Dusic

If the price for Ake is £20m then getting £25m for Bertrand would be horrendous business.

He will probably be behind Stephens, who has the potential to be excellent.

Targett is dross going forward and also too slow one v one defensively. Bertrand would have to be replaced otherwise you could argue they are more bothered about the number of Academy players in the team than the number of points we win. Neither McQueen nor Targett are good enough to be first choices in a PL team at this stage.

Add to list of players we have sold too cheaply. Puncheon, Cork, Clyne, Wanyama, Mane.

Never really got the Lee infatuation. Hardly whiter than white...

Hope we allow him to bring in his own team. To an extend Puel was hampered by that. Interesting that when Koeman left, Alek Gross our head of sports science took on the fitness coach role from Jan Kluitenberg. Be interesting to see if Gabriel Macaya is part of the new team or if Gross retains that role. Assume Watson will stay again. This is a great article: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/jun/24/mauricio-pellegrino-complete-coach-southampton-manager?CMP=share_btn_tw

Centre mid options are totally flawed with no cover for Romeu and JWP to be shoehorned in somewhere but not a natural fit. Likely replacements for VVD and Fonte needed, possibly Bertrand too. A bit of deadwood to shift: Gardos, Long, Clasie, Jay, Gazzaniga, possibly Austin. Quite a bit to do in a short time.

Good appointment. Now lets refresh our squad where it is badly needed.

Quite. He is only 5'11 too. The weakness of both Stephens and Yoshida is against the more physical strikers so whoever replaces VVD needs to be a physical presence in our increasingly small team.

Good appointment IMO. Seems a good fit for Saints for various reasons. Now lets improve our flawed squad in time for August...

Interesting re De Boer as most of the reports yesterday said he is on our shortlist but we hadn't spoken to him. I wonder if we ever intended to? Or if Pellegrino was our first choice for a while?

Its a position we badly need someone and overall we could do with a bit more experience in the squad.

Pellegrino sounds ideal for us, tactically flexible, good man-manager, able to get teams playing better than the sum of its parts and recent excellent results against much better teams. Prem experience too.

Will lose a lot of respect for Reed if he caves in on this one. Not like he won't have other options to go elsewhere. But we look like mugs if we lose him to Liverpool, regardless of the fee.

Is Pellegrino being labelled a defensive coach purely based on the Alaves goals scored stats last season? If so, surely a bit knee jerk without having actually watched any of the games? On the face of it he would seem a very interesting choice.

A bit spineless from us if he does IMO.

Still feel its likely VVD will go this summer but hooefully Saints will simply refuse to sell to Liverpool at any price, no matter what. He will get a move soon anyway with the amount of top sides tracking him, so not like he would be short of options.

Have people decided Pellegrino is a defensive Manager purely on the stats from last season at Alaves? Or am I missing something else?

Seen a suggestion Monaco are also keen so hopefully we can wrap it up quickly.

We have a gap though at the moment. Aside from JWP (going into his 6th PL season) and Stephens (age 23) we don't have any Academy developed players who are good enough to start in the PL on a regular basis. Virtually no representation in this summers England youth squads either at an U16-20 level.

Why is that? Surely if Reed wants him then it would be better if we could get him?

Martinez got completely found out at Everton - no thanks. Hope whoever it is we get the person we really want rather than a 5th or 6th choice. Deep down can't help but think this situation has taken far too long to be resolved when we should be thinking about the weaknesses of our squad and giving new players time to bed in to be able to really go for the first few matches where our fixtures look favourable.

Everton doing very nicely. We can't really profess to be rivals to them any more given their spending power Five really good signings to improve them since January - fair play, that is why Koeman left.

Indeed. Its our biggest problem area IMO. At least Davis and JWP can play 90mins regularly though. There isnt one pairing of two players which doesn't leave us vunerable to counter attack as nobody in our squad who is quick or agile enough in that position.

Too small to play as a single holding midfielder. Too slow to play alongside Romeu. Won't improve us, sell this summer, not physically suited to the PL, amazed our scouts didn't think that too.