CB Fry

We weren't going down, we're not going down.

It doesn't.

We are home and dry. We weren't going down before today anyway, but now we've got half a season to get maybe seven/eight points.

Ranieri has lost the dressing room. Sounds familiar. Also interesting that one of the theories behind their dreadful season on there is the apparent mistake of paying their biggest players huge wages not to leave, therefore their desire drops and they stop trying but still hoovering up the coin. Slightly at odds with the received wisdom on here that that particular course of action is the magic formula for guaranteed on-pitch success forever. Them dopey Leicester fans, eh?

Except Jeremy Wilson is patently the best informed journalist on all things Saints and gets a lot of information from the club, and elsewhere. If you're prepared to describe the stuff posted on here by "two or three posters" as "facts", then what Jeremy Wilson writes is just as factual.

I'm excited to see a battle between two very contrasting managerial styles. The famous "tinkerman" versus Claudio Ranieri.

Pretty sure he said "sign a replacement" which I think is unambiguous. We will sign a replacement.

If that's what someone has told you, fair enough. The club came out well out of that, absolutely no reason to flog a player cheap just because that's what the player wants. And if he was that desperate to play for Benfica all he needed to do was run his contract down a bit longer, until the summer or next January, keep giving his all for Saints and eventually his price would come down and he gets his dream move. The fact he has now locked himself into a long term contract with West Ham, suggests the Benfica thing is just a nice cover story, much like how people came on here trying to pretend the only reason Lallana joined Liverpool was because Les Reed didn't return his phone call. Ill-constructed not-my-fault player spin.

Nothing more than the Portuguese Richard Hall.

Peak Delldays.

Sunday.

No he didn't.

We don't sell in January, as the sales of our big stars wanted by big clubs shows. If you can find me one we sold in January, crack on. Ten points for the first Jack Cork reply. This is a slightly different situation to those and, if anything, could be used as an example of us saying no and holding on for half an additional season rather than selling last summer. But hey, you don't care about that, you myth-buster you.

Being that Les very specifically said we would sell Fonte this January if we get an acceptable bid about a week ago, I'm not sure what amazing discovery of hypocrisy you think you've uncovered. Maybe you should just pay more attention.

Can't be right. Southampton has the global exclusive rights on the "the opposition are bang out of form so that means they'll beat us" rule. This is crazy to suggest other fans could even think that.

What's good is Les said we won't sell on the last day of the window so this is definitely not going to drag on.

Not replacing Fonte this window would be madness. We already know we will need to replace VVD in the summer so bringing in one per window rather than two new in the summer sounds sensible. And relying on Yoshi/Stephens/Gardos feels like a recipe for a long second half of the season to me.

Let's just pay Lee Barnard's bail money, spring him out and get him back here.

It would be nice if we signed the replacement before Jose rocks up at his new club. Get the retaliation in first.

Seems a little like the Bertrand signing, albeit with a higher outlay, bit of a big club failure, lost his way a bit. Doesn't feel like a typical SFC signing to me (if anything it is the kind of player WHU would buy).

MOTD purring about the match. Just said they're putting the whole 90 mins on the red button so all fans can enjoy it.

Cortese would never try and sell one of our club legends who played a massive role in our promotions through the divisions to West Ham United.

If Jose is parading around on the WHU website tomorrow then SFC have got 24 hours to announce the replacement or the meltdown on here will be visible from space.

Some of them sound overjoyed at the prospect.