CB Fry

Still eighth in the list of spenders which is pretty impressive. Net spend is only one metric and not necessarily the most important one.

No, there was "more to it" than whatever the evil press/evil ref/evil footballing authorities said. They all had a collective anti-Saints agenda you know.

We've made a surplus. Good. Well done Saints. I think we've got the squad to finish mid table and go for it in the cups. Happy days all round. Well done Les, Ronald and the whole club.

But of course. If we'd lost or even drawn on Sunday you'd gave been all over this forum like a scabby rash. I know it, you know it, we all know it. Let's see how your mobile phone battery survives next time we don't win.

At the point of him leaving Liverpool he becomes precisely the kind of player we don't buy. Bloated, big club cast offs on huge wages and questionable desire. Perfect Sunderland/WBA/Stoke fodder.

Agree with your sentiments, nice read. Assuming you are using this blog as practice for a career in writing, my only suggestion would be to try and adopt a more natural, conversational style - it's a blog after all. At the minute it reads a little too much like a solicitor's letter with a few too many uses of "furthermore". And it's safe to assume the vast majority of people reading this will be Saints fans so there is plenty of stuff you won't need to bother explaining - you're not writing an introduction to Southampton FC for the BBC world service. Get to your opinion. Anyway, I liked it and nice to read sensible balanced analysis.

But of course. Presumably there was the mother of all U16 tournaments between September and December 2014 when our phenomenonal run of former coincided with barely a peep from you.

He came up from the Netherlands Then from Celtic too-oo Always thought that we were sh it Until we signed you-oo You're so fine And you're mine Better than Nathaniel Clyne Oh you make me feel Oh you ma-aaake me feel We'll win three-two [Clap clap clap clap clap] Like a Virgil... [etc]

Chim chimminy chim chimminy chim chim cher-ree Virgil Van Dijk he fuc king hates Pompey Chim chimminy chim chimminy chim chim cher-roo He plays for the Saints and he's coming for you

Do the Championship still have the emergency loan window thing that opens next week? I didn't think Reed would go and I am pleased he hasn't. I'm hoping he may have played himself into the first team by the end of the season, in advance of Victor being flogged to Tottenham next summer.

It kind of works for us, Romeu has had a decent apprenticeship and comes to us ready to play. For Chelsea, though, you do need to ask what the point of it is. They'll buy in front line players anyway, hardly any of these kids ever break through. Genuinely they needn't bother.

All being well, he'll probably be a thirty million quid player in two years time. We cash in, you cash in, we buy another Celtic player. Keep them coming!

Passion for what? He never ever comes across as someone who actually wants us to succeed. He just wants to spit bile at the club. His remarkable disappearing act from the match thread on Sunday - posting merrily about how sh it we were until we scored and then disappearing for the rest of the day - shows he is an attention seeking troll who wants to seeth and hate but never enjoy or celebrate.

It's odd. They've turned into some kind of pan European player farm. At least we've benefitted with Cork, Bertrand and (so far so good) Romeu.

It's a shame he didn't reference Toby as a box not ticked, but we probably wouldn't have signed Caulker (or VVD) as a result so not really appropriate I suppose. Other than that it feels like another strong window to me. Or, as forum expertise will have it, clueless idiot Les gets lucky again just like clueless idiot Les got lucky last season and the one before that and the one before that.

Clearly nothing to do with Koeman's contract. I don't expect Ronald to stay beyond his current deal, and that's fine.

Okay then.

That's only dawned on me this morning - I was thinking RK might palm him off to a Dutch league club, where he'd probably look a world beater. Back to Hull, anyone? Brucie?

Gaston will never again play "as an option". He might play in a League Cup game as a second stringer but that's not quite the same. He is effectively finished at SFC and I'd not be surprised to see him shipped off somewhere tomorrow, like last year.

There won't be a press conference to announce the signing. In the same way there isn't a press conference for any signing.

It's strange - the history of BBC2 thing they did last year really was excellent. This, however, is a will-this-do toss off.

Andy D = The Javi of the Leibherr era.

Scottish league TV deal is worth something like £15m per season. Not for Celtic. For everyone. Compare that with prize for finishing bottom of the Premier League which is about eight times that.

I'm so happy to be stuck with him.

Three year deal only. Yet another deferred meltdown. Club utterly clueless etc.