Lallana's Left Peg

I am by no means a bed wetter at all and very rarely have any negative thoughts about the club but right now I am quite concerned that we have a Manager who doesn't appear committed and players futures who are linked to a Manager more than the Club itself. It all has the potential to go very very wrong. And should it do so, by the time it is sorted we may need to replace some important players (50/50 record in the transfer market at best) and of course a Manager. Not an exciting prospect, is it?

I don't want a pithy press release or anything like that. I'd much prefer the club to be decisive and move forward. The longer this goes on the weaker our position for Pochettino staying, recruiting a new Manager, players leaving / coming etc.

Former - bids for Shaw and Lallana.

The club isn't coming off very well in all this thus far. Press are like a pig in **** linking our players everywhere and our Manager to Spurs, meanwhile our public declaration of sorting out things at the end of the season set some expectations yet there is no news and all we have to put up with as fans are the prospect of being a much worse team next season. I would have suggested that it may have been more prudent for the club to say things will be looked at in the summer rather than at the end of the season, which sets the expectation that if there was a desire from the Manager to stay at the club that it may have been something that was sorted by now. As it goes our Manager is clearly non-committal right now (which in itself is a bad feeling) and further to that it appears the future of key players are more linked to our Manager than our Club, which is also a horrible feeling. So now I have to put some faith in a Board with no footballing experience (aside from Les Reed) to get a deal sorted for our Manager just several weeks after they claimed to have inherited a 'difficult' financial position. So you'll have to excuse me right now if I think they have something to prove rather than me thinking they have my trust and all be will be ok.

Good piece from the Echo online which basically suggests Saints are sitting on player bids until they get Pochettino's future sorted.

I disagree - players progress at different rates. Here are some examples: Shaw - was with the U21's last season until November Chambers - with the U21's all of last season JWP - dipped into the U21's in the second half of last season Reed - made the step up to the U21's late last season and spent most of this season with them The U21's this season also contained a lot of players making the step up from the U18's full time. Our U21 team is regularly one of the youngest put out (I would suggest an average age of 19) whilst our U18 team mainly consisted of first year scholars this season. Dodd and Williams do a good job bringing the players on and teaching them about standards and Hunter is very good at instilling an element of professionalism in the way they manage the game and gets them doing the things that Pochettino likes ahead of training in the first team. If there is a reason any of them are leaving I would be fairly confident in saying it has nothing to do with performance.

Why on earth would we sack Dodd / Williams and Hunter? Both manage the youngest teams in their league and have been responsible for honing young talent so it is deemed good enough to make the step up to a team that is 8th in the Premier League.

Not good to have legal issues - until we know who invoked them it'll be very hard to make any reasoned assumptions regardless of who the names are.

I would fully expect players to be informed of the clubs position when other teams bid GDP's of small nations for their services. In fact I suspect they are entirely aware of the buying clubs position but it would be unusual and unfair for Saints to leave them in the dark. If nothing they should just reiterate their position to them that they aren't for sale so the next round of transfers requests and leveraging can begin. My theory is that the club doesn't know what to do with players until they know who will be their Manager, and they can't sort that until Pochettino makes up his mind. A bit of a sorry state of affairs.

Enjoyed his agro-laden approach to dealing with defenders in League 1.

I agree with the sentiment but I don't think it is for RK to say this. He's a Chairman who I believe has stated publicly he will have nothing to do with the sporting side of the club. KL is the owner and keeps a low profile. It's Les Reed who appears to have the responsibility for any chatter around the football side of the club. I don't think it is as straight forward as coming out and re-iterating what was said 3-4 weeks ago as that doesn't address the issues. The issues are that the club has repeatedly said things will be assessed at the end of the season and now we're here they have backed themselves into a corner and have in my eyes made themselves appear weak by not being able to deal with the Pochettino situation swiftly. Maybe Pochettino himself is playing games but why would you commit when you know a better offer could be coming along soon?

Imagine if Pochettino leaves and no-one wants Osvaldo and we're stuck with him

I would find it hard to believe a club of our size and our means would pay any employee £115k a week (at least where the person approving the wage isn't the person receiving it...). And we shouldn't either. We are an attraction for a Manager as much as the other way around. I'd like Pochettino to stay but we shouldn't be desperate.

I was told the original deal was loan to permanent (already agreed) anyway.

Are they going to asset strip this summer as well

I think the new Board should know now about summer budgets and desire to push on though. Or certainly be in a position to tell Pochettino what is what. That said, maybe they are and the moment the season is over they talk.

Fair enough I suppose.

The 25% sell-on fee may prove to be a saving grace. Saints can dig their heels in and insist any fee they want has to be net of that, and hopefully that will scare teams off. Can't say it would mean Lallana is happy though. Of course, one way to completely circumvent this is to chuck some players into the deal and lesson the fee. Now then, would could we realistically take from the potential suitors of Lallana. We know Pochettino likes young English players...

My away days: League West Brom - 9/10 (last minute winner really felt like the momentum kicker as the game was turgid) Norwich - 4/10 (just a bad day at the office) Liverpool - 10/10 (great atmosphere, great weather, great performance and great result) Man Utd - 8/10 (decent performance, enjoyed poking fun at the Man Utd supporters, and a late equaliser - should have won though) Stoke - 6/10 (horrible weather, decent performance, crazy goals) Newcastle - 6/10 (never really got going in the game, but a decent point) Sunderland - 6/10 (threw it away but was good to watch a game after all the Cortese stuff) Hull - 8/10 (great performance, really controlled the game and should have had more, decent atmosphere for midweek away as well) Man City - 6/10 (decent performance albeit limp second half after the ridiculous officiating mistake, and horrible injury to Jay Rod) League Cup Barnsley - 6/10 (not a great match but saw five goals and great to see the kids play) Sunderland - 5/10 (bad performance, seeing Reed was the only enjoyable part)

I don't think selling his best players was a surprise to him - he only got the job in the first place because they were broke. I think it just wore him down that season after season he'd have to sell his best players and get in replacements. You can see why there is no point him hanging around in Southampton if that is going to be the case. His stock is pretty high right now so no need to get stuck into the same cycle again.

Usually 18 months or so but not unusual to wait until the summer of the penultimate year. Would like both to stay myself.

Cork and Fonte are under contract for another year.

Don't really like all this game playing being done. My best guess is that Pochettino and the players want assurances the club wants to continue to progress - basically, they don't want to be given a reason to want to leave from Saints (regardless of the lure of other clubs). I don't know if those assurances can be given from a financial perspective as I don't know if the Board want to sustain what they've got (that may be the only option given our wage bill?) or if we really do have the financial flexibility to push on further?

What makes it worse is that bar Lovren and Davis (S) every single other outfield first team squad player right now is one we have developed as well (Wanyama is up for debate but I see some good progress in his game this season alone). So we don't even get the medium term benefit of that. Say we do scout well and sign a decent player, we've then got to develop them over a few years etc. Selling when we should be the ones to benefit from our hard work is just a terrible idea.

And that, unfortunately, is the problem. There is no way if we sell any of our best players that we replace them with someone as good. It's not going to be a case of selling Shaw for £30m and signing his replacement for £30m. Selling players is just a bad idea for us.