Saint Matty 76

Pelle was replaced by Austin. Wanyama was replaced by Romeu. Schneiderlin was replaced by Hojbjerg. Mane hasn't been replaced yet. Not that bad if you ask me, only significant downgrade is Wanyama to Romeu, which I agree is a bit of a concern.

Feel like our lack of width may be a big issue here with Valencia, Shaw, Martial and Lingard/Depay/Mkhitaryan going up against our two full backs. Would be surprised if we still ran diamond but who knows.

Adam Blackmore ‏@bigadamsport 4m4 minutes ago #saintsfc fans asking about in-comings, I'll reiterate what I said b4. Puel has to spend, but currently he is happy to start season as is Not sure how much he knows. Hopefully not a lot!

I swear Guan never mentioned anything happening today specifically?

It'll be 90 minutes of us struggling to break them down.

Do either of them have a history of getting anything right though? Find it hard to be excited by anyones "ITK" posts on here other than Guan/kbilly any more.

£13m+ then basically, surely it's Boufal.

Anyone saying they wouldn't begrudge him of a move is small time. The season starts next week and he's our captain. Losing him now would be suicidal to our season. We can't sell and if we do it's pathetic.

Non-official YouTube streams for games as irrelevant as this are largely set-up to redirect traffic to a paid stream service website. Hope I'm wrong though.

Can't imagine that's a real stream sadly.

4-3-3 surely.

Bye bye Dusan.

Wanted Sigurdsson for years, can't see it happening now though as Premier League transfers will be at such a premium now.

Could also judge him on the fact he made the Ligue 1 team of the season.

We're not signing a 30 year old Edin Dzeko on the wages he'd command.

Hard to make predictions without knowing how teams are going to do in the market. Think Middlesbrough will do well though.

Does everybody forget that Charlie Austin scored 18 goals in a relegated team 2 years ago putting him only behind Aguero, Costa and Kane? The injuries last year were unfortunate but with a full pre-season he's going to come in like a new signing.

Agreed. I'm not worried at all about Austin being Pelle's replacement because we saw what he could do at QPR and he just had an unfortunate few months of being injured. However relying on Rodriguez to be a vital squad player is a bit of a worry considering how woeful he looked whenever he featured last year, hopefully he can benefit with a full pre-season. Redmond being the Mane replacement would be dreadful though, not to undermine his ability but somebody like Boufal would really have made a statement and got the fans on board.

Even Leicester had a net spent of +£40m so I'm not sure where that's come from. You're also not taking into account the TV money all Premier League clubs are receiving this year, if we were to not have a + net spent this season it'd be almost ridiculous.

I've never been worried about us selling players because we always replace them well. However, if this is the year that we're going to decide to stop doing that and rely on our youth instead, who seem to be lacking in quality, this could be the "failure year". We're going to drop down a few league positions no matter what, but if we're going to end up with a net spend of something like -£30m whilst teams like Palace and Bournemouth are spending £50m+, this could end up being embarrassing. Hopefully this is all knee-jerk as we don't know Puel's plans yet and it is still hard to make deals with players on holiday/at the Euros, but all these articles stating that he's "happy with the squad" are starting to worry me slightl.

Just heard we're looking at Maxime Gonalons from Lyon. Puel has apparently named him as his top target to replace Wanyama and wants to get a big signing in early to try and win the fans over. Will have to wait and see if anyone else informed has a word on its validity as I'm not entirely convinced we could get him.

"According to latest reports in Spain, Saints are on the verge of completing a move for a striker from Tenerife, will he fare better than the now departed Juanmi. The player in question is called Alexander Mesa Travieso or Nano for short and appears to be one for the future rather than ready to step straight into the first team. The 21 year old has been wanted by both Aston Villa and Newcastle United, but according to Spanish newspaper Marca, the player has flown into England and is about to sign for Saints."

The three B's.

Get French Football ‏@GFFN 7m7 minutes ago Claude Puel wants to bring Hatem Ben Arfa with him to Southampton... More to follow tomorrow. Obvious link and not sure there's anything to it but he's really turned himself around in France. Ended up with 17 goals in 33 games from attacking midfield. On a free as well would be a great signing, adds the unpredictability we lose with Mane.

£32m for Mane is yet another piece of robbery considering his inconsistency, hopefully now that's our two outgoings done early and we can only receive good news now this summer. Good news all round.