CB Fry

Man U and Man City would both loan him out. It's not like he'd just be scrubbing boots. And highly likely he could end up loaned to a prem team as part of that development. And players are optimists. If Man U want him Butland isn't going to think "well they don't really want me, I'll just be back up forever". He would sign with the expectation to be United's number one in time.

Not logic. Just wishful thinking. Man City and Man United will close us down and stop us playing far more effectively than, say, Blackpool. Blackpool, funnily enough, "play football like us" and we, errr, struggled like hell against them. Funny that.

This kind of thing is said a lot but it's just bo llocks isn't it. Why will Everton or Man City let us tap it around all day? Why are the likes of Crystal Palace and Leicester more adept at stopping us playing than Stoke or Newcastle?

Absolutely we can. Brace yourself to being called negative and posessing a 'Dell-sized brain' and being stuck with an Askham mindset. Unfortunately, that's the view of our self proclaimed "intelligent posters/voices of reason". It's a funny old forum though.

No. Who is saying it is? Funny how both clubs managed this feat without 50,000 gates. Almost like it isn't that neccessary.

If he'd agreed a contract with Swansea he'd be a Swansea player. He hasn't. He isn't. He looks like joining a big club just as TDD said he would. How you divs can still say TDD is wrong just beggars belief. But then thats the standard of debate on this forum I guess.

You do realise that every single human being connected with professional football in this country for the last forty years has been described as having an "anti-Saints agenda" at least once by at least one dinlow on this forum. Alan Nixon, whoever he is, does not have an "anti-saints agenda". Why on earth would he?

Not entirely sure what you are getting at. My point is there is clearly lots of interest in him. If all his potential suitors (including us) all plan to loan him to a lower league club then from Butland's point of view he might as well join Liverpool/Man U/Chelsea. He's getting loaned whatever so do it as a Man U player. The only way we can get him to SMS would be to tell him we plan to use him in our first team this season. That's the only thing that would swing it for us. And anyway, what might happen is he joins a top six club and they loan him to us.

Butland would only come to us with the expectation to be first choice by end of season, probably by about November. If he's just going to get loaned out he might as well join Man United.

Shut it you freak.

Oh well. Just me and the England team manager then. Picking Kelvin Davies for England would have been a completely pointless and laughable exersize.

Yes.

Utter garbage.

You cannot finish fifth in the Premier League by fluke.

Well, quite a few actually. And he doesn't need to sign for "many" clubs. Just one. As soon as another club comes in he can start choosing. That may be happening now.

He'll have plenty of offers. I fear he'll go to one of the bigger clubs, like Everton or Villa.

The debate is about Lambert being a "budget striker" compared to JR. Not about other clubs buying Rickie. If you want to wet your pants about that go ahead but I'm not in the slightest bit interested. And if it shuts you up, I completely agree with you. Value is decided retrospectively, but you can still assess risk up front. My point was and is that comparing our £1m L1 signing of RL three years ago with signing JR now is ridiculous. And saying one is better value than the other before one of them has even signed is also madness.

I think you'll find it is The9 looking at value based on price not me. I very much doubt Saints will be spending seven mil on any 30 year olds this close season. But thanks for some of your usual obvious "insights" delivered in your typical tediously patronising way.

How much did J Rod cost Burnley then? Because we didn't sign him last season and he didn't play for us last season.

Nice pastiche. The point is we're not buying RL now for one million pounds. If we were then yes, that's a budget signing. We're also not buying a 30yr old for seven million pounds either. Bad value. What we are doing is buying a 22 year old with bags of potential and wanted by several clubs and sold under duress by his current club for seven million pounds. We wouldn't have done that as a L1 or champ club. If the league a team is in has no impact on the cost of the player, how come league one teams aren't spending seven million quid on players all the time? Pretty simple really. I'll type it out slower for you if you like.

He's a good player. League one team doesn't spend seven million pounds on one player. Premier League team does spend seven million pounds on one player. The fact we (may be about to) do the second one does not make our signing of Rickie Lambert some bargain basement steal. Just dopey rewriting of history.

Well we're not buying him in the prem are we.

How many £1m signings were there in L1 that season? Or even last season, or even next season? £2m signings in the Champ are less rare but hardly commonplace and definitely not "budget signings" especially as we signed him and stuck him on the bench for weeks.

You mean like the loyalty shown by Norwich to Bryan Gunn? Lambert owes Norwich nothing. Adkins owes us none.

Yet the Mega bucks striker didn't score as many goals as either of our 2 "budget" strikers in the same league last season.... Which budget strikers are these then? I can remember Lambert and Sharp playing for us but they both cost significant amounts of money.