doddisalegend

I guarantee that no club at any level will buy a player if they think they have better player in the academy if the club bought a player it's because they didn't think the youth players were up to it simple as. Koeman has been happy to let Targett play so he clearly isn't adverse to playing a youth product if he thinks he is good enough but anyone who thinks we are going to be churning out two or three PL quality (even as just squad players) players every season is deluded. How many academy products did we play regularly in the first team in league 1 and the champ Judas and Oxo? People are talking like the club has being bringing through huge numbers of youth every year.

Those two guys sit (well did) on the same row as me at SMS about six seats away. Clearly I was highly engrossed in the quality on pitch entertainment because despite being sat only a few feet away I never heard or saw any of that amazing that two spurs fans sat in the away end could hear them hissing over the general din and I missed the whole thing. Didn't even realise there was a problem until one of them got escorted out just as the second half started. Still no place for that crap in this day and age.

Technically Toby moved from a top Spanish side....

Problem is any PL club will want a premium to sell their best players to a PL rival (lets face we absolutely gouged the big boys for some of our players). Buying 3 or 4 players from other PL teams would mostly likely be very expensive....Shane long comes to mind.

The Liverpool fans I work with think he is overpriced crap HTBH.

So would be safe to assume we don't pay any worse/better than other middle table sides?

But they would ignore it anyway and figure the same won't happen to them. Still they will have a nice big bank balance to help them get through those cold days on the bench.

Probably not a lot of 25 million pound players earning less than what they could earn Southampton though.... Also we have absolutely gouged several big clubs with regards to player sales players like Lovern and Lallana where not worth (IMO) any where near what we got for them.

Interesting Stokes best player is on 70K a week anyone now how that compares to saints?

How many player do you think will sign for us if we tie them into a 6 year contract and it enforce it.....

On current form I wouldn't have them down as our two best players (mind you everyone is pretty bad at the moment). We didn't really miss anyone from the first summer in fact we did better. The only player I feel we really miss is Morgan which is clearly showing this season. Having said that I've yet to see anyone offer a sensible solution on how we make players, who don't want to stay, sign a new contract. All our leavers (bar Jack CorK) have gone to top six teams it's not like they are ditching saints to go to Norwich or Stoke I don't see anyway to stop our best players leaving for big clubs. Sure we can hold them to their contracts but they will still leave and the club will get no money to re-invest to boot.

Is it though? Two summers ago was pretty unique and we saw a lot of departures but last summer we lost two (Toby not being ours in the first place), one of who was in the last year of his contract, and next summer we will most likely lose two players again that's hardly a massive amount to lose from a squad. If you take out that one truly bizarre summer out of the equation we aren't much different to other clubs I'd say.

Except the plan was for him to have a **** storming season so he was worth lots of money next summer currently he is doing a good impression of a very average PL player (was it October last time he scored in the PL?) same goes for big Vic we will be lucky to get much money for either of them if they carry on in this form for the rest of the season.

I really don't know what people expected the club to do about Morgan? We could have forced him to stay one more season and he would have walked for nothing and we be in the same place we are now one season later. Players don't want to stay at saints if they think they can do better. The club has put it's foot down with player sales, like they have the last two summers, but as Victor has shown this season that doesn't always work out well.

What's the going rate for a quality PL level player these days 12 million? So we need to sell Mane in the region of 72 million for that scenario to work....should have no problem getting that for a forward who hasn't scored since October

Lambert.... (different level granted) I am confused because you say we need to sign quality players but you also say they won't come to saints.... so we're a bit ****ed aren't we?

ermmmm ......

Has Koeman not been backed by the club then? I'm struggling to think of a manager who has been allowed to sign so many players that are clearly his choices in a long time.

Agree we went through a goal drought last winter but were solid at the back with Morgan shielding the back four so kind of got away with it. Now the defence is having a comedy **** up every week we need to score more goals ( and defend better). Without a goal threat we cant mount any sort of comeback when our defence inevitably ****s up.

Over and over again this season we haven't taken advantage when we were on top. Without Morgan our defence isn't as water tight as last season so not scoring is killing us because we will **** up at the back at least once a game. When was the last time we had a goal threat from central midfield? The championship? We need our central midfield to contribute more goals they are **** poor in that department and have been for a few seasons.

I'd rather we killed games off by scoring goals when we get the chance then we could afford the brain farts at the back.

Don't agree lack of a clinical striker and a goal scoring AM is killing us. Should have been out of sight by half time.

A decent striker who will convert our chances and a goal threat from midfield please god....

Yeah but not and the same tempo our boys put in against the arse and in the first half today.