CB Fry

I think the person lying to himself to make them feel better is you son.

But when people say the same about George you dismiss it as made up by the "anti Burley brigade"? Right-o.

This is like a civil war reenactment, old swords dusted down. But, regardless, what a load of nonsense. The anti - Burley "brigade" were anti Burley because he was an appalling manager who managed to utterly blow the best chance we had of a Premier league return, despite having unprecedented funds and total freedom to build the squad he wanted. Your suggestion he had a "tough time" is garbage - the relative resources he had far outstripped any of his predecessors. And with all that he left us in a far worse state than he inherited us. Utter, abject, pathetic failure. The drinking stuff was not just made up by people on this forum, now was it? And drawing a correlation to footballers 30 years previously is a pretty ridiculous comparison.

This is the kind of thing people used to say about Alan McCloughlin.

Koeman singles out Vlaar for praise on his twitter feed last night. Just a case of wrapping up personal terms now, surely....

Leave the stands as they are, they are well named as it is and as Hypo says we have stuff named after ML already.

We CANNOT all stand by and be complicit in us not signing Loic Remy.

No idea what point you're trying to make with this list of WC performances that we all know. The prem was far more English in 1994 than now.

The utter mentalness has started TDD. I like the new regime, I'm confident we will make decent signings but it is pretty clear next season will be transitional and we are very likely to be weaker than last season. That's a fine thing to think. Don't think the world needs the likes of NickG making out a ragbag of Saints reserves is already a top half team. I think he still thinks we finished in "realistic" 6th place last season....

Don't worry, NickG is very good at saying stuff, unequivocal and clear as day but even when it is directly quoted back at him will still point blank deny he ever said it.

Just like we were definitely going to appoint a Steve Wigley / Billy Davies standard manager? Pitifully, pathetically wrong. You never, ever learn do you? At least we can all look forward to a blubbering "well, its easy in hindsight" backtrack from you, regular as clockwork.

Would be astonishing business from us but stupid business for Liverpool.

We had a very English division one in the seventies and couldn't even qualify for the world cup. We did great in 86 (still a terrible group phase performance), okay in 82 but appalling in 88 and didn't qualify in 1984. Oh for an English only football league.

But if we didn't have red and white shirts, and had the revolutionary and forward thinking plain red strips from last season, do you think a significant portion of the 90% would then embrace Southampton? Of course they wouldn't. If and when that 90% decide to follow EPL football, then they will follow the top six clubs. The basic rules of brand size/market share will apply. And, funnily enough there are already three of that top six wearing revolutionary forward thinking plain red. Basically the point is we don't need to adapt our kit to revolutionary forward thinking plain red. We will only ever be a niche proposition in overseas markets anyway and the only factor that will build that niche is winning stuff, playing well. Whoring our identity and history for some shred of acceptance from people that frankly don't give a s hit is the football branding equivalent of what that pis sed up dopey cow in Magaluf decided was a good idea last weekend.

Lovren can't force a departure either but those extremes of the legalities are pretty irrelevant because of all the reasons and common sense circumstances above. We have sold plenty of players that would have to loved to stay and sold plenty we'd have loved to keep.

What a signing. He was no Thomas Hadjto, that's for sure.

That's him. Who was the alternative? Svensson?

I think the point is, if the club tomorrow morning say to (say) Maya Yoshida "we've accepted an offer from X club" then immediately he is not as happy and settled because we've told him very clearly we don't want him. Sure he can stay and hang around, just like at the opposite end we can force Lovren to stay and hang around, but both of those outcomes are pretty futile.

It's days like this I remember when we'd signed that centre back from Arsenal. Years ago now. Pilchards, previously of this parish, and mentioned in this thread earlier today, had stated 100% that he'd seen the contract signed with his own eyes. Proper ITK Billy big boll ocks. Knew it all, he did. He signed for Reading the next day. I think I made Pilchards cry the following day with my slating of him. (He's a good poster who doesn't post on here any more and you can see why). Innocent times and obviously I have changed since then. And when I say remember, I mean I can't remember the players name. He turned out s hit for Reading anyway.

Jesus Christ.

No, he's just saying we can accept offers and sell him if we want to. He won't have to go but we can engineer a situation where his stay becomes untenable. If Billy Sharp had his choice, he'd play for Saints, he signed his contract with us to achieve that end. He doesn't because we've made it clear he will never play so we ship him out. Danny Fox probably would have loved to see out his contract with SFC. If Lovren was shi t we would do everything we could to get rid. We can "force" a situation in the same way Lovren can to "force" us to sell him.

Can't really see how we can carry off having two "top class" keepers. Not enough games to justify it - would think a, say, Marshall would want to No 1 and that is going to drive Boruc out. Can only see us buying a youngish prospect with a view to them being first choice by the end of the season.

What has he got wrong then?

If Joel Parker is saying it, then it's as good as sealed.

Someone really needs to tell those Man United fans how forward thinking and revolutionary a plain red football top is. I mean, don't they know anything?