CanadaSaint

Thank you for the responses - factual and smart-arsed.

What's the Italian "window"?

Just based on the weekend I'd be very surprised if about 15 clubs, including us, didn't take a run at him (assuming that there isn't a long term injury rumour out there). Frankly, I think AVB is off his rocker and could be gone by Christmas. Again.

Ramirez probably has the higher "upside" but Ince and Phillips probably have a safer "downside." I'd lean toward Ince and Phillips but it needs to be a quick switch in focus and a "no farting about" negotiation because "time's-a-passing" for both Blackpool and us. If I were a betting man, with the Liverpool and Spurs shadow in the wings after two weekend losses, I'd stick my money on us getting just Phillips.

I'd love to see Ince, Dave - can you imagine him and Clyne down the right? But Holloway would go into total meltdown at the merest suggestion that we were after both. I think he'd rather cut off his own nuts.

That's why I think we might be in the period of silence practiced by high-level negotiators - "the first guy that talks, loses." And I can't help but wonder if we're seriously thinking about Phillips AND Ramirez, so our fall-back option might already be in play.

And, so far, nobody else. We're set up for a decent deal or a gazumping, so - in our case - no news is good news.

Seriously, though, we're essentially negotiating against ourselves. Unless someone else comes in for Ramirez, Bologna has a simple choice - Saints or nobody. At some point we have to follow the age-old rule - make our best pitch and then STFU, because the first guy that talks, loses. That sounds like Cortese's kind of tactic.

My read is that if someone else comes in for him, like LFC or THFC, we probably won't get him, but if nobody else comes in we will. So the only news I'm interested in is whether anyone else is making a move.

Note to self: I must learn to read the last page first when catching up on overnight posts. And then I could save myself reading a load of utter testicles.

Judging by the threads you start, I think you're certainly missing something.

As I said on the pre-match thread, it's just as well that there's a lot more spine in the dressing room than there is on here. And we played football.

Thank God the manager and players have more spine than some of the fans. Imagine sitting in the dressing room and looking across at some of this lot.

The starting line-up and bench selections don't look like a team set up to a) avoid a heavy defeat, or b) score early and hang on. It looks like a team set up to play with some style and see where the chips fall. Fair enough in my book.

I don't get it. Everyone says we're short of pace all over the park (except RB) and yet some are talking about players like Dunne and Barry. Don't see them helping at all, I'm afraid.

It isn't "ridiculous." Yes, they were cracking shots but - as I said above - he went for them with his low hand, possibly because he didn't read the flight early enough. Had he gone for them with his high hand, he had a much better chance. I'm not as critical of Davis as some but this won't pass unnoticed in a league that does a lot of scouting. And it might be one (but certainly not the only) reason why we concede a fair few from longer range.

Well, the clip of the goals was quite revealing. All four originated down our right, where we seemed to struggle with the defensive midfield role. Two areas in which we could learn a lesson are these. Udinese are very quick to move the ball forward and then switch it inside - no hoofs but great runs and early delivery; not many square passes in the build-ups we saw. Udinese, unlike us, are very quick to shoot. Yes, the first two goals were crackers, but if Davis persists in trying to save high shots with his low hand he's going to let a lot more in like that at PL level.

So, again it looks like there were two games at SMS tonight.

Or the player's agent, even if it's at the instigation of the agent.

Fair enough, but from what I've see one of the issues around our box is not just failing to close people down quickly enough, but its root cause - failing to anticipate the need to close players down. We can do a lot of ball watching around there - and it gets more expensive the higher we go.

Nigel confirmed that there has been club to club contact, so it's not like this was a behind the scenes tap-up. Holloway was also very critical of Phillips' agent, so perhaps the agent jumped the gun rather than us. Still, we probably shouldn't have talked to him.

So were we slow to close down the shooter then?

No, but I think it was indicative of a plus/minus weakness we have, and one that we certainly need to address. It was pretty much replicated against Reading. We conceded several key goals from the "D" on the edge of our box because we didn't defend that vital area well, but I don't recall us scoring too many from there - largely because of a reluctance to shoot. Unless we do something about it, that weakness will be more costly this year, at both ends of the pitch.

He has one big thing going for him - a measure of versatility. That doesn't make him a starter but it makes him a good guy to have on the bench. He considers himself a Premier League player and I think he's going to get the chance to prove it.

I agree with that. We need players who have proven themselves capable of competing in the PL or a system capable of being competitive there. We don't necessarily need both, as last year's new arrivals in the PL demonstrated. The teams on buying sprees face the danger of being caught between a working system and trying to bed new players into it. That can take quite a time to sort out. I liked a lot of the things we saw against Ajax, and in some ways it might be a predictor of what we'll face from August 19 on. We started poorly, we figured things out fairly quickly in terms of what they were doing to us and what we need to do to them, we adjusted, and we looked much better. Yes, I'm concerned about the middle of the back row but I'm far from convinced that Fonte is the lost cause that some on here see him as. He was a very good player in his early days here, but he seemed to rather lose his way. I'm struggling to remember clearly but I think his decline started at around the time that Jos arrived. It's as though two good players just might not suit eachother, in which case the arrival of one solid CD would create the potential for three different partnerships. Yes, a fast, skillful wide man on the right would be great but - after the arrival of Clyne - we did some good things down that flank against Ajax. Anyway, after watching the Ajax game I think we have the system and most of the players that we need to do quite well, and we have a management team that knows how to adjust. I certainly don't feel comfortable but I'm nowhere near as concerned as some.