Matthew Le God

What utter rubbish. Why have you just made that up?

That article has twisted the Telegraph story it says it is based on. It implies Saints have made a recent bid to scupper the West Ham loan. It is very misleading as this is what is actually said in the Telegraph... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11736782/Arsenal-transfer-news-Carl-Jenkinson-signs-new-contract-but-rejoins-West-Ham-on-loan.html The Telegraph article says Saints made an £8m bid for Jenkinson in June, probably before we signed Cedric Soares.

A max of 14 Saints players can play in each of the European 3rd round qualifying games and I would hope we use our best possible team in those matches to avoid messing up. Perhaps Koeman will use the Espanyol game for the many players we have that won't play in the Europa games.

We've only sold two players this summer; Clyne and Schneiderlin. We've already replaced Clyne with Cedric and it looks like Clasie will soon be Schnederlin's replacement. Then we need to fill the gap left by Alderweireld.

Wouldn't someone with 0 goals be worse?

His contract expires on 30th June 2018... http://www.feyenoord.com/news/news-overview/jordy-clasie-extends-contract-until-2018

Its hard to take seriously anyone who describes themselves as "reputable". Shouldn't that be for other people to decide? https://twitter.com/MurrayGroves

He is injured for 4 to 5 weeks and won't have had a pre-season.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

We didn't have Rodriguez, Juanmi or Gallagher (for a lot) of last season. When Pelle doesn't play we don't have to use another target man striker, it is possible for us to change the system as we did for Chelsea away with Long and Mane upfront.

In Mourinho's system Chelsea's full backs aren't given the same license to attack that Southampton's are. This means it frees them to have a more attacking player alongside Matic as the fullbacks are less likely to be exposed. Southampton use Schnedierlin and Wanyama to cover for the fullbacks, take one of them out and it leaves Saints vulnerable.

Saints' Ross Wilson follows that Twitter account which adds some credibility to it.

Saints' Ross Wilson follows that Twitter account which adds some credibility to it.

No fresh links today as far as I can see, it was from 9th July.

I wasn't.

Europa League, not having to live in Wales and the Ronald Koeman factor should hopefully give us the edge.

I had the thread open for a while and didn't refresh it, so I had no idea what you said until I clicked post.

I can't see us going from bidding big for Alderweireld to the backup option being a loan offer for Chambers. The money we were going to use for Alderweireld will probably be used on another high quality centre back.

You are worried because in a total of 90 minutes of friendly competition a below full strength Saints side didn't score a goal?

Pelle, Mane and Rodriguez have all scored good amounts of Premier League goals in their last season in the league. How are they not "proven goalscorers"? Plus we have Long and Juanmi as options, and Gallagher and Seager progressing through the ranks.

Any evidence to support a bid for van Dijk?

If using a 4-2-3-1 you need two defensive minded players in central midfield in order to allow for very attacking fullbacks and the creative freedom of the attacking midfielders. If we regularly played with a more attacking player alongside Wanyama we'd be exposed defensively and would cost us points. Last season in the Premier League Southampton had the... - 2nd best defensive record - 6th best goalscoring record - 5th best goal difference The system we used last season clearly worked well.

You didn't answer my question. There is a big difference between contacting ex Saints players asking them to recount their favourite game and having good current contacts at the club or agents who feed you things.

Can you link to an article from Crook that provides evidence that he has good football contacts and isn't a rehash of something someone else has put on the internet for him to source and not credit?

What makes you think that? Pretty much every article or tweet I've seen him make about Saints is something from a press conference he's attended, a rehash of either someone else on twitter or a rehash of a local/foreign article from days earlier. Whenever that hasn't been the case its turned out to not be true, so probably made up. I can't find any examples of articles from him that look to have been from a good football contact and aren't a rehash of someone else's work. Compare that to Simon Peach... the clubs' media department actually tell him things in advance. He clearly uses them for information and they are happy to give it.