CB Fry

Don't ruin his moment. It's a favourite game of forum masterminds to pretend "no one ever said" stuff we can all remember people saying on here. If you get Olallana on a good day he'll probably do the one where we play-pretend that no one on this forum has ever for one second said they think we can ever make the Champions League.

"What decades of success have they had by the way"?? Well, from a cursory look at Wikipedia shows them winning at least one major trophy - League, Cup, European trophies, every single decade for the last sixty odd years 2010s/2000s/1990s/80s/70s/60s/50 and so on. Most decades it is significantly more than one, with plenty of runners up spots on top. Looks like they had a spell in the second division in the 2000s but so have the current English Champions. If that isn't decades of success, I really don't know what is. You comparing that to Preston is even more ludicrous as your comparison to Saints.

It's not "writing us off" to say we're not comparable to Atletico Madrid. For all the pretty factual reasons listed above - stadium, capital city, major trophies won throughout their history - we aren't comparable.

In the last few minutes Saints Fan CAM has delivered a beautiful parody of the Saints Web ITK bulls hi t ter. From smug "look at me" teasing to self righteous "you're all terribly ungateful" temper tantrum within a handful of posts. Absolute textbook. Capped off by his "sh it at the wall" routine being exposed on the Lallana thread. If anyone has missed it, get over there now. Anyway. I know someone very close the club and you wouldn't believe what I heard about a key player and his destination...#hesgoing #hesstaying

There are clearly people on this forum who are desperate to scream "we've been robbed" regardless of the final deal. Thirty million quid would be astonishing money for a left back, even if they pay us in weekly installments over three years. Anyone complaining about that valuation is nuts. Yeah, we don't want him to go but blimey that fee would be a terrific second best.

Yeah. Fine. It's a myth anyone called him the best young manager in England. Future England manager was a myth too. Future Liverpool manager also a myth. All myths and no one ever said that on here or anything remotely like it. You got me.

Fair play, you know how to build a strawman. Well done on this one.

Well done on not understanding my point. Pochettino is as likely to be an old dinosaur in the making as he is a future Champions League standard manager. Nobody knows whether the ideas he can impose on small, mid table clubs will translate to bigger clubs with egos and budgets. There's some on the Pochettino speculation threads saying how he doesn't suit Spurs and that Levy will sack him within 6 months etc that suggest some Saints fans share that thought.

He hasn't proved he is anything other than a mid table manager, at two clubs in two leagues. His appointment would be a massive risk for Spurs. He's foreign, young and exciting but his actual achievements are no better than lots of less exciting managers - Fat Old Sam, Alan Pardew, Gordon Strachan or Steve McClaren or Mark Hughes. I know we like to think of him as far more exciting and revolutionary than any of those dinosaurs, but in five years time people may look at him as just some guy who finished mid table once. History is awash with them. Who remembers Nigel Adkins as English football's greatest young manager?

It's perfectly possible if the club is prepared to spend 80 - 100m on transfers and wages to give us enough squad depth to challenge for those extra 20 points we need. All your stats show is we finished where we deserve to finish. Good, but nowhere near good enough.

1. No 2. Foreigner 3. 2 4. 3

It's not like us trying to compete with Chelsea/City, it's like Spurs or Everton trying to. We really have no similarity to a team that has decades of high level success behind it. It's far more misleading to suggest we are even remotely comparable to Atletico Madrid.

We'll go with your suggestion, then. Presumably a manager who has never had a team lose a match or concede a goal.

If we ended up with Sherwood, I'd be okay with it. If nothing else he has experience of working with young players. And I like the way he comes across. And his performance at Spurs was good. Not spectacular but far from a disaster. I can think of plenty of candidates I'd like less than Tim Sherwood.

Apart from Alan Ball (who still used us a stepping stone) which successful managers have we appointed who had an prior affiliation with Saints? Don't say Ted Bates either.

The only comparable situation I can think of is when Pardew wanted out of Reading and in to WHU, he was put on Gardening for a while, but it wasn't really Reading calling the shots, they were just about saving face. That kind of playground posturing you are suggesting is not going to benefit anyone and would achieve precisely nothing.

Because that would effectively be a sacking, especially if he hasn't done anything wrong.

Dortmund have a 80,000 seater stadium and have won the league eight times as well as plenty of domestic and European trophies too. Athletico have won the league, errr, ten times in their history. They are the "hierarchy".

Yep, this is an excellent summary. 100% agree.

In fairness it was a pretty strong 8th, streets ahead of WBA last year for example. But your point stands. Eighth is eighth.

But you are demanding we finish sixth, or are you going to pretend you never said that too, even though you've put your little points target on here several times. And we're now achieving on a wage bill a fraction of the biggest clubs in the land, then. Fine. My main problem with you is the petulant child you have become post Cortese, having stupidly swallowing the Italian's pie in the sky bulls hit you then decided would have all definitely happened were he still here. So we get the demands for sixth (or your 65ish point target), the demands we keep highly valuable players no matter what even though the likes of Arsenal, Man United and Everton can't even do that, and the arrogant dismissing of finishing eighth next season as being boring, uninspiring and not progression. And the casual "we're fine" financial analysis with the inference we should keep spending more until we're just not fine like all the other clubs. You've always been a soul destroyingly tedious contributor to this forum, which was okay of a fashion. But the position you now take is just ridiculous beyond belief and I am happy to call it out.

Nobody is demanding she spend her money? But you are demanding we finish sixth next season, aren't you? And you are demanding we spend a mere 40% more on wages, which assuming our wage bill went up a fair bit last season anyway with three huge signings, would be taking us to somewhere close to eighty odd million a season. Just on wages. And we don't sell anyone but presumably you want us to sign some players too...Because heaven forbid we don't finish sixth in case Drunk old Franko gets bored. But yeah. No one is demanding she spend her money.

Whatever anyone thinks of Farage, he hasn't got an "unarguable point" about anything. He has some views.

A good starting point is to not believe anything from the Daily Express (or the Daily Star for that matter). Spectacularly weak journalism, the only national titles where 9 times out of 10 they literally are making it up.

That's the thing about the biggest clubs in the world. They always seem to get hold of these really good players. I mean, what's that about?