verlaine1979

As someone said on another thread, we should be looking to bid for someone like Tomori from Chelsea. When we played Derby in the cup he already looked better than what we've got. Moreover, the club's PR should really start hammering on RH's similarities to Klopp in terms of style of play, enthusiasm etc. Klopp's stock is so high at the moment that it could give us a slight edge in recruitment, particularly with younger British players who might see us as a fast track to playing at that level and in that style.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, the idea that a renewed contract for an already proven player is anything other than a mechanism for protecting their transfer value is insane.

You're kidding yourself. He'll be 28 at the end of this season, which would be the end of the 2 years you're talking about. No way was he going to stay and play mid-table football for the peak years of his 20s. As you say, he was probably the best defender in the world - it's just absurd to think we could have kept him. And besides, that's not really what contracts are for these days (in addition to protecting the transfer value of the player, the higher the transfer fee, the lower the signing bonus, so the extra wages are also a compensation for that aspect of any future transaction). If anyone good comes to Saints and shows their potential consistently, bigger clubs will want them and they'll probably want to leave after two season. It's exactly what happened with Mane, and it really should've been what happened with VVD. Take as much money as possible and move on. Le Tiss was an unusual figure even back then, and such behaviour has only become less likely with the money and celebrity on offer. Of course, if Gao finds a few billion down the back of his sofa and wants to bankroll us that way, then fine, our behaviour can change. But if the club has to be run as a business in order to survive, then run it like a business and leave the vanity and ego out of it.

It probably also gives young players who are weighing up whether to come to us something to put in the negatives column. So many players share agents, and so many agents are on retainers with clubs that the idea that you can maintain a chinese wall around players to prevent them finding out that other clubs want them is simply preposterous. We should manage the club in light of the reality we find ourselves in, not some fantasy. Liverpool got VVD, are fighting for the league and are in the CL final for the second year in a row. All we got in return for our stubbornness was a season of uncertainty over our CB positions and some ropey subsequent recruitment. Who knows, perhaps if we hadn't been such drama queens over VVD we might have been able to attract someone slightly better than Vestergaard?

Eh, new contracts are as much about the club protecting resale value as it is a 'reward' to the player for doing well (leaving to one side the spurious notion that pay in return for work is ever a reward). Our mistake was going down the 'not for sale at any price' route. That immediately broke the covenant between the club and players, which had quite obviously been based on the idea that if you do well here, it's a stepping stone to bigger things. At a club our size with our business model, a player should never be 'not for sale'. Instead once there is concrete interest from bigger clubs, we should make it clear that they can leave, but only at their appropriate valuation. This would encourage want-away players (and fans) to put as much pressure on their suitors to get a deal done as on us to sell. The whole refusal to negotiate for VVD once it became obvious he wanted to leave was idiotic grandstanding, and did us no good at all.

If RH doesn't get the funds to build a team in his image this summer, I doubt we'll get more than another season out of him. He's just too overwhelmingly employable (young-ish, affable, passionate with the fans, coaches a modern game) for someone else not to take a punt on him.

We can't afford top players. We can either afford a small number of league-proven mediocre players on high wages, or we can afford a larger pool of young players from other leagues on lower wages, some of whom will at least have the potential to transcend mediocrity.

I'm pretty sure the Chinese govt policy towards foreign sporting acquisitions had already changed before the deal went through. Gao pushed ahead anyway, using loan financing from HK rather than his mainland assets, which were restricted by the govt change of heart. To me, this cements the idea that it was less about trying to fit in with regime policy, and more about trying to transfer wealth out of China and into a more secure European regulatory environment. Nothing that's happened to Lander or Gao since the takeover (massive crash in stock value & net worth, effective takeover by state controlled funds) suggests much reason for optimism. The club may not be milked for debt payback yet (perhaps because our PL status has been so precarious since the takeover) but that doesn't mean we don't have that to look forward to, just like almost every other debt-acquired club in Europe.

To state the obvious, on our budget it isn't - it's our record fee.

Thing is, to sustain the self-financing model, you have to be extremely strict, and always sell two years before a contract is up, no matter how much of a fan favorite they are (unless they aren't worth much and selling wouldn't yield the funds to buy a suitable younger replacement). Les Reed/the club hierarchy screwed up when he started to act like he believed we were different - if you declare that you're going to run the club as a self-sustaining business, then you can't get distracted by sentiment or nebulous ideas like image or legacy.

Long showed why he'll never be good enough - first touch for his chance was just so poor. Hope him, Stephens and FF are gone next season (along with Ely who has surely proven himself deadwood already).

Even the Dortmund/Atletico models seem to require more money than we are comfortable spending (though this might also be a function of being in the PL where the table stakes of having a competitive team are just a lot higher). But to play the reinvestment game with any confidence you have to be looking to sell one star and buy two or three prospects every time. One for one replacement leaves you one dud away from an empty cupboard, as we're likely to discover quite soon if we have to sell yet again before buying over the summer. It's a shame really, as I think the stepping stone model can be quite exciting to watch. You get the enjoyment of seeing new talent emerge, rather than just watching the same old names week in, week out.

Ings has missed 10 games through injury this season, and been benched for two games where he clearly hasn't been up to playing twice in quick succession. That's just a hair under a third of the season unavailable. I really hope whoever we bring in is an absolute nailed-on starter, otherwise that's a lot of slack for the unreliable finishing of Long and Obafemi to pick up.

He was only supposed to be a bench striker this season, but Ings and Austin are injured so often we've ended up relying on him. Sure, keep Long if he genuinely would just be sitting here as a fourth or fifth choice with Obafemi, but if we have to ship him out to give us a chance of landing a genuine starter, then I'd sell in a heartbeat.

Just to reaffirm that he's not very good, really. He did his best to waste that chance by aiming straight at Boruc, but the defender did him a solid.

Without the nick off the defender, Boruc would've saved the shot for his goal easily - wasn't actually a good finish at all.

He's absolutely right. We need a massive upgrade at CB, otherwise we can look forward to another season of throwing away record numbers of points. JB is worth keeping, but the rest are pretty toss.

We're well organised now, but you can see why we were so useless under Hughes - we're really lacking some fundamental areas like passing and control. To take even the most basic care of the ball we have to slow the game right down and rely on the CBs to circulate it. After spurning a couple of good chances in the first half, we barely managed to string two passes together in the second, and gave Watford every opportunity to try and kick their misfiring attack back into gear, which they duly did. We'll stay up, but the squad needs a complete overhaul that we almost certainly can't afford.

We take so little care of the ball. Invited that whole spell leading to the goal by not having a clue how to keep hold of it around their box.

This. Our passing is so sloppy, especially when we insist on using our three clumsy centre backs as playmakers.

So is Wilson now officially our DoF?

I think it's because, hand on heart, I think he is a much better player than Redmond, who has many of Boufal's flaws and nowhere near the same level of natural ability.

He hasn't even seen Boufal train yet. All anyone is saying is that they hope he'll be given a chance to impress in pre-season, rather than being judged prematurely surplus to requirements. Why wouldn't we?

Indeed - are we really debating whether raising the overall quality of a team generally raises the performance level of individuals within it? It's not complicated - if the players around you start finding space more easily, either because they themselves have become better at it or because the team now has a strategy that increases work rate and movement - it will be easier for creative players to find open passes and create chances. This is true even for players like Messi and Ronaldo, whose achievements over the past decade have been significantly magnified by having the likes of Xavi, Iniesta and Modric alongside them.

Eh? You see him beating his man and moving the ball on over and over against arguably the best defense European football has had over the past five years or so. Sure, a couple of moves end up in wayward shots, but what were you expecting? No one is claiming he's up there with the likes of Hazard, but in terms of his ability to create space all by himself we have absolutely no one who can do what he does.