CB Fry

Err, except you're wrong. James Rodriguez has a €500m release clause, but there were reports on whether Real would accept Chelsea's offer of £60m for him. Why would they even consider it if €500m is the minimum? There are plenty of players in Portugal and Spain with huge release clauses that will be sold for far less.

We are safe. 15 points from the last 15 games isn't great, but if we carry on that until the end of the season, we stay up very easily.

Correct. As in the post above, we need three wins for the rest of the season, and we have not even kicked a ball in February yet.

But they succumbed to the money men too. Melchester smashed the transfer fee record back in the late eighties when they spunked three million quid on Scottish Mo Johnston lookalike striker Andy McClaren.

You're saying Southampton Football Club is unstable. Good lad.

So you can't answer the question because you haven't got a clue. Clear. Thanks.

You're constantly saying variations on this idea but never actually expand on what you're talking about. Do you think you could give us an example of a football club fanbase that haven't been "brainwashed" and how that not being brainwashed manifests itself in their collective behaviour/approach. What do non-brainwashed fans do, exactly?

.....our black box identified Chris as an excellent fit for the club way back in 2015 and we have been running extensive logarithms and data modelling profiles on him since then. Plus we have spoken to four generations of his family to build a conclusive personality profile so we know that he will blend seamlessly into the culture of the squad precisely as we have planned oh God oh God please sign for us Chris please oh please oh please oh please.

This doesn't look anything like the last time we got relegated. You don't need to be a "Happy Clapper" to know we are not being sucked into a relegation battle. We're not. We will not be relegated.

I didn't really want him here, too expensive and no match practice for six months, but if he was the target we'd been tracking all window then we should have signed him or been ready with another of our options the black box and greatest scouting and planning team in football had meticulously planned out. The point is really that Palace managed to sign a centre back this window, as did West Ham United and we didn't.

If we plan a window in advance (Reed takes credit for), and also analyse all the available data so we know everything about the player (Reed takes credit for) and have a unique approach to strive for top 6 on our budget (Reed takes credit for, therefore knows the budget) then he has to take the blame for this. If we are by far the greatest scouting team the world has ever seen then we should have worked out, long before deadline day, that Sakho wanted to live in London and/or his wage demands would be ridiculous. We should have signed a CB long before yesterday, 3 weeks into the window really - you know when West Ham signed their new centre back. VVD injury irrelevant here: we were clearly trying to sign Sakho and Tasci so there was a need identified. I'd recommend to start slagging him off. I like Les in the main, I'm not one of the loons but he has really failed this time. A victim of his own hype.

It's not lying as much as hubris and him being a bit of a bull**** ter. He's basically the football administration equivalent of Jay from the Inbetweeners.

I genuinely thought we had our CB replacement lined up to be wrapped up within two or three days of selling Fonte. In any project, if something unlucky happens at the last minute, but avoiding the last minute was perfectly possible, then it is still more fu ck up than bad luck. West Ham United sign a centre back with two weeks to spare. We plan an entire window in advance and we can't.

Sakho never seemed like the kind of signing we make (and feels exactly like a Big Sam signing) so not massively fussed about him per se, but am really rather very fussed if we don't sign a CB at all.

We haven't had a "that's all the business done" type tweet from the club yet, which they normally do. So let's see.

He got 17 for long shots and 16 for finishing he got.

I don't think we needed to sign someone for the sake of it, but we can't keep feeding puff pieces to the newspapers about how we plan so far advance (always one window ahead) and then fail to bring in a CB when we genuinely have had two transfer windows and six months to prepare for it. The black box myth is taking something of a pounding tonight. But hey, we might still sign a CB tonight.

Best attacking options in the whole league.

We've got Gabbiadini, just the timing of the announcement but I can't see a CB now which is a clusterf uck. One hour and a bit left.

We definitely won't score.

Boufal I love you.

We all have an opinion of you.

U21 player of the year.

Never in doubt.

Booooooooouf