Lighthouse

2 minutes ago, LeG said:

Other clubs interested are Spurs, United, Liverpool and one from Germany. Leas to believe that they aren’t the only ones. Doubt he’s going to Everton with the other waiting in the wings. 

Same with Fernandes…loads and loads want him. I reckon this could be a club record fee….

As in - more than the £80m we received for Virgil? 😐

I'll believe that when I see it.

Is @elbobble the random Twitter account people weirdly think is ITK for no reason, this summer? Hardly seems like a credible journalist.

3 minutes ago, egg said:

Ha! It's a shame you missed the semis and the final. You'd have seen performances from McCarthy that Baz wouldn't have put in. 

You’re just making up nonsense now. We won all three league games against West Brom and Leeds with Bazunu in goal. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen, or that the FA would have given us an 18 point deduction for playing him against Preston, just because I don’t like him.

3 minutes ago, egg said:

We were much better after he got injured and McCarthy took over the gloves. Personally, I'm not sure we'd have made it to and through the play offs if Baz had stayed in the team. 

WTF?! I’ve seen some nonsense written on here but after Bazunu got injured we lost three out of five games and still finished 17 points ahead of seventh place. I get that some people don’t rate Baz but when people start denying mathematical certainties (including those who believe 63 and 0 are the same number) it just gets weird. Those three games lost included getting thumped 5-0 at Leicester and losing at home to relegation threatened Stoke, via a goal which went straight through McCarthy. Hardly an end of season rocket up the form table.
 

Whether some of you like it or not, Still would appear to be the fifth consecutive manager to prefer Bazunu to McCarthy, so unless we sign another keeper in the next three weeks, it looks like he’s going to be our keeper this season.

31 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

We are too weak to hold a player who doesn’t want to stay so I agree 

So were Liverpool with Trent, this isn’t unique to Saints.

33 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

I watched him with my own eyes, and so did a lot of other people. I know what I saw every week to be honest, the stats just backed it up. So that's that really.

I'll respect your view.

I watched him with my own eyes two and I can remember one howler (Plymouth at home) and maybe half a dozen he should have done better with. That’s about par for a keeper over the course of a season and pointing out his save percentage statics were 4% lower than average isn’t enough to convince me that we were ‘promoted in spite of him’.

8 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

We have to really pull off an incredible last few weeks to be in the convo for Top 2.

I wouldn't say that. We need a couple of decent attacking midfielders but I think we've got a pretty decent Championship squad. There will be a few teams in the mix but I can't see why we wouldn't be one of them.

8 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

Yup if you remember with van dijk we made a lot of fuss about him being tapped up .. nowadays it seems to be totally common practice .

even still I can’t just agree that we should make it so easy for anyone who wants to leave .. fernandes for example if he goes for any less then 50 m this is just becoming ridicolous

Agree with who, exactly? Criticise Rasmus all you like on a variety of issues, but you can't deny he's done well getting good fees for players we have sold. We've already received a quite astonishing figure for Sully and managed to sell Onuachu for £6m, instead of £6. It seems like we're holding out for a decent price on Dibling too.

11 minutes ago, Wade Garrett said:

But they didn’t because they could attract a manager like Moyes as they are a bigger club than us.

They didn't because they had much better players than us and were underperforming under Dyche, which obviously made them a much better prospect than Saints and the certainty of weekly defeats and relegation.

This whole idea of 'big clubs' is just something people argue about in the comments of Sport Bible on Facebook, it means f**k all in real world terms. Dibling isn't going to Everton because they won the 1995 FA Cup. It's PL football and money.

F**k me, how many of these meaningless 'fantasy signings' threads do you need? If anyone else cared, they'd have posted in the last two you started this summer.

4 minutes ago, Wade Garrett said:

They’re a much bigger club than us.

They're a much Premier Leaguier team than us. If Everton had gone down instead, players would be going the other direction.

10 hours ago, Smirking_Saint said:

Needing a passport to have a wank

Nah, you just need a 100 mile ethernet cable and a router in Cherbourg.

43 minutes ago, Golac's Cunning Stunts said:

How are we a different team? THB and Downes are hardly inspiring to say the least

You're asking how we're a different team, if we have our best CB and two best CM available?

1 hour ago, Sheaf Saint said:

I didn't watch today, so let me get this straight...

Having spent the back end of last season desperately wanting Juric to ditch the 3 CBs because it clearly didn't work with the players we had available, we're now saying that playing 3 CBs is the best option for us right now with the players we have available?

I'm confused.

Personally, I still prefer the back four. I think looking better with a five today was something of a fluke in that it coincided with us bringing Robinson on, playing Archer more central and Brighton taking a few of their better players off. Whichever system we play, I still feel we're missing a bit of creativity and can't just rely on one of the kids to be our spark.

If THB, Downes and Fernandes (or his replacement) were available, we're a different team.

Oscars won:

Titanic - 11

Deadpool - 0

A few decent performances in there, decent pre-season game overall. Really like the look of Robinson, Edwards, Charles and Quarshie, although the latter seemed to stand off a bit too far at times IMO. Suga might be alright in a five, against weaker oposition. Baz had a solid game, as did Stephens for the most part. I think we looked more threatening with Archer central and AA in behind.

33 minutes ago, sadoldgit said:

Rohl has left. The club is in chaos.

5 minutes ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

So it’s better to have three crap players then one great one ? This is exactly why we got relegated quantity over quality 

we could easily do without stephens bazunu and smallbone and would probably be better off them not playing 

Stephens, Bazunu and Smallbone are not ‘crap’ Championship players and will play a significant part in this season, as they did two years ago when we were successfully promoted. Ramsdale would take up a disproportionate amount of our wage bill.

10 hours ago, pimpin4rizeal said:

Annoying thing is we get him out on loan to save his wages apparently . Yet are happy to give wankers like stephens probably close to half of that .. just think ramsdale wages is probably no more then the likes of stephens bazunu and smallbone combined 

You say that like it’s an argument in favour of keeping Ramsdale. The fact that we could have three Championship players for his wages is literally the reason we’re loaning him out.

Linking JWP with a move back down here is about as lazy as fake ITKs get. Particularly since he started pretty much every game under Potter and even if he is suddenly frozen out, loads of PL teams will be after him.

28 minutes ago, benjii said:

I think it's a mistake to sell now.

His value won't be massively reduced when he has one year left on his contract, particularly if he has just had a great season in the Championship and has multiple parties interested. If that happens, I think we would get a similar amount next summer

Disagree. We’re highly unlikely to get anything near the £27m Everton have already offered (I’m not saying we should accept that) for a player with only a year left on his contract. In a worst case scenario, his head gets turned by someone like Levy and his agent gives us an ultimatum. We could end up in a scenario where he will only sign for Spurs, on the promise of a massive signing on fee, and we end up with turnips as a transfer fee. Basically what happened with Hojbjerg.

1 minute ago, StrangelyBrown said:

Oh yes we have...

We've tried to sign hidden gems from Man City and Chelsea's academy with mixed success, hidden gems from mediocre European teams with little success, half decent championship players for the premier league with next to no success, loans of formerly good premier league players...

We've had a number of failed strategies and as a result there have been far far more misses than hits.

What is it you think that's 'too clever' about any of that? We're never signing established PL players, we're always going to have to take a gamble on someone.

26 minutes ago, AlexLaw76 said:

He clearly said 3 players to be brought in regardless and outwith any sales.. 

A lot of people say a lot of things. A reasonable number of departures was always going to be the first priority and that's what we've done.

Just now, StrangelyBrown said:

This.

We need to sign some quality in some really key positions. Dragan promised some of them, but so far what have the team delivered??? A young CB who might be good and a young CF who might be good...

So many years of trying to be cleverer than everyone else has resulted in a bloated mediocre team, we seriously need to stop speculating on footballs equivalent of penny shares hoping to accidentally invest in a unicorn.

With such a bloated squad, there were always likely to be a lot of outgoings before we were able to recruit. Hopefully we’re now in a position where we might be able to bring a couple more players in. Luckily, in a way, we already have a decent Championship standard squad from last season, so we shouldn’t need much by way of recruitment.

We haven’t tried to be cleverer than anyone, we’ve just recruited poorly.

A shame they couldn't keep the retro theme going by charging nineties prices for them.