angelman

£12 tickets are the reason.

Its quite amazing the press on this. Liverpool seem paragons of all virtue, and it has now started that Saints are the sinners, based on hearsay and other unsubstantiated crap. Amazing what people choose to believe but guess they do so to suit their agenda.

Gaston signs for Sampdoria for £7.5m Good business by Boro, getting him on a free for a year.

Damn, if our mods temp closed threads when bedwetting and doom & gloom happened, there wouldn't be a thread left!

The good thing for SFC is the length of contract and that his value will not diminish. If it means that players won't sign long contracts in the future so be it. Seems a fairly meaningless exercise anyway.

Bednarek is U21 being born on 12/4/96

That is exactly what should happen. But it doesn't. It won't. Us "make weights" really need to stick together. Don't let players get their stroppy way. But then you have the likes of WHU. They suffered it with Payet, but were quite happy to let Stoke suffer it with Arnautovic. It's dog eat dog. There are no gentlemen left running the clubs, so what do you expect?

This ambition thing that everyone keeps trotting out is fairly meaningless without quantification. What do you mean by ambition? Do you want us to spend spend spend? Look at our bottom line - do you think that the club is making massive profits that are being squirrelled away in some bank account? Or are you advocating spending above and beyond what we earn?? Some on here really have no idea what so ever. We are a mid-sized provincial club that has the 8th highest wage bill in the PL and the 8th most expensively acquired squad (I think but happy to be corrected). Maybe you think that Leeds and Pompey are examples of ambition?? TBH I am not sure that they are alone in the manner they do transfers although they have been caught out at both senior level and junior level. The Blackpool meetings were an absolute disgrace not least because VVD's agent is "chairman of EFAA, the European Union for agents/intermediaries". If the chair of the agents' union is caught bang to rights, what hope is there for the game?? I really hope that Jansen is taken to task over this. UEFA should demand that he steps down from his role and maybe strip him of his licence. These agents are pariahs on the game. But that certainly does not absolve LFC of their behaviour. In all this, there is a complete lack of respect for SFC. You expect that from supporters of LFC (after all as 1 comment said, we are but makeweights in the league), but hope that the club, the agent and the player don't behave in the same disdainful manner. It seems though that they all are. It is sad. The true (old) Liverpool supporter is fine. I recall one coming on here apologetically when Bodgers was buying from us to say (sincerely) how it wasn't good for the game. But the new breed of Sky generation supporter are vile. I always find it highly amusing when listening to call ins on the radio when you hear the accent of the Liverpool supporters. Hardly a man is Scouse or Irish - lots of Cockney and Surrey. I guess that there are many who buy the message of how great they are. They were great, no mistake about that, but I don't understand how you can arbitrarily support a club that you have no connection with and never go and see, at least not on a regular basis. People say that the atmosphere at football has changed and that it is now not a working man's game, but to me, it is the tourists that are killing the game. Clubs our size are less affected (if at all, although I did note that when ST holders around me are replaced for non PL games, the tourists have a really negative affect). The big clubs have this the whole time with their league games. The Sky generation supporter is in tune with the business not the sport. The big clubs have moved so far away from sport that the local supporter is actually pretty irrelevant. They can relocate anywhere and still fill the stadium. The are owned by people who have no connection to the City, no connection with the Club and see it purely as an investment. When you are like that, do you really expect anything other than vile behaviour? Behaving in any other manner gets in the way of success/profit and that isn't what you invest for. When/if we get sold, we might well turn out to be more like that, but the size of our club won't allow us to behave like LFC. The big difference is that out of ALL their supporters, they are supported mostly by people who have no connection to the City nor surrounding area. They aren't alone in this by any means and I suspect most of the big 6 are the same. I suspect that the majority of Saints supporters have some connection to the club/area as they sure haven't chosen us for glory hunting reasons!! ☺ And as a "neutral" (can one ever be neutral??), I really am not behind them at all. You do hear that being trotted out by the media an awful lot and it is complete crap. I suspect that like many, I am behind one team and don't really care about anyone else. LCFC had my backing for a short period while they were winning the PL, but that was more about the good it brought to football despite it only being a facade. I take a passing interest in AFCB, but that is because I was born in Boscombe and as a nipper once in a while I used to go there when SFC were playing away, but I don't really care if they get relegated or promoted, so long as they don't do as well as us!! I view all other clubs with a total equanimity, save for wanting all the Big 6 to fail, especially in Europe. Success just increase the financial gap between the "them and us". There, that's my rant over. Like a fair few others here, I just don't like the way money has changed football, and yes, I know that we are part of it. I look at Neymar going for £200m and earning £550k a week post tax and I just can't reconcile with it. Maybe it is best to leave it to the Sky generation as they seem quite happy to accept it. PS - yes, best not mention Heysel.

McCarfthy - where is he? Is he injured?

McCarthy??

That's what I was aiming to say

Celtic need to win tonight to progress in the CL......

Maybe the agent thought it worked the same way as it did when he took RK from us to Everton “He left another agent [Guido Albers] and came to me. “After that, we had some serious talks with Everton before Ronald decided to leave Southampton. “So it was a lot of work to get the transition done.” http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/koemans-agent-reveals-how-tough-12463215 VVD changes agent > has talks with LFC > decides to leave Saints. [As an aside, I thought RK decided to leave Saints before talks with Everton]. One might have thought that the President of the European Football Agents Association (EFAA) might have known how to do things in the proper manner.

£15m is what Wolves and Boro are spending in the league below us.

The problem with that is, why did he change agent a few months after signing a 6 year contract? He decided to do it. He knew what he was doing. He knew what that agent would do (and I am sure the club did as well). Sure he's a football player, but FFS, he was 25 and at some stage he has to take responsibility for his own actions and decisions.

Depends on the state of the bridges and how many have been burnt beyond repair. I suspect that the club have the hump with LFC rather than VVD, but as the article states, a marker has to be laid down. It might cost a bit in the short term, but pay in the long term. The club has to plan for the present and future, and players upping sticks on a whim (or when they have been tapped up) is no way to plan. A 6 year contract in this day and age you expect to last longer than 1 year. Its a sorry state of affairs. Maybe Jansen thought after his Koeman crap that he could walk over us. Maybe Liverpool thought that they could to. And anyone saying VVD has been badly advised, I would ask when do football players actually take responsibility for themselves. He was 25 when he pulled this **** and surely he can be a big boy rather than being manipulated by his agent and LFC.

What a load of crap, and you can't even spell his name right for FFS.

No that is your (and many other's) interpretation of the business model, unless you can point out where anyone in the hierarchy has said that we are a stepping stone club. It is incorrect as well. People come to us because of the wages we offer compared to other clubs. They might then see that we can advance players to a certain level that makes them attractive to other clubs and they may take a step up. For example, why did Gaston come here? He quite openly admitted it was the money. Nothing about thinking he could take a step up and move on. Tadic the same. VVD came to us because we were the club paying the most who were prepared to take the chance on him.

No. Why on earth would you want to watch a pre-season friendly between those two?

I'm not a petulant child, but if I was a 26 year old refusing to do what my employer asked me, I would be deeply embarrassed when the payment of what I had "earned" arrived in my bank account.

Not necessarily. We can keep him with the kids. It shouldn't diminish the value of the asset, just muck around with cash flow.

They're only choosing the (PL) goals of the season.

Boufal, Tadic, Long (in that order).

I think Yeboh's is the best.

Inter isn't a step up from Liverpool, Barca is. Unless they double or triple his wages, Mane is not going to go anywhere. And really, if I was a black player, would I really want to put up with the racism that is still so prevalent in Italian football??