tajjuk

Oxlaide Chamberlain and Schneiderlin back and I think no fan would complain about our transfers.

Mane is gone, he's in Liverpool today, £34 million + £11 million + £2 million = £47 million from player sales. £11 million spent on Redmond. If we are going to actually invest in the team then with the sales (could go up to as much as £60 million if Pelle goes) then I'd expect our transfer outlay to be around £70 million. Spending £20-25 million over sales doesn't seem a big ask.

Yeh it's just wall to wall good news at the moment, what us being manager less and having just sold two of our best players and bought a winger from a relegated club. Who could possibly question any of that eh? God forbid someone doesn't tow the party line and join in with the fanatics, as soon as you do that you are branded names like 'bedwetter' and 'drama queen' just because you have some criticisms. I thought this was a forum where people debated stuff, not a church where everyone just claps and smiles with whatever is trotted out.

We won't get it right all the time, as we have shown with say Clasie, who does not replace Morgan. You cannot keep selling quality and expect to get equal and better quality for less money. We have done excellent work, but each progression we make it gets harder to improve, creating your own problems is only going to make that even harder. And what if Redmond is supposed to replace Mane? What then? 1. So just profit then? That is not a reason for ambitious football club, that's a business reason. 2. No that's called folding. We did not need to sell, so we do not need to negotiate. Liverpool want the player so Liverpool have to accommodate us, not the other way round. 3. I'd be happier with the club showing some backbone. 4. So then we don't sell him FFS. We didn't want to sell him so the number of bidders is irrelevant. Liverpool are very clearly direct rivals, our aims for this coming season will be to improve on 6th, that means challenging for champions league. Those will be Liverpool's aims also, how are they not rivals? None of this is evidence of the club putting up a fight. Also people keep harping on about this contract Mane was offered, but how much actually was it, saying it was the best deal offered to a Saints player ever if we only have ever offered £60k a week is not saying much. Leicester have just offered a 29 year old with a terrible diet and bad training habits near £100k a week, I doubt we offered Mane anything close to that. No you are lucky, I know parents who would call you 'smug parents' because they think they are the only ones who can think of things like routines and structure. There is also a huge difference between not getting caught short and actually improving the team. We need to do the latter, not just replace like for like (which we won't even manage) Good footballers for low prices are not an endless supply, selling quality players when we don't have to is not a good way forward, however good the systems you have in place are. I think people are getting carried away with the black box, it's just a scouting system, it's a decent scouting system but we cannot expect every replacement to be an improvement, especially when you are talking about key players. It is very unlikely we will be able to replace either Wanyama or Mane with the same level of quality. So we are now forced to replaced TWO key players when we could have held on to Mane for another year and only had to replace Wanyama. The likelihood of that happening is pretty low. Happy to be proven wrong, that would actually be a decent statement of intent and a quality signing, but can't see it. I seriously doubt we'll even spend all the money we have recouped.

Which would be less than we have sold, so zero investment on transfer funds essentially. We've taken in £47 million so far, so we'd have to spend over £50 million to actually be investing in the team.

The club quite easily could have ensured that. All you have to do is tell Liverpool hes not for sale.

And that is going to work everytime is it, or were we actually lucky that Bertrand turned out to be decent? Plus if we still had Shaw we'd have one of the best left backs in the country with a potential to get even better so how would we have lost out? If we are so good at getting players to play above their level, then who's to say we couldn't have got Mane to play to a higher level next year, like a Vardy or Mahrez level that may have kicked us on even further and made £34 million look cheap? Funny how everyone is an expert in hindsight. If Mane goes crap at Liverpool and Redmond scores15 goals next year the you can happily dig up my posts and rub them in my face, I'll happily be wrong. But if we are worse next year and Liverpool get champions league thanks to an excellent season from Mane I won't be trumpeting my 'rightness' because it will be a sad day for the club.

His knee had complications then he had a separate foot injury didn't he?

24 starts and came off the bench 11 times in a team that was poor on quality you'd think he'd be ever present for them. I didn't watch Norwich that often but the few times I saw him play he seemed to lack quality to me, either producing poor shots or poor crosses. Townsend almost did as much in about 11 games as Redmond did all season. 3 years ago I'd probably be quite excited by it, but now for a team looking to kick on from 6th? Underwhelming seems a good word for it. I think he'll be useful addition to the squad what with Europa league, but I'm not sure he particularly improves the squad. Hoep he proves me wrong and shows more of his obvious potential.

Er what? None of Clyne, Lallana or Morgan are a 'shadow' of themselves. And Mane is older, but also better than when we signed him and he's 24, not 30, he can potentially improve even more. The profit is great for our bank manager and our bank balance, that's it. As for team spirit, if our team spirit was so great we'd have over achieved more and not gone through that run of bad games in the middle of the season. We'd win more games when the team wasn't playing so well. Our success has been built on having good players.

Top insight there. It's simply this - Is our squad better with Mane in it for another year, or without him and an extra £15 million? I think it's the former. If we actually spend more than our sales for once and then I might change my opinion on the sale, but currently it's looking like a very short sighted and profit centric transfer.

If Everton are interested in Morgan then I don't see why we can't be, perfect replacement for Wanyama.

He's about to turn 27, so he's probably at peak value right now.

And if he kicked on again next season and scored 20 goals do you think that would be worth £15 million? Or won us a trophy? Would that be worth £15 million? Do you think our £15 million will look good if Mane propels Liverpool into the Champions league? Do you think they will care how much they paid for him?

There's a lot of evidence. 1. He has two years left on his contract so have absolutely no need to sell him. 2. We told Liverpool we wanted £40 million, yet within a few days of saying that we've sold him for less than that. 3. This 'saga' has barely lasted a week. 4. We've sold him to rival team. Doesn't seem a lot fight to me. Seems to me they've gone for a quick easy sale that makes them some no fuss profit. An ambitious club looking to maximise their potential success in the league would not sell one of their best players, to a direct rival, when they didn't need to sell him and at a fee lower than their asking price. A club looking for short term profit gain absolutely would. I did not expect Wanyama to stay he only has a year left, he has the offer of Champions League football as well. Would have again preferred to sell him to someone outside the league though. Mane does not have one year left, we don't need to sell him so at the very least I'd expect the club to play hard ball on the fee and make Liverpool pay silly money. And as for Redmond, Mane is already a very quick, young player that can play out wide and is already better than I think Redmond will ever be. Redmond does not improve our squad, he adds to it and that's fine but improve our overall quality? I don't think so, he's a player he struggled to get regular starts in a very poor team that got relegated so I have a lot of doubts about him. Losing Mane very much hurts the quality of the team.

This. This sale is for profit and nothing else. Then we can keep up the pretence of 'spending' when in reality we are just spending what we have already sold. The club has made net transfer profits from the last two years and this season we will have the most amount of TV money we've ever had, it's hardly like we need to cash.

No the time to start worrying is when the club starts cashing in early, whilst making a rival stronger, rather than keeping the playing asset and team quality for another season and losing money at a later date. That's a club being run for profit and business success not football success. We had no real reason to sell Mane this year, especially as Liverpool had clearly not met the asking price (with our strong stance on that lasting barely a week) so the only reason to sell him this year was profit.

Who already has 205 career games under his belt including two full premier league seasons, plus 28 caps for the England U21s. So he's hardly some inexperienced fresh faced youngster. Ward-Prowse is only 21 and has about half as much experience as Redmond but that doesn't seem to excuse him from criticism about his inconsistency.

Well they still have him for a start and Everton's poor season was largely due to an inept manager more than anything. You really think holding on to Mane is going to suddenly make the team worse? Er yes he did. http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/600168/Exclusive-John-Stones-Everton-chairman-Bill-Kenwright-dream-move-Chelsea Yet he didn't. Who's to say if we hadn't have held on to our players then we wouldn't have achieved even more? I mean having a good squad and then adding quality to that already good squad, what a terrible idea that would be. If we are being run as a 'for profit' business then the club need to stop with all this 'ambition' talk. Teams that want to compete and get in the champions league like the club claim is their 'ambition' occasionally have to spend some money not just maximise profit at any opportunity. If the club us ambitious then who cares if we only sell Mane in another year for £15 million? We'll have had 3 good seasons out of him and still got more than we paid for him, plus who knows maybe in a year we improve further he changes his mind and signs a new contract. Where are we going to drawn the line? Are we going to start selling players with 3 years left on their contract because they will be worth more than when they have 2 years left? The club exists to be good at football, that entails having good players, there is a difference between wasting money will nilly and making sensible use of our assets. The position the club currently is in and the chance it has to kick on (which should include keeping your best players) is worth more IMO than an extra £20 million. Selling one of your best players, who still has two years on his contract, to one of your rivals is what a club looking to make the most money would do, not what an ambitious club would do.

Austin is not that much of worry for me, people are making out like he's Sturridge or Wilshere levels of injury but before last season he'd had seasons of 36, 37, 40 and 46 games. Jay Rod I'm not so sure on, I have this worry, especially looking at him last year that they've bulked him up on muscle mass to prevent injury and he's lost a bit of his pace and agility for it. But we'll see, a full pre-season could do wonders for him.

Utter tosh is when anyone dares to criticise the club they get this sort of reaction and gets called names like 'bed wetters' like we should all jump up and celebrate having our best players sold with little fight.

It's been pretty evident he's been inconsistent.

And? We stood our ground with Morgan and he still had a good season after his little tantrum, they are footballers not 3 year olds, they get paid to play football, it's hardly like we are forcing them to work down a mine. And what are we going to do with that extra £25 million? probably very little, I'd rather have the two good players for another year, who knows what can happen over a season. Qualifying for the champions league or winning a trophy is worth more to the club in the long run than £20-25 million especially when the club gets 5 times that every season from TV money anyway. We are more likely to do that with better players are we are not?

If you can't read a league table then you are blind. That amazing Liverpool team finished 9 points and 1 place above Stoke, and Joe Allen could not get into that 8th placed team. If it's deluded to suggest a bench warmer for a team that finished below us would not improve our first team then i'll happily call myself deluded. A player struggling to dislodge say Toni Kroos or Iniesta from a first team is one thing, a player who can't displace Jordan Henderson from a first team is not a player who will improve our team.

And yet they aren't seen as a selling club and a pushover so the fees talked about for the likes Lukaku or Barkley are massive. If we'd had Lukaku at Saints we'd have already sold him. We'd have already sold Stones before July as well. The club are pushovers and the likes of Liverpool know it. I'd rather risk Mane being crap for a year than sell him to Liverpool. Hardly like we are going to spend that money anyway, we'll just sit on another £20 million transfer profit.