Chez

its been five years since Boro spent that kind of money on a player, and when they did they fucked it with £15m Assombalonga, however that transfer was funded by selling De Roon and Rhodes, so if Spence does bring in £20m, maybe their will be funds. Ralph seemed to have very confidence in him in the second half of the season, but he did make noises at the end of the season to suggest he would be here next season.

Boy, I bet that elite team of scouts circling the globe watching keepers every week are laughing among themselves about all those wasted air miles.

I presume you are now happy to accept that McCarty and Stephens were indeed offered new deals and signed them, as was revealed in The Athletic a year ago? As mentioned, journalists don't write stories about such benign subjects unless they are true - no point. Salah to Barca/real etc., sure, Stephens gets new three year deal at Saints, nah. Why the club didn't announce them at the time I will never know.

I wouldn't take that phrase at face value. My guess is `contract offer' is a broad term used to describe the limbo status of a player - not gone, but not signed. So, an offer may yet to have even been discussed.

Wonder if an actual offer has to be made or (more likely) the club just is indicating that it's in talks.

no idea. I fucking hope not, but you don't have a £114m wage bill unless you pay these chumps a shed load more than some imagine.

Hmm. Or it could just be that the second use of the word `contract' is superfluous.

game is played on the pitch. Why pay a cheerleader £70k a week?

yep, weird. Good news though. We need some goals to go with all the offsides.

He's certainly been here a while, but great servant?

Long to get a new deal. Called it months ago. It was obvious and with no chance of Broja returning, leaving us with two strikers, the club just don't have the money, bottle and/or maybe scouting ability to replace him. No holds barred my arse. When they said there wouldn't be a revolution they meant it.

it was such as shame. Steve Baker was an absolute gentlemen. He always turned up at Tyro presentation evenings, charity events and the like. He seemed to love Southampton, gave everything when he played, but THAT game was not the game to have a nightmare. I'd be really interested to hear his thoughts on that game and the effect afterwards. I hope he is well.

Actually, I do include him. He scored those 19 goals, but he did absolutely fuck all else (yeah I know how that sounds), which impacted our all round game. I totally understand the counter argument to this - a headless chicken running around but not scoring would be worse, but I just had no love for Stern and don't feel he `saved us from relegation'. I felt he was very much part of the problem. I guess it was similar to the Ronaldo situation at United last season. I appreciate my view might not be shared, but I went to and suffered pretty much every fucking game for my sins, and that view has long since been burnt into my Saints supporting soul, so nothing is going to change my mind a decade or so later.

I think that look is typically used when you find out that you have to pay for parking at the Stadium when buying a ticket.

Here are the transfer fees paid once they got back into the Prem to build the side that won the league Shinji Okazaki 1.FSV Mainz 05 £9.90m N'Golo Kanté SM Caen £8.10m Gökhan Inler SSC Napoli £6.30m Yohan Benalouane Atalanta BC £6.30m Daniel Amartey FC Copenhagen £5.94m Demarai Gray Birmingham £4.59m Robert Huth Stoke City £3.78m Leonardo Ulloa Brighton £9.09m Andrej Kramaric HNK Rijeka £8.10m Danny Simpson QPR £2.25m Tom Lawrence Man Utd U21 £1.13m Riyad Mahrez AC Le Havre £450Th.

Maybe not transfer rumours, but the Beano can tell you who we should sign: https://www.beano.com/posts/fed-up-with-footie-transfer-deadline-day-find-out-who-your-team-should-have-signed

I remember getting absolutely berated on here for completely writing Pulis off before he had played a minute for Saints. I said he was shit, would be shit for Saints and would continue to be shit long after that...and he was.

The play off defeat certainly was a sliding doors moment. All our young and best talent departed, and replaced with any old shit. Please tell me Safri didn't cost us £1.3m. It's not quite the `KLF art project £1.2m transfer fee for Thomas', but it was after the parachute payments had ended and we had buttons to play with. No way we should have spent that on him. A few hundred grand maybe.

that was a special performance. It was in the Prem though, so the Bennet show possibly tops it.

Horrible. Killed us, for a couple of years. I wonder how many other CBs we tried to sign before him? Maybe none. I suspect our scouting system was reduced to nothing and I doubt Burley brought much to the party other than half empty bottle of scotch.

I love this type of thread. We all get to remember the good times.

Paul Wotton's best was pretty much everyone else's worst. Never fault him for effort though, just ability to play football. Almost became a cult hero at the Brentford game. "Paul Wotton football genius...." There's perhaps three categories here. 1. had a mare, made mistakes, possibly went out on the lash the night before 2. had a mare, made zero effort, probably went out on the lash the night before 3. had a mare, but was shit full stop and way out of their depth, possibly always on the lash, but if they weren't, they may as well have been.

Whoever was involved in that panic buy should have been sacked a few weeks into the season. Up there with the Carrillo signing in terms of scouting.

Pretty fair. I think every Saints fan hope he is a big success.

Is it 21 miles? The bigger the gap the better.