Chez

we do pay for some of our academy entrants. Lallana, Best, Blackstock and most recently Neal Osborn (£40k up front, potential to be £1.3m in total) were all bought in. Maybe not £12m, but how much was Lallana's sell on to Bompey in the end?

At no point did the club want to lose any of the best players (Lambert apart), but they certainly didn't want to match the wages they were being offered by the CL clubs.

sort of player that might look crap at 5 a sides

I have no idea if he's a nice guy or not, but what I see on the pitch is someone that gives absolutely everything and that degree of effort and robustness complimented our skill players brilliantly last season. There will be other more talented players out there, but you need workers too. Any player that is willing to tackle with his head if called for (as he did last season) gets my vote. Now whether his contract demands are realistic are another matter. I suspect he wants a huge pay rise and that will be the stumbling block here. Koeman will want time to see if he is actually worth the 40,50,60 or whatever thousand pound a week he wants.

one thing Lallana certainly didn't have was a loose touch. He had the best first touch whilst on the run that I have ever seen in a Saints shirt. It's only because so many have gone that we aren't all worrying about how badly we miss these individual players. I think some fans have seriously forgotten how good Lallana and Shaw were for us last season. Tadic and Bertrand have a lot to live up to.

I like Mulumbu, MOTM at their place on the opening game of the season, but Yacob wasn't better than Cork last season.

Does Koeman like a fried egg sandwich I wonder?

As I said, IMO it wasn't a vocal minority, it was the majority of fans in the stadium that day that expressed their unhappiness at Hoddle coming back. You can airbrush the incident all you like.

Boy are we are going notice the loss of Shaw. Bertrand is a massive backwards step. Massive. Mind you was at ever going to be otherwise. Let's hope he keeps improving as he didn't impress much last season.

Considering I thought Osvaldo would be here until the last day of the window bleeding us dry this is good news, or are we paying Osvaldo wages and inter paying Taiders?

He's very average. Maybe that's the new way forward. Average players that don't attract interest from biog clubs.

such a great view too! Premiership prices have got beyond a joke.

tiny vocal minority? I know this is your `specialist subject', but I distinctly recall that much of the ground expressed their lack of desire for a Hoddle return. Lowe certainly bowed to fan pressure, but there seemed plenty of it.

I'm not convinced there were clauses. If there were they would have been agreed by Nick Nac. Would the current board not then have pointed out to the press/fans that their hands were tied, thereby redirecting the fans anger? As I say, I am not convinced there were clauses, but who knows.

no chance what so ever.

With Krueger saying we are close to bringing some in that must mean it's Forster and van dijk.

welcome back Chambers/Adam/Rickie

they have upgraded with Chambers, they just don't know it yet. From the moment he ran rings round them at SMS Wenger will have made his mind up not to pamper to Sagna's wage demands and been on the phone to Chamber's agent to get the deal done. It was probably all signed and sealed back in February.

Good point. The worry is we have relegation written all over us so will players sign for us now?

I suspect qpr will sell him to anyone for that as they know how injury prone he is.

Like Rose a lot,but isn't he first choice for spurs?

Isn't he available for £8.5m? Why pay twice the going rate?

Is on, not was.

We may win the league. We may not.

After years of studying any potential suitor will be instantly recognisable to me.