Sour Mash

I think Adkins will be gone regardless of where we finish. But in all honesty, finishing 17th wouldn't be particularly impressive considering the money spent. I don't think Di Matteo is anything special as a manager, it was Cech, Cole, Terry, Lampard & Drogba stepping up and running the show that won it for Chelsea last season, along with a fair slice of luck. As already pointed out on this thread, he was pretty poor at WBA.

Said it before, just got a feeling we're going to end up with Di Matteo regardless of what else happens. Personally think Di Matteo is well overrated anyway.

Norwich will be £30/35 for us.

Play the same team as against Arsenal, but with Clyne at right-back and Cork in for Davis centre midfield, Hooiveld for Fonte.

According to Tancredi Palmeri on twitter, AC Milan are going to line up a bit for Ramirez in the summer. Could be interesting.

Think it's been generally accepted for a while that the player has agreed terms, it's the negotiation on transfer fee between the clubs that is taking it's time.

Just seen that 4 out of our next 5 games are away and our next two home games are to Everton and Man City - pretty tough run that. Still think we should have got greater breathing space from the bottom 3 as a result of our "easier" run of games.

For a few more games maybe. You won't base a signing this big on the need to cover an injured player fro a few weeks.

The ticket office were telling people only yesterday that there were still loads available?

Not sure about RDM already working for us, but agree he'll end up being our manager sooner, rather than later. Not ITK, just a gut feeling.

Hopefully we're lining up a couple of other bids for similar quality CBs to 1) Push Cagliari along and put the pressure back on them. 2) To ensure we do get a quality CB in sooner rather than later.

But my point is, there's much, much more to 'net spend' than just transfer fees.

It obviously wasn't a "£3million net spend to get to the Premier League" was it?

That's the whole point - we don't know where all the money is coming from, we don't have a clue.

Out of our signings to date, I think we'd get our money back for Yoshida, Ramirez and Davis, probably double what we paid for Clyne and lose a bit on Mayuka, Rodriguez and Gazzaniga.

Yep, completely agree. We might never know what goes on behind the scenes, or be able to do anything about it if there is something wrong, but the least we should be doing is trying to ask the right questions and probe for answers where we can. Hate the Premier League and the money obsessed beast that it's become anyway.

The team selection showed we didn't care about the Chelsea game? How do you work that out? From what I could see, we only rested/rotated one player, Lambert, everything else was as full-strength as our injuries would allow.

Our support was poor, no doubt about it. We're stuck with where the away fans are, so can't do anything about that, but the club haven't helped the Itchen North get going with what they've done to block 3. As others have mentioned, what I really hate is the double standards of our police and stewarding, seem to let away fans get away with what they want and come down on Saints fans like a ton of bricks for the smallest of things.

Lallana isn't much better. We miss Fox badly in this regard, although it's not enough to recall him for.

Ignoring Fonte's injury is out of order, but apart from that, what would you expect considering ow the 2nd half went?

Not watched any of it back yet, but what more could Boruc do? Why pick out Guly but not Puncheon? Rodriguez was excellent first half, pretty anonymous in the 2nd. If he plays, the rest of our side need to understand we no longer have the 'Lambert' out-ball option.

Will do a full reaction to the game post once home, but today was yet another good reminder how far we are from the top 5/6 of English football. Hate days like this, seeing the city of Southampton and St Marys taken over by a load of mouthy, band wagon jumping pr1cks.

Sounds like a cheap option to me.

Not going to complain about having 3 quality CBs, but it's a weird position to cover, bit like a back up keeper, you might be a decent player, but you can go a whole season with hardly any game time, as opposed to a back up forward who will get chucked on most weeks for 15/20mins or a midfielder that'll often get brought on to help close a game off.

Yeah I know, but which would you pick to drop? Hard call, as both been very good of late.