The Kraken

But Johnson has scored more and assisted more than Ramirez in total. How is that doing f*ck all?

No; I meant if it was a straight choice between signing one player or the other. A midfield front 3 of Johnson Lallana Puncheon would be pretty decent. gaston clearly has some skills; I'm yet to see much to suggest that he's going to be immense in years to come though.

Out of Johnson and Ramirez, I know which player I'd rather have in the side. I'll give you a clue; it isn't Ramirez.

Speculation then. Fair enough.

Earnings over £150K per year. Which is 7.5% of his annual salary, a fairly negligible amount.

Fill us in if you know the figures, if they exist. Mine came from the horse's mouth, hence passing them on. I'm all ears for what Johnson's equivalents are though.

Either your mate is wrong or Gaston lied when he gave an interview, saying he's on 2M euros a year after tax. 2M a year is 40K per week after tax. Higher rate tax at 50% plus NI. He also received a signing on bonus of 1M euros, which has to be factored in as a wage of sorts. So even if your mate is correct, given the signing on fee there's really not much in salary between the two.

Christ, and another.

If you "couldn't care less", why is it "good"? Surely if you didn't care, you would have no opinion one way or the other?

This forum would be amazing if we didn't have people like CBFry ruining it for the rest of us. No wonder none of the better posters bother coming on here any more. Hell in a handcart etc etc

Why would you spend £30M to replace one bunch of squad players with another set of squad players? Why not get players in who are better than you have, then the previous first teamers become the squad players? Of the players we brought in over the summer only 4 have usurped others to be genuine first team players (Yoshida, Clyne, Boruc, Ramirez). That cost us around £20M. We've spent around another £15M on squad players in Rodriguez, Mayuka, S.Davis, Gazzaniga and Forren. That's a huge amount to pay for an improved subs bench.

Whoever picked out Forren, I'd suggest. Adkins had nothing to do with it, MP denied knowledge of it. Doesn't leave too far to look for the culprits.

Correct. If they were serious about staying up they would have spent far more than the paltry £30M we did spend.

We're not exactly poles apart from that. Pogrebnyak has more goals this season than Rodriguez; not much to choose between S.Davis and Guthrie; Clyne is much better than Gunter; is there a huge amount to choose between Yoshida and Mariappa, and McCleary and Mayuka? Biggest difference is that we probably spent at least £20M more than Reading did.

My forward line was better than yours. You can't have a front 6 FFS.

Or you could just set your own one up?

I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who can't remember Italia 1990.

No problem for me; I'm a terrible poster and I'll put up with any old sh*t.

My bad. I think we'll stay up while the club goes bankrupt after Cortese gets committed to a mental asylum and SFC gets sold to a bunch of Afghans who pull in to St. Mary's on a flying carpet.

I think we'll stay up this season. Just.

I do love it when figures of authority with the inside track post how it is and how its going to be. I'm relieved to hear this news.

Or more importantly a forward 3 of Emmanuel Mayuka, Jonno Quick and Tandoori Lee. What an explosive and potent attacking threat that would be.

£6M doesn't even buy a Jay Rodriguez. So, hell no. Hopefully Cortese has learnt this since last summer.

The car, or the fake rug?

Seidi had a good first 10 or 15 minutes, got clobbered by Coady and after that was utterly dreadful. Rowe was very good first half, quieter in the second. Reminds me of a young Danny Wallace. Robinson was good in the first half too. Can't tell enough about Forren to see if he'll step up well; I'd hoped he be taller than he is, hardly a dominating centre half. Jake Sinclair seemed a little lost up front on his own, but livelier when he had the ball at the feet running at players. JWP was fairly quiet.