verlaine1979

Back in July the Guardian suggested that the option/obligation to buy KL's 20% was about to kick in. Surely the timing is not a coincidence if rumours of strife between them have only emerged since then. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jul/22/southampton-continue-to-invest-in-youth-after-gao-jishengs-boardroom-reshuffle

Since it now seems certain that Markus wasn't anywhere close to being a billionaire, he probably couldn't have afforded for the club to be anything other than self-financing once it reached Premier League level. Either way, it's irrelevant - if the club had been treading water like this for the past three years with Markus at the helm, do you think we wouldn't be having these same conversations about investment?

Being self-sustaining might win you plaudits for economic discipline, but it's a big impediment if other teams have owners who can chip in when required (don't bring up FFP - it doesn't stop owners making modest annual contributions).

I suspect that of our established players (i.e. not including Djenepo, Danso and Adams) the only player we have that most rival fans would definitely put in their first team is Redmond, with Sheffield United and Newcastle fans probably persuadable on Ings. I suppose a couple of others might also consider Romeu and Bertrand, but they're certainly not shoo-ins.

Eh? Hoj has played for his country more than 20 times - JWP has made 2 cameos for England, two years apart.

Do the top clubs still want their own league? I assumed they'd realised it was a bit like the Matrix, and if you remove hope of promotion from the wider football population, it could end up destroying the whole ecosystem.

This - Tadic wasn't fast, but was excellent at shifting balance and had enough acceleration from there to create space for himself. It's like the scouts looked at Tadic and the lesson they took from him was that you don't need pace to thrive in the PL. Sure, but you'd better have something else that makes up for it, and Elyounoussi doesn't have anything.

Bickering aside, the problem with Elyounoussi is that any scout watching him for five minutes should have been able to tell that he's got absolutely no acceleration or top-line pace. If a player has all the attributes to succeed and doesn't work out (Boufal, Lemina, Hoedt might fall into this category) then fair enough - those are the breaks where you're trying to game the market. When someone fails because of physical characteristics that are obvious within the first few minutes of his debut, then a bit of finger-pointing is probably warranted (especially if you boast about having scouted the aforementioned player for six sodding years before signing).

He did almost get his leg snapped off against Brighton, so I'm hoping (as with Bertrard) that RH has just been super cautious in bringing him back. That doesn't explain why both him and RB have been unused subs recently though, as fullback generally isn't a position where you risk someone on the bench in the hope that they'll give you a game-changing ten minutes late on.

I think it's because if he hadn't been such a pathetic noodle when challenging with Kane for the spurs clearance, that counter-attack would never have gotten started. Bednarek was at fault later in the passage of play, sure, but this is yet another instance of Vestergaard showing zero strength, so worth noting.

Was just thinking that - a lot of them don't pass so much as hand it on.

When you 'match' a better team for 10 or 15 minutes, and then they start to roll you over, as Spurs did here leading up to their goal - do you think it's because we started unusually well or because they started slowly?

Vest got beaten so easily in the air for the turnover on that goal. He interviews well, but is just so weak on the field.

Eh, if we gift any of their forwards the kind of chances we've been giving up over the last three games, a lot of this cautious optimism is going to prove misplaced pretty quickly.

I thought this too - first 25 minutes or so, Yoshida looked very shaky indeed, with a couple of ropey passes and instances of poor control.

You have a charmingly simplistic understanding of the world.

There's a bit of a whiff of Elyounoussi about him - just doesn't look like he thinks or moves quickly enough to make it in this league.

Ake, King, Fraser, Brooks, Wilson and probably Billing to start with.

He almost scored against Sheffield United - it's going to take more than that to make a convincing argument that he'll make the grade.

Is it much of a comfort to prove so conclusively that we only deserved to lose 3-1?

Where did they take their shots from compared to ours? Hoj had that scrappy attempt that was bundled away by the post with about five defenders in the way, but other than that I think the others were all from outside the box. Bournemouth finished better, but they also cut us open to create far better chances. If King wore boots one size smaller and VAR had done its job with their penalty claim, we could easily have lost that 5-1 and it wouldn't have been undeserved.

As above, a few decent moments of hold up play, but I've not seen anything from him to suggest that he's got what it takes to perform the Herculean task of outscoring Shane Long. His last touch before contact on the penalty was taking the ball out of play about ten yards ahead of him, so he was very lucky as otherwise it would've just looked like another passage of play where he lacked the pace or technique to create a chance for himself.

The problem with Hoj is that we can really only afford one immobile defensive midfielder, and Romeu has that spot sewn up on merit - he's far better at winning the ball back. Hoj just isn't outstanding in any area - he's not mobile enough to be a nuisance, strong enough to dominate or technical enough for the game to run through him. He's a solid utility player, but easily shown up by opponents with a better blend of qualities in their midfield partnership.

That's two Vestergaard has gotten away with this half. Dire.

Eh? We've had a go against a side that were 2-0 up and cruising at half time. Your verdict is missing some important context.