SaintBobby

Cedric is okay. I slightly prefer him to Martina. But best RB in the Premier League? Wtf.

At the heart of the problem/discussion is that St Mary's is about the right size. Probably rather too small, but not enormously so. If the capacity was 35,000 or so, we probably wouldn't be having this question. To justify a major redevelopment, you'd need to be confident of making a real leap forward. The move from the Dell to St Mary's clearly achieved that. But I doubt we would have left the Dell if we felt we needed an 18,000 rather than the 15,000 capacity we had. To my mind, a major overhaul would need a business plan involving attendances being well over 40,000, and possibly towards 50,000, on a very consistent basis.

Still not sure I get this. Why can we afford a £5m transfer fee and £5m in wages over, say, 4 years but we can't afford a zero transfer fee and £10m in wages over 4 years? In fact the latter is more affordable because there's no upfront spending. The uplift in salary often associated with being a free agent is simply an economic reflection of the fact that there's no transfer fee.

lol

How did you work that out? Our destiny isn't strictly in our own hands re: Europa League.

This looks like good news to me - and if it's a gamble as to whether he improves or not, then the club has the best end of the deal. The worst that happens is that he doesn't quite cut it and ends up as a bit player for us before being moved on to a Championship side. In this scenario, we have probably lost a couple of million quid or so. The best is that he really flourishes and becomes a very good Premier League player and an England international. This is worth much more than a couple of million or so.

Sky Sports website now emphatically saying that 8th can qualify - even from here. I am reading on the app, so not sure how to cut and paste?

This presumably means we are now certain to lose to Palace!

Slightly ropey start. Let's try and soak it up for 15 mins or so.

Europa League qualification is back on. Keep changing my mind about whether I want it or not.

Please God, stop this mentalism. He is not coming to Southampton. This is nuts. Stop.

Can't believe this has made it to 3 pages. Classic stuff.

Requoted as gospel truth.

Lol. What's his salary £300K a week? Still, never say never....:-)

Sure, but the market prices for next year have altered accordingly. Leicester are about 30/1 as opposed to 5,000/1 this season. Saints are around 120/1 on Betfair (we usually start the season at 1,000/1). I think West Ham are about 60/1. These are all long-shots, but the aggregated price of a "smaller" club winning the league next year is probably about 6 or 7/1. A long shot, but not an insanely long shot. Put another way, the market prices now suggest it is quite likely that a club other than one of the top 6 (Man C, Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool) will win the league in the next 4 or 5 years.

I am unsure whether Leicester winning is a "once in a century" sort of event or whether English football is levelling out. We would need a risk adverse accountant to crunch the numbers, of course! However, I'm wondering whether the huge influx of TV money makes it more likely that teams of the size of Leicester, Saints or West Brom could perhaps win the league more frequently in the future. The fact that a higher percentage of revenue for each club is based on (roughly equal) TV rights is, potentially, a major leveller. It might be that in the 1990s, Man Utd were paying their players, say, £20K a week and we were paying players £2K a week. Now, they are paying players £150K a week and we are paying £50K a week. The cash gap is bigger but the ratio is much tighter. Maybe it is eminently achievable for a club with a £100m pa turnover to outperform a club with a £400m pa turnover. Or at least considerably easier than a club with a £10m pa turnover outperforming a club with a £100m pa turnover.

I thought Tadic was epic. Surprised to see Long winning the MotM vote on here. I think I might just have got used to him being brilliant, so am perhaps taking him for granted. Agree that he could be next season's Vardy, if he could only improve his finishing by a notch - he is otherwise fantastic. Defenders must hate playing against him.

Despite all the compelling evidence above that this "source" is talking complete and total made-up bull$hit,, I think we have to commend this chap for having the balls to start a thread. Never listen to that "source" again...and please go back and ask for an explanation as to why he was 1000000% utterly wrong. Thanks.

Am conflicted about this. I want Norwich to stay up, but want Arsenal top 4 not Man Utd. Guess I'll just limit myself to cheering on WBA.

Brilliant idea. Good luck!

Seems to me they'd be crazy not to rest their top players. It's a bit odd to prioritise next year's UCL over this year's (this could be their best chance to actually win the Champions League in many years) Furthermore, they are pretty damned likely to end up in the top four even if they lose to us. Perhaps they will further weaken their line up if either Arsenal slip up v Norwich or Man Utd are failing to beat Leicester.

I think the encouraging thing is that even with that nightmare run at the end of 2015, we're on track for a solid 8th place. The issue is whether we can ever really "push on". It's easier to go from an average of 50 points to an average of 60 than it is to go from 60 to 70, I guess. Nevertheless, in our four seasons back in the Premier League we are averaging around 9th place. That's way better than I expected when we went up in 2012.

Yep, that's fair enough. I don't even mind Yoshida and Stekelenberg as back-ups. But beyond those back-ups, there is absolutely nothing at all. Whereas is we lose, say, Jay and Austin for months on end we still have a good attack. I really want to buy some cover at centre-back, we should have 5 decent players who can play there (even if one of them is also a DM or LB/RB). I think we currently only have 3, given Gardos has been out all year. If we had an injury to VvD and a suspension for Fonte, who the heck covers those positions?

Ok, not quite true...Crystal Palace have beaten us twice this season, given the FA Cup defeat at SMS. But with 3 games to go, no team has done the double on us in the league, right? That's quite a weird stat - have we ever got this deep into a season before without a league opponent taking maximum points from us? Have we ever gone a whole season in any league without being "doubled" by an opponent? Of course, all of our next 3 games are against teams who have beaten us once in the league, so we'd need to avoid defeat in all of our next three games to get through the whole league season without being "doubled".

Trying to work out how we might get into a situation whereby we hand the title to Leicester with a result at Spurs. There are loads of ways either Leicester or Spurs can win the league, but for us to specifically have a role, I think we need to go to WHL with either of the following: 1. Spurs six points behind Leicester and we win or draw 2. Spurs five points behind Leicester and we draw If Spurs are >6 and