S-Clarke

I may be wrong but I think he had to undergo more Surgery at the end of last season, so there's no immediate come back for him.

I think this is a good deal if we're honest. As you've said above mrfahaji - it's already happened down there. You had Rhodes being bought for what was 10-15m, Britt Assombolonga (i think that's how you spell it) - who cost Boro something like 15m. Villa spent something like 10m on that preverbal championship scorer McCormack. So, given that he was a top scorer in the NPC and we've supposedly got the PL riches, we've got ourselves a deal which can't be sniffed out.

Deserved a crack at first team football. He may make a decent PL player, but to me he always had flaws and parts of his game which weren't improving. So, I think we did well to get what we did. I wish him the best.

Yeah, we have. But the £30m+ figure being bounded about made me gasp, a little.

Iago Falque - he's actually gone onto have a decent career in Serie A at Roma and Torino.

But you'd need a high spec internet connection...

What on earth is this thread about. We're ripping apart his goals because they weren't very good? He was there to score them though? Would you rather it was a video of him missing chances? Sometimes people on here confuse the hell out of me.

Pretty much adds weight to the 'Che Adam's chooses Southampton' claim then.

Their attack is lethal, pure quality throughout that now. They've got Arnoutovic to spearhead it as well, really impressive - could do really, really well next year.

I don't think they do ensure our long-term future. You need investment to be a success, you can't run on income alone - not in this day and age. If he's not going to invest, then we will slip slide away. I'm not suggesting we go and splash zillions on mega players, but some ambition and some investment will be required if we want some fun and enjoyment. How are we going to compete in the NPC if we went down? He doesn't want to invest, so how can we compete? There's not enough income alone, and then you've got clubs down there splash £15m themselves on players now. So this belief that he doesn't have to invest into us is just tosh. He is being a lazy and unattached owner with no intentions to do anything with us, therefore he needs to **** off. And also....why is he talking to the FT and not fans of the club? We want to hear from him, we don't want to be searching other webistes to get info. He's an absolute charlatan.

This is exactly it, and I share your concerns. As others as said, whilst we are Top Flight we will tick along...but as soon as we go down, the entire place will just come falling down on top of us. If we go down in the near future with Gao in charge, we will not be seeing top flight football for decades in my eyes. He offers us nothing, there is no connection and no meaning to his ownership. It's a token ownership and I can promise you when he realises he is losing money, he will try and tip us of the edge as quickly as he can to save his own skin. It's a very, very worrying future ahead for us. Everyone has the right to ask why Bournemouth are able to invest more into players than ourselves (without selling) - something has gone horribly wrong when that happens.

Spurs would be a better move for him for sure. But you've got to wonder what exactly clubs will be getting? He was utterly dreadful last year, didn't live up to any hype. Granted, in a poor Fulham side. But I still expected to see some more from him.

I hope we get this one over the line, he's a really good forward. Would add a lot of pace to our attack and that would probably finish our additions in attack - then we can focus on the back.

Villa have just signed Jota from Birmingham, so maybe their sights aren't really set too high for next season.

Whilst the world cup was fun, our performance was still pretty overhyped. We only beat Tunisa, Panama and Sweden. The luck of the draw and penalties enabled us to get to the semi final stage, but we were never on the level with the other teams at that stage really. We've got some good young players in the attacking third, but there are some serious holes in the side - as other's have said, midfield. Which begs the question, what in crying out loud has Delph done to get called up in the first place? He doesn't even play for City anymore, he's certainly not good enough for this level. Rice looked hideously out of his depth. So, it's a good young squad, but the media have overhyped it based on quite an average world cup performance. We still fall short against teams of any real quality.

I can't imagine anyone even paying that. He doesn't even look like a footballer.

It's got Leicester written all over it.

Stephens being paid 28k more than Bedernak is simply criminal. No one is going to take Stephens off of us on that wage. Our contract management over the last 3 years has been diabolical. It makes me sad.

https://www.tuttomercatoweb.com/serie-a/tmw-fiorentina-3-club-di-premier-league-si-muovono-per-dragowski-1249757

We are looking at a Serie A Goalie apparently.

Wonder why we're delaying the announcement. Or maybe we didn't feel it was worth a great big announcement. I just hope he does a good job.

Yeah, it wasn't a test website. You'd publish a test website with dummy text, not specific text detailing out spurious claims about their links to Southampton.

I don't think that's what he was saying, it's more about understanding the type of delivery and service these centre forwards require. When Pelle was at Feyenoord he had the supply needed by wide players, so Koeman made sure we got a high calibre wide player who he'd have known well. We pretty much pulled in the best Erenvise goal scorer and the best assister to play together, that's why it worked. Having a manager who understood what got the best out of Pelle was the key here.

It was nice, I agree. It was just ruined by the absolutly diabolical season it featured in.

This is exactly why he left. Look at that. So pleased for him though, deserved a final swansong like this!