The Kraken

F*ck me; from the BBC updating their football website to a bitter rant about the state of the nation in less than 20 posts. :lol:

I don't necessarily disagree that it would be nice to sign 1 or 2 experienced heads. That said I don't see it as the be all and end all; Norwich and Swansea both had effective seasons without those types of players. QPR on the other hand went down the expensive experienced route and considerably struggled.

On the flip side; if they can afford not to offload him, they can potentially get a decent season long loan fee for him and then see where they are next year. If Butland plays well in the Premier League, and indeed goes on to actually play for Enfland, his stock will have risen massively and he'll likely be worth significantly moe than the £3M approx that is being talked about now. At that point Birmingham will have the option of recalling him if they gain promotion to the PL or selling him for a much higher price.

I had the misfortune of watching England v Portugal in Euro 2004 in Dublin airport. In a bar, myself and around 10 other English lads, and a completely packed bar full of rabid, angry Irish. It was the most hostile environment I've been in when just sat in an apparently "neutral" bar; they were so bitter and fired up for England to lose it was incredible. The barman at one point refused to serve us drinks as we were English (and winning). Utterly pathetic, it was so hateful. Their massively over the top celebrations when we lost on penalties were like their own team had won the tournament.

And that type of moronic idiocy is apparently in charge of moderating a forum. Dear Lord.

What a ridiculous point to make.

F*ck the other teams. We are Southampton; we'll wear what we want.

It's extremely difficult to get a working visa for the US. Perhaps the best way (apart from marrying someone) is probably to try and get an inter-company transfer from a UK office to a US office. But of course this requires you to work for a company that has offices in both countries. There are also other temporary visas (J-1), but these are typically only for around 4 or 5 months. Just turning up in America, hoping to get a job and therefore a visa would very be a waste of time.

They certainly have similar attributes in comng across as intolerable know-it-alls while at the same time showing a complete ignorance of the game in general.

Once again you prove the name "Professor" to be completely inapt. You and Alpine clearly have the same inability to recognise that the club don't choose to make signings later in the summer. In an ideal world it would be great to have all transfer activity done and dusted by July. But it simply doesn't work that way for a hell of a lot of signings, players and agents hold out for the best deals, which often takes time. The fact you think this one signing heralds a new way of thinking concerning incoming transfers just shows your entire naievety to the situation, as if we've suudenly discovered how much better it is to get players in earlier than later. The Rodriguez transfer is pretty much the highest profile Premier League transfer so far. There has hardly been any transfer acitivity to date. Does this mean that all other PL clubs have got it wrong? No, it simply means that transfers will happen throughout the summer. If we can get players in early, then fantastic, we absolutely should try to do that. If it takes longer to get in the right player, then I'm sure the club would much, much prefer to do that. Tell me; you place such importance on getting players in early. Is it therefore better in your opinion to get some players, any players in before July, rather than wait and get better players in, but not until August?

If someone like Tottenham or Arsenal had bought him, it would be seen as a wise transfer for a potential up and coming player. They see Saints buying him and assume it'll eat up all our transfer budget. Sunderland have been the absolute kings of wasting money in the past 10 years or so, so I don't think I'll get bothered in any way if they choose to mock us for this.

Yep. Our delayed transfer activity last summer cost us dearly last season. Thank God they've learnt from that.

I'm not saying we'll bring in sh*t. I just think that at least one or two of the players we bring in will be akin to Jaidi when we got him; experienced, been there done it, probably higher end of the wage scale but 29, 30 and over so little transfer fee. I think we'll spend another £5M or so on one more player, and as i said before no more than £2M or ££m for the rest, with potentially at least 1 or 2 of them either a free or a loan.

Yes, but he originally said Delap could be the 4th OR 5th in the list. 5th would mean 3 extra signings above Delap. Besides, I never said that there is no chance of us spending that much, unless you can point out where I did. I simply stated I don't think we will.

Well we'll see. But we know we need to bring in at least 1 new keeper, Martin going suggests we'll get at least 1 CB (potentially 2 if Seaborne is not back or up to it), I think we'll go for a CM, and there's been reported interest in Matt Jarvis. That's going to cost enough, without lashing out £10M+ on two of them. Do that, its at least £16M for 3 players and we're still likely to need/go for 3 other starting first team players.

That's pretty much the minimum we could do it for though. I personally think we'll see one more signing around £5M, and the rest will either be decent loans or no more than £2M - £3M.

And his England career nose-dived after his fluffing of a comparitively easy header against Italy.

That would potentially see us spending around £25M and upwards. Can't see it being that high myself.

I'm hearing £6M plus £1M if we stay up.

Agreed. i think we need a little more experience in the spine of the team. Cork and Schneiderlin are great but both only 22, so it would be good to see someone brought in there. And while Fonte & Hooiveld will do a job I'd definitely like to see a CB come in, even if its a signing of the likes of Jaidi when we got him. Chuck in Tom Ince, Matt Jarvis and a new keeper (Butland maybe) and that would be a pretty damn good window.

The bottom half of the Premier League has been quite average for some time. We'll have to get used to the fact that there's 3 or 4 clubs who can genuinely challenge for the title; another 2 or 3 who are a bit further behind, 1 or 2 comfortable top ten clubs and then really not much to choose between the rest. You could argue to argue that, on any given day, a Championship play-offs team would stand up against a bottom half Premier League team. Cherry picking the Championship's best players is a decent transfer strategy.

His wiki page (of course no guarantee of accuracy at all) states it as £750K.

Yeah, they handled him so well that he was the top scorer in the division and voted as the Championship's best player. And how do you know we are "throwing all the eggs in one basket"? Is this to be our only signing? Will we sign other players? This is the earliest in the transfer window that we've made a signing since the Liebherr revolution, and we know that interest has been shown in a number of other players.

Peter Storrie is the chairman of Liss.