Sour Mash

Also, just to remember, this agitating from Lallana's camp weakens our position and strengthens Liverpool's - all this from our Captain who spoke of how keen he was to end his career with us not too long ago.

It's obviously not as black and white as playing or misleading a journo, plenty shades of grey. Have that many players talked about a "wall of silence around the club"? Not seen that. There is obviously room for improvment in communication at the top, but lets not pretend that is the issue at the heart of the Blackmore/Lallana tweets.

It's obviously not his agent working independently from Lallana.

Ha ha, pretty much this!

And how would he go about doing that getting a call or a few messages from Lallana or his reps? He is a safe pair of hands, but he's only human and has to take a punt on bits of info he's given, he's always going to put that out into the public domain. So who is leaking the info and why?

This looks to have flown over your head a bit. Lallana wants to go and play Champions League football and is trying to kick up a fuss via the media because Saints are saying 'no'. Lallana is in the wrong here, not the club.

Exactly so Lallana runs to Blackmore and kicks up a fuss about not getting what he wants, puts it all out in the public domain, weakens Saints' position and all this from our captain.

All correct, but from where is the story about not answering phone calls being leaked from? Likely to be hyped up just a bit by someone not getting what they want is what it sounds like to me.

Very poor from Lallana, especially considering he's our captain and his quotes whensigning a new contract only recently.

Good short list if that is the case.

There is no perfect candidate out there, easy enough to find negatives for any of them, a new appointment is always a bit of a gamble. I'd be happy with Koeman, would hope to have something confirmed by the end of this coming week.

Quite. I'm afraid you're probably wasting your breath trying to offer logic on here though.

Another definite vote for this. The problem is it doesn't fit with the "want it now" immediacy of modern football fans and society in general.

Relative to all the hype, I found that pretty boring. Froch's Mrs is very fit, worth waiting to the end for her to jump on.

Spot on. Good to see some logic and balance on here.

Fair enough, how much time do you need?

Right, but the club were still trying to get MP to stay, there is only so far down the line they can go with recruiting a new manager. If in a few weeks time they haven't recruited anyone, by all means complain away, just a bit pointless after a couple of days.

Well that's quite a different scenario, so not really comparable is it. Exactly how far down the line can you go with recruiting a new manager a) Before the old one has left and b) While you're still trying to do your best to get the current one to stay.

Thanks. Sounds attainable as well, depending on how things pan out. Surprise we weren't linked to him last summer.

You are kidding aren't you? There is plenty of scope to be critical of the board if you so choose, but not appointing a manager after the last one left only a couple of days ago is going a bit far.

Pelle's record at Feyenoord looks outstanding, even if you take the quality of the league into account, but his career before that point looks pretty journeyman. Anyone know much more about him? Has he came close to getting a look in for Italy?

Why?

Yep, would agree with all that (although I'm probably still a bit more open minded on Reed than most others). I agree re KL etc taking things to heart - long term I still believe she is an asset for us and some of the reaction is well over-board, we could be owned my much worse people.

Bit of variance, but around evens for Koeman to come to us.