Saint Garrett

Thought we weren't getting the rugby game?!

St Mary's is about right for us at the moment. If we do move up the table and are challenging regularly for a top half spot then maybe we'll expand it, but until then we'll just have empty seats everywhere.

NZonzi...very odd. I haven't seen much of him, but can't imagine he sees much of the ball in midfield playing for stoke.

£120k. And no, surprisingly he's not mates with Jay Rodriguez as well as Andrew Davies.

Fair enough. I can only go on what I know or speculate.

Source?

It was rumoured all along that we wanted a 'marquee' attacking signing. That signing was Gaston. Has he been worth £12m for what he has contributed so far ? No probably not, but he may well do. You take that transfer fee away and the rest of our players were all done on the cheap. Although J-Rod's transfer fee was inflated I bet his wages are relatively low. I also doubt his fee was £6m straight up, it'll all be related with add ons anyway. I've always said we could have done better with what we spent but I also think we could have done much worse.

Astori?

Pretty much comes down to opinions though doesn't it....If you think Gaston and J-Rod will be failures and we will lose money on what we paid for them then the are a bad piece of business. If you think they'll get better with time and contribute a lot to us over the next few years (whether that is transfer fee or performances on the pitch) they're a success. Just think writing them off so early into their Saints career is massively premature. Morgan is a great example, shown glimpses of quality when he arrived and has grown into it and now by far our best player.

We signed J-Rod way before Mayuka ? And Sharp isn't good enough.

Maybe I am? But I personally dont see why we'd even think about letting him go.

So you don't think we could have put work into 2 different positions at once ? You think we bought J-Rod instead of others? You would have been happy to go into the season with 1 striker in Lambert?

Im sure if we were trying to get rid of him he would have gone. There would have been enough takers.

How do you know they were neglected or maybe we just struggled to bring in the talent at CB that we wanted? Yoshi is hardly a bad player is he.

So you think we should have brought in a player and just never played Rickie ? You don't think he deserves his chance in the prem or capable ? Yes we could have brought in a high paid prem player on his way down, but the idea was to bring in a player who can learn his trade here and for him to learn from Rickie. How much would it cost to get a player better than Rickie? 10m? 15m?

Deary me how are you so unable to gather the concept, it's quite something...! Just becuase he is more expensive than someone that we paid £1m for 3 years ago, doesn't mean he's suddenly much better than him? Rickie is a top player and if they were the same age, Rickie would cost much much more. That doesn't mean that J-Rod is ****, it just means Rickie is a good player ? Understand ?

No he's not. But then surely you can understand why J-Rod can't get in the team as our striker when we only play one?

He might be ? He might not be ? Who knows? Thats the risk you have with buying young players. But even if he carries on as he is, he'll probably be sellable for 4 or 5m, so for a net spend of 1 or 2m, it's not bad business. It's much better business than spending 5m on a player who is 30 and will offer for 1 season but then not good enough...

If Lambert was 23 then he'd be worth more than £7m....that was my arguement about 2 pages ago...

Don't think it has been mentioned. Although probably around the 45-50k mark I would expect. Not that we would fill it !

For every West Brom and Swansea there is a QPR and Sunderland...

I have never said we couldn't have done better with what we spent. And not sure what you mean by the last sentence ?

I don't think I've ever said any different. I like the players we bought in, I think they are decent. However they're expensive.

I agree and have always said that we have overpaid for those 3. However you don't get anything for a few million these days. If Clyne has a contract he probably would have cost 5/6m and Davis would have probably cost 3 or 4m, but because they were free, and we could offer them a decent wage a first team football, they wanted to come here. Same with Boruc (although a little different as noone else realy wanted him) It's very easy to just say, 'It's been 6 months, we paid 6m for him he hasn't done enough, it was a waste', but there are a lot more other factors IMO. The fact Gaston was reportedly one of the hottest talents in Europe, meant we were always going to have to pay a lot of money for him. If you want to buy a young player with a lot of potential and a few people after him, they are expensive. We obviously thought that these players would improve over time and that we had enough about us to stay up this season. I'll make a decision as to whether they were a waste of money once they leave and I can rate their contribution while here, and how much they cost us net in transfer fees. Mayuka I really don't get though.

We can clearly afford it though, so our transfer strategy is different to that of other clubs. If we spent £8m on Gaston, people would probably say he was a good signing. I almost think because we've never spent that kind of money before, our fans are suddenly expecting these players to be world class.