Saint Albert

I think that Yoshida may be the contingency plan. He's done well in cup games this season.

I can sympathize with him a little if he is looking to extend his contract beyond its present term with Saints but he is certainly not doing his legacy as a potential Saints legend any favours here. Do Everton really need another central defender in the senior 30+ age bracket? I would rather keep him than sell him to that mob.

Such good news. He's been so good. Things are looking up for the academy this year. Dare I say that Koeman's departure was a good development for the long term health of the club?

I can see the Redmond story lines already. Could have been worse I suppose.

I certainly agree that there is a risk in holding players to their contracts. I think that the best we will be able to do with VVD is hold him to one more year with the promise of a departure in 18-19, similar to Morgan or even Ronaldo at Man U. West Brom kept Berahino to his contract and he has disintegrated. Not literally but you know what I mean.

There's two threads on this but I suppose good news deserves multiple threads. This makes me happy, this player has so much going for him and I think is better than Targett. There was news circulating that Liverpool were sniffing around for him as a Jan transfer. GET IN!!!

Interesting, thanks. I assumed the CPS would remove the charges from his profile considering that he was acquitted when the Crown called no evidence. He is after all innocent until proven guilty. At this stage they are unproven allegations. I'm not sure that I agree with the state sticking unproven offences to someone in this way, but that is a debate for another day.

Yep Dan Roan let me down there: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38200993 The coach was at Fleet, but is not employed anymore. There was concern around the lack of screening. I'm not sure how much screening can be done if someone has not been convicted of a criminal offence.

Les said this in the press release announcing VVD's new contract: “At 24, and with significant European experience already under his belt, we believe he can be a key pillar in our squad for years to come, and we are delighted to have agreed this new deal with him. “Although Virgil only joined us in September we felt it was important to strengthen our commitment and we believe this also provides further indication of how serious our ambitions are for the coming years.” For me, these are either the words of a bullsh**er, or someone who did not incorporate a ridiculous release clause in the new contract,

Dan Roan has tweeted that there will be a "major development" in the child abuse scandal this evening.

VVD was 1 year into a 5 year contract when he signed a 2 year extension. Why with 4 years left in his first contract would Les give him both a raise and a release clause? Why would he do it for 25 mil when, at the same time and in the previous off-season stupid money was being quoted for John Stones, an inferior player albeit with an English birth certificate? The release clause is so disadvantageous to Saints that it can't be true. I hope.

First Forster. Then Boruc. Then Stek. It's like they're in some kind Saints-related goalkeeping blunder competition this weekend.

I am a Saints supporter who enjoys the failure of ex-Saints who leave under a cloud like Ronald Koeman. It's probably a character flaw but I can live with it. A lot of Everton fans were underwhelmed by his appointment in the summer. He was such a streaky manager here. I 'm waiting for him to turn it around, go on a ridiculous winning streak and have them looking like world-beaters, until the next losing streak.

There were definitely rumours of a release clause when VVD re-signed. If I was in the shoes of a person like Les, and negotiating a contract with a release clause, I would ensure that it is a summer release clause to prevent the mid-season disruptions inevitable with a January departure of an important player. A lot of the rumours in the press imply that he will be off in Jan, which ought to be a non-starter. Inserting a release clause at all seems like an awfully blunderous thing to do particularly when everyone knows that we sell players anyway and many teams regard Saints as a shop window team.

The Sun publishes a name... https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2322646/football-coach-who-worked-with-alan-shearer-and-matt-le-tissier-being-probed-by-cops-investigating-allegations-of-historic-sexual-abuse/

After watching the wonderful Palace game I thought that I'd watch the Swansea v Spurs game on my PVR. After about five minutes Neil Taylor applied all of his studs to Kyle Walker's face. Tadic will be able to sympathize but according to the commentators Neil Taylor is not that kind of player. Go figure.

According to the Telegraph, Palace have lined up Alardyce to replace Pardew if they lose this game.

I'm not sure if this has been referred to yet, but here's Puel dismissing the VVD to Liverpool rumours: http://www.thisisanfield.com/2016/12/southampton-boss-dismisses-virgil-van-dijk-liverpool-speculation/

The media's VVD feeding frenzy continues, with the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3992096/Manchester-City-target-Virgil-van-Dijk-William-Carvalho-Pep-Guardiola-steps-search-Vincent-Kompany-Yaya-Toure-replacements.html It's more on the VVD as Kompany replacement meme.

He's writing a speculative article, based on someone else's speculation. I'm not a fan of journalists at the best of times but this kind of nonsense drives me up the wall.

Something similar happened in hockey circles here in Canada featuring a convicted sex offender named Graham James, who was the coach of a junior team called the Swift Current Broncos. At least two of his young victims ended up in the NHL. This kind of criminality has a severe impact on the victims. For some, it pushes their life completely off the rails. Anyone who comes forward should be applauded, and the offender/s will hopefully end up facing criminal prosecutions and lengthy incarceration.

According to the Sun, Fonte to Man U is back on, Liverpool are confident of getting VVD, and we will buy Wimmer from Spurs as a replacement. The article claims that Saints are "resigned" to losing both VVD and Fonte over the next two transfer windows: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/2300298/southampton-transfer-news-south-coast-club-expect-to-lose-virgil-van-dijk-and-jose-fonte-to-liverpool-and-manchester-united/ The Fonte bit does not seem new but might explain why he has not signed a new contract, the VVD story seems recycled from the last few weeks, the "resigned" bit sounds made up and I can't see Les being too excited about dealing with Levy. Other than that it's a great article.

Seems like a prudent team selection to me - balancing the need to rest players while not gutting the entire first team that played against Everton.

If a team were to swoop in for an important player like VVD, presumably having already tapped him up via his agent so that he designates them as the team he wants to go to, I would not be looking for a fair deal. I'd want to take them to the cleaners.

I hope that we can hold onto VVD for at least 1 more season. It sometimes seems like a forlorn hope, but he has a long contract. It will not be like Morgan, Mane or Wanyama where the bidding team had the whip hand because the player had 2 years (or in Wanyama's case 1 year) remaining. The ability of an interested team to practice the dark football arts by convincing the player to run his contract down is non-existent in VVD's case right now. Hopefully VVD would keep his head down for another year. I suppose you could always argue that Lallana walked away from a long Saints contract, though, and then you look at a player like Berahino who seems to have self-destructed after Levy's attempt to unlodge and destabilize him only resulted in a pretty epic destabilization. Still, Morgan gave us one more year after a meltdown. We have a right to expect at least that from VVD.