verlaine1979

I didn't say it would happen - it's just how I interpret the thinking behind paying a fair whack for what looks on the face of it, a reserve keeper. Gunn had a lot of hype behind him when he first emerged at City, so I suspect the club jumped at the chance to acquire a young potential England international on the assumption that his value will rise significantly, despite the fact that there were more pressing needs in the squad. With Kepa and Alisson setting the bar for prices, the likes of Pickford would easily go for £50m in this market.

Seems unlikely that LR was running a private scouting operation through Europe while steadfastly ignoring the minor-league gems being served by by Wilson. Far more likely is that the job was too big for RW, so he tried to shortcut by scouting the fringes of bigger clubs like Bayern, Juventus and Lazio for prospects. That way, at least he could say that someone else with clout had already passed a positive judgment on the players he was suggesting.

Assuming the entire point of buying Gunn was so that we could play him for a season or two and then sell him for 5x what we paid, they're going to have to start bedding him in sooner or later.

I don't think it's Reed who made MH play 5 at the back all pre-season then immediately switch to an antiquated 4-4-2 45 minutes into the first league fixture. The tactical shambles is entirely of Hughes' own making.

Looking at their last few games, they seem to play 4-2-3-1 with Delofeu, Hughes and Pereyra playing behind Success.

Exploiting these opportunities so successfully that the market cap of his main business has fallen to less than half of what it was around the time of the takeover. So, an owner who never really cared about the success of the football club, who has around half as much money (or less) as he did when he bought the club (and was never particularly wealthy to begin with). Now there's a recipe for long term stability if I ever saw one...

Blimey, that isn't even remotely true. Lander are very small fry.

Eh? Play that formation with that midfield and Capoue, Doucoure and Hughes will run the game. And I wouldn't pick Vestergaard to play against an attack whose primary assets are the pace and movement of Pereyra and Delofeu.

Bundesliga not a bad shout for him - quite a few playmakers have come over from the German league and not shown anything like the same creativity in the PL.

Eh, why bother injecting a spurious moral component into this? His job is to be a part of the Saints squad, and aside from missing 90 minutes per week, I'd imagine he still plays more than enough football during training to satisfy any lingering love for the game (not that many people still love a hobby or sport once it becomes their profession). On the flip side, he's a man with a relatively short career, who you're suggesting should give up over 40% of his earnings in order to play one more game of football per week for a lower league club that would also have pretty much no chance of winning anything meaningful. And the only reason you want him to do this is to save his employer - who let's not forget only bound him to such a long contract as they believed it would increase their chances of selling him for a profit - some money. If there was some way that Forster's wages would be channeled into lifting children out of poverty or curing the sick, then sure, maybe it would be fair to accuse him of greed. As it is, any cash he walks away from will just be given to some other overpaid millionaire footballer, so I say fair play to him. Never do your employer any favours, as they'll almost never do any for you.

Eh? There's no reason to believe that if he was picked, Forster wouldn't play for us to the best of his ability. In which case, he's not in breach of his contract. If the club were dumb enough to offer him a bumper 5 year deal when there was already evidence that his form was declining, then the fault rests entirely with them. Regardless of the fact that he earns many multiples more than me per year, I absolutely support Forster's right to see out the contract he signed. If you disagree with that and think it's fine to try and force players to give up their contractual rights, you'd better never breathe a word of dissent when other players under contract try and force through a transfer to a bigger club.

We're quite comfortably bad enough to go down, and as in other seasons, momentum is as likely to play a part in who gets relegated as player-for-player squad quality. The Watford and Fulham games next month are looking absolutely crucial, otherwise we could be rooted to the drop zone by end of year.

Redmond and Lemina both playing reasonably well, but once again as a spectacle the game has been dire. The few decent moments have come from turnovers in the middle, and once again there's no real sense of any structure in how we try to create chances in normal possession - it's all very static, with the majority of running on the ball being the wide players going backwards in order to make space to recycle the ball.

We didn't lose and we had a couple of chances (though Bournemouth's chance in the opening minute and King's miss were probably as clear as any of ours) but we're still a team completely lacking in identity. Play doesn't develop - it just sort of happens randomly throughout the 90 minutes.

Both teams dire so far.

A game of blunder and counter-blunder so far.

I was among those agreeing that he at least *looks* better this season, but his stats for the league are still no goals and no assists in 8 games. What's more, for all that, he's probably still our most dangerous player behind Ings, which is terrifying for someone with no decisive contributions in twelve hours of football.

I'm pretty sure we also had a massive goal drought that season over xmas and new year too.

I don't even think it was a myth. I think it was a very successful wind-up playing on the vanity of some of our fanbase.

But, but - he saw the value in taking our unique 'family club' brand global! Who will do it now??

Eh? Puel, MP and Hughes have all deviated from the 4-2-3-1 template the club were meant to play across all age groups. After starting out with 45 minutes of five at the back, haven't we been playing an old-fashioned flat 4-4-2 in most of our games this season? The problem with the club isn't that we're sticking too closely to a philosophy or identity, it's that we've let go of ours completely in both tactics and recruitment, and are now floundering in a sea of received wisdom about what-you-need-to-do-to-stay-up.

Exactly - FFP is a complete red herring for Saints. Since the takeover, we've spent about two million less on transfers than we've made on sales. Beyond that we've also shipped out several of our highest earners and replaced them with players from the Swiss, Scottish and other less remunerative leagues. TV and sponsorship revenue has increased over the past couple of seasons, player trading is more or less cost-neutral and wages have probably gone down recently relative to the average rise across the league. All adds up to the fact that we could be investing more in the playing squad, but have chosen not to. Moreover, FFP actually allows clubs to make losses of up to £105m over three seasons as long as the owner is prepared to inject cash to make good the loss (though the allowable losses are smaller if you play in European competitions governed by UEFA). Hence why all the bleating about Bournemouth is probably futile - I doubt they're coming anywhere near touching the FFP caps for either profit & sustainability or short term wage control.

We just don't have the composure or the class to play against Chelsea's press. They've won more tackles in our defensive third than we have.

The game isn't so much being played in our half as in our penalty box at the moment.

Redmond showing his searing pace there.