Ex Lion Tamer

I agree with this, but hopefully if we can get full houses back at St Mary's this season, then we won't need as much of the loan as we feared and can pay back a big chunk of it early without incurring interest

My minimum selling prices: JWP: £48m Ings: £20m Vest: £16m

Did Le Tiss actually stay out of selfless loyalty to the club or was it just that it suited him to be here? He's come from the Channel Islands and deep down he knew that a place like London would be too big for him. Plus he'd have to work harder in training and on the pitch. Did Benali or Dodd stay with us out of a duty to the club or because a big offer never materialised? Ultimately everyone makes decisions for themselves I think.

He identified that our senior leadership positions were in need of an overhaul and brought in a group of much more capable people like Semmens. His senior recruitment strategy has led to better decision making throughout the club

Indeed. I think a lot of people have forgotten we're in a pandemic which has hurt most clubs' finances and changed the market. There may well be less signings and any signings that are made may well be cheaper

I think that's a subjective interpretation. I read it that he was struggling to get back to form after injury and getting frustrated as a result. Because he wants to do well

It's up to the club to set a deadline before the real deadline and make sure Danny and other clubs know we won't sell after that point

I respectfully disagree with this. If he's really only interested in a Champions League club and ends up turning down big contracts from teams like Spurs and West Ham, then actually that shows a lot of loyalty to us. And he can have ambition but still be motivated to play for us if the big move doesn't work out. Look at someone like Theo, his big club days are behind him but he still shows plenty of commitment. He's not disappointed to be here, and I think Ings can adjust his expectations if that's how things work out for him too.

The risk with experts is you end up with something like this (to be fair Hoddle was a good manager)

It helps if you've managed to sell a defender for £50m

If they take cash they only get 60% of the value because of Newcastle's sell on clause, surely they'd want a player exchange? Or they'll have to accept one because no one is paying £25m

Our only possible ace is if they want Obafemi on a perm more than they want Gray on loan

I think this sort of psychological profiling is really important but I'm wondering actually, how do you go about finding out if a player is a tosser?

Bad apples are so corrosive to the wider culture though. Look at the problems Sunderland had. One of the reasons Ralph has managed to improve us after Hughes is that he's got rid of anyone who isn't pulling for the team

If it was just about Ralph not fancying him then he would have got a move to a better club than Motherwell

In our first bad spell under Ralph, we played wing backs and we only managed to turn things around by switching to 4222. Going back to a failed formation would have been a disaster

This is where I disagree. On the latest available figures our wages/turnover ratio was comfortably the fifth highest in the league. That put us in a substantially worse position than others. And I'm not convinced other clubs had the sheer number of failed signings that we did. Perhaps someone can analyse it properly but the number of expensive duds we've been carrying has been ridiculous

Money obviously helps but it's also a bit of a red herring. We nearly got relegated because Pellegrino and Hughes were crap managers and we spent all our money on poor players.

We know that Gao isn't taking any money out of the club. We also know it's not in his interests to see the club relegated. So why people think the club is withholding money that it could be spending I simply don't know. Our finance director will be making a recommendation of how much it is safe to spend and frankly I'd be worried if Gao or Semmens decided to overrule him

A lot of players are out of contract next summer, and we're offloading a few of them this summer. I'm not saying we're going to be flush with cash or anything but we're getting better. We had the fifth highest wages/turnover ratio which wasn't sustainable

Because of the mistakes of the past which we're trying to rectify. Interestingly your description of the transfers you want are exactly what we're trying to do, except you seem to object to the fact that we have to wait a few weeks to offload some players

Our own club gambled on future revenues and ended up in administration. Amazing that fans want to go down that route again

We stayed up comfortably last season and are one of the longest serving teams in the division, certainly outside the big clubs

Looks that way doesn't it. To be fair, it's equally hysterical to say we'll definitely end up in League 1 if we spend within our means

Or we could spend beyond our means like Pompey/Bolton et al and also end up in League 1