CB Fry

Er, I thought all teams everywhere in every league try to win the league? According to this guy, anyway.

Still don't understand how this bonus place is conjured up from. In all the other scenarios UEFA seem to cover the missing third EL place somehow and we stop at two places but in your last scenario they can't and suddenly give it back to us? Why? If Liverpool win the EL and finish, say, ninth then they qualify for the CL. Man City win the CL and finish fifth. The top two qualify too and third gets the CL qualification spot. Then fourth and fifth (or fourth and FA Cup winner) get EL.

So you don't think we should be signing players like Forster, Virgil, Mane, Jay-Rod, Wanyama and Clasie? I do. They've made our team, like, pretty good. Fair enough. Who do you want us to sign?

Personally I think Sadio Mane has been a good signing for us. Shame you don't agree.

This is a pointless ambition that is never going to happen. Being a 'stepping stone' club is perfectly fine for us, and signing 'stepping stone' players like Mane is exactly what we need to do. If ambitious players see us as a gateway to Manchester United, then good. They only get to sign for United after performing well for us for two years at least, therefore contributing to fine league placings and one day maybe even a cup. I take it you didn't object when we signed Virgil, Victor and Forster from our own favourite stepping stone club, right? Because that's fine, isn't it?

It's not about people "bleating" that "there isn't one economist". Obviously there will be some economists supporting Leave. Obviously. The question Kate Hoey couldn't answer last week was about Independent economic reports/analysis from an independent group/source showing a positive forecast post-Leave. A Facebook group called, er, "Economists for Brexit" is not going to answer that, I'm afraid.

This. People are hugely overestimating this - whatever team he sends out we will be in a game. Who remembers that weakened team Everton put out only a couple of weeks ago?

So nothing to learn at all from what any club does then because everyone is trying to win the league. So that's alright then.

Whether they do or not isn't really relevant to the point SW5 was making, which was a very good one.

Someone here is being naive, that's for sure.

Dont disagree, we'd still be in the mid twenties though, would we? I always worry about players on the way down. Far more likely we'll sign someone I've never heard of (not difficult) for £10m. If there is a Southampton Way, that might be it.

Toby didn't want to sign for us. You seem to be confusing football transfers with eighteenth century slave trade.

It can be done, like it has been done by, like, us. We've been buying loads of players in the £8- £12m bracket and hardly bought any duds at all. Apart from the now historic disasters of Osvaldo and Ramirez, our record is excellent from Victor and Mane to Lovren and Long and Virgil and Bertrand and Tadic and Pelle and Forster. Clasie clearly getting better and better too. Plus cheaper signings like Austin and Romeu, Cedric who will also prove their worth, and decent loans like Toby and Stek. We won't be buying big club cast offs like Bony and Benteke any time soon and neither should we. I'm sure there were plenty grumbling about Villa signing Sinclair and Lescott last summer. We've established a nice niche in the type of players we've signed and we will carry on in that vein. Weird we're already getting "sort that black box out" type comments when our transfer record is absolutely superb on any measure you like.

Er, League. Obviously. They'll finish top four.

Because Leicester didn't "aim to win the league". Or, if they did, (which they didn't) then we can interpret aiming to win the league as signing free transfer full-backs, Stoke City third choice centre backs and not spending any more than £8m on anyone. Or, to put it another way, Saints have "aimed to win the league" every season since we got promoted.

They'll still win.

Except we don't always lose to them. Have a Minstrel or forty and calm down.

Of course it's me. The government are still paying me to discredit Pap, but the funding does come through an EU grant program, which explains why I am so passionate about the Remain camp. It's my little holiday fund. Those people clubbing together. Just wonderful. I bet SOG lobbed a tenner in.

After the clip finishes that odd bloke appears talking about the leftist bias of the "British Brainwashing Corporation", seemingly unaware of the source of the clip. Great stuff. Of course, Andrew Neil seems to get 20 tweets a day about how right wing and Tory the BBC is and how the bloke that runs BBC Politics was Osborne's best man or something. But all by the by. That woman came across okay anyway.

I think you know your way round our splinter forum, GB. I think it's a point of principle to not actually link to it here. Anyway, if you're struggling the thread is named after Goncalo Amaral, the Portuguese copper in the case.

Confirmed he says. CONFIRMED. You people.

Heartily recommend the McCann thread over on Bletchweb which I did have a peruse over yesterday. There seems to be a new kid in town, a proto-Pap. A Pap mini-me. A Pup if you will. It's weapons-grade stuff. He's demonstrating all the familiar hallmarks including deliciously referring to all the "research" what he done. And the most critical hallmark of the lot, which is (of course) spouting a load of old pony. He's a special little guy, that's for sure. Anyway, if you like a chuckle at jolly insightful loons "challenging official narratives" then it's an absolute pearl of a thread.

Palace to win the cup with Pardew taking over from Roy after the Euros. The Mike Bassett-isation of the England team will be complete.

Top quality analysis. Yesterday we also learned that if Shane Long scored 20 goals a season he'd be a 20 goals a season striker.

No one seems to have told her that there is a highly convenient way to carry breast milk around.