Dig Dig

And no Cortese. Jizz everywhere.

I doubt it. 12M isn't even a lot.

They use a side of a which is most newsworthy. It's what they are paid to do. That's a bit different from a paper having some kind of coordinated campaign in which stories are released just to overshadow positive news. No one really cares that much.

Why are you suddenly ITK Jeff?

Good feeling about this one, it's a signing which makes sense.

I doubt it. We've been through the cycle plenty of times of this summer. No one is writting stuff with the sole purpose of trying to de-stabilise the club

That's 20% of Cortese's horrendous overspend on the training ground!

What abuse of the board are you talking about? People are reacting to a multitude of decisions made by the board and react to each one inline with their own perceptions and opinions and subsequently share on a message board. Nothing to do with Cortese, the Mail or anything else. It's more normal to react negatively to seeing the club sell off your best players (for whatever reason) than it is to blindly seal clap whatever happens and then whine constantly when people don't see it the same way as you. Do you ever have an opinion beyond whatever a nasty journo or poster writes?

In general, what a shambles of a summer. For all the talk of rebuilding and strengthing, we have only secured 1 position in the long term with Forster coming in and we still have real issues with squad depth. Added to the fact that many players we have got in are unknown quantities, this is always a challenge even when you are only trying to bed in 1 or 2. I don't think this is going to be a particularly pleasant season ahead.

The classic watering down of a players ability when they leave commences. Cork has been brilliant for us.

Bit desperate to put my quote up Jeff but as always, if it makes you feel good, I am ok with it.

Because of your hysterical/bed wetting threads?

It's where we are right now, we need bodies and at this stage we aren't going for our first choice targets. We do need other options so happy to get him in if no one else.

Exactly. At least some of the old crusties will stop banging on about the cost of Gaston etc. These are the going rates for half decent players with time on their contracts.

McCormack for 11M, Deeney touted for around 10M. He can't realistically expect to pay less for Long. Prob would have been better off looking abroad but our supposedly amazing scouting network seems to be all over the shop this window.

If there was a release clause it would be reported and Saints would confirm it. It would be in our interest to disclose it.

14th.

Weep

If any of the sold players had release clauses in their contracts, the board would be shouting it from the rooftops. It would be the easiest way to (correctly) diminish responsibility.

Definitely, Koeman was top of the options out there at the time.

Koeman seems like a strong and honest character, the club are lucky to have someone like him fronting the situation.

Midfield of Wanyama holding, Davis and JWP/Taider as advanced CM with Tadic and one other playing off Pelle is pretty decent. Providing that the other AM is good quality. Rodriguez would be perfect but I doubt we'll see the best of him in a Saints shirt again.

The letter obviously arrived on Fonte's doorstep just in time.

Easy enough if anyone is buying a Saints player though.

It's reported that Morgan and his agent arrived at St Mary's the day of Ralph's interviews to talk about how the negotiations were going and whether they had agreed a deal only to be told that we wouldn't let him go afterall. I don't condone Morgan's behaviour since but this whole situation seems a bit pointless. The only benefit for the club is having another long serving player who comes off worse than they do.