angelman

French obviously not your strong point!! I think, if I can translate from some form of pidgin French, "I am called an ice cream please". Maybe it is the patois they use in Alsace!!

On the plus side, it might take the heat out of our market and people might not be so quick to slap an extra few £million on.

What does that mean? Do people write gobbledegook and think by putting a # it all makes sense?

I'm not so sure that you are right when you say we were not in control. Certainly I will grant you that it appeared that way and anyone could go as and when they wanted. But let's face it £55m for Shaw and Lallana is pretty phenomenal and even supporters of other clubs who show some objectivity would agree. Lovren pushed it and we didn't make it easy for him and it appears that we held out for what we wanted. Chambers - that's the odd one, but again £12m > £16m, despite any potential, for someone who has played 20 games is also pretty phenomenal. The lack of communication I think gave the appearance of being out of control and therefore players, agents and other clubs took it to be that we were out of control. I would criticise the board for not speaking sooner, as that would have stopped further people thinking that they could just walk out (which still might happen) as well as the signing of players. I might be wildly wrong, but it seems now that we are unwilling to pay the inflated prices being asked seeing as everyone knows our situation. This is purely based on the lack of signings so is probably wholly wrong. But procrastinate for too long, and we will find ourselves in severe trouble. I actually hope that there is still some honour in football and that if we need to loan players in, that Chelsea and Man City will help us out. I know that that is naive, but I have a funny feeling that they might, even if it is fake and they can take the moral high ground. Everyone knows that this is a bad situation for football in this country.

Been reading a bit more of Bluemoon. It is quite an interesting thread. They are happy to see the situation for what it is, how football is ruined, while taking the moral high ground because they didn't buy any of the players leaving. Some are much more aware of things, and I suspect that those might be the supporters who have followed them from the top division to the fourth and back again.

This is a pertinent post from the Man City board.

Pochettino was the keystone? I am surprised that the players are so shallow. They seem to have switched their allegiances to Pochettino from Adkins pretty easily, but most of them were off before they even knew who the new manager was going to be. Do you not think that the club and the incoming manager should have been given a chance, that is if it wasn't about money? Roll things back 18 months and you offer us Pochettino or Koeman as manager, and I think that we all know who we would have gone with, and maybe the players would as well.

Not going but going to put £5 on us to win.

Probably a good thing Lovren's gone as not sure the other players would want to play with him while he's in the nuddy.

I suspect it's more hate against the modern day footballer rather than anything personal. I do agree that going on peoples' social media and calling them a **** is somewhat unnecessary. Irrelevant It may be a short career but he is still young.

The quality of the football and the quality of the competition are not mutually inclusive.

And who wrote the contracts and agreed what would go into them? Wouldn't be Cortese would it??

Can you flesh that out, esp how many senior player which should let us know how many more are likely to go.

@alex_crook: False alarm #saintsfc fans have now been told Morgan Schneiderlin has NOT handed in a transfer request. Spoken to his camp and club sources...YET

Simple, Say his request is not accepted.

21st.

People are going on and on about promises. These promises that were made to Morgan, and that weren't in his contract, who made them to him? If it was either NC or MP, then you can see the problem. If he wanted cast iron promises then he should have had them written into his contract either at the time of extending or as an addendum. I do find it a bit strange though, that he signs a new contract extension in Feb 2013 and has to have promises made to him between then and presumably the start of the season in August 2013.

Well the powers that be would say that they already have that in the form of FFP.

£50k! That's still £2.5m a year. I was thinking more £20k. If you were good then you would no doubt get £50k a week with the addition of endorsements, image right, advertising etc

Yes, really. 1-4 = getting improved terms 5 = the other bit I said

Not sure, whether abolishing the max wage brought this to where we are now, it certainly hasn't helped. Wage caps are funny things, and there are often ways around them so their effectiveness has to be questioned. But as the only way I can see any solution to the current situation is by bringing in a wage cap, then I guess the answer to your question has to be yes. I suppose image rights are the real circumnavigation to wage caps, but I am sure that there are other way. And unless the whole of Europe did it, you would get to a position like Rugby Union, where people want to play in France. I see that La Ligua want the best 500 players in the world to be in their teams, so if we introduced one in this country, then everyone would be off there. Does it matter? No. The clubs are still here, and the competition would be better because everyone would be closer in ability. You might not get the best players, but does that matter? Certainly not on a domestic level to the supporter, but the PL money men wouldn't have it, and the CL competitiveness would be curtailed. As we aren't going to be in the CL if the current situation stays, then I don't care about competitiveness in that competition.

Signing a contract extension is seen by players as being loyal in that the club should be able to cash in more, as well as getting improved terms.

this.

Are there 3 senior players left? Reckon it would be Jos, whose idol was The Cow, telling Morgan he's acting "badly".