Lallana's Left Peg

I don't disagree with the sentiment but when we finished 8th in the League we had a Manager who would play many of the kids who Koeman has just declared not good enough. I'm convinced that Reed can contribute to this team more than he is being allowed to.

He is right in saying that the required standard has improved. But as has been mentioned above, he also lacks the capability to be able to develop a player via giving them first team minutes. That is the most disappointing thing given his record at Feyenoord. He'd rather play senior pros with known ceiling caps on their ability than see if a youngster can make the step up. I never thought that was the 'Southampton Way'.

Pretty sure everyone at the club is acutely aware that the player needs to be paid after he is purchased. Overall cost of deals are always factored into every signing whether they are a free transfer or under contract and require a transfer fee. Everyone is getting excited because they've seen the total cost of Ramirez to Saints over 4 years but the Osvaldo figures are far worse.

A definite toughening up there, at least in public.

When is the last time a player worth £25m went for around that transfer fee as a sideways move and only increased their wages from say 40k to 60k? Quite simply those sorts of players join better teams than us.

Think you're missing the default question posed to Koeman that has nothing to do with Southampton. Maybe one on the injuries at Liverpool or the FIFA presidency.

They don't always work out (Ramirez, Osvaldo), and some are hot and cold (Long), but the ones that have worked out (or look like they will) like Tadic, Mane, Bertrand, Forster and VvD are vital to our team. My belief is that the board do genuinely reinvest everything they get from transfers but at this stage we're now of a sound financial footing where if we sell a player for £30m we can spend £10-15m on a player on a good wage and seek to minimise the loss of the good player as much as possible rather than making signings with too many risks and then ending up with an indifferent season like this. And if other teams are better in the transfer market then that is fair enough, but I'd rather see us take the above approach then spend 25-33% of the sold players value on his replacement. It's a real big drop in quality of player. EDIT: Forgot Wanyama too - he's been a hit.

Yep - you can of course sign £5m players that are better than £10m players, but by and large the more money you pay the better the player you get. If we're going to sell players for £30m I'd prefer our policy to target and try to sign £10m calibre players (say, two of them) as replacements / enhancing the team rather than £5m players. Nothing is guaranteed of course when you spend money, but the general rule is the better players cost more and I think the thing for a team like Saints is that a £10m player can make a much bigger difference than a £5m player. We'll of course continue to sign duds just as much as we continue to sign players that work out well for us, but now is the time to start spending more on quality players that make a difference. We've seen this season what happens if we don't.

People turning on Mane already. There is a reason he's our highest valued player and that's because he is our best player. There is room for plenty of improvement in his game but he is already a handful for all teams he faces and does some things that people can't stop without fouling him (he's the most fouled player in the league this season for reference). And even if you think £30m is good value, who exactly do you think our club is going to sign to replace him? It's 50/50 whether any replacement for him is any good and any Saints team without Mane in at the moment is half the team it is with him in.

I live in the North-West and none of my Liverpool supporting mates are fans. They say he hangs onto the ball too long, is slow, and turns into traffic far too much as well. It's fair to say he hasn't done well at Liverpool.

I think its a mess personally. Didn't expect to finish 7th in the league and then 6 months later be 6 places worse off. Season can be somewhat salvaged but overall it has been a mess: 1. Didn't even quality for Europa League 2. Toby farce 3. Lost two other starters (Clyne and Schneiderlin) and failed to adequately replace them 4. Bottled second biggest game of season (Liverpool in the Quarter-Final, most important being the away game in Denmark) 5. 13th in the league and lost 7 of 9 And I haven't even mentioned the players refusing to sign new contracts. Don't think it will go down as an average season. It's ****e at best. Only a really strong second half of the season resulting in a Top 10 finish would be anywhere near acceptable, even then when you write down what has happened since June it's a bit of a joke. But that is just my opinion - I thought the club would do a better job at sustaining itself in the Top 8 or so but I think I my confidence was misplaced after this summers transfer activity.

Reed with the backing of the rest of the board.

Doubt he will walk like that. He has been allowed to bring in a lot of his own targets and he has struggled to get the best out of them this season. So whilst we may spend somewhat meekly and I think he would have a point, what we have spent on has been on a lot of 'his guys' so he is also responsible for the mess.

Caulker is a bomb scare. We don't play three at the back any more and we're not in Europe. No need to pay him £30k+ to be on the bench every other game when we could have an England U21 international doing it on a third of the salary. Is Stephens better than Caulker? Probably not. Is either going to play much? Probably not. Is it sensible to save the club money rather than having it padded out with players eating up money doing nothing. I think so.

Aren't they only signing him on loan with a fee of £16.2m agreed if they want to sign him permanently in the summer?

Koeman treats them all as mature people and doesn't treat them like kids. By and large the players respond well to this and also his coaching from what I can tell. Unfortunately some misguided individuals take advantage of this and it's causing issues with those who act properly within the group. They want to see the club (if not Koeman himself) drive out this behaviour in the first place as it isn't helping matters at all. Think we all recognise we're a momentum team that relies on spirit and collectiveness but you've got players acting inappropriately who aren't receiving due punishment which in turn is hacking off senior professionals seeking to set an example and do things the right way. Then cliques start forming and it's a bit downhill from there. Maybe winning games means these things don't matter as much but when you aren't winning these things come to the forefront a little more. I do feel sorry for Koeman a little in this scenario as certain players have been told and yet continue to act in their best interests in order to get what they want. Unfortunately these individuals are too important to the team so with no alternative the whole team / club suffers if a zero tolerance policy is adopted. However I think it has now got to a point where something has got to change one way or another (and I don't mean Koeman leaving, I mean either things are tightened up and they fall in line or they leave). But Koeman must instigate it as he is the leader of the players. My gut feeling is that things will tighten up but there will be some casualties.

Hopefully we get rid of Caulker now and it's a move in the right direction.

This hasn't come out of the club to me but I know someone who works in football where I live (Manchester) and he hears bits and bobs over the course of his job. Dismiss it as nonsense if you like but he told me that he's heard the players like Koeman but the senior players want him to get more of a grip on the squad and establish more discipline as certain players aren't behaving appropriately and Koeman appears to let them get away with it. It's also creating cliques in the group which isn't doing team spirit any good. No individuals named but I would imagine we can all probably guess.

The challenge is that every single team other team in the league spent money in the summer in order to try and make their first team better. Some get it right, some don't. Some spend a lot doing it, some don't. But unless you try then it won't happen. We spent this summer trying to fill three holes and ending up not getting anywhere near as good in any of them (though I do like the VvD signing), and then on top of that signing squad players who are third / fourth / fifth choice. The approach doesn't make sense and it questions how we spent our money. It's also then even harder if you are content to just spend money you receive on transfer fees on new players.

FFP means that if our wage bill is over £52m a year (last summer it was) then we can only increase it by £4m that season. The only other additional way it can be increased is via commercial revenue but our club is way behind on that so basically the wage bill could only increase by say around £5m last summer. That is probably why we got rid of Osvaldo. Signing Stek and Caulker didn't help as they were loan cover for players already at the club and being paid. That's why I didn't like our 'padding out' of the squad. Juanmi contributed the square root of **** all eating up 30-40k a week probably. Caulker the same. Don't sign them and it's 80k we could have used towards wages for better players elsewhere. Mind boggling.

Twente owe us after Martina as well.

Yeah Clasie has looked great hasn't he. Can't last 90mins, bullied off the ball when we play against energetic sides and looked his best when we've played four central midfielders in a 4-4-2 just to stop us being carved open so easily. Lets not talk about the way he was done for the goal on Saturday either. Turning circle of an oil tanker. He is a million miles away from being anywhere near as effective as Morgan for us. He's an £8m player and it shows.

£5m. But no-one knew how good he would be. He was a prospect signing and it is paying dividends already. He also wasn't signed to immediately replace anybody or plug a hole in the team. If your argument is that you don't have to spend much to buy a good player then it only serves to highlight how poor our summer was in the transfer market where we didn't spend much on some not very good players. Generally speaking, the more you spend the better calibre of player you get. There are of course exceptions and spending lots guarantees nothing. But it usually guarantees more than spending not much.

Would be mad to sell for £30m. That isn't going to go very far this summer in this sort of market - especially for a domestic transfer.

I don't want the club to sign a £25m player as it isn't realistic. But a £12m player in the centre of the park - it's vital. Lets not forget when we already had Morgan we added Wanyama. Now we've lost Morgan and we replaced him with Clasie or Romeu and neither are anywhere near as effective for us and we're suffering all over the pitch because of it. I think we also stopped doing it in the centre of the park. Morgan went for £25m and his replacements are £8m and £5m respectively. And it shows.