Saint-Fred

thanks.. I knew I read it somewhere back when he signed but never really looked to see if it was true!

Perhaps instead of the extremes people keep insisting on putting other people's mouths..all some people want is the club to address the ,obvious to all, deficiencies in the squad? Yes we have two weeks to do it but wouldn't it be nice, for once, to start the season with a full squad and let others do the scratching around for deals? For me mid table is fine..watching my team play some good football, having a chance in all games (so not getting hammered each week) is enough for me..people who keep quoting "win a cup" obviously haven't supported us long..we have only won two in 130 odd seasons so if that's a criteria of success then most will probably be very disappointed!

That's just not true during cortese's time we signed loads of English players (maybe not all talented! Lol) off the top of my head Chaplow, Hammond, lambert, Clyne, butterfield, bernard, sharpe, etc sure I forgot a load plus some foreign players already playing in England eg Fonte.

Chelsea are number 4!

That would be interesting to know whether it was the black box or Koeman? I thought I read an article where it said he had identified him from a champions league match against Red Bull but that could be inaccurate? Update...Had a quick scan of CL and EL and I reckon that isn't accurate as as far as I can see RK hasn't managed a team which played against a team with Mane in as far as I can see..

From his history I struggle to believe he will be incompetent enough to get himself sacked in three months! He is trying a system which he obviously believes in but we haven't seen him set up a team for a game like Man Utd away yet...he hasn't lost a game yet so we don't even know how he would react to that with team or formation changes etc... We did see him make changes to the team on Saturday when we were losing (which turned the game) and obviously make enough impression on the players at half time to change the performance of the team. The team made the second most passes in the weekend with one of the highest accuracy. Possession was one of the highest at nearly 60% and we had more shots than any other team. Personally I am looking forward to seeing us play the attractive football that his other teams have been known for.

TBF it's a bit more than that but ultimately will produce outputs that need human interpretation hence you still can end up with players that a manager knows..eg Clasie, Pelle, Tadic, Pied. It would be interesting to know of any player that has been identified using the system that has actually been sold on at a profit?

Lol at least other 12 teams main objective is staying up! That's not something to be ashamed of! We will be fine...now if we were Palace I would be worriedly!

where are the other two teams? We also had one of the highest possession nearly 60 % and one of the best pass accuracy something like 85% (just behind Bmth! Lol)

Yeah but last year we didn't have VVD in that game..as again he was a late signing...perhaps our poor starts have more to do with signing good players late in the window so they miss the first games? Year before Mane and Toby, I assume didn't play the West Brom game?

Why couldn't our business have been already completed and maybe Fonte might be thinking we have x and x who are very exciting, why would I want to leave this?.we should have a good year!

Xxx

is that aimed at my comment? I didn't say go after them so it might be someone else? I agree the sensible way is to interview a few managers so how would Puels mate know we were looking at him for a while beforehand? If someone is on our list do we go and tap them all on the shoulder and say "we are looking at you even though we have a manager..keep it quiet though as we don't want him to know and you are the only one we are looking at....honest"?

Reminds me of Morgan, he also was obviously totally unaware that we wouldn't sell him..and he had a strop. He was only placated by the promise to sell him the following year...the issue is Fonte knows they won't be back next year..it's now or never! Will be interesting how he does react if we do get an offer and we refuse it!

If we couldn't keep Mane because he wouldn't try if we didn't sell..doesn't that apply to Fonte?

It would make sense as we are supposed to have targets lined up in advance but it's brings two questions to me? How would he know we were looking at him? And why, then, did we supposedly go for Rudi Garcia and other options first?

Was the club rebuffed or did they not offer enough? Wasn't the comment our last bid was rejected..sounds like the club were willing to sell but we weren't willing to pay enough.

How come their players aren't sulking, refusing to play and hence lowered their value to 12m? I thought that always happened if you didn't sell?

Personally I don't think we are weak negotiators and I am sure the team really believe they get the best deal possible. It does feel due to the speed we can sell that we must be nice to deal with though rather than tough negotiators but again that isn't necessarily a negative. It would be interesting if an ITK could give some insight into why incoming transfers take so long given the fabled black box is in place? None of the departures have been a shock and we are told the black box identifies targets well in advance so why are those deals not lined up for day 1 of the transfer window? (An exaggeration I know but other teams do sign players right at the start of the window) Why then would we have to wait until the end of the window so often to do a deal if we know who we want? Ultimately I suppose if the players we sign on the final days have been targets for the whole summer but only signed for us at the last minute because they ran out of other options then it isn't surprising they are happy to jump ship at the first opportunity. I am not sure the board can be blamed in that situation?

I agree to a point but I do look at other teams and don't see the same quality..famously even Leicester's squad was cheaper than ours!

Or with no other options Mane decides to take the extra cash for a year and agrees a new contract. He plays for a move to Barcelona and single handedly wins us the league before moving to Barce for £80 million pounds the following summer.

You may well be right. I think the current board have given us the strongest squad I have known at Saints and they deserve credit for that and my gratitude. I never dreamed I'd be watching a team made up of so many 8-10+million pound players. They may well have something lined up...my only minor gripe is we sell early ( so Mane has a full pre season-which he only had once with us by the way-at Liverpool and starts the season on fire) whilst we still await news of new signings and no doubt will be repeatedly told "they didn't have a pre season-let them bed in"...the reason for that is that we can't buy as others want to secure targets before they sell...well in that case we should do that as well before selling and instead of earning Liverpool 2 points Mane could have been sat on our bench or "injured" like Lukaku waiting to get the go ahead to leave when we had a replacement. Lukaku hasn't got his Chelsea shirt on tonight has he? If he was ours you'd suspect he would have had a holiday in RA's yacht, scored in all the pre season games and had time to paint his house blue since he had signed for them!

Who are all these people asking for us to spend beyond our means? The majority I have seen just want the cash from incoming transfers reinvested in the squad? Forget the extra sky money, forget the extra commercial money..just what was done two years ago when the majority of the incoming cash bought us a new team ,which took us to 7th then 6th place. Without that near 100m investment we would have gone down. Without that 100m investment we wouldn't be having the commercial deals we have now.. everyone agrees the squad is light...if we don't invest in the team, you go down..look at Villa..... Look at Newcastle..lack of investment caught up with them even if they did chuck money at it last season when it was too late -the squad was rubbish by then. Making a profit and having cash is great as long as the team on the pitch can compete..I don't think we will go down by any stretch of the imagination this year but imagine selling Forster and VVD next year? Fonte needs replacing next year whether we sell him or not. We'd need to spend a fortune to get a team on the pitch to save us then! Last year only one signing we made managed to hold down a first team place. If we had the same team as last year how many of this years signings would make the first team? At some point we will need to buy some proven quality.

The black box unearthed Caulker last year so maybe it will spit his name out again?

Ok The only way we can do that is to have a summer keeping our best players and bringing in extra quality to build a team to challenge for something..how can we expect Fonte to stay when all his decent team mates from over the years are playing in teams that will compete for titles and cups every season? If they were still here, he would stay but the club always sells them on..why should he have to always be part of a "development" side? Hasn't he earned this? The problem with this one is Fonte can't stay one more year like Wanyama or Morgan as he is at the tail end of his career so this is now or never. It's our policy ..buy, develop, sell.