Ken Tone

I think the downside of our many bargain buys etc is that many of our players, and arguably managers like puel, take time to adjust to the premier league. Mane, wanyama , etc were nothing like as good in their first seasons as they later became. I'm hoping Boufal will be better next year, once he has learnt when to try to go past 3 players and when to get rid. it feels like the same applies to Puel. He started the season with fixed ideas ....eg the diamond , Redmond as a central striker.. and now he's consistently playing 4-3-3, with redmond wide. His record suggests that he should end up a good manager in the EPL, but he isn't good yet. The question is ,how patient are the club going to be? I suspect that unless we drop close to relegation, the answer is 'very'.

Sorry not to see sims on the bench. He at least wakes us up a bit when he comes on.

His wages would be more of an issue than the transfer fee.

yes. Far from building up an atmosphere, it actually dampened it.

IT was good to be able finally to hear the announcements etc, but they need to turn down the music. It was so loud that we couldn't talk to people next to us without shouting in their ears...more.like being in a club than being at a match. Some people near me were complaining (when we could hear them, after the music finally stopped!) that it actually hurt their ears. If it continues at that ridiculous level I'll not renew my season ticket next season.

It's not just his set pieces. He passes well in open play. Too many professionals seem to rate him for him to be as bad as some of the amateurs on here seem to think.

The 'i' newspaper has a piece today reminding of the Stevens enquiry in 2004-ish, that concluded that 17 transfers needed further investigation. 4 of them were to Bolton whilst Allardyce was manager. Several others were to Portsmouth whilst Redknapp was there. The FA and FIFA bottled out of a proper investigation.

Anybody seen a replay of the Shane Long booking? It really didn't look like simulation to me, but I was a long way from it.

Thanks for the response to my diamond question. I can't say i like what I've seen of it so far this season, but then I'm not the manager !

Genuine question ..... Are any other premier league teams playing the diamond formation this year ? Or did any last year? And indeed, how common is it internationally? I seem to recall England using it a while ago.

Thanks. Waited patiently one year only to discover they'd closed the car park I'd been using and not told me, hence a bit anxious.

Has anybody received their seasonal car parking tickets yet? We paid for ours at the same time as we paid for the season tickets, but have heard nothing since. We've had problems before with them cocking this up, so are beginning to get nervous right now with the first game only 11 days away. Would be good to know if others have had theirs yet. Thanks

I'm lookoing forward to the. Dave merrington version!

most of the wages quoted in the media for footballers are AFTER tax, or to be more precise the tax is paid for them by the club as party the contract. So the £100k a week or £5 million a year is take home pay. Obscene isn't it?

Well the value of the pound collapsing will have caused a problem, let alone anything else. Is the contract in euros? Probably not. So both sides will be looking very closely at the exchange rate before signing the final version.

I know someone who is a neighbour of his in Winchester, who says he is late all the time for everything, but to be fair , that doesn't necessarily mean he is a liability. BTW he and his girl friend are going to find Wallasey a bit different to Winchester!

Just as as long as he signs the petition now https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215 #regrexit

Not just NI, most footballers wages quoted in the press are tax paid, ie the club pays the tax for them and they actually take home the obscene amounts in their contracts.

Don't know why the OP has started this thread today with a week old article ,but since that was published I thought we'd been told that Koeman was offered a new contract that included a break clause after one year ..... I'm presuming a clause that allowed him to go under certain conditions ,eg Barcelona or Arsenal wanted him. if that was the case, then it seems eminently reasonable to me.

I was quoting the BBC with 7%. this from poundsterlinglive.com Pound to euro exchange rate today down 6.4% at 1.2222 Euro to pound exchange rate: 0.8180 Pound to dollar exchange rate today is 9.8% down at 1.3415 Pound to Australian dollar exchange rate today 6.35% down at 1.8297 Pound to New Zealand Dollar exchange rate today 6.6% down at 1.9174 Pound to Swiss Franc exchange rate today 8.57% down at 1.3050 Pound to Yen exchange rate today 13.77% down at 1.3628 Anyway you look at it, today isn't a good day to try to get a foreigner to sign a contract of employment in the UK!

The pound has dropped 7% against the Euro, less than against the dollar because the euro also dropped a bit. It does seriously make you wonder if our prospective manager, whoever he is but assuming he is not Britsih, will have his agent frantically upping his wage demands this morning.

I had that problem a few weeks ago, whenever I viewed the site on my ipad. It became virtually unusable for a while, but then recently the 'prize' ads stopped ... nothing I'd done. At present it is just slow for me on my laptop, whilst the 'slow running script' runs, and weirdly is much quicker on my phone or ipad.

There's some really interesting stuff on this thread ..... Ought to be a sticky mods.

"De Boer’s agent confirmed to the Daily Echo there is no interest from Saints, while sources in Bournemouth have said that Eddie Howe has indicated he would not leave the Cherries for a move to St Mary’s at this stage." Quote from the Echo above about Howe ,but then a fortnight ago the echo would have been saying much the same about Koeman and Everton.

Me too. Almost unusable.