Matthew Le God

10 hours later... (out of interest why do you cherry pick the ones that don't happen and not look at the good signings that have happened?)

Why would media reports have any influence on what Leicester offer a player? Why would Leicester care in a negotiation what is happening in the press? It is irrelevant.

I'm puzzled how you think bidding £25m for a player and losing him to a team like Leicester means the club are "stone broke". That is just nonsensical.

So are you saying Eko is not reliable?

Why? Under Mike Ashley they are hardly big spenders. Their record transfer is still below ours and their wage budget is likely to be as well.

He was talking about the pitch of his voice, that is not remotely racist. If he had been talking about David Beckham's high pitch voice like many used to do, would you accuse him of being racist?

No, but given this is him on Twitter what is he to gain from saying it if it is bull****? He didn't need to say anything about it. He isn't a random Twitter user, he is a journalist for a major broadcaster.

For what reason would this journalist from Sky bother making this up...?

Wilshere on £130k a week and no transfer fee works (due to end of contract) works out to be significantly cheaper than Maddison on £70k per week and a £25m transfer fee. But this would probably happen a lot...

The Leicester City of 2016 had just won the league.

Perhaps he was happy to move to us to play in the Premier League, but when Leicester starting bidding the distance swayed him towards them.

We have a pretty huge wage budget, I think it is more likely he viewed Leicester as having better players and moving back to an area of the country he likes. Last accounts 2016/17 - Leicester wage bill £112.6m - Saints wage bill £112.5m So extremely similar.

The reports state Saints were offering the same as Leicester, the player was left with the decision on which to pick. So money was not the issue.

He scored more Premier League goals than Tadic (or any other Saints player) last season, but why does he have to be better than Tadic? They could both play in the same team.

Can you list reasons why Southampton are a more attractive proposition than Leicester City? If we were losing transfer battles with Huddersfield, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Watford etc you might have a point, but Leicester won the league 2 years ago and have a bigger wage budget than us. Plus, Sky have even stated a part of Maddison's decision was due to geographical location.

Why have you classified him as a "maybe"?

They may well internally think it is ridiculous, but... it is the type of thing that wouldn't appear ridiculous to a lot of their readership base, so they keep doing it.

We've seemingly lost a £24m transfer battle with a team that was Champions of England 2 years ago. It is not a disaster... 2004-2009 was a footballing disaster. Perspective

That is wrong. James Maddison is younger than all of them, his first England under 21 call up was in November 2017. In November 2017 Ward-Prowse, Targett, Redmond and Stephens were all too old to qualify for England under 21s. So Maddison would not know them from playing for England u21s.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

I don't know. I think we should sign one, but it is unclear how Hughes and the club view their current options without jumping to conclusions on extremely little (or nothing) in the way of evidence.

Betting odds don't reflect the truth, they reflect the amount of money the public put on different outcomes. The odds for Gibson shortened because the press ran with stories linking him to Saints, which in turn means the public place bets on him after reading newspaper stories and the odds shorten. That does not mean there was ever any truth to it.

Unless you have some information that isn't publicly available, then how are you able to determine it is "likely"? For all we know it is made up press nonsense and isn't at all likely in any way.

This is an alphabet legend...