Matthew Le God

I fail to see how that would influence Soares' choice of clubs as Lisbon had agreed a fee with both Saints and Stoke. So anything between Sporting and Saints concerning Rojo is irrelevant to his choice. He came to Saints because... - we have a better team with better players - Fonte's influence perhaps played a role, as would working for someone of the standing in European football of Ronald Koeman - we have Europa League football - have better facilities; bigger stadium and the £40m of upgrade at Staplewood training ground is more impressive than Stoke's training ground Its just the Stoke paper ignoring that and looking for conspiracy theories.

Juanmi was reported in many media sources as meeting his €7m (£5m) min fee release clause and Sporting CF say the Cedric Soares deal is "up to €6.5m (£4.7m)".

Maybe I was listening to the Portuguese version of Dave Merrington.

Why isn't it? He said he would like us to sign "promising players from the Championship" and I said that players from the Championship cost a fortune in comparison to two Spanish and Portuguese internationals from continental clubs. That seems pretty relevant to me.

If a Spanish 22 year old or a Portuguese 23 year old only with a few caps were at another Premier League side, I doubt we could sign them for £5m and £4.7m respectively. A decent season for a player in the Championship and clubs start putting £10m+ valuations on them!

Thats not how I've heard Portuguese commentators pronounce it.

I get the impression the club like to announce things so it can break at a good time on SSN to get maximum exposure, circa 5pm to 7pm. They'll probably do it at 2:30pm now!

I had this thread open for a while and only saw Saint_clark's reply once I hit post.

Alderweireld is an A.Madrid player, Luis is a Chelsea player; any swap deal wouldn't involve Southampton other than A.Madrid paying the clause in the loan deal. What does Bertrand have to do with it?

You can't expect Saints to sell them and replace them straight away with starters from the academy, the bar to reach our first XI is very high now. The squad is packed with internationals for youngsters to compete with for a place in the starting XI. Despite that, last season they gave Premier League debuts to... Matthew Targett Jake Hesketh Dominic Gape Jason McCarthy Ryan Seager Plus... James Ward-Prowse Harrision Reed Sam Gallagher ...have all played for the first team. How many other Premier League clubs do that towards the top of the league? We still have Bertrand & Forster, plus Rodriguez is now back for next season... as the football cliche goes... he'll be like a new signing.

Villa are reported to be paying him £65,000 p/w, matching his Man City wages. He also apparently turned down £90,000 p/w from Sunderland! http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/aston-villa-agree-micah-richards-5866880 Plus as a free agent he'd be asking for a huge signing/agent fee.

Perhaps Saints would make Liverpool dropping out of the race for Gomez a condition of any deal for Clyne? Would then leave Saints with two right backs in their squad... Cedric Soares as first choice and Joe Gomez as his understudy.

I don't think Saints have revealed the value of any transfer under Liebherr ownership.

Good chance it may be moved for TV, either to later on Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon or Monday night.

Its a later first signing of the summer than we made in either 2012/13 or 2013/14, were you concerned?

Why is that a prerequisite? Mane didn't, nor did Pelle.

Perhaps they are training Gary Neville up for it...

He has a holiday home in Portugal and was Benfica manager for a year, so you can probably add Portuguese to that list.

How do you know that? He may just not be comfortable yet to do an interview in a second language.

If they aren't the correct fixtures then it isn't a "leak".

It was reseeded 9 days ago. But thats still enough time for green to start showing.

The pitch was ripped up on 5th June and new seeds planted on 7th June. It doesn't take long for you to start seeing green shoots.

Because last summer left us with such a bad squad we could only manage our highest ever Premier League finish? First signings of Premier League seasons... 2012/13 - 10th June Jay Rodriguez 2013/14 - 14th June Dejan Lovren 2014/15 - 8th July Dusan Tadic (getting a new manager delayed things but it was hardly late) 2015/16 - 16th June Juanmi