Dig Dig

Really good blog, that.

It's quite simple....Koeman and Everton have agreed terms, Saints and Everton are negotiating compensation. By all accounts koeman will be the Everton manager very soon.

Speculating like this you mean: Yes I'm aware of that. So just keep risking it until it goes wrong then? Unproven players may work or may not, that's what it means. Proven players will probably keep doing pretty well! So if you're good at recruitment, use it to enhance what you have not start over every summer. You're not being a hypocrite are you?

Neither would you as it's well beyond your limitations.

Grown men getting all upset about what people they don't know write on a football forum. You seem more frustrated than most. Are you sure you're ok? FFS.

Maybe two years of working with him and his "positive talks" is the limit for most managers.

Classic Les

Same, any Pompey connections have never crossed my mind. I don't remember any mouth breather getting upset when he was in the running after Pards. Would be pretty happy with Howe but would prefer someone with continental experience/connections.

Everyone on here loves a South American with dodgey English.

I've never said that we're terribly run, the opposite in fact. I do think that the club and fan base get a bit carried away with our own hype at times despite some of the obvious contradictions between statement and action. I never said that 6th was just "par of the course" either, the point was that we've been 8th-6th for the past 3 seasons with players worth 20+M trotting out onto the pitch each week. The total sum of how we arrived at this point is complex but if we want to consolidate our place in the league or even do better (as per Uncle Les) then we have to see ourselves as being where we deserve to be. Otherwise it's just an acceptance of and excuse for doing worse. I see keeping good managers and players at the club as being a key component in sustaining success in the long term and don't completely buy into a model which suggests that we really are experts in managing change whilst keeping momentum. Not over a sample period of two years at this level. I wouldn't suggest that there has been a decline since Cortese left. He's gone and irrelevant now. If others do, that's up to them.

Not sure anyone really would be despondent about the future. It's just strange that on SWF, posters can't show any disappointment in losing good managers, players or staff (perfectly normal reaction for any supporter) nor can there be any suggestion that SFC is anything but perfect without it being labelled a "meltdown" or whatever. The reality is that change (especially enforced) in quick succession is risky and even the club have said that they intend to have a different summer than the previous two which clearly doesn't involve having our manager poached by a team which shouldn't even be bothering us.

You can't have it both ways. Either net spend is important and directly linked to success or it isn't. You can't say it doesn't matter (Newcastle) but then use it to talk up our ability to "punch above our weight". The fact that we have/had players worth 20M- 35M consistently over 3 seasons only shows that we have very good players and deserve to be where we are, if not more.

We're not punching above our weight. We've done well in the league because the last couple of managers have been really good and we have good players. But things change quickly in football. Especially if it's fairly easy for a club like Everton to come in and turn our managers head, same with spurs. These are teams we are supposed to be competing directly against in the league.

Lets hope we do as the PR piece in the Telegraph yesterday claimed that no one even bothered meeting about the prospect of Koeman going to Everton

If he's just going to Everton for Money, far worse than Poch going to Spurs. Wonder if he'll get as much vitriol? Doubt it somehow.

Les Reed confirms that Southampton are close to signing Ron Koeman on a new deal....what happened next is SHOCKING!

I don't think he said that and if he did, he wouldn't mean his own personal terms. He's been more concerned about his ability to keep a team together and progress which has been his measure of ambition over having loads of cash to spend on players.

To balance this though.....we reportedly had Steve McClaren and Cristian Gross on our shortlist after Poch

If he goes to Everton, it will be worse than Poch going to spurs.

Positive talks are happening in Les's head all the time. Don't worry kids, he's got this.

Someone with an astrophysics degree who doesn't know the difference between "weather" and "whether"

Drinkwater is Toilet water

Bertrand miles better than Rose

I'm not sure how explicit Lallana's refusal to ever play for us again really was but I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't have got more than the £26M we sold him for. I think we've proven that players don't really go on strike and become worthless assets. Clyne running down a contract is a completely different scenario.

Was anyone really "ecstatic" about signing Forren?