verlaine1979

Deulofeu started out at Barca before going back there.

It's a pretty decent sum to have in hand by the time you turn 19 though.

Talking about these academy midfielders reminded me of Josh McEachran. I'm pretty sure he was tipped as the best Chelsea academy player of his generation and the closest English football had come to producing its own Xavi. Now at MK Dons after a few seasons of doing very little in the Championship.

The kid only turned 16 back in March. Given a three year contract he'll not even be 20 by the time it runs out (or even 19 by the time there's only a year left and they have to sell him or lose him for nothing). Sitting on the bench once or twice a year at Saints isn't a meaningful development opportunity.

He's not going to play for either side's first team much before he turns 19/20, so it's actually a question of whether he finishes his youth career with a million quid in the bank or not. Moving on from a rich academy to first team football elsewhere when you turn 20 is an increasingly well-worn path that we've been keen to take advantage of ourselves.

Life-changing money at 16 and a move to a club that will no doubt be investing heavily in academy infrastructure over the next few years. Run the contract down until he's 19/20 then start again if he's still in demand. Sounds like he's being well-advised to me.

Presumably the financial flexibility is that the new owners are prepared to shoulder the risk of spending money on inbound transfers before it has been generated by outbound sales. If those sales don't pan out, they must be comfortable with the idea of covering the shortfall somehow (owner loan or new debt), whereas under Gao we clearly were not comfortable with that idea at all, as evidenced by the Target and Ings sales.

He's a game changer if we get a free kick in a decent position. In open play he's just a very dependable water carrier. It's emblematic of the team's creative failings that some are pinning our hopes of staying up on points won from dead ball situations.

The point remains. Players very rarely move straight from mid-table French or Turkish sides to champion's league contenders. The multi-club model could definitely work for us, but the scouting will have to be top notch.

Gems unearthed in the French and Turkish second divisions are unlikely to go straight to teams above us in the food chain.

Far too indecisive and inaccurate on the ball for a possession-based team.

Experience in baseball doesn't always equate to huge wages, whereas it almost always does in the PL unless you're bringing in someone who is over the hill, rather than experienced and still close enough to their prime to handle the physical demands of the game.

Anyone who has played a full season in a top European league is experienced enough for a club like ours. The only players with significantly more experience that we can afford will already have been proven not good enough, or we wouldn't be able to afford them.

And create. If we go into the season with Che as our No. 1, we'll need to create 10x as many chances to account for all the ones he'll sidefoot straight at the keeper.

I'm still undecided over whether I'd rather have Lemina than Diallo, but I'd take Boufal over Elyounoussi every day of the week. If the barometer of consistency is simply knowing that a player isn't going to make anything happen, what's the point?

Yes, god forbid we should be anything other than a team of mediocre cloggers. Hoping to occasionally be a nuisance to bigger teams, because all we have are nuisance players. But at least they give their all at the same time as giving the ball away over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

I'd choose a player with a terrible attitude and a great first touch over the opposite every single time.

McCarthy as number 1 cannot be the plan. He's just unbelievably dreadful with his feet, and alongside Bednarek being unable to pass more than five yards, it screws up 20% of our back-line build up. If he was an incredible shot stopper like Niemi, you might put up with the shortcomings in linking play, but as it is, he brings pretty much nothing to the table.

If Napoli is the level of club seeking his services next year, we won't be in the conversation at all. And to be honest, for the past month or two he's been playing like he knows he'll be making a step up next year regardless of how our season ends. No idea how Napoli play these days, but Mertens et al always played on the shoulder, which would suit him a lot more than our painfully slow build up.

Unless the owners come in with a £50m-ish kitty, I feel like £70/80m is worth more to the future of the club than JWP. If we're not confident of being able to more than replace his defensive and goal contributions with 2x£25/30m players and one £20m player, our scouting and recruitment departments might as well give up.

Problem with both our keepers is that they can't play out confidently from the back. I could live with the occasional (or even semi-regular) howler if I felt that they weren't undermining the basic foundation of the way the team wants to play. Now whether it's sensible to expect your keeper and CBs to be comfortable on the ball is another matter entirely (though I much prefer teams who try and play that way over ones that don't).

Your memory is faulty. We didn't have stats in those days, just raw prejudice.

It hasn't been this fraught on saintsweb since the Steven Davis underrated/overrated wars of 2017.

Spot on. Complete stupidity to consider the Arsenal result as anything other than a phenomenal keeping display. We got battered and nicked a result. You build on that spirit, not on those tactics.

How are they able to create decent chances from slow possession around our box, but we have to go back to our CBs the minute our pace slows?