SaintBobby

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.

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.