Chez

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.

You think we did?

In a similar vein, I'd like to throw in Schneiderlin's display away at Bristol City many moons ago. Pathetic limp performance where he showed no strength, bottle or fight. I never thought he would become the player he did after seeng that display. I'm hoping I am equally wrong about Smallbone, who to date has been just as passive. Young players often need time to blossom.

despite there being so many, the answer is of course Steve Baker. But for flavour, the McQuashie abomination at QPR, Ian Andrews, also away at QPR and the Hungerford fat lad's display away at Fulham all deserve a mention.

I know situations relating to signings needs to be fluid, but we have known for a long time that Forster would need to be replaced and even McCarthy too, yet our scouting networked seems to have only extended 24 miles down the M27 to find a keeper that cant have been on many people's radar before his loan spell last season. OK, if a good player is on your doorstep, why not scout him and then go ahead and sign him up, but seriously, we have one of the largest budgets in world football. Could we not have cast the net a little wider to find a 20 year old keeper with talent? Did we even look at other keepers before last year? Why have we not been tapping up young but experienced talent for the last 18 months? How much budget is dedicated to scouting I wonder?

When Forster was farmed out on loan, that will have been the end of the relationship between Forster and Ralph. Ralph compounded that when he decided McCarthy was the better option 18 months ago. He was leaving from that moment onwards. I see your point abut not letting both go as it would cost us to bring in two keepers, but we could for example have signed Johnstone on a free. Whether he is actually a better keeper I don't know.

A few Hummel shirts while we wait. JEFF United 22/23 shirt, and below Denmark 2022 and Kilmarnock 22/23

do Saints have gods?

knowing us we'd of gone through endless c£30m players with a similar success rate.

Forster possibly didn't want to sign any contract (because of the way he had been treated) so Ralph's hand may have been forced, but there was a point 18 months ago that he had both keepers playing towards the end of the season and he seemed to make his mind up that McCarthy was his number 1. With that decision, Forster's mind would have been made up, if it wasn't already. Ralph made a judgement call and it hasn't worked out quite as planned. If it was a computer game, as gamers/managers we'd of let both go, well I would, but in real life that was never going to happen.

and they have made a shit load from their multiple successful CL runs.

its about three times our own wage bill. How the hell can we hope to compete with them? The top sides are in a different league completely spending wise. I guess you need to do it differently. Buy youth and build something? Trouble is, the best youth is still acquired by the big clubs.

Probably wont make anyone feel better, but every penny we spend on a keeper is a penny we can't spend on a striker...and we do need one of those, among other needs.

Other clubs fucking up their finances doesn't make me feel any better, but COVID certainly played a big part in us having to take that loan out. However, it certainly makes sense to compare ourselves with others, but that needs to be wages + transfer fees + player sales + other income + other costs and debt...and all over a three or four year period, not just before we sell JWP for £60m, or just after. In the end, the finances all comes down to buying the right players, getting the most out of them and selling them at the right time to maximise the return. Three years of buying Livramento and KWP-like talents is what we need. Lets hope this summer turns up a few of them

It annoys me when people say `where has the money gone?' in some sort of insinuation that the owner ha been cyphering off large amounts for himself. The accounts tell you everything. Wages are massive and general operating expenditure is also massive. We lose a shit load on players that don't work out and we haven't be makign a huge amount on player sales for some time. The wage bill is still high - not when compared to others of course, but as Forster and his monster wage departs JWP's new monster contract replaces it.

Really? was that the general consensus? I thought part of the reason Drago got the club so cheap was the amount of debt it was carrying? £140m of combined losses over the last three years and pushing towards £100m of debt, when it was next to nothing not so long ago. COVID has a lot to answer for...and some woeful scouting. I know debt is not always the great enemy for businesses, and profits/losses at a football club depend largely on players sales (and if you sell you top guy every three years to balance he books the proceeding years are always going to look a little ugly).

Its a fair question. Maybe we are more wasteful with our monies than others? Paying Forster £5m to sit on the bench for a few years is one example of waste. Buying Carillo for £20m and letting him go for £0 is another. Our £114m wage bill is part of the reason. Our outgoings are a lot more than that by the way and our income hasn't been great.You can only spend what you have. And we obviously have had no owner gifts/loans. I was going to say others may have built up a bigger debt to find transfers, but ours seems to be pretty big. We may spend a few bob this summer. We have some funds to come in from players sales, although how much of the debt we pay down will be interesting.