SaintBobby

It's all a game of bluff essentially. And who blinks first. The worst case scenarios never/rarely happen, but you get to a happy compromise by keeping them in play. Let's hope we get £25m for him. Would be very good business.

Of course, I want us to win. Like every game. 8-0 would be great, with Ings getting all the goals. But given a choice between (a) winning 1-0 and (b) losing but Ings getting the golden boot, I'd probably choose the latter tbh. I'm not overly exercised about whether we finish 11th or 12th.

I think I'd be okay with a 3-4 defeat if Ings got a hattrick. Yes, yes, I know - every place is worth £2m or something. But in the absence of silverware, I'm more interested in a Saints player getting some golden footwear, to be honest.

I'm sure he is not coming back. He was simply the wronf type of signing in so many ways.

That's the nature of a negotiation though. You don't negotiate from your worst case scenario, but you do need to risk your worst case scenario. If we accept the Everton offer and he stays, then maybe we make clear he will be trainign with the kids and not selected to play for the full year. Potentitally we lose £25m. Potentially he loses a chance at a meaningful career. A lot of it is who blinks first. All sides have a lot to gain and a lot to lose. On the logic that the worst case scenario is we get zero, you might as well accept £1 now.....

Another article on Armstrong - this one is pretty lengty... https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/dundee-united/1464488/dundee-united-stuart-armstrong-southampton-scotland/

Sure, just price in any delay/staging

I’d say Saints hold a good few cards. Not need to hold our nerve. If Spurs don’t match Everton’s offer, he has the choice of going to Everton or staying at Saints. In practice, if Spurs get within an inch of the Everton offer, you might accept it if you want to help facilitate the KWP transfer. But, as a rule, if you do have two offers on the table, you don’t accept the lower one. Especially if it’s much lower.

Thery could be in big trouble next season. I have then earmarked as one of the three to go down, even though we don't know exactly who is coming up or going down thsi year yet!

Agree. The 40 points meme is really annoying. You can get relegated on 40, but it's vanishingly unlikely. On restart, my view was that we might even be able to lose all 9 games and still stay up. That would be cutting it VERY close obviosuly (especially as it would mean Bournemouth would now also be on 34), but it could still turn out to have been enough. Sure, we were only mathematically safe after beating Man City, but that was the difference between 99.999% and 100% basically.

In the weirdly unlikely event that we get: Man Utd 6 West Ham 2 and Leicester 2 Man Utd 0 then there would need to be a playoff between Leics and Man U if you need to separate the two of them to determine Champions League qualification (which you probably would need as it looks probable that Chelsea will get more than 2 points from their last two games)

Not really, unless Man Utd thrash West Ham. A 1-0 Leicester win suffices if Man Utd only win by two or fewer goals. They’d need to win 2-0 if Man U win by 3 or 4 goals. They only need to win by 3 or more if Man Utd beat West Ham by five or more...

So many different and contestable factors to consider: age, injury record, contract remaining, whether he wants to stay or go, impact of the pandemic on finances of possible buyers, how desperate Saints are for cash, presence of other goal scoring strikers in the squad who could go some way to filling his boots (eg. if Adams & Obafemi had both scored 8-10 goals, you might be a little more relaxed about selling). I’d say most of these factors tend towards a very high asking price. £70m+ plus. I’m hopeful he’ll stay as I don’t think the teams who might want to buy him can afford the sort of price we’d accept. If he has another stellar season, it might be harder to keep him - especially if we are mid-table again rather than, say, top 6 or 7 and qualifying for Europa.

Do everything to create chances for Ings to give him a chance of the golden boot. I’d start with Long.

If anyone thinks Bournemouth are likely to stay up (or will even stay up “easily”), they are about 1/4 to go down with most bookies, so you can about quadruple your money by backing them to stay up. I’m surprised to see that they are also narrow favourites to beat Saints today. The 2/1 available on a Saints win is quite attractive, I’d have thought.

You expected at least three points tonight? Maybe 4 or 5, but you reluctantly would have settled for three if really pushed? !

Not persuaded by either. Weak spot for us is that whoever partners Ings is maybe okay, but not at all inspiring. I might even play redmond up front rather than either Adams or Obafemi.

A particularly glorious few seconds of footage was Neville awarding the Motm award to Martial in the 94th minute for "scoring the match winner" LMAO

Here's a mental stat to conjure with.... In the Premier League era, Man Utd have played 537 games at Old Trafford. In all those 537 games, they have only dropped a total of 5 points in stoppage time - a full 40% of which were in last night's match! Sweet.

An advantage we had was that we had Swansea in one of those last games. If Bournemouth still had matches against West Ham and/or Watford, you might see a way out for them. That Swansea 0-1 win truly was a six-pointer and deserved the “must win” tag!

Magnificent display. As I said on the pre-match thread, I liked our odds of 10/1 and shoved £20 on it (sadly, the poster who said he rated our chances at worse than 100/1 wouldn’t come back and offer me odds! Which is a shame, because betting is basically a pretty efficient way of taxing bullshit!) KWP was Motm for me, but obviously several worthy candidates!

If you're willing to offer me 50/1 or better, I'd like to place a bet then please. Say £200?

Genuine question - is there definitive evidence that being in European competition damages your domestic performance? At least for the relatively smaller clubs, maybe ignore the top six who have such deep squads? Or is it a myth along the lines of "2-0 is the most dangerous lead" or "it's often harder to play against ten men"? I know there will be anecdotal examples (as there are of 2-0 leads being squandered etc), but is it a stone cold statistical fact that Europa League hurts you?

Reported across various media: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8473931/Sky-Sports-pundit-Matt-Le-Tissier-says-review-wearing-Black-Lives-Matter-badge.html https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/matt-le-tissier-holds-talks-22275642 Interesting questions over BLM. I wonder if you can believe black lives matter while distancing yourself from the wider platform of the BLM organisation, which i gather supports defunding the police and destroying capitalism. Bold love by MLT.

Not sure I want us to be up for signing KWP permanently, but does anyone what sor tof salary he is on? This site suggeests £20K per week, which seems low. If PEH goes to Spurs, I guess he could be a makewight?