doddisalegend

Hardly a surprise given the clubs demise recently going from best of the rest to scrapping relegation, by the skin of our teeth, is going to impact our attractiveness to potential signings. What last January proved was its a lot harder to sign quality mid season when you are club clearly struggling good players would rather go elsewhere. I have no problem with the club trying to sign good players and failing to get it over the line, better that, than signing dross just for the sake of signing someone. The bigger problem I have with our recent transfer history, is not the club trying and failing to sign a good player, but the club not replacing players sold with like for like replacements. Not replacing Pelle, Mane, VVD, Fonte or Victor with a suitable replacement in the same window has seen the spine of the team seriously degraded. If you sell a CB in January buy another ****ing CB in January, don't sell until you have your replacement lined up and make sure the replacement is a good substitute for the departing player ie don't replace a commanding experienced CB with a young lad. There is plenty wrong with our recruitment recently but I don't class trying to sign good players and sometimes failing as one of those things

Which suggests they won't do very well next season then. They won't sack him if they are ripping up the league. So Leicester are going to have a poor season with a poor manager sack their manger and yet according to DT still do better than us....looking forward to next season already then

But their manager is ****e isn't he?

WTF are you talking about? What's wilfully misleading in my post? both saints and Leicester had bid accepted by Norwich. That left it down to the player to decide which option he preferred given the recent history of the two clubs why is anyone surprised he would pick Leicester? The only thing we could do to be more the attractive option is blow Leicester out of the water with a huge wage offer and that was never going to happen ( And isn't a sustainable way for the club anyway) I'm quite happy to bash the club when its called for. But in this case, the way I see it is the club have tried to sign a decent young player, and failed because he prefers a more attractive option...... **** happens

Walcott was pretty clear he wasn't up for a relegation fight and who can blame him.

Not sure how this is the clubs fault. They offered Norwich the required amount of money so did Leicester. It then comes down to the lads choice. Allegedly we have the more attractive manager to play for but Leicester are a club in a much better place than us right now and closer to his home territory. The only thing the club can do to swing it in their favour is offer massive wages to a 21 year old with one decent season under his belt.

VAR doesn't give us that Refs all seem to interrupt things differently.

Great result for the Swiss

I know he is playing against Brazil but Shaq looks very average and a lazy ****er.

Clearly but we are never going to bid for Messi are we?

We clearly thought we could sign him. Board level incompetence isn't the same thing as suggesting we bid on players we think we can't sign..

Glad he doesn't play in the PL anymore so I don't have to see him score against us again...

Who did we bid a shed load of cash on we knew we couldn't sign? I doubt the club ever bids for anyone it doesn't think it has a chance of signing. I imagine player agents ( if they are doing their job) give several clubs encouragement that a player is interested.

About to see him turn out against Brazil. Neville not being very complimentary about him in the build up chat.

So time to see which manager is more appealing to play for Hughes or Puel...

Slightly different circumstances though its a lot easier to beat the competition to player signings when you are saints in league 1 (or even the championship) its not like PL Southampton can just go out and poach the leagues top scorer like we did in league one.

looks like Redmond with confidence...

Harrison Reed going the other way to sweeten the deal?

This Croatia v Nigeria game is ****ing awful two teams who hardly look bothered.

I've only seen the last 30 mins but Peru have been pretty entertaining to watch.

Aussies dead on their feet worked hard and scuppered by a dodgy penalty.

it was handball though no argument get in 1-1 to our Aussie cousins

exactly the reply suggests a good tackle VAR is supposed to help refs get decisions right

VAR working well...no penalty for me.

On paper France have got an amazing team but Australia seem to be channelling their inner Burnley/Huddersfield/ Tony Pullis team and locking them out. TBH its quite entertaining in the same way an FA cup tie between a minnow and PL team can be.