Lallana's Left Peg

Looks like he's eyeing up a new boot deal as well!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32510554 Big ask, plenty of reasons why it won't happen, but that is what targets are all about.

Some of those scenarios are the cherry on top. The cake is the fact that they completely ****ed up spending £120m, have missed out on the Champions League (barring a miracle), one of their best ever players prefers to play in the US than stay on, their next best player can't stay fit for more than 2mins, and their utter gob****e of a Manager is coming off like a complete clown. Absolutely hilarious.

Nice article for recognition, however I don't like this bit: I think he was highly rated at Palace and he was in a team that was on course for the playoffs. His move to us was because Palace were strapped and we paid him a lot of money. He was a bit of coup for us, rather than us being someone who he had to turn to because his career was on the downslide.

I wouldn't expect him to say anything else, regardless of what the club think will happen internally.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11700/9827239/les-reed-says-jay-rodriguez-and-morgan-schneiderlin-will-not-be-leaving-southampton-this-summer?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Lots of good stuff in there. I am glad squad depth for Europe will come from within - would be great to qualify for Europe and see lots of Academy graduates play. EDIT: Also says we'll loan a keeper or sign a young keeper as Forster will be back in January. FULL ARTICLE:

I agree - it would be wrong to say that they haven't spent much money and don't have much investment, but it would be equally wrong to suggest that what they have achieved still isn't impressive given the clubs they have finished above.

What is he like in the air? Morgan wins a lot of headed duels in the middle of the park. Size matters in our league. Clasie, Wanyama, and Davis aren't that tall. Reed either.

Sounds positive but it could just be posturing our end to position ourselves in the public eye. Les Reed did similar thing in the summer last year ahead of the sales. Would be absolutely massive if he did sign though.

Steve De Ridder? Tadanari Lee? Emmanuel Mayuka? Vegard Forren? And in terms of good Liverpool signings in the same period: Shelvey, Suarez, Henderson, Sturridge, Coutinho. Liverpool have wasted a lot of money. So have we. We have signed a lot of good players. So have Liverpool. Liverpool have more money so have wasted more, but then they've also signed better players than we ever will as well. It's true they have had plenty of mistakes but then so have we.

Saints and Liverpool have both signed an equal amount of bad and good players in that period, for varying amounts of money. No club is better than 50/50 in the transfer market.

Marca reporting that Real Madrid are considering purchasing Hernandez but won't to renegotiate the agreed free with Man Utd which is about £14m.

Who?

That doesn't mean they need to play elsewhere whilst the work is done though.

Where did I say they wouldn't sign players in the summer? They will need to decide what approach they take in the summer - to buy some experience and potentially disrupt the team a little, or buy young players who haven't played at that level before. The risk to the former is disrupting what has got them performing greater than the sum of their parts this season, the risk to the latter is that the league is a big step up over the course of the season and it could go very wrong without any nous.

I think it's good that another new team get a slice of the Premier League money. Who knows how they will do - there is still a lot of gunk at the bottom of the league and they will need to decide what financial approach they will take to it. The only thing that is a guarantee is that having a Manager and entire squad (bar the current keeper) that is new to the Premier League is a risk.

I doubt Ramirez is going to extend his contract and so with him entering the last year of his deal I suspect, regardless of how much intrigue I have to see if Koeman could find a productive role for him, the club will seek to move him on. Personally would like to see him stay if we make Europe - I think a team with a few kids and Gaston in playing in European games would be fun to watch.

I'm not against keeping him but not at anything more than £5m.

Alderweireld - do as much as we can to make it happen. Elia - if the rumoured fee is around £3-4m then it makes it more tempting. Wages of around £40k a week? I don't think he is blocking the pathway of a younger player. I wouldn't be unhappy if we made a move for him - wingers are inconsistent by nature, but I don't think he's a player to take us to the next level. Djuricic - if the fee is £9m or so as rumoured then leave well alone.

To be fair there is time for things to change. Van Gaal also ended up changing his mind about Fellani. Would love to sign Hernandez but wouldn't want us to be a team he reluctantly settled on.

22/22 At the age of 34, that lot were in the prime of my sticker collecting in my youth and I'd have been disappointed with anything else. In fact I knew the answer for 90% of them without seeing the options.

More importantly, if he is fit, will he play in midfield?

Pompey may be able to pay Cook more to be fair.

You are absolutely right. Would rather we have all this grief with our £10-12m signings a few years into their contract than be where we are with Ramirez and Osvaldo. The challenge for our club is to inch closer each season to being better and maybe, one day, in a position to keep our rising stars. Difficult I know, but that is the challenge.

I didn't say it was. I said it was disrespectful behaviour in line with what we've experienced in the last 12 months.