angelman

If you want to misinterpret peoples' posts, that's fine. I am not sure many of those that you mentioned were in the twilight of their playing days. For example, Ruddock played for 11 years more after he left us, a year at Spurs, 5 at Liverpool, a couple at West Ham.

Ah Charlie George. I remember he took the worst penalty that I have ever seen taken in my life. Can't quite recall whether it cleared Milton Road stand or not, but it was a damn close call. But..... It's nice to have moved up in the world a bit, where we don't have to accept cast offs from other clubs and give once good players a run out in their twilight playing days.

Disagree as think Harry Reed will be perfectly able. Will be interesting to look back on this in say a year's time, although suspect we would buy someone.

Against us, the 11 players starting plus 3 subs were ALL British (and yes, Lukas Jutkiewicz counts as British)

To go down.... QPR, Leicester, Sunderland (or if not Sunderland...Hull or Villa). To come up..... B'mouth, Brentford and not sure about the other. Don't want Watford. Maybe Wolves, but would like to see a play off final between Norwich and Ipswich.

To a certain extent, the actual level of the A League is not of primary importance. That is so long as they do actually know what they are doing. I suspect, but please correct me if I am wrong, the competition is more important. If the competition is close and exciting, then does it matter that it is L1 standard? Look at our own leagues.....ask most people which is the most exciting league, and invariably they will say the Championship. There, they have the perfect balance between level competition and skill on the pitch. Not the most skilful but the competition more than makes up for that and thus it is possibly THE most exciting league in the world. Just look at it this season....6 games to go, a the top 4 covered by 2 points and the top 8 by 7 points (PL top 8 has a 24 point gap plus 1 game in hand for Chelsea). So while the league might be exciting, whether there are enough skilful players there for us to look at is another matter. Give it time and I am sure standards will improve if there is a commercial appetite for it to flourish and surely if there is exciting competition it will flourish.

I was just watching some MLS, which surely must be considered quite a step above A League, and it was rubbish. Had to turn it off. L1 standard at best.

My view is Pelle is our main forward. Support him or (in the nicest possible way) **** off and support someone else. Sure his first couple of games were tough, then he hit a purple patch and now a barren spell. **** happens but he's our, a Saints player. Sure our striking and goal scoring has held us back, but hey, that's football. I do wonder whether those who lambast him ever go to games, or are just arm chair fans?

http://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/man-city-preparing-bid-southampton-whizkid-ward-prowse-4071131?utm_source=main_feed So, that's Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool and Spurs wanting to sign him.

No **** Sherlock.

You're good

If/when Atletico take him back, do we get £1.5m from them or was that just if someone else signed him?

Wolfsburg

Ah....didn't realise. Will learn for next time.

OMG - the racist card being thrown down. racist - a person who believes in racism, the doctrine that one's own racial group is superior or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. Nowhere in that post was there any hint of supremacist language, and this modern phenomenon of shouting racist whenever someone states something like Dig Dig did is truly pathetic and detracts away from the true instances of racism. It might have been unnecessary and flippant, but nor racist. Or do you consider someone calling Theo "black" rather than "mix raced" as racist, when there was no intent to be derogatory? Personally I have never bothered to pigeon hole him with regards his skin colour, but if someone forced me to, then I might also describe him as black rather than mixed race - does that make me a racist as well? As it is, I just see him as an ex-Saints player.

Who knows, we might have Osvaldo back by then! But I think his English is better than most peoples in this country

Man Utd and SFC might well think it wonderful, but would he want to come here? Man Utd > Real > Saints? I know that we aren't the most unattractive club in the world to play for, but a bit of a step down for him. I'm not sure that he was too keen to come here when we tried to get him at the beginning of the season, but then he maybe knew that Real was on the cards. I am sure that there would be some big German/Spanish/Italian clubs in for him.

LOL - I seem to have confused myself.

http://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/sport/football/567969/Southampton-ace-Graziano-Pelle-wage-cut-join-Lazio So it's Juve and not Barca!???????

That (surely) would be Abel Hernandez and not Javier.

Stunningly insightful piece - http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/434121/Southampton-face-FIGHT-keep-Sadio-Mane-with-Sporting-Lisbon-pursuit Wow, we take someone from a second rate league, expose him as someone who knows what he is doing and COULD expect a fee in excess of the £11.8m that we paid for him what with him having 3 years left. Wow. Who would have thought that!!? My post #520 covers why I think it won't happen. I suspect it is actually more to do with the next sentence..... ....where the papers are building up to have more "poor little Southampton" stories filling their pages.

******. Went on strike to get a move.

It was a charity game wasn't it? Heard on the radio that Cape Verde had some disaster recently and needed to raise some money.

As it is..... Sporting Lisbon's current record transfer fee is £7.79m and second highest is £7.04m. Maybe the article actually means the other big Lisbon side of Benfica. Their record transfer is £10.5m and they have on one other occasion spent over £10m So given the fact that we spent more than their record transfer fees on the off chance that he would be good, which seems to have paid dividends, I would not imagine that with 3 years left on his contract, that we would be looking to let him go for anything south of say £20m. Will Lisbon near triple their record transfer record or Benfica double theirs? Somehow I doubt it. But you never know.......!!

I thought Arsenal were going to put in a bid for him. Strewth - it's hard work trying to keep up with where all our players are going to be plying their trade next season.