Matthew Le God

Yep, had Saints been given a penalty for the clear foul on Pelle and Saints got a draw then I doubt alpine_saint would have posted this thread. Its remarkable how easy every single one of his negative rants is to pick apart for the nonsense it is.

As ever, utterly bizarre! But its what we've come to expect from an alpine_saint post or thread. 1) Why would the club sell him in January? The summer perhaps, but they have little reason to do so in January. 2) Why when he is sold do you not have confidence they can replace him? They have shown time after time the recruitment set-up at the club has a process that works more often than it doesn't. 3) Define "f**ked"? Because take Mane out of our squad and they don't replace him... we'd still have a very good Premier League squad. In any case if he is sold, they'll spend good money to replace him as they have shown in the last two seasons.

Long isn't apparently back, he is definitely back. He was training with Saints in the build-up to the Sunderland game, played for Ireland this week and was in training with Saints this week. We have Juanmi as well. Many appear to have harshly written him off already. Seager was recently on the bench vs Sunderland and Aston Villa.

I doubt the Koeman is kept regularly informed of the youth recruitment strategy for 16 years olds coming into the club.

If those "upto 100,000" kids go to a Saints branded "soccer school", I think there is an increased likelihood they will follow the fortunes of the first team. Ample opportunity to flog Saints shirts, training gear etc and merchandise to 100,000 soccer moms.

In terms of player retention, it doesn't matter if Saints are 17th or 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th for wage bill. The ability of the clubs to other large wages will see our best players see a move as good for them financially. The public and media keep bringing up the idea of "selling club", but the number of "non-selling clubs" in world football is tiny! Every club in the Premier League is likely to lose their star player if Barcelona or Real Madrid really wanted them. Under Liebherr ownership Southampton haven't sold our best players to anyone other than Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool. If we start losing our best players to Newcastle, Aston Villa, West Ham etc then that would be a concern as it would indicate the quality of our best players has dropped significantly. I doubt Saints will be losing their best players to any English club other than Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool anytime soon.

Southampton have only been back in the Premier League for 3 years, there are restrictions on how much you can add to the wage bill year on year but Southampton are quickly catching and overtaking many clubs... [saints are one of the few clubs to have already released 2014/15 account details]

The full game is now live and the free demo is on Steam.

How many of their players would you want in our starting XI of... Stekenlenburg (Forster when fit); Cedric, Fonte, van Dijk, Bertrand; Clasie, Wanyama, S.Davis; Mane, Tadic, Pelle? Its one or two at most (if we are being generous). We also have far better depth to our squad than they do.

Because he said that he had been looking for the information, not people's opinions on the information and couldn't find any.... He doesn't ask people to give their perception of how many there are, he asks if anyone actually knows the correct answer... He also said "if not" then he would appreciate guesses, so clearly perception is not the main focus as he is using it as a back-up...

Why do you want guesses? What use is that for a uni project? Email the club and ask them directly.

Since Saints returned to the Premier League; at St Mary's vs Arsenal... 2012/13 Southampton 1 Arsenal 1 - DRAW 2013/14 Southampton 2 Arsenal 2 - DRAW 2014/15 Southampton 2 Arsenal 0 - WIN

Ronald explains Yoshida plays as it allows for flexibility of formation in the first half depending on how Sunderland line-up...

No he wasn't, that came from "journalists" who didn't listen to what Koeman actually said. Koeman said Long trained this week but isn't quite fit enough yet to be in the match day squad, but thinks both he could be for the Stoke game.

Wanyama is suspended after being sent off vs Bournemouth, so it is a case of who replaces him out of Ward-Prowse and Romeu.

Komen just said in his press conference that Saturday is too early for Long to be in the match day squad.

He also admits that is a conservative figure and it might even be larger as the full details of the new overseas TV deals aren't known yet.

Why is that "sad"? Its finding out information for a company I work for.

Perhaps by telling them "either you accept less or we don't sell Lallana and then you'd get nothing".

What a bizarre conspiracy theory. Why on earth would he do that?

What does it say about the 4th tier?

You can quite easily unlist him if you want. The game's AI deems him surplus to requirements as he is significantly weaker than what is needed for a Premier League keeper. There are a huge number of changes and improvements compared to FM15, but it is always going to be a game where you manage a football club so will have similarities with every other football management game. It is essentially simulating a job of a football manager and that job is fundamentally similar from year to year. What would you need for a football management game not to feel like one released 12 months earlier?

I did so to make the stadium accurate on Football Manager 2016. The game now has a section in the database that allows researchers to enter capacities of individual stands.

I got those numbers very recently from the ticket office who gave me a block by block breakdown of the stadium general admission seats, box seats and hospitality seats.

There are 30,741 general admission seats in the stadium. It is those that sold out in home and away end last night. The 1,721 hospitality seats which didn't sell out are what takes the capacity up to over 32k.