Jimmy_D

All the way along since Liebherr took over, despite having the appearance of a selling club, when we've sold, it's been because we thought we could do better with the money rather than keeping the player to make us better on the pitch. There's been a few reasons that have weighed it in favour of selling more often than not, usually down to not having long left on a contract or the player kicking up one heck of a stink, along with a decent amount of money being offered. There have been a few times when keeping the player made sense for us. Wanyama and Schneiderlin being the obvious examples. More often than not we've been right, our squad has been steadily getting stronger. Looks like we're finally seeing a summer where it makes more sense to keep all of our best players than sell.

Aye, I'm not going to criticise someone that puts their hand up and is willing to face that.

Thought Pickford was unlucky in that shootout, was going the right way for almost all of them.

Oh no... That's his very last action for England U21s as well...

Sort of feels like it might be our day after the chances Germany missed.

I'd guess we want Liverpool to **** off this summer regarding VvD, but we don't want to completely poison the relationship between the clubs (and possibly other clubs too).

If I was betting on it, I'd guess a combination of b and d, the Premier League stand to benefit if their team isn't hamstrung in the Champions League. I also reckon that there's an understanding that Liverpool actually back off and don't pursue VvD though.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2717975-inside-the-southampton-black-box-informing-their-manager-carousel Nothing much new there, but there's a bit more about the black box and the philosophy in place around it than I'd heard before.

No guarantees it'll end up working of course, there never are, but I can certainly see why the club went for him. This could be a really good fit for the club, and I'm looking forward to seeing just what he can out of us.

https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?58468-Mauricio-Pellegrino-signs-as-First-Team-Manager-on-a-Three-Year-deal-OFFICIAL#.WU05-1MrKMJ

'Everyone taps up, so that means Saints have tapped up, even though I don't actually have any evidence of that, so that means it's unfair for them to call us out on breaking the rules by tapping up, so we shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules and tapping up, so they should sell us van Dijk for a price we say because we really want him and managed to tap up van Dijk and get him to want to come here, the price they wanted for him was too high...'

'VvD to Chelsea almost done' Apart from the small issue of Saints actually accepting a bid that is...

With proxies readily available these days, I can't say for certain anyone only has one login. And you have to admit that replying to yourself as if you were replying to someone else did look slightly odd. Add on to that your constantly negative viewpoint of absolutely anything the club does... Hm.

Great performance from JWP, hopefully we'll start seeing those sort of performances a bit more consistently for Saints now he's getting a bit older.

Pretty obvious that the Liverpool media is being rounded up to point out that VVD could go on strike, with the subtext being that he should go on strike. Pretty dodgy ground for them really. Normally it'd be circumstantial at best, no different to the tapping up that goes on every day without being punished, but in the light of us having evidence of tapping up that made Liverpool go running with their tail between their legs... it's pretty clear that if VVD does go to Liverpool, it'll be solely down to illegal tapping up by Liverpool. That said, while VVD doesn't come out of this looking good, we don't have any reliable evidence that he'll actually force a move OR that he's not willing to play for us.

Last minute equaliser for Poland against Sweden gives us a fantastic change to progress.

That home kit is just really really nice. Nicely steps around having to have the plain back panel on a striped shirt too.

The shots fired in that launch

I'm going for the long shot and predicting Kevin Keegan.

Imagine the sheer WTF factor for EVERYONE if it turned out to be Klopp As much as Puel gave us a decent season purely on the end result, I just hope for a football that's a bit more fun to watch next season, whoever it is in charge.

Starting to wonder if someone's stolen the hard disk with part 2 on it now.

Pretty sure the quality of the offside call comment is a reference to the Cup Final.

It is. He changed to them late last year I think. There was some speculation at the time that it would result in VvD going to Everton. Interestingly he doesn't appear on their website, although I'm not sure if that's something that's changed or not. http://www.teamwass.eu/en/talents