Saint_clark

Signing a new contract is shit but understandable if we didn't want to leave ourselves trying to sign two keepers next summer. Planning on him being first choice next year as well, and signing someone to be his understudy, is insane. The bloke is shit! What is Ralph and everyone at the club seeing him do to justify having so much faith in him!?

Hope not. Only out of contract players I'd like us to look at are Romero and Maksimovic (free agent centreback, most recently played for Napoli).

Hope Ralph keeps him in the side for a long stretch of games, he needs them to be able to work on that final decision on where to play the ball.

The problem is that we don't have any money to save.

Ridiculously bitter article. He didn't rip up anything as there was nothing to rip up, he didn't sign a new contract. He didn't refuse to return to pre-season, he was no longer employed by Everton and so shouldn't have been there anyway.

There's got to be decent keepers available on a free or on loan from a bigger club abroad?

Didn't we have one of the lowest wage budgets in the league up until after he left?

Absolutely, I'm not going to be spending every second of their time here thinking about what their value is, just saying I think this is the plan the management have in place.

You must be buzzing off your tits at the prospect of a Saints save on FM with all these hot prospects.

I think next year he could sign a new 5 year deal if both parties want.

Maybe, but we have to be realistic at the same time. All these young players aren't joining us to play together for Southampton for the next 10 years.

Really happy with this window so far. Get a CB in and it's about as good as we could expect. This summer feels like a reset in terms of our transfer policy - signing a whole bunch of talented youngsters who we can potentially sell in a couple years time for anywhere between £20-40million, at which point we'll be able to reinvest at the level we were spending before (but just spending it more wisely than on the likes of Hoedt, Carillo, Lemina etc!).

I seem to remember they wanted a million quid for him at the time which we weren't prepared to pay...remember we were in league one at the time, that amount of money got us Rickie Lambert, spending the same amount on a young player that had been good to average up to that point wouldn't have been justifiable (at the time!).

Brilliant article for those of us who have no idea who he is, doesn't even mention what position he plays.

You'd like to think our starting players in those positions would be two of Armstrong, Djenepo and Tella anyway, but Ralph seems adamant that Tella should be used up front now annoyingly.

Let's not forget that we don't actually need him to be the level of VVD or Aldeweireld to make progress. All our CBs are lower Prem quality, so someone who is good enough for top half would be an improvement.

Having two fullbacks each side that could potentially do a job in the first team means we can rotate more which means we can maintain our high intensity game for longer.

That's mental. Neither of them should be offered new contracts and so their willingness to sign should be irrelevant to who plays.

Now there is a shout, tell them Redmond is available they'll probably lap it up. No idea why he is so highly rated by the rest of the football world. I'd take anything over £10million for him. Let Ralph pick another young player to snap up for the future.

Forster at least makes saves you don't expect him to every now and then, he knows how to position himself when facing a shot to give himself the best chance of blocking it by virtue of his size. He also likes playing the ball out quicker which could be handy with the pace and direct runners we have. There is not a single part of the game that McCarthy is better at.

Part of me wishes we'd conceded from that mental moment when he was crawling around on all fours on his goal line while Salisu blocked the shot. It would have made pundits etc highlight him and possibly force Ralph to admit he's fucking useless. What on earth is happening in training that makes him not pick Forster!

If we continue with the high line you NEED a keeper that can confidently and capably rush out and collect balls that drop anywhere in the box. McCarthy doesn't have the confidence and Forster is too slow.

He's a weird one, last two seasons he's had times where he came into the team and looked outstanding and then his performances just drop and he starts making stupid mistakes again. Maybe he just gets comfortable?

Unless someone is paying £20million or more for him - unlikely - we should not be looking to sell, at all.