SaintBobby

2-1 to west ham

Well, there's usually a positive relationship.Anders wasn't bad for us, but somehow very, very good for Sweden.Delgado just couldn't adapt to England. That was a weird one.Otherwise, being good for Saints and being good for your country are pretty well correlated. The only other one that springs to mind is Neil McCann - wasn't he quite good for Scotland but utterly rubbish for us?

You okay, hun?

For the LOLs

Fair question - when did we last beat the Champions away? Ever?

Can someone please, please, please dig up that thread with people saying Mane was a League One player. That was a peach.

People get so hung up on the transfer fee and forget the wages. My rough guess is that Long is paid about 30% of what Lallana gets paid and so this needs to be factored in to whether they are each "worth it" or not. Very rough guess on what each would be sellable for? Long £8m, Lallana £12m. That's a massive capital depreciation on both players, but on an epic scale for Lallana. Not as bad as Osvaldo though, admittedly.

I keep thinking we really need a No.10...that position just behind Pelle doesn't seem to have anyone who's a natural fit (apart from Ramirez...but let's not reopen that can of worms).

That's not wholly unfair. But making a net profit of, what, £30m on the transfer market while doing so is pretty impressive. Whether that can be repeated ad infinitum...well, let's less certain.

Agree with this. I think we were probably right this year to sell two players for a total of £40m and then buy 8 players for about £5m each (ok, that's an oversimplification, but broadly right) But next year, if we sell Wanyama and Mane for £40m, we really don't need 8 new £5m players - we need one or two superstars. I'm also a bit worried that the academy production line seems to have dried up a little. Harry Reid hasn't burst into the first team. And the others seems to be way off to the fringes. Ok, there's no way you can produce a Bale, Walcott or Shaw every single year. But for the first time in a long while, when I'm asked by fans of other clubs "So, who are the next 2 or 3 Saints academy players to keep an eye on?", I'm struggling for an answer.

These tables are meaningless if based just on transfer activity. A measure of what you're spending should be something like (not saying it's perfect, but it's closer to perfect): 1. Transfer fee paid divided by years of contract (so VvD counts as £2.3m a year for 5 years on cost side) 2. Player wage bill. If you sign your entire squad on free transfers, but pay them all £150,000 a week, you aren't the cheapest squad in the league 3. Transfer fees received divided by years that were left on the player's contract (so, I think that's £12m this year for Clyne, £12m this year and next year for Morgan)

Sure...if he'd done brilliantly at Liverpool, he probably wouldn't have left. For whatever reason, it didn't work out for him. He hardly played. As a back-up centre forward for Saints, he would have been relatively cheap and we could know with some confidence that he'd settle well at the club. Some players seem to click with some clubs and not others. Eg. Wilfred Zaha seems to be a one club man. Jason Puncheon seems to be very, very good as long as he isn't in a Saints shirt.

Quite apart from the bad blood, the fact that he acted like a total ***t etc, I'm not really sure he's good enough to walk into our team anyway. That said, I might have been tempted to take Rickie back as a squad player/back-up. He left on good terms, could honestly say that it just didn't work out for him at his boyhood club and would have been, at the very least, good cover for Pelle as CF.

Schlong scores v mighty Gibraltar

LOL

I've been impressed with what I've seen, but disappointed that I haven't seen much of him. Seems to be being saved for the last ten minutes rather than the last 30 minutes.

It's marginal, but I think it would be a bit more surprising if VvD didn't start.

Spurs are possibly the worst run club in the PL. That is one hell of a hurdle to clear. But I reckon they just clear it.

That's a really tasty line-up - and Jay Rod could play anywhere in the advanced four slots too. I think we now have a better squad than last season and a comparable, possibly only very marginally weaker, starting XI

Disappointed that we didn't wait an extra couple of hours to panic Celtic into dropping the price. I don't know why we are always in such a rush to complete our transfer activity so swiftly....

That open letter is ridiculous and pompous in equal measure. Hilarious though.

Given the c£30m disaster of Osvaldo and Ramirez, Mayuka often gets overlooked as a total waste of money. With the first two, I can see why we signed them though. I still don't really get why we ever got anywhere near signing Mayuka.

I can't see how that can be true. At kick off, half time, start of the 2nd half and full time, he was in the corporate seats, just behind the Saints top brass.

What's geography got to do with it? Derby and Norwich are small-ish citites with relatively large followings, largely due to a paucity of other recreational activities on offer. Southampton is a small-ish city with about an average-ish following. We must be the only club in the world which experiences a dip in attendance when a bloody boat show is on.

Was just discussing this with some fans at Soton Central station. Koeman has been so definitive that I think it's important we don't sell. There are no ifs and buts, he's ruled out a sale. If we do sell him now, it's a lot worse than if RK had been equivocal.