SaintBobby

Gees. Very Saints related....

Result!!! (only 3....?)

If Bournemouth will send him back to us, we should give them Ramirez and/or Rodriguez for the rest of the season. Alpine will back me on this, surely?

Alpine, I've never accussed you of trolling before....but this is just too absurd....:-)

Sigh. MLT broke the technical rules...and was singled out from what I can tell.... If so, it's juvenile behaviour from NC and the board....

Grrrr....does show how weak we are in depth. I quite rate Fox btw...but.....

If we do sign him, maybe we could offer Nottingham Forest loans for Ramirez, Rodriguez and Del Piero if they will send us Billy Sharp back? What do you reckon, Alpine?

The point is that even if our transfer+wage budget is say, £60m, it's not obvious that you can do a deal for a LB which is actually worth it. Of the, say, 20 under consideration, you might conclude that 10 are no better than Fox, 6 don't want to come here and 4 are just too expensive in terms of fees/wages. It seems to me that something very much like this has happened to us here. The challenge for any club is that, say, we rate our centre backs at 6/10. We can't afford 8/10. But is it worth spending £xm to get to 6.5/10 or 7/10. Sometimes, the answer will be "no". Of course, such assumed cool-headed logic is often buffeted by real world events (we get gazzumped, the player's dad wants a slice of £, the wage demands suddenly increase by 100% as we near completing the signing, the player gets badly injured a week before we want to sign him etc etc). I agree with you that we don't have great quality at CB. I think the "depth" issue is a risk, but not as big a risk as you imply. On balance, we are likely to be able to field any 2 of Fonte, Hoovield and Yoshida between now and January. If one gets injured (which is not "highly likely"), Seaborne and/or Stephens gets promoted to the bench. I only break into a sweat when one of those two actually need to take to the pitch. But, the odds are they probably won't have to (at least in League games).

The two scanners in corporate do flash up your name. Not sure if this is where MLT's ST is though (but wld have thought so...)

1. The problem is you have to put a cash value on it. I guess relegation costs us a few tens of millions (depending on whether/when we get promoted back up). So, spending £150m to stay up is probably bad business. 2. Hard to say after 3 games - to my mind, the Wigan game is the most worrying. Yoshida - impossible to say yet. If he's sh1t hot, that makes a big difference. I don't think the defence has been as poor as some are saying. 3. I think it most unlikely that we will be that far adrift by Xmas. 4. It's a mend and make do. IMHO, a positive way of looking at it is that we are really pretty strong in all but two positions. Not sure that's true of many smaller Prem teams. 5. I would have a guess that the big gameplan would mean that - if we continue to progress - our next big marque signing would be a defender, not a creative South American winner.

I can't be sure what the exact, official policy is. But I asked for an email from the senior corporate staff so I had in writing that I could share out my STs before I was willing to pay £3.5K for them - and I got this email. You're right that my name flashing up on the swipe card system is likely to raise less eyebrows than "Matt Le Tissier" coming up on the screen, but still....

Might the problem Adkins/Cortese faced have been something like this: 1. Mr X is better than Fox at left-back, but the transfer fee demand is £5m and the salary demand is £40K a week on a three year contract. That's a total outlay of £11m. Although we'd definitely be a better team with Mr X than with Fox, we don't think we'd be £11m better. It just isn't worth the outlay. 2. Mr Y would be a better choice centre back than Seaborne. But the total outlay would be, say, £3m. That would be £3m well spent if we had to rely on Mr Y for 10 or 12 games, because Seaborne is quite sh1te frankly. But, in all likelihood, we aren't going to have to rely on Seaborne at all. We basically think that Fonte-Hoovield-Yoshida can do an acceptable job (and replacing them runs into the sort of problems outlined in the Fox scenario above). 3. We know we're taking a bit of a gamble here. We may regret it. If we do, at least we can revisit it in January. 4. We might just peruse the free agents to see if we can pick up a value for money offer to mitigate some of this gamble between now and Xmas. 5. Ramirez could revolutionise the team. He has genuinely world class potential. £12m is a steal, frankly. We weren't really expecting to be able to attract him, but he seems well up for it. To be honest, we rate him as a £20m+ player and just the sort of bloke who could, over 2 or 3 years, take us to the next level.

Am still confused about this free agent thing (I've finally got it locked in my mind that loans aren't possible until the window reopens in January) What would determine whether a free agent can be added to the squad? (i.e. what wld determine the "permission of the board"?) Are we saying that, say, Michael Owen should really have signed for a Premiership club before Friday and may now be in limbo until January?

Yep, thanks for the pic. It's the higher up block I was referring to. My group sit right next to those empty seats. Although looks more like 100 or so empties rather than the 300 or so I guessed at....

I'm perplexed that we're so light at the back. But less despairing of our back 5 as some appear to be. I think a player like a Ramirez is such a coup that you have to snap him up. He is a gamble, but potentially revolutionises the team.

I posted this in the "Manc punched thread".... "On the capacity point, the corporates in block 5 have quite a bit of extra space. The seats close to block 4 are quite empty (rough guess, 300 empty seats). I gather the reason for this is that the new "club lounge" membership is at its max for fire or health & safety regs or some such. So, the club could sell these seats - but have no easy way to actually get people to them (and nowhere to put these people pre match/post match/half time...or no way of stopping them getting into the club lounge at these times if they sold these seats separately). I'm told the club is appealing the ruling from the relevant quango/govt body."

I have asked for clarity from the club on this. They said it was no problem for me to share out the three STs I hold (but I wld be responsible for the behaviour of those using them).

So, the rent would be about £115k per season? Or about £5-6k per home game? Lol. Only true if there's a dubious ulterior motive.

No loan window in the top flight, sorry!

Hard to credit this. But then I was a Ramirez non-believer too...

I'd probably build the team around Ramirez. Basically, 4-3-1-2 with Ramirez in the hole/free role. Not sure who the 3 are, really? Schneiderlin, Davis, Lallana? If Ramirez is as good as suggested and becomes our playmaker, I wonder if this puts Lallana under some pressure?

On the capacity point, the corporates in block 5 have quite a bit of extra space. The seats close to block 4 are quite empty (rough guess, 300 empty seats). I gather the reason for this is that the new "club lounge" membership is at its max for fire or health & safety regs or some such. So, the club could sell these seats - but have no easy way to actually get people to them (and nowhere to put these people pre match/post match/half time...or no way of stopping them getting into the club lounge at these times if they sold these seats separately). I'm told the club is appealing the ruling from the relevant quango/govt body.

Strangest thing for me was Mayuka as the holding centre forward and Rodriguez on the wing? Surely should have been other way round? But, from what I could see from just behind the bench, the idea was to have Jay put real physical pressure on a tired (and small) Rafael (at least this appeared to be roughly what was signalled). If that was the strategy, it didn't work. But it wasn't insane either.

Gut wrenching horrid finale. But, in cold light of day, a quite excellent performance. Slight query over the subs, but - with two hours of reflection - I'm actually quite confident we will stay up. Ramirez potentially offers us an extra gear, of course.

The skates new signing, Ertl, has scored. Sadly, for the phew, it's an own goal. Pmouth 0 Oldham 1 :-)