verlaine1979

And in all those years we've been crying out for a genuine AM to actually make chances and score goals, rather than popping safe 5 yard wall passes about and blazing over or wide 99 times out of 100. Whether we bring in Boufal, Stanciu or someone I've never heard of, I pray whoever they are, they finally dislodge that mediocrity from the starting line up.

You'd seriously rather have Davis trundling along in that midfield rather than putting Redmond on the right and switching Boufal to the middle where he can do most damage? Madness. Academic though, as Puel shows no sign of wanting to abandon the diamond just yet.

Judging by how little creativity there is in the squad, I hope we get both Boufal and Stanciu. Can't afford to write of January and Feb when the former goes to the Afcon, so #10 would seem a position where we need two genuine first team contenders.

Sounds reasonable - whichever way you cut it, I can't see how wage restrictions under FFP would be an issue for us right now. If anything, it sounds like we have a great opportunity to push our wage ceiling higher so that we aren't held back in future seasons where we don't have such an obvious step up in commercial and player-sale revenue.

Sure, but there are quite a number of posters saying that we can't possibly bring anyone else in at the top level because we only have an additional £6m/7m in annual wages to dispense this year, most of which has already been taken up by the boosted contracts to VVD, Tadic, Long etc. If, as the above posts suggest, our wage bill can actually be boosted massively by additional commercial and player sales revenue, the FFP wage argument about why we aren't signing (for the sake of argument) someone like Benteke seems without foundation.

Huh, so it sounds like we could boost wages by the £6/7m allowed in the rules by default, plus the extra £5m a year Virgin are paying above Veho (assuming the £1m/£6m figure is correct) plus anything up to an extra £8m from Under Armor (depending on how our self-produced shirt income was accounted for and whether the £8m per year figure reported is accurate), plus whatever proportion of our player sales income needed to be allocated to inbound salaries. On that basis, unless we agreed to pay JWP £200k a week in his new deal, it doesn't sound like wages should be a huge constraint this year.

I agree. Fonte and JRod leaving would surely be an indication that we have some pretty substantial inbound transfers afoot, as to not have very high level replacements for both lined up would be literally moronic.

If the opposition are playing 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 doesn't one of the DMs just drop back to mark your false 9, leaving the CBs to double up with the full backs on your wide attackers when the ball is on the flanks?

Looks genuinely two-footed if the fact that there's a couple of screamers with either foot in his highlights reels is anything to go by.

I think he was alluding to the likely reason why hardly anyone ever criticises SD - even when he has a mare, most posters will limit themselves to 'Davis did okay except for X, Y & Z', while for most players, the excoriation of X, Y & Z would be drawn out in lingering detail. The fact that he's British, hard-working and easier to identify with than most flashy modern footballers, is probably the reason why he's so highly rated, despite being bang average or worse in every phase of play.

For a formation that relies on the fullbacks even more than we did under Koeman, I'm not sure we've got the players. Even when Bertrand comes back, I don't expect him to suddenly tip the scales - he's a great defender and pops up with one or two assists, but constantly bombing forward isn't his game (he's averaged less than one cross per game for us over two years). Cedric gets forward pretty well, but doesn't he seem to balloon a high percentage of crosses? As for the midfield (Hojbjerg aside, who was neutralised by having to play at the base of the diamond) we don't have ball carriers, so both passing and movement are pretty slow and static. We could really use a player that the opposition are scared to see on the ball - someone who has the potential to take people on create overloads and gets their defense shuffling backwards. Redmond and Long both made some good runs in the channels, and with better support and movement from the fullbacks and central midfield, could have created a platform for us to build more than half chances. As it is, there's a disconnect between midfield and strikers, and it's there that the problem lies. Buying another target man who won't get service is not the answer.

Davis even less suited to this system than the old one. Not dynamic or creative enough to contribute going forward, and a wafting liability when we don't have the ball.

Yup, unless Saints have a surprisingly big data science and software engineering department with a multi-million £ per year budget, they won't be doing anything more than compiling, sorting and replaying footage and stats.

Liverpool have him under a long contract and know they don't need to sell him unless it makes sense for them to do so. I doubt they want rid of him so badly that they wouldn't be happy to wait until January when Inter Milan or whoever else looks like missing out on the CL this season will be happy to cough up for a known quantity striker.

Benteke is only 25 and has a proven record in the Premier League - 42 in 89 for Villa and 9 in 29 for a Liverpool side he probably should never have joined. £30m is good value for a 1 in 2 striker yet to enter the prime of his career.

You'd think if we signed someone like Boufal, the 4-4-2 diamond would make even less sense as a formation that made best use of our best players... 4-2-3-1 with [Romeu/Hojbjerg - Tadic/Boufal/Redmond - Austin] would have good balance (assuming that Hoj's size and strength translate into decent defensive capability) and plenty of creativity.

Assuming Boufal/Another at the tip of the diamond, would you rather have Davis or Tadic on the left there?

If we buy someone of the quality of Boufal to play in attacking midfield, Davis will be on the bench more often than not.

Don't lose anyone else and plonk £10-15m on a genuine attacking midfielder to replace Davis/JWP in the first XI and it will have been a perfectly reasonable window.

Agree with some of the comments here - Fonte can be quite error prone and his recovery pace is only going to decline further. We're going to need to think about replacing him sooner or later, but it doesn't really sound like the club have got a succession plan in place, so probably best not to lose him now with only two weeks of the window remaining.

Looked to play a couple of really nicely weighted through-balls from midfield too.

I did as you suggested and looked up Ancelotti's Milan - so all we need to do is bring in players of the calibre of Cafu, Pirlo, Kaka & Shevchenko and the formation will work fine?

Might have just been the contrast on the TV, but aside from VVD and Romeu, Watford seemed to physically dwarf us man for man. New formation hardly a resounding success - not a lot of point having two strikers racing about up top if the rest of the team are struggling to advance beyond half way.

My PSG supporting friend doesn't rate him, but he's a bit of a snob.

I wonder how many of the lesser-known/non-PL names on that list would also cost more than our record fee to sign?