Saint_clark

I don't think we have a lot of choice really. We don't have the funds to buy everything we need and with Dibling and SAA we have two attacking midfielders that could do well for us this season.

Over there.

Dibling?

That's...not how that works. We still spent money on him originally.

And then when he doesn't win us the game in that 15 minutes he gets slated. If he's being integrated he needs to be given proper chances, a run of 5 starts, get players actually playing to his strengths rather than expecting him to play a fast paced dynamic role where he covers the width of the pitch.

And wasting resources we don't have to waste. Let's be conservative and say he's on £60,000 a week, that's over £3million we could have tacked onto a transfer offer to get it over the line.

More than he scores from outside the box.

Rubbish.

If JWP had stayed last season we'd have gone up automatically. He absolutely would suit the style, he's basically Smallbone but many levels higher in ability.

I agree but we seem to have done our best to freeze him out this pre-season.

Is it time to just accept we aren't getting money for KWP and make him our first choice left back?

Something strange went on behind the scenes. We'll probably never know the full story.

Like Norman Hunter reborn, is Stephens.

Maybe that's the thinking behind picking up a few Brazilian and Japanese players and loaning them to Turkey for the season.

"Pass it to the defenders" "Ok boss"

They haven't finished developing, even by your 3-4 year time frame. Good job we didn't follow that logic with Lallana and Schneiderlin when they took us down to league one.

Signed 2 years ago, needs 3-4 years to develop, it failed...something wrong with your maths. Just repeating what others are saying. You've clearly never actually read what I said about him. I said that GK is the one position you can't afford to throw someone in at such a young age and that doing so could single handedly cost us our Prem place, I said that I have no doubt he will develop into a top goalkeeper but that by the time he does that he'll be snapped up by someone else meaning we'll have put up with years and years of a dodgy goalkeeper for no real benefit to us. Everyone else is in and out of the team in the time they're developing, Bazunu was stubbornly every managers number one almost as if it's imposed from above. Martins even said he will definitely be out first choice again despite the fact he was dodgy again in the league below and we have absolutely no idea how we will recover after a significant injury. Finally, for all the talk of needing to sign and develop young players due to cost restrictions, that doesn't apply to goalkeeper as the summer we signed Bazunu we could have got Johnstone or Leno for less.

IIRC they signed a few players in January that all spoke genuinely about wanting to finish in the top 4 and that's when they fell away. It went from a fun ride while it lasts to genuinely trying to do something impossible.

It won't be the drubbing people are predicting but it will be comfortable for Newcastle, 2 or 3-0 with us barely threatening.

That 1-1 comparison depends heavily on how Suga adapts to the Prem to be fair. I think Taylor is an improvement on Manning and BBD an improvement on Che.

Welcome to Southampton! If you aren't a top Prem player by the time you're 21 we'll ditch you.

Agreed, but what's the alternative? We can do a Pompey?

This is the level of spending the Premier League is at for decent midtable players. This is why we sign younger players and why we have to give them a few years before we write them off.

Yeah we'd probably do well to get £40-45 million out of that lot right now.

I was just using that figure as an example. Obviously we should try to negotiate down but if we can't afford the full amount up front I don't see anything wrong with splitting it that way, decent chunk up front with the majority of it at the end of the loan.