S-Clarke

10 quid for BT Sport? Try £27.99 p/m! then another £25 ish for Sky Sports. No way do they need more money.

That price is crazy expensive. Maybe 8 quid or something along those lines? Those are the old Prem Plus prices, and that never worked because of the extortionate prices. For fans who are paying around £50 p/m for BT Sport and Sky Sports shouldn't be expected to pay another £15 to watch additional matches, IMO. Even more so when fans have already paid for season tickets and won't receive those refunds until after the event.

You've always had a problem with Davis and it's very odd. Pretty much 99.9% of people you ask, with any decent level of football understanding, will appreciate what a good pro and a technically gifted player he is/was. Massive for us in those 14/15 15/16 seasons.

Didn't he start against Inter Milan at home? He did have good potential at one point, but he drifted and then got a very bad injury (and another I think) He will prob have to settle for lower if not non-league now.

Can't complain about that what so ever. Like a freebie shot really.

Is it being streamed anywhere?

He's an odd player, like you say he's very skilful, probably the most skilful player at the club. But he was lacking other attributes. I'd agree with you that his awareness and general football brain was poor, that can't be coached and that's what you're born with really. He's what I'd call a luxury player, someone you can throw on and let the showboats come out - but you need time and space to do that and this league doesn't really afford that luxury. The lack of suitors says it all really. He's ended up at Angers because whilst he's talented, he lacks other key ingredients to be a top level player.

Exactly, there's no way you could find similar experience in a position we needed to improve for that fee. I think Everton helped us out a lot there with the wages, they probably wanted a much bigger contribution. There's prob a loan fee involved as well I reckon, maybe 1m? So yeah, 2.5m for 8 months. Would struggle to find anyone else with the experience he has for that. I reckon he'll work out cheaper than Boufal over the 8 months too, I'm sure I read Boufal was on something like 60-65k here.

Blimey, this feels a bit early! But then you think, it's only 10 or so weeks away. Let's see how we go is my answer at the mo. Looking at the squad as a whole at the moment we look fairly balanced in most places, two full backs either side, 4 centre backs, way too many goal keepers, nice options in CM. Attacking options look interesting too. I guess it depends on form and injury really, that'll dictate what we do. My main concern has always been what do we do if Ings gets injured? I feel we shouldn't have renewed Longs contract and used that space to get another CF, but it's not always that easy. I don't think we urgently need anything right now though, which I guess makes the last window a success - one of the first ones in many a year where I feel we haven't left a glaring hole in an obvious area, which is pretty good going given that we've had to do that with little to no money.

We must be paying something like 2.5m for the 8 months? (If his Salary is 50k as reported). What else could we have got for £2.5m? That is probably the maximum we had available to play with, so loaning Theo didn't stop us spending funds on a starter - as we don't have enough for that. It's a cheap loan for 8 months, he's an experienced international, champions league and premier league player. There's a lot of sentimental stuff and PR drive around this move, for sure, but for what we had to spend this is probably a very good outcome.

In and around 10th-13th I imagine. Unless we have a season with no injuries and Ings has another freak year, then maybe top 8.

Apparently he's set a new 2020-2024 strategy and is handing over to John McDermot. If I was John, I'd start by ripping that up and starting again.

I actually think this may have been our most challenging window, yet we've come out of it by sheading a lot of our heavy dead wood and evolving the squad in certain positions with young players. If all goes to plan, we will have new ownership by the time the next summer window comes around and we won't be going into a window with such a huge wage bill around our necks to start with. I certainly don't think it will be anywhere near as bad as you are painting as a worst case.

They just build up whatever they get. We'll have one of the most high profile deals of the day, which says it all about the day!

Worth adding that whilst this may not aid us bringing players in immediately, you'd imagine it will free up some space in the wage bill to aid the renewals.

Boufal has gone on a free https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2020-10-05/announcement-sofiane-boufal-transfer-southampton-football-club-angers

He's gone. It's another complete freebie though. https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2020-10-05/announcement-sofiane-boufal-transfer-southampton-football-club-angers The club have finally stopped trying to get fee's for these players. Makes no sense having them hogging the wage bill, so we've done a lot of good today.

Not that I can see. People just putting 2 + 2 together and making 120. Based on the tweet from Adam about a 'sniff'.

Not sure why you've taken a personal issue with Hypo. There are plenty on here who talk a load of shit, he isn't one of them.

Don't think it's fair to say he was crap at Bournemouth, I thought he did well there - played quite a lot of games, had a full season and was pretty tidy for them. He's talented, but injury prone to a ridiculous level. That will put most clubs off, if anyone does go for him I imagine it'll be a pay as you play. Waste of a career he's had really.

Sky Sports bringing out the comedians to fill their airwaves today.

Exciting.

Depends how he does. Maybe we'll have a bit more $$ to play with next summer and we can buy someone like Rachica. This whole signing feels very 'romantically' driven though, rather than what he could offer us on the pitch. It doesn't feel part of any real strategy, which is odd for us. Although our 'strategy' hasn't worked that well in recent years.

Reckon we'll be seeing Butland coming as part of that? Which would be odd, cause we'd then have McCarthy, Forster and Butland. Having 3 keepers of that rep is unheard of, even for top clubs.

Angers I think...should be announced at some point. Talk of 2-3m.