trousers

The Liverpool Echo almost make Factless & co look professional. Almost.

This. I've heard a few interviews with Long recently where he has praised Koeman for his rise in form, but conveniently forgetting that Koeman did pretty much the complete opposite for the first half of the season. Selective memory syndrome me thinks.

BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking Russia's football team issued "suspended disqualification" and 150,000 euro fine over crowd disturbances #Euro2016 http://bbc.in/1Ux6oYy

Ryan Bertrand currently doing live England press conference. A sign that he might be in the starting line-up Thursday?

It's certainly an interesting, and perhaps telling, omission from today's statement, especially given how long its dragged on, thus giving all parties much more time to sort things out than what happened when Pochettino left (which, IIRC, all happened pretty quickly?) You'd have thought if it was a fait accomplis that they would go with Ron then it would have been announced at the same time.

Strictly speaking, we *could* afford to pay our manager £7m, but we've chosen not to...

http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/27052014-statement-first-team-manager-resigns-1575779.aspx

Hmmm..... the new SFC management team....? #strangerthingshavehappened

Oliver Kay ‏@OliverKayTimes Impressive work, #EFC. Set sights on him and got him. Southampton? They can't afford to keep losing best players/mgr

A Lallana style 'goodbye' from SFC then

Nice parting shot at Koeman there

Southampton FC ‏@SouthamptonFC #SaintsFC can confirm it has accepted the resignation of manager @RonaldKoeman, ahead of his appointment at #EFC.

Lewis Coombes ‏@LEWIS_C Here we go then.. Today's the day #Koeman finally announced as new boss of #EFC... #saintsfc Adam Blackmore ‏@bigadamsport Ronald Koeman about to swap red for blue ....

Actually, come to think about it, what was he up in the middle of the night for? Maybe he's still in a different time zone after all....

Koeman changed his Facebook profile picture 5 hours ago. Keep up man!

I always get quite excited when there's a rumbling of ambivalence on here about 'average' players we sign in the c.£10m bracket. More often than not they turn out to be little gems. More ambivalence please folks!

Excellent news. I like it when our summers turn into "sagas". Always a sign of a good season ahead. Lovely jubbly

Pelle!!!!!!!!!!

Aye, you'd never get anyone on here reacting negatively if we didn't progress....no sir-eee.... (Remind me, how long have you been a member of this forum....?) (Edit: yes, I know the negative brigade on here aren't representative of the wider fan base, but...)

I replied to a poster along these lines last week when they said it should be easy for us to attract a high profile / high calibre manager. I suggested it could actually be more difficult due to the success bar being a lot higher than it was when Koeman joined. So, doesn't surprise me if our options are indeed being restricted in the manner you describe. Thanks for sharing your insights FloridaMarlin; appreciated.

I'm English and I support Ireland when we're not playing them. I do this purely to annoy people who get annoyed by such things. It's quite a successful ploy.

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I'm not a member of the Adrian Durham fan club, but this piece seems pretty bang on to me... https://m.soundcloud.com/talksport/listen-adrian-durham-onn-fan-violence-and-slams-uefa