CB Fry

The fact you think we can "enforce" a player to sign for us is probably the nub of your problem here.

We were the first club to agree a fee. Last August.

So we have a chat with him and announce to the world "we've decided not to take up our option on Toby Alderweireld". Yep. I see your point. The reaction to that chain of events would have been incredibly calm. Maybe six or seven posts on it.

Any professional footballer with an eighth of a brain would think after the season Toby had he'd be able to get a better deal somewhere else. Some of us don't live in a linear little computer game world. You can't force humans to do things they don't need or want to. Toby played it perfectly for his own career.

HE MADE STEVEN GERRARD CRY FFS.

Okay then.

Brilliant stuff from Les. All the dins on this forum could do with having a listen to the great man but why bother when you can spew out ill informed knee jerk bile?

Being that we've done it before, that may suggest we've tried it before and we may have tried it with Clyne. But create a culture where you are so driven by fear that you are extending contracts year after year is going to create even more of a player power situation. So this time last year Clyne gets a pay rise, what about, say, Victor? And if he did, then why not Victor again this season, another pay rise, just to keep the wolves from the door. So would Mane, Pelle and Tadic deserve a pay rise then if Victor's getting one? Bertrand only signed his six months ago but if Victor, Mane and Tadic getting one does he deserve another pay rise? What's the gamble we take on JWP right now? Five years on £80k to stop him being poached? Or we leave him out of the pay rise club for now, and decide we don't want to demonstrate how much we want to keep him, but do some others? Fonte as club captain is seeing annual pay rises being doled out, so where's his? Starting a culture where we are renewing contracts with two, three years left on them is probably not what Les and co have in mind.

When is he due to get old and rubbish? I thought that was supposed to be 2 years ago. Was expecting to still be watching that match at 8 o'clock tonight. Gah.

I will laughing about this all weekend. Laughing and laughing. Because nothing makes me laugh more than things going wrong with transfers for clubs I have no interest in. Oh Stoke are truly the laughing stock of football.

And Keegan and Shearer up front.

Is "let's extend everyone's contracts at the earliest opportunity" this season's "why don't we get our business done early"? Isn't it easy to come up with simple solutions? Next up, score more goals than the other team.

This thread is proper mental. Thankfully I don't have time to take down the pages of utter fu ckwittery it contains. Suffice to say, well done. Seriously, well done.

Ol' swivel eyes is back.

....powered by a mandate as the party with the most seats in 1945, so shouldn't you "shut the fu ck up" about it and accept the result?

This coming season is clearly a write off. Let's start building for 2016-17 where hopefully we will bounce straight back and not be reliant on the play offs.

Absolutely correct. I will not reply.

This is what is known by some round these parts as "ambition".

80s, whatever, I couldn't really follow what your pi ss weak analogy was so I thought you were talking about the semi before 1976 (I have no idea who played in the other semi) I was 5 to 7 ish when we had those two semis in the eighties, so not particularly strong memories anyway. Did you not celebrate getting to those semis?

Your "finishing seventh in the Championship" analogy will take some beating in the utterly ridiculous strawman stakes. Although your slightly demented ranting about fictional third place games in 1970s FA Cup rums it close. Exceptional stuff.

Finishing in a better position than 21 other teams in the tournament sounds like success to me. Would certainly be successful for England men in a World Cup or Saints in any cup you care to name. Or a GB Football team, Hockey team, Curling team or any other GB team or either stripe in either one of the Olympics. They did great. Brilliantly. Get over it.

Just celebrating your victory. Congratulations.

Weak. You could have tried a bit harder to structure that as a Haiku.

Nothing to be embarrassed about. Ireland showed the way with that referendum thing a couple of weeks back.