The Kraken

It should have been enough for us to be at a Norwich level right now. If not team-changing then certainly enough to plug the gaps and be a 10th - 15th ranked side. £30M is a huge amount of money however you look at it (hence why we were the 7th highest spenders in Europe). How many other promoted clubs have been afforded that luxury of spend? not too many.

We keep getting Norwich thrown as an example; they spent much less than £30M when they came up and finished comfortably mid-table. They've again spent far less than £30M this summer and have pushed on further. So I disagree; to some extent you can expect £30M to buy you a good team.

And in our case some average ones too....

Firstly the regulations would need to be changed. And, because of Hillsborough, that is a hugely emotive issue. There is a massive lack of understanding in this country as to what "safe-standing" actually entails. Some German clubs still have the old style terraces that we had here; that's not what is being pushed for. But that doesn't stop a good deal of ignorance being shown publicly by those who can't see any distinction between Hillsborough then and football grounds, policing, stewarding and emergency produres now. If terracing was so inherently dangerous it would be banned throughout football. As it is now, only sides in the top two leagues have to provide all-seater stadia. Lower league clubs are allowed terracing. Why? If standing up at a football game is so dangerous, why are 99% of the football grounds in this country allowed to have standing areas? There needs to be a big information drive to show exactly what safe-standing is, and how in many cases it is actually safer than people standing in seated areas.

I'd definitely rather have Pogrebnyak than either Rodriguez or Mayuka. Unproven? 8 goals and 33 games at international level for Russia. Won the league in Russia, and has played in the Bundesliga as well as having a decent scoring rate for his short time in the PL. He's entirely the type of striker we should have bought in the summer instead of Rodriguez IMO.

I think we'll bring in 2 players at most. I think a centre-back, but only if he's better than what we have. Whether that happens will I guess be determined by how much money we are able/willing to spend. And dependent upon how extensive Lallana's injury is, also a winger. In fact with the deliberation around Puncheon's contract perhaps a winger anyway. I read someone the other day describe our attacking four (Puncheon, Ramirez, Lallana and Lambert) as "free-scoring". They really aren't. Puncheon has 3, Lallana and Ramirez 2 each. And Lambert has 7 from 18, which while being a decent return is worrying in that it's pretty good without being outstanding but still more than twice as many as anyone else in our squad. Put simply, our forward 4 need to contribute more goals.

That's also a bit of a double-edged sword. The better a team we are, the better the academy graduates need to be to get into the team. It is a good aim to have; but as you say highly improbable, and it shouldn't be seen as a failure not to hit such a target. Having 2 or 3 academy graduates in the team at any team is a success in itself. Expecting 5 or 6 at one time, very unlikely (unless its in a League Cup game).

I'm fairly sure they also see it as a source of potential players to play in the first team. Which in itself can potentially save the club an absolute fortune. How much would it have cost to go out and buy Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw? There's cost savings to be made from running an academy too.

Predominantly yes, but not totally. Jos was late 20s when we got him, Steven Davis is 27, about to turn 28. Whether we'll ever sign anyone 30 years old or above, perhaps you're right. But IMO it's really short sighted to rule out players that may only be able to give decent service for a season or two and who will have little re-sale value; I hope its not the case that we have such a policy in place, if only just for one or two players.

He would be a fantastic signing. Probably high wages, but could perhaps be offset by having no transfer fee. He was an absolute beast in both games against Fulham, he is an organiser and a leader, he has bags of experience and at 31 still has (one could presume) at least 2 or 3 years of top performances within him. It would be an outstanding signing if we got him IMO; better than any signing we made last summer.

Merry Christmas Bear-features. http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/fulham/151423/fulham-1-1-southampton-berbatov-bags-his-fifth-boxing-day-goal-but-whites-can-only-draw-with-saints-photos-highlights.html There's a video of the MOTD coverage if you scroll down.

Yep. 2 goals in 11 games is not a great return for a player in his position. Playing him out wide is a nonsense really; he's our most creative and potentially effective player yet wasted out wide. Having Steven Davis in his position makes it even worse! Gaston needs to be played central, and he also needs to get into scoring positions more often.

A great shout; but I imagine Celtic would put a very significant price tag on his head, and would be quite relucatnt to let him go.

Hangeland is just an absolute beast. Signing someone like him would be perfect. Even Senderos had a pretty decent game.

...

Thanks for pointing that out, genius. I had no idea. At fulham today, tell me if you saw a team benefitting from an experienced old head on there. I must have missed it; well, for us anyway. But then I saw Chris Baird and thought he had an absolutely great game, so what do I know? And Berbatov was pretty superb. But apart from that... We do not have a team of experience. We don't. But carry on shouting it if it makes you feel better. Keep crossing those fingers to Feb thoug; that'll do it.

What's the point? We were asked to do this in the summer, as to which centre backs we should have signed. And despite naming such players that moved and have proven to be a decent acquisition, such as Bassong and Turner to Norwich etc, pretty much all ideas were dismissed out of hand.

Strangely enough, no. Its an opinion. Of mine, specifically. Surprised I had to point that out. IMO.

As has been said, they can't start a second successive season in administration. What is perhaps unknown at this stage is what happens if they come out of administration after the season finishes but before the new season starts. My inclination would be that the minus ten would fall under the same rule as if it had happened after the March deadline (i.e. points deducted for the previous season unless the club are relegated anyway, in which case they carry through to the next season). But then this is the FL, and as we know too well they like to make up and change their own rules as they go along.

And just as easily I could have pointed out £7M for Rodriguez, £12M for Connor Wickham, £6M for David Nugent plus countless others who have been bought for big money from the lower leagues but haven't made it (in the case of JRod I'll say "yet"....) As I said earlier in this post, the most important thing is the actual ability of the player. But unlike others I choose not to disregard the effect that an experienced player can have on galvanising an otherwise very young team (one of, if not at some times the very youngest in the PL). Yet to some of the blowhards on here that seems to equate to either only spending mega-millions on failures, or filling the team with only those who've played in the top league before and totally disregarding lower league players. Its quite bizarre reasoning really. One, maybe two decent experienced players could and would make a workd of difference to us IMO.

Is it being close minded to lower league players to say that you'd like to see one or two players come in who've done it before at the top level? Very odd if that's how you see it, but fair enough if you do.

Congratulations on missing the point.

They actually signed a couple of players each of the last 2 summers from PL clubs; in particular this summer Bassong and Turner. Don't need a whole team with some decent top level experience, of course; but just 1 or 2 players would be quite nice. Still, probably won't happen as its not really our thing, so it matters not. And its more about the ability of the player than anything else. So we'll see.

1) GK 2) Wide midfielder 3) CB

Great to see we still don't yet show any indication of signing someone with PL experience. That would be terrible.