Chez

Reading are paying £8.5k a week whilst Chelsea pay £111,500 a week? Blimey. That's a deal and a half.

I'm not keen on attacking fullbacks suddenly being asked to play in midfield. Despite it bing roughly the same area of the pitch, its a different role, often requiring the player to make very different decisions and play with back to goal a lot more. Some fullbacks have made the transition such as Bale, but not sure its ever seamless. I'm with you, lets get the most out of them in their proper position.

Wolves possibly signing Duje Caleta-Car. We will get to see what we could have won.

If you went through all the clubs squads, I wonder how many players would be regarded as `non contributors' and what the total cost/wasted monies spent would be.

Our outgoings were £138m last year (not including transfers). Not sure what percentage of costs is wages, but if its, for the sake of argument, £100m, that means we have a lot of big earners. Chelsea are well known for paying youth team fellas an absolute fortune (£30k+), so with a wage increase, Livramento could be on a fair whack. I agree, if we were paying Lemina £60k a week, why wouldn't Armstrong get that too. We may have reduced our wage bill, but our costs went up by £7.2m, assuming we are paying the interest on the loan at the end of the year.

I just wonder if the relationship between Forster and the club is not terribly great.

The thought process will be to buy a younger (cheaper) keeper and if he is good enough, he replaces McCarthy sooner or later. That seems to be the new model. Buy players and promote. That said ,we have seen young players get that promotion quickly already. All we can hope for is the new `young' keeper is the nuts and he has to be picked.

If McCarthy's form is not good and then Forster comes in, it will look terrible that the former has the new deal and the latter is leaving. Ralph isn't going to drop McCarthy, unless he absolutely has to - whatever that means - as it will make the decision look terrible.

I guess the question is, would it be possible to sign two keepers, both better than McCarthy, with next to no funds? Nice to have a clean slate, but equally, having a `steady' keeper at the club is n bad thing, assuming McCarthy can be considered steady.

Very strange decision for the manager to (effectively) say that Forster is out of here next summer when he may need to rely on him this season. Why not keep your powder dry? Maybe Forster informed the club he wanted to leave, thus he wasn't revealing anything Forster didn't already know. Ralph obviously feels McCarthy proved himself last season. Not sure I agree.

I seem to recall Reading `upping' the amount they wanted on the back of his successful loan, and Nik Nak didn't want to play ball. I might be confusing this with the Matt Philips negotiations though. It seemed to be that Reading didn't really want him. He hardly played the following season. Mostly coming off the bench, all be it at a higher level than we were at. Real shame we could not sign him. Still have fond memories of him terrorising Orient in the second half of our game at their place. One of the best/entertaining second halves I have ever seen. Loved watching him, but I guess Chamberlain filled the void brilliantly.

lose Long and we get a Minamino sort

I guess Tella fits that bill? Perhaps we will try to turn Broja into a permanent deal too.

Agreed. I think we still need a high quality, attacking player, in the Minamino mould, a flair player who can dribble and create.

the club has spent more than it can afford...hence the need for a £70m loan. Gao has taken no dividend yet.

maybe the man marking is so poor it appears zonal or maybe its a hybrid. Its hard to stick with players like glue is their movement is decent. Often defenders get left for dead and its just good fortune that the cross is not to their man otherwise they will look like mugs.

Absolutely. Even a 50% cut would mean we are paying him £50k a week for four more years. In the Championship, one or two of those can all but bankrupt you assuming you can't sell the player.

We made a huge loss on the previous financial year. I know it doesn't always paint a true picture, as player sales etc. can fall just outside the period, but the need for a £70m loan suggests we continue to spend more than we can afford, so a reduction in wages is perhaps a necessity? We need to find about £6.3m to cover the £70m loan interest - assuming we intend to make some sort of repayment.

McCarthy's punching in the first half was very good to be fair and others on here have suggested Forster is a new man in terms of coming off his line, but in general I agree with you. The days of Grobbelar coming out to the edge of the box to catch lofted crosses are long gone, and in general keepers leave it to CBs to take charge (Forster let Fonte, VVD win everything and never confused the issue by coming off his line), but you do still need keepers to come off their line and punch/catch at times, especially if you don't have that strong CB. I guess the issue is finding CBs that can play and are massive. Not many of those about.

seems like that it is the current recruitment model. Buy young players, initially as cover, but with the expectation that they will improve and then when the senior player leaves, they are promoted. Obviously not every signing follows that model, as the likes of Theo, Armstrong and Perraud signings differ, but Bednarek and Salisu both followed that model. Its certainly more sustainable, but whether we have enough quality at CB to keep us up is a different matter. Lets hope so as it is hard to be sustainable when you lose £100m Prem money.

Watching the game yesterday, it was evident that we struggled to cope with the arial ability of Pogba from set pieces, especially in the first half. I don't want to put a dampener of the Stephens appreciation party, but in that period, his marking of him was absolutely woeful and could easily have cost us a goal. His tackle on Fernandez, hostility to Greenwoods non injury and nice photo of him giving Fernandez a dressing down will have meant nothing if we had conceded and gone on to lose. I am concerned when the likes of Dunk, Soucek, VVD and others come to town that we may have similar problems. For all his limitations, Vestegaard did win a lot of headers from corners. I don't see Lyanco replacing that strength. Maybe playing three centre backs will help, but if all three don't dominate we will have issues. Conversely, another issue we had yesterday in some periods was giving the ball away cheaply. This wasn't necessarily a CB issue, although Stephens killed us when a sloppy pass led directly to a foul on the edge of our box. But Lyanco's ability on the ball, as was offered by Vestegaard, will help us there.

so assuming he was on about £65k a week, the extra year we gained cost Saints over £7m in extra wages spread across the four years he had left. When fans ask, where has all the money gone...the answer is wages. £26m of them over the next five years.

we could do with a ball player (dribbler, skills etc.) in the final third. Our attacking midfielders jus ain't all that. The Minamino loan signing last season makes me think we will try to do that again if the right player becomes available.

very good point. Individually they are simply better. To beat teams you need good tactics, a bit of luck and players to have good games. We don't look like a side that can take the tops team on, playing them at their own game, but with a £100m+ wage bill, we should always give teams a game.

yep. both goals coming from the press, to a degree. Would be nice to see us score from slow and fast attacks in the coming games.