The Kraken

My dad could beat your dad up.

Very true, and well put. My point is though, that at the start of the negotiations the club would have had their assets valued, and their cash in hand determined. That would have been the basis for a "value" of the business to be ascertained by the various interested parties. In the weeks that followed, through the protracted sale of the club, the asset value of the club was reduced by £3m in terms of player sales. Though this of course should impact on the cash in hand value. But in addition, the cash in hand figure was also reduced during this period, through the fact that we had to pay wages yet had no meaningful income through either ticket sales or season tickets. I'm not saying for a minute that I know the actual figures, of course I'm not. I'm pretty sure that I don't and never will understand all the ins and outs of the deal. But what I am saying is that to completely write of the £3m in sales as irrelevant to the final sale price is absolutely wrong, it simply has to be taken account when considering our total spend in the summer.

You're clearly choosing to ignore previous posts on this very thread in order to carry on your tirade. But I'll humour you... Of course I can't tell you how much was paid for the club; no-one will do that. But my point stands; if you think the sale price of the club would stay the same while the club lost £3m of assets overnight, then you're deluded. I can just see the negotiations...."so the club is worth £3m less than it was yesterday? Sure, I'll still pay the same price for it." Probably no-one will ever know how much effect this had on the exact sale price of the club, but to dismiss it entirely as you have done is clearly wrong. And I've already agreed with you; hardly any clubs in this league buy big like we have. No-one, especially me, is going to argue with you with the fact that we've spent much more than the other clubs, and we can pay higher wages than most other clubs. But that just HAS to be allied to the fact that we lost so many senior players for a very larrge sum of money, and those players had to be replaced in a hurry. And I guess that's where our differences lie; I see the purchases we've made thus far as us playing "catch up" as fast as we can with the other big boys in this league. In any case, the January transfer window will be a good indicator of where our finances lie. If we go out then and splash another £1M or more on players then I may well defer to your views. Until then, I think they're a bit exagerated.

Dear God, this is getting tedious. No-one is arguing the fact that we're a much bigger club than those you just mentioned. Arizona has repeatedly stated that our income is around £6m per year higher than such clubs, hence we can afford to pay bigger transfer fees and wages than these clubs. But your analogies to Chelsea and Man City are just not valid; both of those clubs operate at massive losses. Our owners have indicated all along that we are being run as a profitable business, we won't be run as a loss making exercise. You seem to conveniently write-off the £3m of player sales in the summer because they were made prior to the club's purchase. But Mr Liebherr was involved in negotiations for the club well before these player sales, and if you think for a minute that having £3m worth of assets removed from the company accounts would have had no effect on the price he eventually paid for the club, then it's you who are severely deluded. This summer we found ourselves in a position whereby we had lost 7 senior players from our squad. Players who would have walked into probably any team in this division. Those players needed to be replaced, and quickly. Yes, we've spent a fair amount of money to do that. No-one really knows the actual figures as the majority of the fees are "undisclosed", but we can be sure its quite significant. And yes, we've spent more than any other club in the division. But, although you just don't want to do it, that HAS to be offset against the players that have left the club in the summer. It's a redundant exercise without doing that, no matter how much you argue it.

So apart from Delph, all other players out of the door went on frees, and none to clubs in a higher division. We lost McGoldrick, Dyer, Surman, Wright-Phillips, Euell, John and Rasiak. All to teams in a higher division, and quite obviously our better players. Leeds and us are two completely different scenarios.

It's a bit of both really. No matter where the money for Surman, DMG et al went, they were players that were in our first team last season that we lost, they brought in a significant amount of money, and they needed to be replaced. However, there are not many other clubs in this division that the likes of Lambert, Hammond, Murty, Waigo etc would have gone to, both for the transfer fee/wage that we can now pay, and for the fact that we're one of the biggest clubs in the division. I agree with Arizona that it's not irelevant when the players were sold, the sales would have had some form of impact on the price of the club. And while we have certainly spent alot on new players we're certainly not the "Man City of League 1", we're just a bigger and wealthier club compared to most other teams around us.

Best league game? - Southampton 3 Sheffield United 2. Last game at St. Mary's 2007/08. Best cup game? - Saints 4 Spuds 0. Best goalkeeper? - Antii Niemi Best centre back? - Michael Svensson Best full back? - Wayne Bridge Best winger? - CMFG Best striker? - James Beattie Best youngster to come through? - Gareth Bale Best manager? - Gordon Strachan Overall player of the decade? - Antii Niemi Favourite away game? - Derby play off semi. Favourite home game? - Southampton 3 Sheffield United 2. Best away fans to visit SMS? - Man Utd. Best Saints fans performance (home)? - Dell last game Best Saints fans performance (away)? - FA Cup final

With 20 league games gone, I decided to search inside for my inner geek, and came up with the following.... The Gillingham game, our 11th league game, I have taken as the turning point; the 10 games before that were completely different in terms of performances and results. Since then, we’ve scored 23 points from 10 league games, so an average of 2.3 points per game. If we assume the top 6 clubs will continue their total season form, and take Huddersfield who are in 5th place, they have a total of 32 points from 20 games at an average of 1.6 points per game. So, assuming both those trends continue for the rest of the season..... Huddersfield have 26 more games to play, at 1.6 points per game, which would equate to 42 more points and give a season total of 74 points. Saints have 26 more games to play, at 2.3 points per game, which would equate to 60 more points and give a season total of 82 points. So it’s clear to see we have to continue the form of the last 10 games to be in with a shout. I personally don’t think we will continue that form all season, but there’s no reason we can’t be too far away from it. And if we’re in the mix come March or April I’ll feel more confident over ourselves than the likes of Swindon, Huddersfield, Colchester etc. So, it’s definitely possible....

And that was sort of the point of my answer. No-one, as far as I can recall, suggested any of the signings we made in the summer and since. So I have faith in the management team signing who they think is the best option. Don't get me wrong, I love the sentiment that we have money to spend in January on players, its a great thing. Maybe I've just been swayed by the relentless bickering on this site of late from pointless idiots who want to debate how a win is a draw, and how 9 wins out of 13 is a bad thing.

I'd just let Alan Pardew do his job. As he has proven so far, it's one that he can do in a more than capable manner. AP has brought in a number of players since arriving here. And all of them, in their own way, have proven to be a successful signing. But, more to the point, pretty much no-one on here has predicted their signing, let alone suggested it. It's easy to sit back and play fantasy manager and criticise from afar. I'm happy for our manager to sign who he sees fit; his choices are bound to be much better than the suggestions that come from the plethora of clowns on here.

And it was the football league that imposed the -10 penalty; not the FA. Not having the best of mornings, are you...

Simon Gillett in shock loan recall in time for Boxing Day Saints clash.

This whole thread is pointless and embarrassing. Its like an argument in a school playground.

You really are quite an oddball.

Thank God there's someone on here with a bit of sense, and reality. Good post, I agree entirely.

Yep, because one more person getting dragged into this tiresome, embarrassing and frankly pointless argument would have been just what this thread needed....

Exactly right. I expected mid-table this season, with a late chase for the play-offs considered a real bonus. We may have spent a lot on players in the summer, but look who we lost from the squad: McGoldrick, Dyer, Surman, Wright-Phillips, Euell, John & Rasiak. From a team that really wasn't that good in the first place. Those sales brought in around £3M, and I'd doubt very much if we've spent as much on their replacements.

Exactly right. It's not so much about formations as it is about ensuring players do their jobs. We'll never win games if 6 of 7 of our players have an off day, and the formation they line up in is irrelevant to that. The Brighton game was awful, we were under par all over the pitch, but 451, 442, 424 or whatever wouldn't have changed that.

Can you point me in the direction of the rumours that he was ever off it.....?

Just goes to show how people have different views of the same game! I thought James was very good while at RB but I wasn't that impressed with him at CM. He had a few good moments in there but an a few occasions lost a bit of composure and we never seemed to hold on to the ball as well as we could with Morgan in there. It's always good to get a result when the team haven't played overwhelmingly brilliant though. And in a way I'm kind of glad we let the goal in, you could see that Pards was distinctly not impressed with it and will ensure the players are kept on their toes. Would be nice to keep a clean sheet Sunday though.

Took a matter of minutes to find this.... 27 August morgan is not suited to this league...you can tell he has class in there somewhere and playing div 3 football in england when the french clearly want him to progress quicker means we are not the club for him...

You were also telling all and sundry that Schneiderlin and Lallana were truly awful and should be dropped, so let's have a little bit less of the self-congratulatory back slapping shall we Nostradamus?

Bugger cheaper beer. I'd be happy to pay the current prices if the lager actually tasted like, you know, lager. I've truly never drunk such consistently terrible, weak, flat beer anywhere else. It's a disgrace really, cleaning the pipes properly and ensuring a half decent beer is really not all that difficult.

You seem to expect us to win every game, when it's clear to see our rivals don't. I've said it before. We will lose games, and draw some. And not just against the big teams, its inevitable we'll drop points against the lesser lights. It happens. But it doesn't spell doom because we drew with Orient away from home.

And yet you fail to recognise that most fans' opinions lie somewhere between the two polar opposites you have represented. I don't know of too many that think we will "walk this league" based just on the last 6 games. Furthermore, I don't know of many others that think we're on the brink of a massive collapse just because Orient put 2 goals past us. I would suggest most fans would recognise that we have markedly improved since the start of the season, that we are one of the stronger teams in the league right now, but are still a work in progress. We're still perhaps a little bit away from where we and the manager want us to be, but for me there are many, many more signs for optimism than pessimism right now. Different strokes though.....