CB Fry

You're forgetting Micky Channon, the Wallace brothers and Wayne Bridge as well. Oh what might have been.

Is this £400m in the room with you now?

Basically he is never there for the glory. He walked out to Stoke during the season they went up from L1 and obviously repeated the trick this season. So he obviously did good work there but his name never on the tin for any actual real honours. Never mind, though 😂😂😂😂

Except that's not what I am saying. All I am saying is City don't become completely helpless bystanders while we merrily flog him off to whoever we like because check the small print and the calendar it's not 2024 yet lads and the world's richest club slinks off into the background, utterly helpless. Pretty sure whatever deal we did with City had an assumption that we wouldn't shit the bed and be immediately relegated. If the intention from City was for Lavia to get two seasons of middling Prem football then probably City may have a view on maintaining that notion, just not with us. The party who have not fulfilled their part of the bargain here is us because we are going down. Lavia did his bit, City havent done anything wrong. The idea that turns into ha hah hah ha fuck you City we're flogging him to Liverpool and you get no say now fuck youuuuu seems fanciful to me. I think City will still have skin in the game even though it is 2023. Just that small thing. But we're not on a slave ship here, ultimately the player gets to play for who he wants, but if you are presenting the whole buy back deal as a clever scheme for Lavia to escape Manchester City then why didn't the player just refuse any buy back deal last year? If your whole argument is the player has the power then well he had the power last year as well. You know, whisper it quietly but maybe Lavia aspires to actually be a Man City player? Maybe that?

Sorry I didn't realise that most people don't realise that loan fees exist. There's been £10m loan fees knocking about for a few years now. But yeah, let's just pretend there's nothing in it for us to loan him to a Premier League club for a year. Alright lads 👍👍👍

"Set him up for life?" he's 19 mate. What he needs next year is regular top flight football so he gives himself the best chance to get to the Euros. The move from Saints to someone else for the 23/24 is not the "set him up for life" transfer. He's got a career in front of him and bigger contracts and more money in the next decade if he plans his career right.

So the sell on deal was engineered as a way for Lavia to have a defined period where he can jump the fence and escape the clutches of Manchester City who are powerless to stop him? Not so sure about that.

Well, there is a planet where the European Championships are at the end of this season. Lavia will want to play in them and he will want to play in the Premier League to facilitate that. That planet. I think you need to get your head out of your arse that we are sitting on all the cards here and we control where he goes or if he leaves at all. He will not be playing for us any more. Of course there could be a route where we get a £xx million loan fee to a Prem Club for one season ahead of selling him to Man City the year later. That kind of thing might work nicely for Lavia, us and City.

I find it highly unlikely that Manchester City inserted a clause into the sale of Lavia to us which states that "Manchester City can activate a buy-back with a specific defined price if Lavia is sold summer 24........but seriously Saints if you want to flog him to Liverpool or Arsenal in summer 23 then crack on don't worry about lads fill your boots no questions asked". Obviously not. Obviously. Either City will buy him and loan him to Fulham/Palace/etc, or we loan to Fulham/Palace and sell to city the following summer. Either way he's not going to a direct City rival this summer.

It's behind us.

Our current style of play = losing. All the fucking time.

Yeah, them delusional people are, like, sooooo delusional. Thank god you're here and we can relax because Lavia and JWP will be lining up for us against Preston and Huddersfield next season #excited

That kind of "athletic" football is not the "antithesis" of JWP at all. Its exactly what he can do, the guy's a bloody machine. He'd fit in at Newcastle or wherever. It's just pathetic to filter all the shit that the rest of the club has been for the last two and half years at one players door and imply everything we've been terrible at is down to him - just because the team can't do it doesn't mean JWP can't do it.

Shut up you dopey old tart

He promoted us two seasons in a row while you whined like a little bitch. It was absolutely delicious. Such a shame you hated every second of it x x x x

I think this is the most likely scenario. Whatever the exact rules of the sell-on are, I don't think City will let any other Champions League club have him in the summer. They'll just buy him back and loan him. The second most likely scenario is we loan him to West Ham or Palace or whoever, snd then City activate the clause the year after and we get our money. What I think we can be sure about is 1) City will have some say 2) He's never playing for us again

Honestly would be mental thing to do. We end up with a “ha ha ha four managers in one season” tag forever, Martin risks a home tonking in his first game setting him back from the get go, even if we scrape a draw or fluke a win so what - the whole team will change…. I can see not one upside to doing it. Not one, just pointless.

Just because Allardyce hasn't done much in three weeks/three games at Leeds doesn't mean he can't do it or he never has done it because obviously he has. Ditto the others.

But you know it's him already so it doesn't matter. The club are most likely doing to right thing by Selles, let him manage the team on Sunday and next week do the announcement. Quite frankly I thought it would be mad to start doing new manager announcements and videos etc etc this week and personally delighted they haven't done it. The time to look to the future etc is from Monday.

Really useful - thanks for the write up. Interesting how positive you are about Piroe. One of the statistical experts on this very forum has written off Piroe because he assures us that there are 91 other players in the Championship that are more clinical finishers than him. True story. But it's a game of opinions (his is wrong).

Stop asking for lists of managers. You're still making out that the only person on planet earth that is suitable for us is Russell Martin who conveniently enough just so happens to be the guy we've chosen. Ridiculous.

Yes fine but there's no point asking for people to list other alternatives just to knock them all down. Eg: you could make a case for or against the Ipswich guy or the Plymouth guy or Viera or Lampard or Carrick or Chris Wilder or whoever you like. But if we'd have recruited any of those the narrative immediately shifts to that guy is the only guy we could have got and no one can name any other alternatives. The minute we recruit, that person by default becomes the only person we could have realistically got. If we'd have recruited the Ipswich guy there's no way you'd be pining for Russell Martin, you'd be saying that guy is the best we could have got. We had it with Puel and Pellegrino and Hughes and Jones and so on. No one else would come, no one else is realistic apart from the guy we just so happened to have employed. Last point, I still cannot believe people are still mentioning Potter. He was never coming, pie in the sky. Cooper we were relying on another club being insane, lucky for them they got over it. WBA guy yeah fine alongside other Championship guys like Martin.

You had definitely identified Russell Martin as our absolute undeniable number one choice a few weeks back, then? The single only guy we should appoint because there is absolutely no one else?

....or that Scot from Plymouth or that Dutchman who played in the World Cup in the 1970s or that former Liverpool assistant from Spain or the former Manchester United striker or the guy from Luton. Or Steve Wigley. Or Stuart Gray.

Buddhists are all fucking twats. Happy now?