Lallana's Left Peg

It's an interesting blog - I am not sure our transfer activities this summer have been planned nor do I think that we would be seeking ways to increase our wage budget via loans however as a theory I can see some sense in it.

We really didn't need him though, can't say I am bothered whatsoever about this.

Absolutely correct and whilst in the modern game player behaviour makes it hard to build something and there are some things you can't control the way we've timidly accepted it and allowed ourselves to get in this situation really annoys me as a supporter.

Man City have done well there. Rodwell gets injured all the time and has really lost his way.

We're short in areas but many teams in the bottom half are. I think we're in better shape than we were two summers ago. I've been very scathing of our summer thus far but I am not too worried about relegation. I am just concerned about our prospects beyond middling as a lower half team that festers away just happy to exist and be a part of the party.

Current squad is good enough to stay up but falls well short of clubs stated ambitions.

Maybe they recommended him after our esteemed DoF failed to strike a deal to sign the first 17 strikers on the list despite having a net transfer kitty of £75m?

You don't know that. You have no idea whether or not we are. You choose to focus on the spin from the club and make excuses when it doesn't happen. I prefer to focus on what we're told and whether or not it is delivered. There could be any number of reasons why deals haven't happened, and they either could be in our control or out of our control. I have never complained about a lack of communication from the club regarding transfers but I do choose to listen to what the club say publicly and then see if they can deliver. Right now we are clearly struggling - we've sold most of our best players and the rebuild of the team is clearly not going to plan. You can piece together all manner of information to come to that conclusion. The club have a month to try and patch it up and fix it but as of right now this summer has been a complete balls up. Anyone who thinks differently has got the blinkers on.

But we set expectations that we hoped to sign 2-3. Not just 1. We hoped to do something and didn't manage it. So we failed at what we attempted to do. With the club in such a state of flux and fans rightly concerned at what is happening to extend that level of hope to the fans and then not deliver is a little naïve.

Yes he said he hoped to get 2-3 players in over the weekend. We got none. We failed.

Our new Manager did on Thursday night. He may have just been putting pressure on the Board to get deals done to be fair. They may even have them done and be waiting until today to announce them. But at the end of the day if you had told Saints fans at the start of summer that we'd be linked to Samaras the response would be 'meh'. Then if you had told them we'd be linked to him on a free after selling nearly £100m worth of talent they'd be angry. Not sure why we shouldn't be angry now.

If they were good enough for the level of the club they were at then they would play. That isn't the question we should be asking though, it is whether or not they are good enough for the level that we play at and more importantly what their motivation would be to join us from a better club who are paying them more. We've not exactly had a great record signing players from clubs equal or better than us - all of our best signings have come from players joining us a step up (or rather, a stepping stone...).

Since May the Board never gave you any reason to have any.

Probably best not to kid yourself on that front. The reason he's at Saints in the first place is because he made the best decision for his career so I doubt he'd turn his back on a better opportunity out of loyalty to Saints.

I think they do - as long as Les Reed is at the club I believe we'll have an emphasis on young English talent. I think he wants to lead the way with English football development. To be fair to him, he's doing a good job thus far and one of the reasons we've got such great fees for our players is because they are English.

And the rest...

He means Ryan Bertrand not Right-Back.

What is wrong with what he said?

Has input, no player is signed unless Manager is satisfied with him, but Reed is the man with the power.

Cortese had the final say when he was at the club. Reed has it now. That is the difference. The underlying process is still the same.

Scored a good goal against Man City last season but apart from that been a waste of space.

Waste of time.

But even then armed with a £70m+ surplus in transfer fees we should be identifying players to buy to develop rather than loaning them from other clubs and giving them all the benefit for a short-term fix for ourselves. If we start loaning players it'll be one of the most idiotic things we can do and a sure sign that we are failing to buy players due to incompetence. I'll make the Taidar deal an acceptable deviation given the main purpose of that deal is getting rid of Osvaldo however why we are signing another central midfielder when that is the strongest part of our squad I've no idea but there you go.

In the space of 8 weeks we've gone from being a club who have youngsters that Arsenal want to buy to being a club they send their fringe youngsters to like some sort of finishing school. I really don't want us to be one of those clubs. Lets develop our own players.

You must be raging that all the ratings updates you've done for our best players are for the benefit of other teams now