S-Clarke

They will, yes, but that will give us around £100m in transfer income. Plus the 70m in parachute payments (I think it's 35 over two seasons). And that's excluding any additional investment SR provide, which they've already said will continue should the worst happen. We wouldn't have to spend a fraction of that to have a competitive team in the Champ, but any new manager would have the scope to develop and build his own squad. This is the crazy thing with us, we are struggling but our players are on decent contracts and would attract genuine interest for decent fee's. When Koeman came in he had the scope to do that and he found it an attractive propoisition, and so would a lot of other managers.

I don't think he will be shocking at all, but I think committing to anything more than a 6-month deal at this stage given the position we are isn't sensible on either side. As i said above, there are 3 scenario's here. 1 - We stay up amazingly; he does a great job. We offer him a new deal to stay on and continue his work, if he accepts, he accepts. If he doesn't then we are a PL club with a pool of managers to choose from with a clean slate again. 2 - We give it a good shot but ultimately go down. We decide we want to offer him a new deal and he accepts to continue the work in the Championship and enables some continuity. 3 - We bomb and no one wants him to stay. He leaves by the backdoor after the final day of the season, we don’t lose out financially and we are then free to sound out managers for a promotion push. You'd be surprised at the level of managers interested in us if the worst was to happen. I don't think you'd have said Kompany would be going to Burnley, but he ended up there and they're not exactly flush.

Think about it another way, if he is shocking for us and no one wants him after we never improve at all, we'd be relegated and then have to potentially find another payout in the Championship to ditch another manager, when we'd have less money. Potentially impacting who we could then replace him with or players we could buy. I stand by what CB Fry said, in the championship this will be an incredibly attractive project for a decent rep manager to get stuck into. Not only finance from SR, but potentially over £100m from play sales (or the possibly to work with some great young players). This wouldn't be like us going down under Redknapp with 90k to spend on fuller, this is a totally different ballpark. I don’t want it to happen at all, but you’d be surprised who’d be interested in the summer if we were a managerless championship club.

I thought that re: Hughes, but it was actually a contract until the end of the season initially. Reed just got a bit excited in the summer after he'd kept us up (which was from a much better position than we are now by the way) and decided to give him a 3 year deal, and £60m to spend on Elyounoussi, Gunn and Vestergaard.

3 and 1/2 years too long tbf. Hopefully we look back and laugh at this charade in a few years.

I think people would also be having a moan if we'd given him a long contract, as if he flops then we've got another payout to consider. Nothing in football as as black and white as it seems from the outside. It may not just be ourselves who want to focus on the short term, maybe he is also giving himself a chance to reasses in the summer as there are still lots of chats linking him with the USA job (and given that the next WC is a home WC, it could be a huge pull for him).

3 1/2 year contract I think.

I notice Villa's owners are heading down this multi-club road now as well. Aston Villa's owners have entered a sale and purchase agreement to acquire 46 per cent of Portuguese club Vitoria S.C. The Guimaraes-based club have been in talks with Villa for the last two years, with the Premier League team announcing it is "an important step forward in the global expansion of the V Spors portfolio". The move still needs to be proved by Vitoria, who played in this season's UEFA Conference League qualifying rounds. President of Vitoria Antonio Miguel Cardoso said in a statement: “Since first meeting we found out that Mr Nassef Sawiris is a man of serious commitments and available to be the right partner which VSC needs in this important moment of our history."

I think as a club they're taking the opportunity to look at the short-term right now, which I think is sensible. Offering anyone a 3-year contract at this stage doesn’t give you any wiggle room in the summer to re-assess. If he does well, somehow in a crazy reality keeps us up and is sought after elsewhere...then so be it, he's kept us up and we'll have a bigger pool of managers to choose from then. If he does well enough, but we do go down (the most likely outcome), then we may like what he's instilled and offer him a chance to build something in the championship. If he totally flops, then we go down, he goes off into the distance and we rebuild with a new approach in the championship and no one is out of pocket. (Apart from us losing TV money!) I think as fans we cannot judge his success on keeping us up, given the position we are in it's going to be very difficult for anyone to do that - so if we do likely go down then I don't think that automatically equates to him failing in my book.

I cannot take views seriously where people discount Marsch in one breath, and then as an alternative suggest Wayne Rooney. I just don't understand how that makes any sense.

Doesn't everyone in football? I think even I have a better record than Jones at St Mary's.

I think that's the way you beat these better teams to be honest, certainly for clubs like us. That’s why counter pressing is seen as a viable alternative for sides away from the elite, we don’t have the KDB’s or Oddegaard to be the play maker, so alternatively the stress the press causes becomes our playmaker. The ‘top teams’ want time on the ball and they hate being stressed and crowded around, expectations are on them to find a way through so you often see counter pressing teams that are on it continuously winning the ball back in attacking thirds. It's how we played at Spurs, in what I thought was our most complete performance under Ralph to be honest. Sure, we conceded two goals but in terms of stressing them and counter pressing we were absolutley on it that day.

I think it's the sensible approach you take in a situation like this, for both parties. It allows us all an option to reasses in the summer whatever happens. We did similar with Mark Hugues, but we were way too quick to give him a longer contract in the summer.

The general chatter from our 'media leaks' is that we want him in place for Chelsea.

Brilliant read - it would be a great joke football story if it wasn't actually f***ing true! What a crazy few months!

His payoff, if it happens, would be in the 10's of millions. He will happily sit on that, go travelling for 6 months and see what's avaliable in the summer. There is no scenario where we magically wait for Potter to get sacked and he's our manager the next day.

Looks like Leeds have decided to stick with their caretaker for their 'upcoming fixtures'. What a weird scenario. We'll probably line up at Elland road with the manager they sacked as they felt they needed better, but they will still have a caretaker in place as they haven't managed to replace their former manager who is now in our dugout. Be interesting to see who is the winner out of this chaos, potentially two losers given the league table - but we'll see.

CB's as well, better 1-on-1 CB's in terms of pace. Leeds had Cooper and Robin Koch (and Llorente before he went to Roma) I don't think we'll see Tino until next season.

If you don't want to have a reasoned debate then there's no point. I think the people who are behind him are clear on why, and the people who don't want him seem to be incredibly confused as to why they feel that way. (apart from wanting Poch or Tuchel instead) So let's just leave it there.

This is one of the reasons we signed more mobility in the summer, i.e Lavia and ABK. It was pretty obvious that Bednarek in a high pressing team was a disaster waiting to happen, but whilst we will concede chances playing that way having decent/quick and mobile 1-on-1 players make a huge difference. I listened back to that video earlier and they explained it really well - we probably have better players suited to how Marsch wants to play than he had at Leeds, certainly in relation to that 1-on-1 defending element. Let's just get back to what we know, back 4 - ABK and Salisu with Lavia and JWP pivot in front.

You were calling for Gallardo, who doesn't speak a word of English and would need a translator, so I'm pretty sure it's a big plus in comparison to that given the situation we are in. That's the key thing people are missing - if we were at the start of the season and had finished 10th, needed a new manager, then Marsch would be down on our list and we'd be looking wider I'm sure, but needs must and his suitability in the current situation is pretty well aligned to us, probably more so than it was to Leeds weirdly.

I'd have Boruc as my top Pole to be honest, top, top keeper - was so happy we got him on a free. Davis had done his time and Boruc was one of those nutty keepers who had that aura about him. I still think Koeman treated him a bit shit.

You keep saying the same stuff across multiple threads, but you seem to be forgetting where we are in the table and how we look to any potential appointment. If you look at the key bits of criteria you'd want in any new Southampton manager, following Jones, it would be... - Positive outlook and a likable demeanour. - Ability to mesh with the profile of players at his disposal, as there is no transfer window. - Familiarly with the league - Speaks full English - Experience of relegation battles and being successful in one. If you go through the names linked....Marsch is ticking most of those for me. The main takeaway is that the players here know all about his principles, sure it went stale with Ralph at the end, but you cannot deny that when he got that 4-2-2-2 working it was bloody brilliant - and maybe a fresh voice with similar idea's can spark life in this group, who have proven they are capable of playing the way Marsch likes his teams to play. People like Poch, Tuchel, Adkins, Benitez are just pipe dreams and bizarre shouts in my opinion. Someone like Benitez is so poorly suited to our team and the players we have, it would be a terrible match.

That's an excellent listen. You do wonder how the likes of Garth Crooks, Clinton Morrison and Paul Merson have got careers jabbering bollocks every week, yet those two guys are so switched on and speak a million times more sense than any of your traditional heavily paid pundits.