stevegrant

Kane and Dawson are below the level we should be looking at, IMO, especially given the "English premium" that would inevitably be added to their price tag. Neither would be an automatic starter in our current first XI. Welbeck would suit our system perfectly, but his wages (and transfer fee) might price us out of a move, and you could almost certainly find better value on the continent.

My word A combination of players that many top clubs wouldn't be able to buy and a couple of players from Spurs who genuinely wouldn't get in our first XI. The only remotely attainable one would be Welbeck if his stance on leaving Man United remains despite Moyes' departure, but even then his wages must be astronomical. I must have missed that long list of players we've already sold for knockdown fees.

Depends which Financial Fair Play model you use as the basis. The Premier League's own FFP regulations are much more relaxed than UEFA's (£105m loss over 3 years with the PL regulations compared to around £40m over the same period with UEFA), and as we're not currently competing in UEFA competitions, their regulations are ultimately irrelevant to us. Samuel's article made a reasonable point that the FFP regulations do a lot to maintain the existing hierarchy, but that doesn't mean that a club of our stature can't still spend big money where it deems it appropriate. Transfer fees are amortised over the duration of a player's contract, so paying £20m for a player and giving him a 5-year deal will only look like a £4m payment on the profit and loss account. The trick, as ever, is making sure the players signed are the right players for the club and team - but that's the case regardless of whether there are FFP restrictions or not. Get the scouting and research correct and we can still make big signings by our standards. I wouldn't expect us to break our transfer record again, but there's no reason why we couldn't spend £10m on a player this summer.

Yeah, I basically just picked players who had played in the last decade or so (more or less since the FA Cup final). I was tired so accidentally wrote "this century"

Oakley 311 Lallana 250* Bridge 174 Surman 146 That's the entire list of 100+ appearances of academy graduates who have featured this century. Surprisingly few, but then I guess the likes of Bale, Walcott and Chamberlain all left before they'd played 50 games. What's particularly impressive is the number of current squad members with 100+ appearances: K Davis (292), Lallana (250), Lambert (220), Schneiderlin (218 ), Fonte (168 ), Cork (124), Guly (113). Full list of 100+ appearances: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Southampton_F.C._players

£995! Good luck with that

As well as all the reasons that have already been listed above, I'll chuck in the fact that even at Everton, Moyes was on a salary of around £4m, which rose to around £5m at Man United.

Difficult to argue with the start we've made to the season, for once, (likely) drawn the two games that were weather-affected and where we were probably a bit behind, and won the one where we were on top in pretty emphatic style.

399 all out. Maximum bowling points secured with two overs to spare, as well. A draw seems inevitable, which would give us 14 points from the match and almost certainly keep us top of the table.

You've started a thread on this already.

I'm sure there's a massive secondary market for tickets to Saints against Stoke City.

Interesting timing of this suggestion given his monumental ****up last night for Man City's equaliser He's been decent, but I'd imagine if we're looking for another keeper, it'll be one who can pass short and long distances - difficult to tell from his games for Sunderland whether he is capable of that.

Very difficult to tell, and to be honest you'd never be able to make a direct comparison, but as a guide, most German clubs generate around 40% of their revenue from commercial activities. A fair amount of that is sponsorship, but every club's retail operation is massive. Of course, because their TV deal is nowhere near as big as ours (€700m a year compared to £1.8bn, but did grow by 70% in the last tender) that means they have to focus on other areas, commercial and matchday being the other revenue streams. Bigger grounds allow for a stream of more money coming in that way, but while you see the headline figures of €109 season tickets at Bayern and Dortmund, that price is solely for the terraced areas with the corporate areas and premium seats on the halfway line subsidising those cheap prices. A lot of it is a culture thing - German clubs have had smooth retail operations going for decades, while it's arguably still not caught on properly in this country - and where the vast majority of clubs are at least 51% owned by the fans, there's a mutual appreciation for the need to supplement the matchday revenues through the megastores. Over here, we're much more cynical when it comes to merchandise, I think largely because historically it's been such **** quality and yet still sold at a premium price. Clubs have been desperate to squeeze the biggest margin possible out of these products on the basis that they've generally not been able to sell them, so you get a chicken and egg situation that they then won't pay for quality goods because they don't sell enough of the **** stuff, but they'd sell more if the quality was better.

Which makes our attitude towards the cup competitions even stranger, IMO.

But pretty much all of those issues were issues a year ago as well, and yet last summer Pochettino stayed (when he probably gave stronger hints that he'd leave than he has done this time around, oddly), all of our top players stayed, and we strengthened the team with three big-money signings. In the meantime, we've improved dramatically in the league, made progress in (and then needlessly tossed away our place in ) the cups and four of our players have been capped by England with the strong likelihood that three of them will be going to the World Cup. The absence of a raft of "I'm happy here and I don't want to do" quotes is arguably down to Cortese leaving and not forcing the media department to ask leading questions in Saints Player interviews that result in endless "I love it here and the chairman is doing wonderful things". For me, I don't necessarily think the players need to constantly remind everyone they're happy here, the evidence is there in front of our eyes.

A win Carberry hits his last two balls for six to win the game and seal his century. Unbeaten third-wicket partnership of 101 from 10.2 overs

Tidy partnership between Vince and Carberry, 76 runs at just 8.94 an over. Vince has 50 off 31 balls

If anyone could **** it up, it's us. 72 runs needed, 8 wickets (realistically 7 wickets due to Wheater's injury) in hand, around 45 overs to bat, on a wicket that's tended to only offer anything with the new ball.

Why doubt him now? Because he arbitrarily decided he was leaving here for good two months ago, only returning with a "oh actually this is my last post" bombshell which only achieves a bit of rabble rousing among those who seem desperate for something to complain about. My hunch is that his source left the club in February (around the time of his previous "final post", when a number of people left the club in the wake of Cortese's departure), so he had nothing to bring to the table anymore, and now he/his source has decided to throw the cat among the pigeons to try and stir things up, trading on the solid reputation he had built previously.

I don't quite understand why people are so desperate to hang on the words of somebody who suddenly disappeared for weeks when it became clear that the "meltdown" everyone had been predicting was a load of nonsense. While information provided in the past may have been accurate, that's no guarantee that information provided now is equally as reliable. Sources come and go, football club employees who you are friends with lose their jobs, the world continues to rotate.

And as if by magic... 215 to win. Still big favourites, but could do with a decent start to avoid putting too much pressure on the tail. Adam Wheater has a broken finger so won't bat unless he has to.

That 700 is a net loss. We've got around 20,400 season ticket holders this season, compared to more than 21,000 last season.

Some strange bowling choices considering they were hitting it to all parts before the new ball arrives. Ervine got 2-15 from 10 overs and yet hasn't bowled since tea

The point is that the German commercial model ensures that ticket prices are kept low because their fans spend loads on merchandise (far more than we do in this country). If fans didn't spend that money on merchandise, as you imply you don't/wouldn't, the ticket prices would have to rise to plug the gap. It's almost an implied social contract between the clubs and their fanbase.

£131 difference between the two, the view from block 3 is still good (as long as you're not right at the front) and you could put that saving towards some away games. I'm not convinced being sat right on the halfway line is £131 better, to be honest.