SaintBobby

but that wasn't the then manager's first match, was it?

Why was he only £12.8m? Can't believe he hasn't been on the radar of a ton of top clubs.

Hojberg excellent. Why the hell JWP beat him to a starting place is beyond me. Surprised that so many on here think Romeu had a poor game, I thought he was very good indeed. Yes, a couple of noticeable errors, but otherwise v impressive IMHO. Still can't get my head around Austin only coming on with 9 minutes to go. He is a centre forward. And we needed one badly. Overall 6.5/10. Two pointed dropped, but we look okay.

Pretty happy so far. Very easy 1-0 win today. Defensively, we look very solid indeed. Agree that our attacking options look thinner. Expect we will seek to win a lot of games 1-0 this season. Might not be too pleasing on the eye but might be effective. A sort of modern, French, cattanacio.

I agree...the guy in the photo on the left is white. And I think it is Fonte. The guy in the photo on the right is clearly black. I can't believe people mix these things up. Total racists.

No.

OMG. That list is 100% accurate. How on Earth did you get it? Thanks for sharing.

I get that people would like a manager for 5 years, even for 3. Some stability would be very welcome. But is this even remotely realistic? What's the average tenure of a football manager these days? A season? Less? Who was the last Saints manager to serve 3+ years? Chris Nicholl?

You'll get your wish, most likely because Wanyama will be leaving too.

Anyone else think we might take on a manger virtually none of us has heard of? As we did with Pochettino?

Big call for Saints. If we want to start paying our manager around £6,000,000 a year rather than about £3,000,000 a year, he stays. If you want to go for the former, then please don't complain about how expensive season tickets are (and condemn the freeze this year) or your Sky Sports package costs you. With a 30% hike on tickets, we could meet Ronald's salary request.

I'm minded to sue. Outrageous.

You're right. People in Malaysia and China only support teams with over 45,000 seats in their stadium. Those seats also need to be red. With dragon logos on them. They also only support teams with average wages of £100K a week. I fear we are doomed.

Apologies. I'm a bit late to this thread. FWIW, I don't think we should sell Shane Long in Jan 2016 to "reinvest". I think he is quite good. HTH.

I remember us signing some absolutely terrible Spanish/Portuguese central defender with long curly hair in, I think, the early 00s. Who was he? I have some memory of him being eaten alive by Arsenal at St Mary's. May just have been a loan signing.

The signings I was most excited about over the last ten years or so were Delgado, Skacel, , Ramirez and Osvaldo. No one else got close to being as exciting as those signings. My reaction was "meh, nothing to see here...probably a waste of money" to the signings of Lambert, Fonte, Wanyama, Clyne, Long and Mane. This conclusively proves that, whilst I love football and the Saints, I have to confess I know jack all about either.

Overall, I think we are doing great. Question is whether we have hit a glass ceiling or can smash through it. 6th in the Premier League is pretty damned good though.

Please close this thread. It's like the skates having their thread on Maradona going to Fratton Park. Embarrassing nonsense.

A fair analysis. Aside from personal issues, such as home sickness or the desire of the Mrs to live or not live somewhere etc, it seems to me that there are two things in our favour on retention: 1. With enhanced TV revenue, we can narrow the salary gap somewhat. Sure, the huge clubs can always pay more, but if moving to Man Utd or Arsenal is a 20% or 30% or 40% pay rise, this is less of a draw than it being, say, a 300% pay rise. 2. The better players will actually get to play at Saints - the picture for some of our departures is rather patchy. Yep, they are earning more money, but in other regards things have not gone well for them in general. Money talks, of course. But it doesn't shout so loud that it drowns out everything else entirely.

Sure, net spend isn't a guarantee. You can squander it easily. But if you're in RK's position and the board say "we need to make a net profit of £30m on player sales this summer", I doubt the reaction is "fine..no problem...there are loads of great, cheap players out there better than our current squad. We will sell some of our rubbish players for £10m+ and buy better replacements for £5m each" Similarly, if you're told "Good news, Ronald, you have a transfer kitty of £25m, plus any money you raise from player sales", I doubt the reaction is "what a waste of money. It will just be squandered. Look at Newcastle"

Ultimately, it all comes down to money, surely. I'm less bothered about players leaving (although massive disruption every summer is a challenge). It's more a question of how much the net spend is.

I think it is a huge stretch with their present squad. But God knows how much Mourinho will be able to spend in the transfer market.

That's quite a cute idea. Would it actually make much difference to the table though?

Brilliant idea. Thanks for the tip. Christ, you are tedious.

That was great. Shed a few tears last night and a few more watching that.