Dusic

Football Insider, who MLG has said many times are very reliable, havent even mentioned Saints. Talk about jumping the gun with a new thread!

Cash strapped Wolves spending €45m on a midfielder (assist: Mendes). Whilst our spending spree has been welcome, things like this really do highlight that staying in the PL is getting increasingly more difficult, especially when not spending more than £15m on a player. No pressure, Joe Shields.

The £7.5m post looked like a wind up to me. Apparently Adam Leventhal the Athletic correspondent for Watford said there is an interest but its early stages. So nothing sorted. If he goes, good luck to him. Good signing in the first place and has served the club well. He has limitations but made over 100apps for a PL team - not many lads brought through our Academy can say that.

Regarding Delap, is it really worth signing him on loan with no option to buy? Spend the season developing him, taking the risk to give an untried kid a chance in the PL and then if he does well (score 6 or 7 PL goals and look a threat) know that there is about a 1.43% chance of being able to buy him. We would be in exactly the same position next summer and have essentially helped Man City make a profit on him, or increase the value of their asset like we did with Broja. On the flip side, he is absolutely brilliant and he keeps us up, which is looking like it will be a good achievement this season and then perhaps it works as a short term measure. Would certainly prefer a permanent move for a striker - assuming we have more cash (or sell Adams).

Having seen a bit of all the teams, what do people think for the relegation battle this season? Forest were a bit lucky today against WHU but they have clesrly signed some good players, with more to come - and have a good manager. Might take them a bit of time but I think they will end up being fairly comfortable. Shame they made it up as Hudds would have surely taken one of the relegation spots. Fulham - will be down there but early signs suggest they are not going to be terrible and unlike last time they play to Mitrovic's strengths and he is a goalscorer. Bournemouth - hard to tell as learn nothing from the City game but unless they do a lot of business surely they will struggle to stay up. Brentford - despite lots of people on here mentioning them I don't think they will be one of the three worst teams. Clever signings, good manager and Toney a good focal point for them. Leeds - lost their two best players but have signed well so far and off to a solid start. Everton - poor so far, and have lost Richarlison. Onana cameo promising for them and you would think with Coady and Tarkowski they find a way to be solid enough. Will be interesting to see which striker they sign in comparison with us, as imagine the requirements are fairly similar albeit they have more cash. I've seen others like Wolves and Leicester mentioned but personally would be amazed if anyone else (excluding us of course) has much of a problem staying up this season. The likes of West Ham, Brighton, Palace, Villa, Newcastle all have too much quality in key areas to be involved. So...are we better than 3 of those 6 teams? Going to be very tight IMO, and anyone external who is predicting us to go down is taking a pretty logical view I think. Hopefully a few of these sides are below us after the Leicester, Utd and Chelsea games but most have had a decent enough start and I don't think this is a season when two teams are buried after 20 games.

Surely we will see some outward movement for the likes of Redmond, Walcott,Diallo and a CB soon? Otherwise don't see how we could be targetting strikers for £20m plus, however much we may need one.

Any club sacking a manager after 2 games of a season would be an absolute shambles and wouldn't reflect at all well on their decision making to retain him at the end of the last season. Besides, they havent bought him a Broja replacement yet...

Maupay is going to Forest obviously and most Brighton fans seem happy to see the back of him. Would hope we are aiming higher.

To be fair to the guy, its not his fault he only has one fit full back and still no Broja replacement! Not like he is selecting Djenepo over a host of other viable options.

Kicker and Sky Germany at the start of the summer.

Interesting that in the press conference this week when asked about strikers Ralph said lots of teams are looking for one and specifically mentioned Man Utd.

I think we would be looking for more of a right sided CB, as if we being someone in it would be to replace Stephens, Valery, Lyanco or Bednarek. Pretty sure Mings plays on the left side and Salisu is so bad on the ball I wouldn't want him playing on his weaker side. Aside from that, it wouldnt be a horrendous move and the kind of character that would certainly help.

Do get the feeling that if we don't win any of the league games in August - a distinct possibility - then he will do well to last much beyond then. Will be very interesting to see the selection and tactics on Saturday. Its not hard to work out the players who would be most disgruntled even if in the main we would happily get rid of most of them! Wonder if this kind of situation puts off potential signings?

Lets be honest, from here the window and a decent element of the season will be determined by the impact of the forward(s) that we sign. As it stands we are going to be well short of threat and goals, as the biggest threat has left the club and as yet not been replaced. You would imagine we have a prioritised list but need to wait to see which player we can get and that usually becomes more clear in the final couple of weeks of the window. It didn't appear from the forum or todays presser that there is anything certain or imminent at this point.

Just listened to it and felt actually Ralph came across well. Say what you like about him but he is genuine, cares about the club and obviously gets it in terms of where the club is and what the limits are. Obviously a difficult spell for him but would love it if he can turn itnaround and set us up for a solid season - which would be lower mid table.

A story involving two of our striker links:

We won't be signing Watkins (if they even sell him). Villa will want more than they paid two years ago and with subsequent good PL performance and England caps. He will be out of our price range and would likely have bigger clubs interested. Amazed some of you haven't noticed/heard/read/understood by now the numerous times that our transfer policy has been explained by Ralph/Semmens.

He is actually good? Also fairly sure I have read that he isn't exactly a model professional. Would be pretty underwhelmed by Dennis personally.

Should be an interesting listen. Why anyone would become hostile to Ralph though and ask him about resigning is beyond me. We may not always agree with his decisions but his commitment and passion about Saints and making us better is undeniable. He doesnt deserve to get abuse from Brian from Bitterne. Hopefully he will be asked about the balance between youth and experience, the rationale for 3CBs when they are the weakest individuals in the team, and why some players are continualy given chances when they have proven not to be up to it. Equally to Semmens...we have lost out best striker from last season, when will you give Ralph the attacking tools to make us more of a threat? Can we push to a £25-30m fee for the right forward? If not, why can almost everyone else?

Fairly possible that Ralph did want to start ABK but also wanted to avoid needing to start him up against Son and Kane in his first PL match. If he played and got rinsed as many PL CBs do then he nay have lost confidence. A home game vs Leeds is more suited. Also...this is the problem you get with signing too many young players. You can't expect them all to do a Livramento and Lavia and be one of your best players from day one. As with Broja, you have to pick the right time to introduce them. Easy to forget but the transfer policy is a club policy, not a Ralph one. I'm sure he would love a £30m, experienced CB with 100 PL games, but thats not what we do.

I've said many times but for a team that is poor and unreliable defensively, with a number of youngsters the last type of CB you need is a rash, inconsistent one who can't speak good English and makes poor decisions. Lyanco was a stupid signing that we will probably end up palming out on loan like Hoedt and Clasie. At least he was cheap, but a player like him should have been a loan with an option.

FWIW, I would go with this: Bazunu KWP--ABK--Salisu--Perraud -------JWP---Lavia------ -----Aribo----Armstrong -----Adams---Mara---- If Mara is not ready then I would play Redmond instead. He has played well with Adams before and I think we really need to have two strikers working in tandem whereas in the 4-3-3 it would just end up as 4-5-1 with an isolated forward. In that team everyone knows their jobs, we can press and we would create chances.

Trying to understand this... After spending £50m, its pretty likely we need to recoup some funds in order to spend more. We clearly aren't going to be getting big money offers for the likes of Bednarek, Lyanco, Stephens, Redmond, Djenepo, A.Armstrong, Walcott etc so perhaps the thinking is that by getting say £20m from Adams perhaps we have a couple of strikers we can bring in who the club think are better? Perhaps an approx £25m signing and a loan for example? We clearly can't have a net spend of upwards of £70m and obviously don't want to sell JWP or KWP. There is basically nobody else apart from Adams.

They have lots of PL experienced players and in Onana and McNeil have chucked £50m at two players. They might not be a brilliant side but hard to see them being in the bottom 3. This really is a season where we need all 3 promoted sides to be poor as most of the others are solid enough.

We need another CB but currently have 7 on the books. We need to be able to shift some (and shouldnt have signed Lyanco on a perm) before adding an 8th!