VectisSaint

He's better than Gardos who he is replacing, so improvement already.

As long as we are getting rid of Boufal and Redmond as well, and replacing all three with 2 proper creative AMs then I don't see an issue. These three were the major cause of our appalling season and apart from 8 games at the end by Tadic none provided anything to the team. Credit Tadic with being very influential in the last quarter under Hughes, but he has been getting worse each season since his first under Koeman and really will not be upset if he goes, especially if someone is mad enough to pay 15m whatevers for him. Bottom line is getting good replacements though, players who can create, play for the team and don't consistently give the ball away in dangerous areas/at dangerous times (all reative midfielders give the ball away, its part of being creative, its when and where that is the problem).

Clearly replacement for Steve Davis who is probably going into his last year with us and is struggling to keep the fitness levels needed. In my opinion Jack would be just what we need, a combative, creative midfielder with leadership qualities. Only concern I have is his tenda y to be a knob off the field.

He was only 23/24 then, younger than Hoedt/Stephens, another year of experience since then, probably matured a lot, still only 1 year older than Jack and Wes.

Some on here will be disappointed, a modern football playing CB, modestly tall 6' 1", not as tall as any of our current CBs, i.e. more suited to the current PL. Hope we get him, has been decent for Boro, will give us decent options for 3 at the back, possibly pushing Hoedt out until he gets over his current lack of concentration.

Bloody hell, you must have been watching a different game, thought he was awful (defensively) against an awful team. Looked nervous, was quite good going forward though I would concede. Stones was also gash, those two will get slaughtered if (when) they come up against a half decent team. Mind you having Henderson in front of them didn't help.

Well 10 minutes longer than for us :-)

Mouez Hassen in goal for Tunisia, at least we get to see him play, unlike for Saints.

Basically the same as the tweet posted earlier, but JM pictured leaving Matty Targett trailing in his wake: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/06/17/leicester-city-make-20m-bid-norwich-forward-james-maddison/

Reminded me more of Ivan Golac's goal, partly becuase it had come up on Twitter earlier as it was his birthday. Golac's was much better though because it was a bit further out, but very reminiscent of the legend.

Not to mention it was in Hong Kong, easiest place in the world to get a few shirts made cheaply in a back street tailor's.

We don't have 26 legends. The whole point of being a legend is that you are memorable and rare. 10 at most.

You don't think that perhaps this is all designed so that he can move to Fulham permanently.

Always thought Maradona was quite handy for a little guy.

Here is a reference in a Grauniad article last year, suggests Crystal Palace took him on after being released by Saints: https://www.theguardian.com/football/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy/2017/mar/16/gareth-southgate-crystal-palace-captain-england-manager BBC article says the same: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44360546 Maybe its just an urban myth, but it does seem to have legs from somewehere.

Can't be arsed to check the rest, but Newcastle have released 3 first teamers (Gamez, Haidara and Good) and 18 u23s. Arsenal have released 9, Saints have released 10. Suggests the accuracy of the rest of this table (at least the "out" section) is questionable at best.

That will be the England players who have already played a lot less than their WC rivals. This is likely to benefit players from other countries who play in the PL more than English ones.

You forgot Carillo, also the Torpedo guy, he was great, then there was Guly's mate(sorry their names elude me) The ones that came to us via Europe have been better generally.

Well actually they don't do they. The top 6 tend to play more games. But yes it could benefit clubs outside the top 6 as long as they don't arrange to play lucrative friendlies as most suspect they will.

No idea if your stat is correct, doesn't seem to be recorded anywhere, but its a poor argument to say that it is all down to our CBs lack of height, given that some of those headed goals conceded came from attacking wingers beating Cedric or Bertie. Even if the stat is correct do you really think that halving the number (from 13 to 6/7) would really make much difference? That number would probably be better than any team in the PL so unlikely that any team could achieve it. Bear in mind also that last season we had a big strong CB for at least some of the season (VvD, even if he was a liability with the way he was playing), it didn't stop the headers conceded. Bobsleigh was absolutely correct to say that our defence is not the issue, as I had posted earlier in the thread. Our defence is OK, not the greatest but by no means the worst, and on very few occasions has the defence really cost us. Much more of a problem is at the other end, not just scoring insufficient but the midfield giving the ball away and ex[posing our defence. The number of times we conceded from our own attacking corners was criminal last season, and that's not the fault of the CBs, who are generally in the opposition box scoring or trying to score goals to make up for the lack of ability of our attacking players. Fortunately Stephens, and to a lesser extent Wesley were able to knock a few in last season. The days of big strong tall CBs in the PL are passing and the sooner people recognise this the better. Very few of the top teams play with big strikers now, it is much more important to be able to stop the agile, small strikers now (Aguero, Vardy, etc). Our current CBs are very well suited to the PL of the here and now, tall enough but much more adept on the ball. Don't get me wrong, I still thank we need at least one more CB, probably two, not least because I expect us to utilise 3 CBs for at least some games next season, you can't hope to play that system when you want with only 4 recognised CBs, one of the positions most prone to injuries and suspensions. But. Stephens, Maya, Bednarek and Wesley (if he can cut out the horrible errors he makes due to his lack of concentration) are all more than capable in the PL. It would take a player of great talent to oust any of those, such players exist but they don't play long term for the likes of Southampton. We have been spoilt a bit in the last few seasons with VvD, Toby, etc., the chances of finding players of that quality to replace our current CBs is slim to non-existent.

Hardly a legend as a player, for Saints or otherwise, and his managerial success came elsewhere. Fell out with Bill Dodgin (Saints manager) because he wanted to replace him with Bill Ellerington, didn't exactly leave on the best of terms. No doubt Ramsey is a legend, but not a Saints one. The only true legends that are not on the Banner, really are Ron Davies, who arguably should have been on the banner ahead of at least 5 of the others, and Ted Bates, Mr Southampton, who probably wouldn't be classed as a legend on his playing ability/skills alone, but adding his long time management and later boardroom services to the club is probably the greates Saints legend of all time. Other than SRL no-one has come close since MLT (there have been some excellent players, but no-one who could ever be considered a legend). Bally would be the only other one that I can think would merit a place on the Saintsweb Banner Hall of Fame (assuming it is based on players, otherwise Lawrie Mac would be worthy).

Nope, 9 of which we won 2 by 3-2. As I said it is a myth that we conceded shed loads of goals. Bit like the myth that Stephens can't head the ball/is weak in the air.

Teaming up with Richard Chaplow. Probably praying they don't sign Danny Fox.

Find it amusing how this myth has arisen that we conceded a lot of goals last season. 56 in total is not a lot of goals. We only conceded more than 3 goals on 2 occassions, (Spuds and Leicester). We conceded 3 goals in a game 5 times, 3 of which were after Hughes came in. That means in 31 games we conceded 2 or less. Conceding shed loads of goals was not our problem last season. The main problem was not scoring enough/any.

Dixi ulous idea to give FF 10 games, we've seen far more than enough to know his abilities, we need to offload as soon as possible, along with his GK "coach" mate.