Lighthouse

Last time we got relegated we signed Ricardo Fuller, Tomasz Hajto, Kamil Kosowski, Bart Bialkowski and 38 year old Dennis Wise.

I have my reservations about this guy but if our scouts have managed to find a player worse than Tella to join us they should face criminal charges.

I’d like to see us sack Jones and appoint Dyche. Not because I think it will keep us up but so that everyone will shut up about appointing Dyche.

TBF he did play a significant part in sh*t housing a point out of Arsenal, only two other teams have manage that this season. He's not a particularly good player but used correctly he can sometimes be the horrible b*stard other teams hate playing against.

Wait, we have tactics?!

It’s nice that you think £70m is a big spend but I’m afraid you are mistaken.

Not bothered if we sack him or not, it’s too late now. We have nothing, literally nothing, to cause anyone problems in this league. Whether we like it or not, 18th and a point off safety is as good as this squad is capable of. Ralph and one vaguely competent player in the final third, signed in January, MIGHT have kept us up but I guess we’ll never know.

Splendid.

I genuinely don’t believe that Jones, nor any of the players (Aribo aside) has done nothing other than try their best. I’d never go so far as to call NJ a w*nker, they’re all just hopelessly out of their depth in this league.

My stream has died, praise God almighty! *A different god to whichever tree Jones is barking up, obviously.

Actually it’s darkest in a subterranean fissure at the bottom of the Marianna Trench, which is engulfed in suspended silt particles, has never seen sunlight and is inhabited only by primitive, plankton-based life forms. Probably a more apt metaphor.

Because it’s the most dreadful collection of players we’ve ever taken on the Premier League with. Before now we’ve always had Tiss, Pahars, Beattie, Kachloul, Ekelund and co. To give us something. As bad as we were there was always a bit of sparkle to just about keep us up. Even when we went down we had three top quality strikers and an excellent keeper to give us a chance. This bunch though… clueless, useless and gutless. There’s not one player out there I feel like I’d pay to see right now, our best player is a teenage DM who’s spent 2/3 of the season injured. We had a manager who pulled a rabbit out of a hat season after season but apparently he had to go. Apparently nobody could possibly be worse than clueless Ralph. Apparently there’s some magic formula which makes this this collection of Aldi off-brand players into a respectable mid table team. At least this relegation won’t hurt like 2005 did, we’ll all have long since given up caring by the middle of March.

Anything above pi is being generous.

You either don’t want to understand the points I made or you genuinely can’t comprehend analogies, negotiation or inflation. I am well aware that we need some serious attacking quality to stay up and even then it might not be enough. That doesn’t mean we should just chuck whatever money anyone asks for according to a bunch of tweets about a player who’s never played club football outside of Croatia.

We didn’t overplay him, he played 4.5 games before he got injured.

Imagine walking towards St Mary’s for an evening game and seeing something a quarter as good as this over the stadium.

FFS, no Lavia again, he’s being sold imminen… oh wait, never mind.

That’s what DT just offered to pay me, straight off the bat because I asked for it and he said he was essentially desperate, needed players now and didn’t want to haggle. That’s the point, it’s very easy to sit here and chuck Monopoly money around and shout, "just get it done FFS," when you’re not the one signing the cheques. Lots of thoroughly mediocre players have played in WC semi-finals, he was up against our very own Mr S. Boufal in the playoff. The fact that he’s 30, has only ever scored twice for Croatia, despite playing for a decent team in an attacking position, and nobody outside of the Croatian League has ever come in for him are a bit of a red flag. Not say he’s bad but this seems to be a punt. For comparison Filip Djuricic has a better club and international record than this guy, so let’s maybe calm down a bit. Which is why I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Assuming this isn’t all just agent talk trying to smoke out another bidder somewhere else, the idea that we wouldn’t fork out £6-8m for the player that keeps us up is, as you say, bonkers. The club will know far better than us the costs involved in relegation, so if we won’t pay it we likely don’t think he’s worth it. Also, he would only choose a rival if they offered him a better deal, not Zagreb. He won’t give a s**t what fee is agreed, only the cut he’s getting, which assuming these rumours are true he is happy with.

Unless one of the parties involved is a complete mug (and I know many on here would like to believe that about our lot) you are always going to haggle whether you ‘can afford to’ or not. If you’re selling a player and you ask for their actual market value, you’re doing something wrong. Whatever we offer, they would always ask for more because you never go straight in with your highest bid. Much like these stories about Leeds twenty years ago, if we’d gone in with an offer of £20m, they would have said, "well Southampton clearly feel he’s worth about £25m, so let’s haggle for that." Even if they only expected £8m. I don’t know anything about Orsic as a player but IF this is another Mara, Juanmi, Mayuka or Aribo style punt, it’d be ludicrous to be chucking £12m at a player worth £6-8m. One thing I will say with absolute certainty; if we could have signed a player on 1st January, for £8m who would have been a class above anyone we’ve got and the answer to our prayers we’d have done it.

I want €12m. There, now you’re haggling over €2m

Yes, that’s how negotiations work between two clubs. What would you have offered them?

He’s got an article in the papers, right here… run… just finished reading it.

Okay, awesome. That’ll be £30m please.

Without even looking at the fixtures, I'm going to say Everton will miraculously get eleven points from five games in April and beat a couple of top six teams, to pull themselves clear. Jammy buggers always weasle out of it. I really can't see beyond Saints, Forest and Bournemouth for the drop. Leeds and Wolves will hover but ultimately survive IMO.

This is inflation in its very basics. It’s like a guy who works in McDonald’s saying he wishes he got paid £1m a year, so he could buy a Ferrari. Wonderful idea but if you do that, all the doctors, lawyers and bankers earn £5m and Ferraris cost £10m. So the world stays the same but with different numbers. However you want to present it, we’re one of the poorest teams in the league and we will, generally speaking, get the worst player as a result. There is no realistic scenario in the world whereby serious targets for Champions League clubs come to Saints.