Professor

Hardly worth replying to offensive insults, but will just point out that you failed to understand what I said. The fact that Krueger made the comments he did, didn't mean that they were believable. That was one of the problems which the article has highlighted. I didn't believe what he said then and presumable, neither did you, but he said it and lost credibility. Don't bother with the apology...

You surely don't think anyone could get a job as a professional journalist without an understanding of grammar, but where you may have got confused, is that journalists don't always need to follow what you learnt in English at school because they are writing a newspaper article, not a page of literature. All that is needed is to get the message over, and the article does that very well. You understood the content enough to say you have no issue with the content. QED.

If you take what Krueger said before Lambert was sold, it would have been reasonable to expect all the starting XI to be retained and 2 if not 3 signings to be added to the squad. As it is, it looks like we will lose 5 players so to get back to what Krueger said the club needs to make 7 or 8 signings of players of international standard. Does anyone seriously expect that to happen? BTW, is Krueger still on the payroll?

Extremely good article and an accurate assessment of what has gone on. To those who carp about grammar and structure, this is a press article not an A-level essay. Its about getting over a message and it does that very well.

Much as I admire SaintRobbie's ambitions for the squad, I think there is about as much chance of the club bringing in 8 new players from outside as there is of us signing Messi. My guess would be 4, including Tadic, with the other gaps in the squad being filled by young players. If we are losing 5 first choice players you might expect to see 5 signings just to stand still, but we may be surprised by 2 or 3 development squad players coming in.

It takes quite an exceptional player to be irreplaceable and its hard to see that a player who isn't first choice for his country is exceptional. What matters is that the fee is high enough.

If only half of the remarks attributed to Lovren are true, I would still find his behaviour appalling. Trying to break a contract freely signed less than a year ago and with 3 years still to run, deserves a fine by the club. If there was any justice in football, it should be possible to recover some of the money Lovren was paid on the misrepresentation he made that he would commit to 4 years at Southampton. If he hasn't gone by the start of the season, the last thing I would want would be to see him in a Saints' shirt again. I hope the club stick to the £25m price that has been rumoured, not that he's worth it, but just to make life difficult for the money grubbers and so that clubs like Liverpool who try to use their financial position to weaken their opponents, can't do so easily.

Three things where the Board have struggled are: 1. The silence. After the last game of the season when press speculation was rife about the manager and various players leaving, the club made no public announcements for at least two weeks. Fans were concerned at the time and comments were made by The Echo about the 'silence'. Bids had been received and could have been publicly rejected. The failure to state that players would not be leaving if the manager left, may be why the players, and not just the ones subject to the bids, thought the door was open for them to break their contracts. 2. The sale of Lambert. There was no reason to sell Lambert, on the contrary there was every reason to retain him while the club appointed the new manager. Selling a player just because he would like to play for a different team sent the wrong message to the football world and to the club's players. 3. Failure restate the vision of the European Football project with sufficient force. Passing comments in Les Reed's interview may have been intended to convey that message but it did not carry enough conviction to indicate the Board (of Katerina) were really determined down that line with the clear vision set by the former chairman. The club tried to recover the position, initially with the interview by Krueger, but that failed badly. The interview was all presentation and no substance. Krueger made statements that seemed unlikely when he said them, such as implying that the club would announce the names on the manager short-list, which patently, no responsible organisation would do, and what he said about not selling key players proved not to be the club's true position. Given the massive sum received from The Premier League for prize money and TV money, it is hard to believe that the club had a financial need to sell any key players. On the contrary, fans were told before any players were sold that there were already funds available to strengthen and players had been identified. Those players in the squad on long contracts could all have been required to see those contracts out. Any player refusing to do that would have damaged his own career far more than he would have damaged the club, so any threats of 'striking' could have been confronted. As we can now see, having failed to take a strong line has weakened the Board to the extent that many people no longer believe what they are told and it appears that goes for the players as well as the fans. Only the Board can know what they will do now. They can fight to keep the remaining star players who want to leave and that remains an opinion now just as it always was with those who were allowed to go. Or they can clear out those who want to leave and make a fresh start. The second option isn't where many fans would have wanted us to be and it might mean a difficult season ahead, even if several new players are brought in, but it could be in the best long-term interests of the team. One proviso though, this situation must not be repeated. In future the club must make it clear that when a player signs a contract he will be held to it until such time as it is in the club's interests to let him go and then they must stick to that. In the meantime, as well as the two signings that are being speculated on, which, early on Monday morning remain only speculation, the Board need to get a move on and sign several others to boost the squad and to do so BEFORE the season begins. Points dropped in August are not recoverable by bringing in players in September, but the people running the club will know that well enough. Hopefully.

Dear old Ron, bit touchy today then? To help with your question, you tried to counter the assertion, I think by LeicesterSaint, that the board looked amateurish, and to make your counter, you praised the board for having got £50m income. Selling players who have been brought through the Academy and putting money in the bank instead of having those players on the pitch doesn't actually need any football expertise, which does leave the board open to the criticism LS made. To counter that criticism, the board need to spend that money on players, not just some of it, but all of it, as well as the funds we were told were already put aside for the new manager to invest in the squad. Until Tadic or Pelle are confirmed, they haven't actually recruited any players at all, but hopefully that will start to change in the next day or two.

Do you judge the board of a high street bank by the quality of its football team? If not, why judge the board of a football club by how much money it has in the bank, instead of by the quality of the team it can put out on the pitch? If Tadic and Pelle are announced this week, all well and good, but fans should be very far from satisfied with that. Before Tadic was mentioned, or Pelle as likely to come with Koeman, Les Reed was telling us that a lot of quality players wanted to come here, and that was before we had the money from selling Shaw and Lallana. So it seems reasonable for anyone, including Schneiderlin, to ask when are we going to know who else is coming in. Its all very well to recommend patience, but we could have lost more players by then if one or two of the squad are feeing impatient.

In his interview, Les Reed implied there were a string of players who wanted to come here. Some of those may not be of the required standard but others surely are. It is a little odd odd that we are only linked with two so far, and both of those being from the Eredisivie, which suggests they may have only come into the picture through Koeman. That still leaves Les Reed's list of potential transfers identified by the scouting network that he spoke about. Surely the club must be close to recruiting others beyond Pelle and Tudic.

This is the Southampton I began supporting in the old Division 3, with Paine and Sydenham sporting red stripes and black shorts. Grrrreat. I will feel more comfortable wearing my scarf to games now that its a better match to colours of the team.

Respect has to be earned. Putting in transfer request some 11 months after signing a four-year contract doesn't seem worthy of respect. The drip-drip effect of allowing one, then two, then three players to break contracts starts to look like a serious mistake. Maybe the Lambert decision, apparently taken so readily before the manager was appointed set the scene. The stand the club are reported to be taking with Lovren (although believe it if it happens) should have been taken with Shaw and Lallana. No show at work, no pay and pointing out that a contract freely signed is a contract.

Of course Lallana had no choice but to threaten to go on strike by refusing to play. When he signed a contract with Southampton for another four years it was only because Nicola Cortese had threatened to nail his scrotum to the chair until he signed. And when he did sign, he had his fingers crossed so it didn't count.

Don't understand this "I wouldn't begrudge him a move" attitude. "Good old Rickie, let him have his boyhood dream." "Far enough Luke, such a prodigious talent should be given the opportunity of playing for a Big Club". "OK, Adam, you've been a great servant, so best of luck at Liverpool". And now, "Morgan, fully understand the France team managers want to see you at a Top Club". Are we here to move this club forward to reach European football, based on the potential that a world-class Academy can offer, or are we just developing players for the benefit of clubs already competing in Europe? If the latter, why even bother with contracts? Might as well have players on one months notice...... Oh, I know that contracts enhance players' value but let's not just lie down and take it, which seems to be what is happening. Any player is replaceable, but replacing half the team in one close season is a very different matter. We might get better replacements for Lambert and Lallana, although probably not for Shaw and Morgan could be the point at which we need to pull up the drawbridge.

The sooner the better. Even though Bournemouth get a (quite unreasonably large) slice of the fee, Tadic looks a better player to me and enough of the £18m share will be left to pay for Pelle as well, who also looks a better investment at this stage of his career than Lambert. Pelle could still be playing for us when Rickie is spending his Saturday afternoons with his feet up in front of the TV, remembering those last couple of seasons when he was a sub for Liverpool.

I have been feeling disillusioned with the Board who don't seem to have done what they said they would do, which was to allow Koeman to talk to the want away players with a view to keeping them. The club also had the strength of the players' contacts on its side but seems to have readily given way without the transfer fees rising much over the originally reported bids. On the other hand, the three who went with England to the WC have only a handful of caps between them and could be described as the England reserves. Shaw will do better, but not so certain about Lallana and Lambert. Maybe we will be better off without them, and perhaps the Board had to mislead the fans about trying to keep them as a negotiating tactic. None of our players have had much of an impact in Brazil and even Morgan, who looked good will probably remain a sub for France at best. So to replace those who have gone or are going, we may not have to look in the top drawer. Add to that, the fact that Pochettino's coaching team did get stuck with possession football and an inability to turn possession into goals. The much vaunted 8th place finish was less impressive when you look at the points table, where we were well off the pace of the top 6 or 7. Conclusion, I suggest, is that we need to wait and see the quality of the new recruits - and whether Koeman can improve on the method of playing.

The Board have said all the right things. Les Reed's interview was very positive, as was Kruguer's, less convincing, earlier interview. Players would not be sold unless it was in the club's best interests. Koeman's appointment should be expected to make a difference and he would seek to convince players to stay. But are events reflective of what was said, with three players (so far), leaving before Koeman is behind his office desk? Other clubs have had players who have wanted to leave while still having years on their contracts, Suarez and Rooney last year both reported as wanting to move on but their clubs refused. If the Board have decided that the money is better than the players, they should be planning to sign players who are as good or better than what we have lost. But any signing, especially from outside the Premier League, is a risk as we've seen occasionally in the past. Much as I liked what Les Reed said, it doesn't sit comfortably with selling the crown jewels so quickly. There must be thousands of fans who now regard the club management with a degree of suspicion and there are two things that could change that for the better. (1) The signing of quality replacements and quickly; and (2), in the longer term, whether new signings actually perform as needed. To that there is just one other possibility. That maybe Pochettino wasn't quite the charismatic coach getting the very best out of the squad that he was reputed to be. Maybe Koeman can do at least the same or even better. The heart hopes that is the case, the head says different.

Feeling very cynical about the Premier League. It isn't a genuine competition except for the 5 or 6 hugely wealth clubs. The rest just slide up and down the lower part of the table with some sliding up and down into and out of the league below. If any club gets towards the upper part of mid-table, the Big Five or Six strip them of their most valuable assets. Not just Saints - after all, even Everton lost their manager, one international and nearly lost a second. The days when teams like Notts Forest, Derby, Ipswich, could rise to the top no longer exist, drowned in the pig's trough of money that these few clubs have out of all proportion to the rest. Selling players valued at £20m or £30m and bringing in players for £10m or £12m is not replacing them, its just providing some cover and cements the club's place as second rate. IF by some accident a transfer-in turns out better than expected, such as Lovren, the player is quickly on the conveyor belt out of the club. The future in this is about on a par with Motherwell in the SPL. It needs the fans to turn their back on the Premier League when a club's best players are poached for anything to ever change, but that isn't going to happen, so we might as well resign ourselves to being second rate and wonder who we will sell next year. Not that this years sales are necessarily over yet.

Sorry to see a few people think this is funny. Violence like this doesn't even belong in the school playground let alone in professional football and certainly not something to joke about. Twice Suarez has been punished for it before and a strong governing body would ban him for life. FIFA is not a strong governing body, with the corruption of money close to the surface, but enough of a public outcry might have some effect.

I watch BBC by choice and if the ad frequency is typical of ITV it confirms my preference. The enforced 45 minutes ad free during a football match must have the ITV executives wringing their hands.

Spot on! Less than 3 minutes in - "Here's Luke Shaw to Lallana his Southampton clubmate. FOR NOW."

First lie by ITV and the game hasn't even started! "Coming next - England v Costa Rica" But instead what came next was yet another Advert Session.

If it is true, £40m makes very good sense. Even if the price was negotiated down to, say, £35m, that reflects, as others have said, the value to Southampton. It would provide sufficient funds to buy a replacement, as it's not likely that Matt Targett could step straight in at the same level, and it would leave cash over to add to the transfer pot. Very good though, to see that the media have been told that Southampton is not allowing other clubs to pick who they want. That message was part of Kruguer's ineffectual interview which was undermined by the immediate sale of Lambert. It now looks like they intend to make the message stick. If Koeman does intend to resist letting Shaw and Lallana leave, maybe the bigger fight will be to keep Lovren as he has a much shorter history with Saints and is the only one reported as having put his transfer request in officially. Anyone know what length of contract Lovren is on?