Saint Martini

Wizi wig has the match in their calender so they have at least one link.

I'd be very surprised if sites like Bet365 & Unibet don't broadcast this match.

After looking at those line-ups I can say that both teams have come a loooooonng way since then.

Agree, and Claus was a better passer of the ball then his best partner (Killer).

As much as I hate Feyenoord this is a very good option (maybe this a good plan, buy Feyenoords player for a low fee). His wage demands will never be as high as a player that has Premier League experience. Wages in the Netherlands are a lot lower then even most Championship teams (if you exclude Ajax & PSV) and Feyenoord doesn't pay that much either because of their economic difficulties the last 5/6 years. He's not expensive to buy according to the technical director at Feyenoord (not sure why, perhaps a clause in the contract). I'm not sure if he would be interested in joining Saints though. Its always considered a risk for players to join teams that have just been promoted, especially if they want to remain in contention for the Dutch national team.

Its unlikely he'll grow much after his 20th birthday. Men can grow rapidly in their late teens but after your 20th birthday most people are done growing. I don't know that much about the player and was pleased to see his rather excellent kick.

Kevin Phillips had that wow-factor. He'd won the Golden Boot a few seasons earlier and had played for England, its not really in the same class as the Keegan signing by any means but I thought at the time it was a huge step forward for the club. In its own way the Lambert signing had a certain wow factor but since we had played Premier League football not that long ago it perhaps wasn't that special. It was however a huge statement of intent that made people believe in the future of our club again.

That was an interesting read and one that totally changed my mind. If Büttner still believes this deal is going through (and is willing to say so in an interview) then why should I be doubting it? Apart from the way we managed to make him choose Saints with the DVD and all there is a tiny bit of information that is perhaps even more interesting. In the part where he describes his chat with NA he says that NA sees him as an offensive leftback. Earlier we've been speculating that he perhaps would be used as a winger but this says to me that not only is Dickson on the way out but this also means Harding is on his way. In a 25 man squad you don't have room for 3 leftbacks.

If that's the case then the only reason for the deal not being finalized is that we aren't interested anymore. One explanation could be that we went for Clyne after the Büttner deal looked dead and now we want to give that a chance before possibly returning to Büttner if the Clyne deal doesn't materialize.

I have no doubt in my mind Büttner is leaving Vitesse but I'm getting more and more doubtful if Saints are going to be the destination. His position at Vitesse is very difficult since they already have a replacement for him, this is why he's not going to Bulgaria with them. But I'm becoming more and more sceptical that we'll be the ones signing him. For that to happen either Vitesse has share the transfer-fee (not likely), Saints have to pay of the 3rd party (doesn't really sound like Cortese does it?) or Büttner has to strike a deal with the 3rd party. Perhaps Büttner can make the problem go away but why would this take so long?

I can't see Büttner staying at Vitesse, as mentioned they already have a replacement for him and he only has one year left on his contract. I'm not at all confident that we'll be signing him unless the mystery third-party drops their claim. Its not like Cortese to just hand over a bit more money to some shady third party. Either Büttner manages to come to some agreement with the third-party or he goes somewhere else. The worst thing for him would be to stay at Vitesse but with both Saints and Vitesse having rich owners they can afford to be principal and Büttner can be the one losing the most.

In this article it says that it was Büttner that informed Vitesse that there was a third party wanting money. My best guess is that its some former agent wanting a piece of the pie and that Büttner can't get out of it.

This. The SFA have pretty much asked a different club then the one that held the registration for Davis to give clearance. The (slightly exaggerated) equivalent would be asking Southampton to give clearance on the transfer for a Pompey player....

The latest news concerning the transfer was a short interview after a pre-season friendly with Vitesse this weekend. The only thing he said there was that Vitesse and Saints have agreed on a fee and that his agent was negotiating with Saints. We'll just have to wait and see, everyone seems to be tight-lipped on the negotiations.

Not sure you can call that English.....

VI.nl is reporting that we can't agree on a fee and that there's quite a big difference between what we're offering and what they want. The report was published just over an hour ago so I doubt we've pretty much wrapped this one up. Link to the story (in Dutch): http://www.vi.nl/nieuws/223910/Southampton-biedt-Vitesse-nog-te-weinig-voor-Buttner.htm

There's two first hand reports (they actually spoke with Büttner) in the last 24h. The first is an interview with a local radio station (Omroep Gelderland) where he confirms he's been in Southampton and was very impressed. Then there is an article in de Telegraaf which I haven't read, but the soccernews.nl story posted earlier has de Telegraaf as its source. The deal seems close in my opinion and I'd be very surprised if it doesn't go through now.

Update: Büttner did an interview after his training session with Vitesse with a local radio station where he said that he was "very impressed with what he saw" and that he quite possibly just finished his last training session with Vitesse. The technical director at Vitesse confirmed that there's a big chance Büttner is leaving (but didn't mention Saints and to be honest, its been clear he's going to leave this summer for some time). Links (in dutch) here: http://www.omroepgelderland.nl/web/Sport/Betaald-voetbal/1622751/Buttner-mogelijk-voor-het-laatst.htm http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/4562/Voetbal/article/detail/3279917/2012/07/01/TT-Buttner-onder-indruk-van-Southampton-Lavezzi-in-Parijs-voor-afronding-transfer.dhtml

Because the Dutch news papers wrote that we hadn't made a bid on friday when they wrote he was coming for a visit. Since they haven't reported any other news concerning this transfer my best guess would be nothing more has happened so far. De Gelderlander has rather close contacts to Vitesse (they're a regional newspaper operating out of Arnhem) so I'd expect them to write an update to their earlier article if we had made a bid.

@deromis is just some supporter copying news from a unreliable football website in the Netherlands. Neither VI.nl or de Gelderlander have reported anything new so my guess is that nothing is imminent. As far as I know we haven't even made a bid yet.

Not a fan at all. I liked the design for Sweden but it works much better with a lighter main colour and darker lines. I haven't seen any photos of the away shirt but I imagine I will like them a lot if they are white with thin red lines. I would have preferred that as our homeshirt with a totally different colour-scheme for our away shirt (Something similar to the Sweden kit for instance).

De Gelderlander, Vi.nl and Ad.nl are reliable sites and they are all reporting Büttner has been negotiating with is but we do not have an agreement with Vitesse (we haven't even made a bid). It shouldn't be a problem though since he only has one year left on his contract so he can't be too expensive (but he's not available on a free as the OP writes). I haven't seen him play too much, I mainly follow Ajax in the Netherlands but from what I have seen its his strengths are his offensive qualities, which isn't weird considering he was a winger earlier in his career. He's still learning some aspects of his defensive game (positioning) but he's tenacious and wins challenges quite often.

You can't take anything from either Aftonbladet or Expressen seriously, they are worse then the Daily Mail.... Proper newspapers like Svd and DN have been very critical of this Swedish team and especially their defending. The only reason I'll be closely following the rest of the tournament is for the sake of my team in drömelvan.

I'm Dutch my wife is Swedish so we started a two person supportgroup.

For those not able to attend the Ajax match (or not bothered to do so). The match will be broadcasted by the Dutch football channel Eredivisie Live (which probably means it will be available on other channels aswell).