Cartman

There is no £210m of debt connected to SFC Danny Trejo (love the avatar, tried to grow the same moustache with the long hair, looked terrible on me), it was a personal loan secured against other assets, not a Glazer style leveraged takeover. As far as we know, with Kat's loans paid up and the loan not having been taken either by SFC or using SFC as collateral, we are debt free and not on the hook for any of it. And his net worth is still the same, $1.4B, so that value is assets - debts, he gained a £210m asset and devalued it by the same amount elsewhere. If he was previously debt free (unlikely) then with a net worth of $1.4B he will have had $1.4B worth of assets, now he has $1.61B of assets and $210m of debt, it's still a net worth of $1.4B.

Considering that he made his own $1.4B fortune, I have a hard time believing he would be that bad a businessman. SFC, like football clubs in general, is asset rich but cash poor, making us particularly bad targets for a leveraged takeover. The way to make money from us is to do what Kat did, increase the value of the business' assets and sell, we don't generate the sort of profits that a leveraged takeover raquires to be successful, and never will. Also, considering that the loan has been secured entirely against other assets outside of the chinese mainland, they are not likely to be small, especially as other people from Macau have been brought in, presumably for that very purpose.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/new-southampton-owner-is-said-to-get-loan-from-china-backed-bank So secured against other assets and not the club then.

We need a goalscorer from wide positions more than anything... Quincy Promes has the same agent as Hoedt, just saying.

Well now it's just bouncing around in the media echo chamber... Corriere dello Sport starts it, the Sun copies it, Jason Burt in the Telegraph then copies it from the Sun, then the Evening Standard copies it from Burt.

Found the original source: http://www.corrieredellosport.it/news/calcio/talent-scout/2017/08/15-29267409/cedric_soares_c_e_anche_l_offerta_del_chelsea/ It actually says there that his valuation is 15m euros. So we now know where our idiot press got the 15m pounds from. Only question is, how did Corriere dello Sport come up with 15m euros as Cédric's valuation... went to check what his valuation on transfermarkt is and... https://www.transfermarkt.com/cedric-soares/profil/spieler/112988 Load of bullsh!t from start to finish.

Why would we want someone on loan?

But what if he reincarnates and buys Liverpool?

Considering that we haven't sold a first team player later than July 28th you'd actually assume that if it was going to happen at all it would have happened by now, even more so when it has been going on since the end of last season rather than just in the last week like Coutinho.

If City want Van Dijk then Mangala will need a new home. Good defender, a physical specimen but not too great on the ball, City fans say he is a really nice guy, left footed too, rather have him than Wimmer. By the way, the last link with Wimmer that said we bid 22m euros came from this Austrian newspaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronen_Zeitung From that description, I wouldn't take it very seriously.

By that logic, why sell him next summer? Keep him until 2020.

https://twitter.com/SamMcGuire90/status/895993829005836288 I don't care whether it's true or not! :lol:

Good post on F365 today: http://www.football365.com/news/mails-does-coutinho-to-barcelona-actually-make-any-sense There is also following article on the subject: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/transfers/neymar-psg-transfer-naby-keita-alexis-sanchez-virgil-van-dijk-liverpool-arsenal-manchester-city-a7875636.html Will be interesting to see what the fallout will be from clubs starting to take a hardline stance on holding players to their contract and calling players and their agents' bluff to see if "player power" really is all that powerful as they and the media would have us believe.

Tadic and Boufal in the same team will work just fine. What doesn't work is playing four from Tadic, Redmond, Austin, Gabbi, Boufal, Long and Gallagher, has to be three at most.

Thorgan Hazard is one such player. 2 years left on his contract, would probably cost around 20m euros.

Anyone know how the Neymar to PSG story started? It was by no means the only reason PSG persued him, but it was at least partially motivated by revenge over Barcelona's attempts to sign Verratti. Basically Verratti signed a new 5 year contract last year but wanted to sign for Barcelona this summer, Barcelona's president even publically stated that Verratti wanted to join them. Lost story short, PSG told him to STFU and that he wasn't going anywhere, Verratti scapegoated and sacked his agent and PSG punished Barcelona. Provides a template of sorts for Van Dijk, doesn't it? If only we could punish them by bringing back Mané...

Just a goalkeeper really. Will never happen after his new contract, but I don't have any confidence in Forster and McCarthy is never fit. Other than that, I suppose a CB and a RF would be nice to have but not an absolute necessity assuming Van Dijk gets his head around the fact he isn't going anywhere, followed by saying he was badly advised and that it was all Jansen's fault. Don't think I have gone into a season recently thinking that we only really need one more player, which makes the fact that it almost certainly won't happen particularly disappointing oddly enough. Put a really good keeper behind Stephens, Van Dijk, Cédric, Bertrand, Romeu, Lemina, Ward-Prowse, Tadic, Boufal and Gabbi, plus plenty of decent options for each position, it looks quite good. Just a bloody goalkeeper Les

Goalkeeper Les

Because he's crap? Why Krul? Anyway, hoping for Pacheco or Skorupski.

Buzzkill. Let a guy dream for a bit until the inevitable disappointment. Then again, I wonder what Pellegrino thinks of him. Surely he will have looked up Forster's performances last year, especially after Brentford and Augsburg.

Was probably half arsing it in training. Incredible ambitious, wants a new challenge and to play european football again, yet signed a 6 year contract a year ago. C**t. Also interesting about the rebuffing of multiple top clubs, so it's not Liverpool or nothing then. Hope we stick to our guns.

Of all the idiotic expressions used in football, "cheeky bid" is up there with the worst. What the actual **** is a cheeky bid? You are either serious about signing a player, in which case you make a serious bid, or you are just taking the p!ss and p!ssing people off. And what would we do with Bony anyway, Gabbiadini is much better than him.

Searching rmc and Lemina on twitter returns rmc being used as source saying Lemina is coming here. Think africatopsports don't know the difference between Southampton and Stoke. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=rmc%20lemina&src=typd

Here is a video of the incident. Having to decide between giving a goal to one team or a penalty to the other... no pressure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je4DfVSFFvs

Ward-Prowse over Tadic and into the middle, move Boufal wide. Would look so much better with a new goalkeeper, is it really to much to ask? We seem to have a weird blind spot towards that position, we are the club that thought it was a good idea to go into a premier league season with 90 year old Kelvin and an 9 year old Gazza as our goalkeepers.