SNSUN

Some big news from the Palace... ...Kevin Phillips has signed a new 1 year contract.

100% yes.

This - knowing Cortese, he'll have snuck something through and it will be announced at 11:23 tonight.

Dang, I'm getting closer. I believe Pochettino has said he's interested in signing Ever. There, it may be old news but it's on topic. ;-)

His middle name is Maximilliano. That's an awesome name 'cos it has an X in it. All names with an X in it are cool.

A baby born at St Mary's. I doubt OUR St Mary's will have any births, but I bet one or two may have been conceived there...

I wonder what chant we'd come up with for him - when I hear his name I immediately thing of "Whenever, Wherever" by Shakira. Just me? Ok.

Prince Cambridge CDAJFU Sign him up, he's young and probably hungry. (I bet he'll support Villa though...)

It's disconcerting that most of us will probably never see him become king...

Does this mean I'm going to have to start having sex with my wife again? Curses.

He's proved he can be an effective Premier League player that can score goals at this level. And he's a fans favourite. It won't happen. Even if it did the transfer fee would have to be near extortion for a player his age and we'd have to bring in one or two top quality replacements. I'm not concerned.

We'll have a 90,000 seater stadium to fill in five years, we could use the extra support from the ghey community...

Oh, the wife likes Kelvin Davis, but then she's always been attracted to weird looking blokes.

You tell me Artur Boruc is no looker - he's a stunner. (In a non-ghey, just observing someones attractiveness type of way.)

Not everyone makes it. John Welsh was on the 2001 article.

Having a look at Dejan Lovren's Wikipedia page, and found a link to Don Balon's 100 most promising youngsters in the world - dated from 2010. Lovren's on that list, playing for Lyon, and so is Mayuka. It could be Cortese's shopping list bearing in mind Coutinho is on there too. It's interesting to see some youngsters on there and where they are now plying their trade. The list: Dominic Adiyiah (Reggina) Toby Alderweireld (Ajax) Hamdan Al Kamali (Al Wahda) Jano Ananidze (Spartak Moscow) Andre Ayew (Marseille) Khouma Babacar (Fiorentina) Holger Badstuber (Bayern) Gareth Bale (Tottenham) Mario Balotelli (Manchester City) Ben Sahar (Hapoel Tel Aviv) Bojan (FC Barcelone) Bo-Kyung Kim (Oita Trinita) Ryad Boudebouz (Sochaux) Dedryck Boyata (Manchester City) Breno (Bayern) Sergio Canales (Real Madrid) Mehdi Carcela-Gonzalez (Standard) Luc Castaignos (Feyenoord) Diego Contento (Bayern) Phillippe Coutinho (Internazionale) David De Gea (Atlético de Madrid) Alvaro Domínguez (Atlético Madrid) Giovanni dos Santos (Tottenham) Douglas Costa (Shakhtar) Alan Dzagoev (CSKA Moscow) Gueïda Fofana (Le Havre) Paulo Henrique (Santos) Giuliano (Internacional) Maxime Gonalons (Lyon) Mario Götze (Dortmund) Antoine Griezmann (Real Sociedad) Eden Hazard (Lille) Jordan Henderson (Sunderland) Markus Henriksen (Rosenborg) Abel Hernández (Palermo) Ander Herrera (Zaragoza) Lewis Holtby (Mainz) James Rodriguez (Porto) Stefan Jovetic (Fiorentina) Vaclav Kadlec (Sparta Prague) Shinji Kagawa (Dortmund) Gael Kakuta (Chelsea) Alan Kardec (Benfica) Simon Kjaer (Wolfsburg) Maksim Koval (Dinamo Kiev) Ismail Köybasi (Besiktas) Toni Kroos (Bayern) Manuel Lanzini (River Plate) Adem Ljajic (Fiorentina) Dejan Lovren (Lyon) Romelu Lukaku (Anderlecht) Lukman Haruma (Monaco) Federico Macheda (Manchester United) Guido Marilungo (Sampdoria) Marko Marin (Werder Bremen) Emmanuel Mayuka (Young Boys) Thomas Müller (Bayern) Iker Muniain (Athletic Bilbao) Marc Muniesa (Barcelona) Ezequiel Muñoz (Palermo) Yann Mvila (Rennes) Tomas Necid (CSKA Moscou) Neymar (Santos) Sotiris Ninis (Panathinaikos) Nikolas N’Koulou (Monaco) Javier Pastore (Palermo) Alexandre Pato (Milan) Pablo Piatti (Almería) Miralem Pjanic (Lyon) Rafael (Manchester United) Yaroslav Rakytskiy (Shakhtar) Diego Renan (Cruzeiro) Marco Reus (Mönchengladbach) Emmanuel Rivière (Saint-Etienne) Jack Rodwell (Everton) José Rondón (Málaga) Victor Ruiz (Espanyol) Mamadou Sakho (PSG) Davide Santon (Internazionale) Georgy Shennikov (CSKA Moscow) Xherdan Shaqiri (Basel) Harmeet Singh (Vålerenga) Moussa Sissoko (Toulouse) Robin Soder (Göteborg) Miroslav Stoch (Fenerbahçe) Yannis Tafer (Toulouse) Thiago (Barcelona) Lacina Traoré (Cluj) Ricky Van Wolfswinkel (Utrecht) Carlos Vela (Arsenal) Jelle Vossen (Genk) Ante Vukusic (Hadjuk Split) Theo Walcott (Arsenal) Vladimir Weiss (Rangers) Georginio Wijnaldum (Feyenoord) Jack Wilshere (Arsenal) Danny Wilson (Liverpool) Siyanda Xulu (Mamelodi Sundowns) Andriy Yarmolenko (Dinamo Kiev) Sercan Yildirim (Bursaspor) http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/2010/11/02/don-balons-list-of-the-100-best-young-players-in-the-world/ Stoch is on that list too. A few were already domestic based, but there are others that now ply their trade in this country too, such as Van Wolfswinkel and Sissoko. Alderweireld is on that list too. Some will make it, some won't but it's interesting to see who has and hasn't so far. (Also this list would have been great for signings on FM2011!) Could they ALL DAJFU? :-)

So we have an offer in, still, and nothing's been agreed with where he's going yet?

My mate's in Ibiza, apparently he saw Bearsy playing in the sea. Sadly he didn't have a camera with him for proof. I did however ask for an artist's impression:

Gold is a naff colour anyway. It looks so tacky - the home shirt would be a tad better had we used the away kits silver. Bring back our colourful badge, bring in a shirt sponsor that has a colour associated with is (like Coca Cola, we might get red and white then!) and get rid of Adidas that clone one shirt from another. Last year's kit grew on me. This won't. Not that it really matters, it won't ruin my season. It's just one fewer Christmas present I'll get from the wife!

Heh. That gold lettering on our shirt really doesn't show up well...

**** me Ships! You can actually see his moobs! I know some footballers put on weight - Southall, Quinn, Ruddock - but Ships has to win the fattest ex-pro award hands down, surely?

Ha! Good knowledge though. I still hope this happens.

Sad news.

Agree with your second point, the club announcing we're interested in Damiano, Wanyama and Benega certainly raised our expectations. They've achieved one of those - but now our hopes have been raised with the other two positions, makin an underwhelming signing could annoy Saints fans. That said, someone we find 'underwhelming' doesn't necessarily mean he'll have a poor season - sometimes it's the players we sign cheaply or with little reputation that can make the most impact. Looking back at our recent history, nobody knew much about Pahars, Beattie or Davies but all went on to have a big impact on us. Then there's the failure factor - signing a big name on big money brings with it expectations. Ramirez for instance was our record signing and came with a big reputation for a youngster, so judging by those standards he had a poor season. Had we signed him with no reputation and little money, his stats - 5 goals and 3 assists in only 20 starts - is a fairly decent return for a midfielder. (Although granted, expensive or not he should have made more starts. I think injury and suspension didn't help with those...)

Still a month until the start of the season and a month and a half (ish) until the end of the transfer window. I reckon we'll be fine.