Matthew Le God

I've seen this argument used by a number of people, its been explained a number of times to them why it doesn't stand upas an argument but it keeps coming back. Saints last season had a good number of players good enough for Champions League challenging clubs, but not enough of these players to challenge for it themselves... hence why we came 8th! Because we didn't have the squad depth required and at times had to use the likes of Gazzaniga, Yoshida, Fox etc etc when our first XI wasn't fully available.

You can list all the clubs in world football that "aren't selling clubs" on the fingers of one hand. Even Man Utd and Liverpool lose players when Real Madrid and Barcelona come calling.

What do you think the club should have done exactly?

If you were offered £100k p/w salary and Champions League football at one of the biggest clubs in world football would you stay at Saints? Williams, Krueger... whoever.... it makes no difference. Once bids of that size we've had come in we weren't going to keep them.

You've yet to explain how the club keeps players when offered £30m for Shaw, £25m for Lallana, £20m for Lovren and £4m+ for a 32 year old Lambert and offers of huge wages from clubs significantly larger than us. If we were losing our best players to West Brom and Stoke for small fees that is the time to panic. Losing them to two of the biggest clubs in world football for huge amounts of money is not (at least not until you see who they are replaced with).

As CB Fry said above, if for example Lallana and Shaw had deals at Saints until 2015 we wouldn't have got remotely close to £55m offers from Liverpool and Man Utd for them both and they'd still have gone once those teams made bids.

You keep saying things like this, but what exactly did you want them to do when two of the biggest clubs in the world started bidding £25m and £30m for our players and offering them £100k p/w contracts? I don't think you should be using words like "incompetence", when you can't even spell it correctly!

He said it once in 14 minutes.

Why are you going from the Bournemouth game to the Liverpool game? Teams don't generally have first team friendly games in the 7 days before the first game, that time is used to prepare for the Liverpool game. It makes more sense to look at the games between now and the Bayer Leverkusen game and Saints have 4 games in the next 21 days.

Between the 21st July and the 9th August Saints have 4 games in 19 days and then a week of training to get ready for the Liverpool game. Why are you complaining?

If Schneiderlin goes to a bigger club, on bigger wages and for a big fee how is that evidence of "boardroom incompetence"?

Its a ridiculous amount of packaging, when all you want is something that is essentially the size of a credit card. Those "home and heart" booklets equate to something like 600,000 pages of waffle when given out with every season ticket! Nice for the people involved to see their stories in print, but is anyone else bothered to put the booklet anywhere else but the bin? Think of the trees Saints, the trees!

Whose relegation season? Ron Vlaar has only played for 3 clubs (AZ, Feyenoord and Villa) and has never been relegated. I think you maybe confusing Vlaar with someone else!

Shame really thats the case.

And yet hypochondriac and Batman constantly say I always sit on the fence and never give an opinion on anything. It doesn't really stand up as a criticism of me. I've never seen them say how good out of 20 they think Jonathan Forte is at heading!

As sad as that may sound, I think its likely to be true.

Its the 18th July, its still far too early to really tell. But as things currently stand I struggle to see that even with Lambert, Lallana and Shaw leaving a strong case that any of the sides below us last season or newly promoted sides have improved their squads enough to overtake Saints. So I think we have a good chance of maintaining 8th position, especially if we bring in another striker and left back of good quality. I think as I've given an opinion on literally thousands of Saints related things on a commercially available product since 2007 that is one accusation of me that doesn't really stand up. I'm likely to have given more publicly available opinions on Southampton football club than anyone else on the planet.

A better finish than 8th probably is unrealistic, but to say we are in the same boat as Leicester, Burnley and QPR as you've just done is absurd. How many of their players would you want in our starting XI? Saints have only lost 3 players of a top 8 squad (and already replaced 2 of them), we've still got a lot of players the newly promoted and bottom half sides of last season would love to have.

Its the 18th July, still lots of time for clubs including Saints to have incomings and outgoings so too early for any real predictions. I would say although some clubs below us last season have made some reasonable signings, I find it hard to see that any of them have overtaken Saints as they currently stand. Again, its the 18th July, still too early to be panicing. We've already got Lamabert and Lallana replacements, yes we do need a few more but its still relatively early in the summer. It would be foolish to think the club aren't currently working on other deals, just because it isn't in the public domain doesn't mean nothing is happeneing.

Well...you can prove anything with facts, can't you!?

Why? We appointed Ronald Koeman, not Alan Irvine. There is clearly ambition at the club. If any club outside the elite few in English football is offered £55m and £100k p/w wages for two youth academy products they are going to leave.

Do you not think £100k p/w wage offers from clubs like Liverpool and Man Utd were the reason? Similar with Pochettino leaving for a bigger club. Saints aren't losing players and coaching staff to West Brom or Stoke, we are losing them to larger clubs for large amounts of money. If we were losing key people to the likes of Stoke and West Brom that is the time to be worried, however that isn't the case.

Who do you think paid Lambert's wages from 2nd June to 1st July? What do you think the Premier League mean by...?

Katharina Liebherr took ownership of the club in League One, Saints under her ownership have risen to 8th in England having brought in £85m+ worth of players and made a £30m upgrade of the training ground. Is that a sign of a lack of ambition? Saints have lost Lallana, Lambert and Shaw to two of the biggest clubs in World football for very large fees and a manager to a bigger club. Why are you using that as evidence of "lowered expectations"?

You say "lots of goals", can you name a few from last season that match your criteria? Shaw was given license by Pochettino to play like that, if any goals resulted from him being advanced it is more likely to be the fault of the midfielder who should be covering the space Shaw left behind.