIFA regulations. When it was noted that this wasn't a political issue (even the German FA said it was fine), they were given the go ahead, but by then it was too late to get the embroidery done, and they wore armbands and (some) wore poppy embroidered boots. Also, FIFA will act on the banner, but given the poxy fines for racism and Blatter's recent shameful accusations about the anti-Qatar agenda, I doubt it'll be a big fine.

Match had been scheduled for April 27th, was cancelled by 15th (which was the date the thread was started). Pinnacle withdrew on June 29th (ish), long after they had ceased to be a viable option. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/jun/30/le-tissier-pinnacle-withdraw-southampton-takeover You may note that I wasn't particularly impressed with some of the reasons given, and had my own take on it. Takeover completed on 8th July: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/paulfletcher/2009/09/back_from_the_brink_southampto.html Like it or not, we'd thrown in the towel well before the future of the club was assured.

Evidence of the launching of "Save our Saints" http://www.southampton.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=149930 prior to the Charlton match (4th April 2009). Saintsweb's take on it (post cancellation) here: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?13113-Save-Our-Saints . StuRomseySaint was not in favour.

Shaw's the best of the three though needs to work on his final ball, which very rarely amounts to anything, and he's been caught out of position (rather than just upfield) a few times, but he's improving with that. Clyne is very good going forward and gives cover at LB too, and tends to get foward without being caught out of position on the counter - but despite being the most athletic and probably quickest, is also the worst of the 3 positionally and most likely to make a control or clearance error. Chambers is a better defender than Clyne but not as quick in terms of pace or recovery, and is less attacking generally, and seems to work better in matches where we're not looking to overlap or attack as much. It's great to have the choice of all 3.

http://www.francefootball.fr/news/Cabella-convoque/471451 Yup, Cabella. Good to see The Sun as reliable as ever.

I should think that given the complete and utter refusal to give any of the non-23 players any playing time at all in their warm-up games, this could be a bit of a stick to beat Deschamps with, so they may be trying to keep a low profile. Not to mention that in real terms it's a change of a sub to a standby player in a squad dominated by news of Benzema and Ribery's injury recoveries, so it's not exactly massive news for most.

My evidence (delayed due to my refusal to pay a fiver any more) is this pic I took on 16th May in the Megastore. And why yes, I am a massive loser who stalks the Megastore to see what's in stock when I'm buying a Season Ticket and they're not charging for parking for 15 minutes...

The "perfect compromise" in the sense that they've got shedloads of home shirts they can't shift even at £15. Alright then.

I refer you to CB Fry's stock response about preferring to look like Liverpool, Arsenal, Bristol City, Middlesbrough and Swindon instead. Anyone who thinks that wearing all red is somehow building a successful Premier League brand over wearing stripes is mental. Supporters buy into branding of clubs that win football competitions, and that's pretty much it. The "unique branding" solution is the sash kit, permanently. Red is just "trying to be like someone else", stripes are at least Saints' normal colours.

I fail to see why anyone would settle for less than £40m. He'd be worth more than Bale if he had pace.

Interesting information. As usual I'll wait to see what happens before getting all excited about it. Though I will say that I WAS putting all the information leaks down to Cortese, nice to hear that isn't the case. I can't think of many reasons not to take that at face value, if he was stirring he'd at very least want us to know it was him. Would be disappointed if Lallana went, annoyed if it was for less than £40m given all the money Prem clubs have and the England international and homegrown premium, and not really sure where to sit on the "top 10 not just CL" angle, which is probably the most controversial element.

Yup, it's one thing signing a player who has "previous" under a manager who has a decent grasp of his psyche and thinks he can get the best from him. It's entirely another thing to welcome back a player who has proven he can't change under a new manager who is unlikely to have managed him before, and with a group of teammates who will have united against him. There would be no quicker way to destroy unity than by putting a known troublemaker back in the mix, especially if we're potentially losing key players who help define the squad's character. Fonte has a level of seniority and it would also feel he was being undermined. I completely agree about Osvaldo's potential, but as I may have mentioned, I just see him as a £15m credit note at the moment, he has no role at the club other than to be sold. Unfortunately, he's not going to the World Cup as anticipated earlier in the season, so that easy boost to his value has gone.

So the bed-wetters have their statement, and they're now pulling it apart for not saying what they want it to. The board really can't win with some of you lot. They obviously couldn't say "we won't sell anyone before there's a new manager" because they just have - but in pretty exceptional circumstances. If they now sell Lallana before there's a new manager as well, yeah, it's PR spin - but at the moment this appears genuine, and underlines a consistent position. They don't need to sell (there's no financial crisis), and they would prefer not to deal until there's a manager (in which case they should probably hurry up appointing the right person). I do think they still could have made Liverpool wait, but Liverpool played the card of threatening to withdraw the offer, we chose to treat that as a genuine position and Lambert might well have not been the same player afterwards if he hadn't gone. I would have greatly preferred it if we had signed some replacements before selling anyone, though. As for Lambert, I don't begrudge him the move at all, and it'll be interesting to see if he makes any impact for them. He's done better for us than anyone could have reasonably expected when we signed him, and his name will be forever linked with our rise back to the Premier League. Cheers Rickie, you'll be missed.

You'd think. But in amongst all the Cortese fall-out action the only thing I've heard is that it's predominantly red. This would of course make absolutely no sense unless the red wasn't a Cortese move (God forbid it's a Liebherr initiative). To be honest I'm not holding out much hope for the accuracy of rumours at the moment. It would have been very silly of them to lauch the Home and Heart branding with stripes all over it, and distribute a couple of thousand red/white striped scarves at Swansea if we weren't having stripes though.

A week or so ago, one of the staff at the Megastore tweeted Sporting-ID who provide kit numbers for the Prem and for international shirts, suggesting the club would be ordering in a load of Nike letters and numbers for printing on the back of the England kit for Lambert, Lallana and Shaw. There's nothing currently preventing the club from selling non-adidas merchandise, so I wonder if that order went in or if the someone in the office got to them first? I knew of one 7 year old with a LAMBERT 18 England shirt for the World Cup already...

Well Sims has really impressed me, he's basically Lallana with more pace (albeit against U-17s). Seager I've not seen much from, and Targett only ever seems to get a mention because we usually do well with left backs, and I haven't seen him do anything yet to set him aside from, say, a Jamie Hatch - level full back. I think maybe one of them will establish themselves. Then again, I thought Jake Thomson was going to be awesome. As for the main article, the Celtic fan knows nothing about it compared to a lot of us, and (repeat until evidence to the contrary) WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN YET! God help this forum if we sell Osvaldo before signing anyone...

Eleven, never realised I didn't know how to spell... the one about Egyptians.

What makes me laugh is that he clearly stated "ALL teams are tracking managers in case of this kind of situation" and they've obviously got plenty of options AS WELL as the high quality managers and players' agents he also noted had been in touch. Somehow though, that doesn't even merit a comment, in amongst all the screaming about how there's no plan and we've not got a clue about who will be next manager, etc.

I think we have an excellent board and will stick with them in the interests of supporting the club through the difficult negotiations ahead this summer. We've got value in the club even if some of the players leave - and no-one has, yet. Not sure why it's a criticism of the board that people want to take people from us because we've done well. Or that some people want them to make a statement on every single piece of speculation. They issued a very positive statement when Pochettino left, I think they've got the balance in communications spot on. What they're doing behind the scenes no-one knows, but equally no club is able to stop people moving for monetary reasons if they've set their mind on it. Chelsea just sold a first choice centre back and the previous season's player of the season, and they don't need the money. Man U lost Ronaldo, Arsenal Fabregas, etc.

Re: the t-shirt sales - I was in Whiteley yesterday, and went in SportsDirect to see which new kits were about. Sondico is a Mike Ashley brand and the Skates were trumpeting their Sports Direct links at the start of the season. Anyway, there are loads left on the shelves even at £15 a chuck. It's good to know that their bog standard, widely available, L2 shirt is still around in similar quantities to the number remaining of Saints' most hated shirt ever (which unlike the Skate kit is only left in XL and upwards and can only be bought in Saints stores in Southampton).

I'm with the last one. As of this minute, absolutely nothing other than speculation has happened.

Funnily enough Sochaux only lost 2 of the last 14 matches Mayuka played for them, having been utter gash until that point. They were in excellent form until their last game. He did only score one goal though.