S-Clarke

Imagine losing him but keeping Redmond and Moussa. I'd lose the will.

That part in the article - ''The move could be accelerated if Armstrong moves on from St Mary's'' - what do they know that we don't?

Nope, I think he's a diabolical keeper. I have no idea how he is in and around the England setup either. Mind you, McCarthy was at one point.

Not worked for 3 years is a bit of a stretch, for an entire calendar year we were a Top 8 side, just sadly across two seasons and not a full season.

To be honest, I'm just willing to give him the benefit of doubt. £5m on a squad player isn't a great deal in this day and age, that's all he will be. Would I have liked to use this opportunity to evolve Bednareks position? Absolutley. But I realise that as a club we are in the pits financially and we're not able to compete for those sorts of players who would make a huge difference. We are very close to the inventible in this league with this model, I'm not doubting that. But what else do we do? Until we have a change of ownership and some direction from those above we will continue to tread water, and that will inevitably mean that we drown in the riches of the other clubs. The club are doing the best they can in the circumstances they have been dealt. We've just got to hope they've made the right choices, it enables us to keep our heads above water for another 1 year or so and we may end up closer to that illusive ownership change. Until that happens, we're going to have to get used to these sorts of signings.

The problem is that we had so many fails in quick succession, and these were big fee's £15m upwards. You can probably add Elyonoussi and Boufal to that list as well. That must be coming onto £70-80m spent on players that just never had an impact and we made losses on all (substantial too), we can't absorb that sort of failure rate in such quick succession, and that is why we are where we are today.

Exactly that. I'm fairly certain that if we'd have had a taker for Forster then we'd have gone all out and bought a new GK. Part of me feels that we're leaving a little bit of the money from this window to one side so we can react early in that market next summer, rather than having to wait for a sale first.

I think that's more of an opinion piece on which club he feels he'd be better at, not that we'll get him. I just don't see this as being a go-er in any way shape of form. Would love to be proven wrong, but I just cannot see how we can attract those types. And we've got our CB anyway.

Time will tell if the club have made the right call or not, but in my opinion I believed the club always saw Vestergaards first choice replacement as already being in the building - Salisu. I don't think the club saw the urgency to buy a superstar CB to come straight into the team, as much as we'd have all loved to see. So they've gone down the road of squad depth. If this allows us to go out and bring in a bit more in CM or full back then it's sensible. I think the club always saw Vestergaard as a 'worry-free' sale in the sense of the trust they have in Salisu. I have seem the infamous ''The club are relaxed about the situation'' comments to, so it does kinda reaffirm what I believe. If this proves the right call or not - no idea, too early to tell. But from the outset we have lost Ings, Bertrand, Vestergaard - spine of the side for around £45ish. And spent about £30m+ replacing them with less experienced players (you have to factor in that we had no money to replace Bertrand, so we've had to suck up some of the transfer funds to repay that I'd have thought). It's a worry, but it's a case of sink or swim really. This is the market we are in and I think we will start to see the disappearance of the 'reinvest what we get' mantra, we will reinvest bits of what we get, yes, but It looks like we're having to keep some back for a rainy day. Martin and co have got a proper juggling act going on, on one hand they are having to add to the squad and on the other hand they have to be aware that we have absolutely no money.

There could be loads and loads of reasons behind that though, it may not be down to ability. Sometimes players just don't fit at a club, as we've seen here. Then they go on and become successful elsewhere, it's not unheard of. I don't know enough about him to be blown away by this signing, or equally devastated by the signing. I'm willing to actually give him an opportunity. This is where we are now, we are in this 10m bracket - 15m at a push when we have enough $$. So we've just got to trust that the club can get us some gems - and players like this, who have the attributes but aren't necessarily settled at their club fit that kind of remit we are shopping in. I remember this forum when we'd sold Shaw and then brought in Ryan, exact reactions. ''Cheap option'' ''Not good enough'' ''Was shit in a shit team last year'' ''Villa didn't want him back'' etc etc. I just don't think you can ever truly judge a player based on what their outgoing clubs fans are saying.

Arsenal have signed Ramsdale for £30m. How in the holy shit have Sheffield United made a profit on him? And what the fuck are Arsenal doing?

Out of interest, what is everyone basing their views on? I'll be honest, I know absolutely nothing about him. I've heard of him, but I don't know much bar looking at his attributes online. I'm just a bit confused as to why it's getting these sorts of reactions when we don't really know much about him.

There are still rumours of that young LB to come into the reserve team, I imagine some funds are being reserved for that. People need to come round to the reality that we do not have a pot to piss in and we won't unless Gao sods off.

There are a lot of quick judgements on here. Let's be honest, hardly any one had heard of him this morning and all of a sudden we're all experts on his inability to add anything to us. He may be great, he may be shit. No one actually knows. But he's a CB, we needed one of those. He's tall, we needed that. He's quick, we needed that too. He can play in CM if required or full back. We needed that too. He's cheap, we needed that too. Not sure what everyone expected really, we were never spending 20m on a CB. Calata-Carr was the biggest non-event, we're not attractive to those levels of players at the moment. This possibly leaves some funds for that highly rated left back to add even more squad depth. And we've also used some of our budget to renew JWP's contract too. We don't have the experience we had last season, but we have a level of youthfulness in the squad that could either sink or swim. Impossible to say yet.

Well, that's put those chats to bed. He's an important player for us and hopefully will be for years to come. This gives him security and us security. We're protecting our asset value wise - another good couple of seasons and he's going to still command those high fee's. Good news all round really.

Yep, without doubt.

I dunno, I think most would be keen to keep us around. Easy 3 points.

How have you worked that out? You don't half get your nickers in a twist sometimes.

We have plenty of holes in the squad, but the priority is CB. That needs to be sorted. I reckon we may get a sneaky loan in come the end of the window to cover full back and CM - I think we have our feelers out for a versatile type. GK, as frustrating as it is, will be addressed next year as the club have said. It's purely financial reasons.

I know Ashley gets stick, and he's a bit of a dick all told, but he has put significant money into Newcastle and their fans would have to be daft to deny that. Who did they sell this summer to fund the £26m move for Willock? Exactly. We are the only club who have to sell before we can do anything.

Christ, I still have nightmares of that Leeds game! Crazy. But I think the 2009/2010 onwards years in L1, Champ etc were my best times supporting this club. Winning games, yep, but it was fun. The crowds were fun, I didn't turn around in my seat at St Mary's to random Spurs fans who'd sneaked in to the home end etc. It was authentic and real football. Great times. I know everyone says this when they're struggling in the Prem, but they were genuinely some of the most fun times I've had as a football fan, home and away.

Must be quite surreal being a Barcelona fan at the moment. They've lost their superstar and are looking to replace him with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. What a front two that will be alongside Martin Braithwaite. They even missed out on Tammy Abraham as he choose Roma instead. They're clearly forced to shop in that next tier down nowadays, whilst PSG and Man City catapult themselves to levels they may struggle to ever each. I think football is better with a strong Barcelona team, bit of romance about it. I remember the days of Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, Pique, Villa, Pedro etc. Unreal sides. The sides with Rivaldo, Puyol, Ronaldinho, Eto weren't bad either. They've got where they are through horrific mismanagement though - £120m on Dembele - flop. £120m on Coutinho - Flop. Even clubs like Barca cannot afford disasters in the market like that. They're paying the price now. I guess they'll always be attractive to players, but a competitive Barca team seems light years away now.

We're not calling people fucking dickheads or muppets. There's a lot of reasoned debate on here, especially in this thread. if you can't see that then I think you should question your own knowledge.

To be fair those European players you list will have their sights set much, much higher than Southampton. It's probably a 'thanks, but no thanks' as soon as we express an interest. These guys have aspirations of continuing to compete in Europe, they'll look at us and see that we're nowhere near. It's not just about what we can offer the clubs, it's about the players apatite as well. I'd expect us to at least put the feelers out on them, we should do given the value they're at, but I wouldn't expect positive responses from the players. I don't think we're that attractive a proposition.

That is what I think. I remember seeing us against Leeds away, we visibility wilted in that second half and we just couldn't get near them. We actually competed quite well in the first half and looked a good match for them. Ralph did make changes, albeit late, but he didn't have a great deal of options. Whilst we have less 'proven PL quality' now, we've got a little more depth. But Ralph for some reason didn't use it right at the weekend. Let's see what happens in the coming weeks. There are still a lot of problems with this team as a whole and I don't believe we are capable of a Top 10 finish over a complete season with the players we have - not yet anyway. In a few years if the likes of Armstrong and Tino develop like we hope.