Lighthouse

It was an example of why this idea won’t work, because you only want to apply it in a certain way which positively affects Saints and nobody else. You want to live in a world where only Saints spend an extra £2m on getting Cucurella, Ramos and Gakpo, whilst nobody else hijacks deals for our best signings and we don’t splash out on some duds.

No idea what your point is. Some of the players we didn’t sign might have come here if we’d offered more. Okay fine, but you can’t just apply that rule to only the players we want and didn’t sign. Using that same attitude we never sign Tadic or Mané because some other club offers £2m more to ‘just get it done’ before us, meanwhile we have to spend an extra £2m on Moi and Armstrong to ‘just get it done’. If we do that, so does everyone else, Saints aren’t unique. All you’re really doing after all is said and done is inflating overall prices.

There’s no ‘may’ about it. January only ever represents awful value for money, unless a player is out of contract in summer. Nobody wants to sell decent players and knowing the perilous situation we’re in will only push prices up ever further. That’s why we have to be extra vigilant not to get taken to the cleaners for somebody not especially good. Whoever we sign is likely to be overpriced, without chucking extra money at a deal just to get it done quickly. Even that assumes extra money WILL get a done quickly, rather than simply pushing demands up even higher. No doubt that’s true but that’s not to say those players were necessarily decent. We missed out on some young Polish lad called Kaputska, who went to Leicester for £8m. No doubt we could have gotten him if we’d offered £11m and a massive contract but he ended up being a complete flop an vanished without a trace. It would have been a complete waste of money and we’d never have signed Hojbjerg. Plus, you can’t just say that about the players we didn’t sign. We’d have ended up paying more for every other player we did sign, to the point we’d have had to sign fewer players.

A signing, yes. A player Man Utd and Liverpool were seriously chasing, no.

They also said they turned down £43m from Leeds. All of this just stinks of agents and selling clubs trying to gain leverage and force a deal through with bigger clubs to me. It was in Gakpo’s best interest to agree a deal with us and Leeds, even if he never had any intention of coming to either of us. Nobody knows the exact details of what discussions were held but I certainly won’t be hanging my hat on the belief that we were half a Mayuka away from it being a done deal.

Eric Djemba Djemba.

Exactly what people said in summer and exactly what they’ll say next summer when we’re signing players for promotion.

Those players are not and never were coming here. Both have been heavily linked with Man Utd, one has just signed for Liverpool, barely four months after we were supposedly in for him. At most them and their agents were using us to try and force bigger teams to play their hand.

People have said that about every transfer we’ve ever made. Imagine if we’d paid over the odds to just get Moi, Aribo and Mara done early. We’d have fair less, if anything, to spend now.

So was ours in between 2013 and 2015. Promising youth talents like Shaw, Chamber, Lallana and JWP breaking through and making the England squad. Shrewd signings from lower leagues like Jay Rod and Lambert. Pulling gems like Lovren, VVD, Tadic and Mane out of nowhere and selling them for huge profits. Money always talks long term. If they have a decent manager, player or even recruitment consultant he'll be poached eventually and they'll drop back like we did.

Christ, do we really have to go through this whenever somebody outside the big seven has a decent game or above average season? Yes - Brentford, Brighton and Fulham are having a decent season. Three years ago we were 11th, whilst two of them were in the championship and Brighton were 15th. In another three years it’ll all be different again because none of us have the budget to sustain it for more than two or three years.

It's always surprised me how the same drung can have such varying effects on people. I'd say most people, myself included, tend to be happy drunks but then I've only ever drank socially.

Likewise, can’t say that it bothers me particularly. Unlike that incessant band, playing the same chorus of OWTS continuously for ten minutes at a deafening volume.

He was playing badly in that team which lost 10 out of 13 or whatever it was. He was one of a large number of players we needed to replace.

Probably that he’s a limited player, hasn’t been playing well for ages and wants to leave, so let’s sell him.

TBF we beat Chelsea at home, so can’t really complain about results like this. Besides, Chelsea are in crap form themselves.

Actually, I’d say that’s exactly what we have. The likes of Adams, AA, Tella, Lyanco, Perraud etc. would all do quite well IMO. Last time we went down we had to replace Phillips, Crouch and Camara up front but we also had a lot of players who were past it and needed moving replacing. Dodd, Le Saux, Killer, Pahars, Redknapp, etc.

*Underperforming clubs with better players than Saints appoint competent managers. Results improve.

They look like the promotional stills from a porno called, "whore bride pleasures five groomsmen in the back of limo," or similar.

Ironically, the only person there who’s actually different is probably ‘Putin’.

This isn’t Jones’ fault and it wasn’t Ralph’s, this squad isn’t good enough to stay in the league. Some people are clamouring for Dyche, if he was here we’d have the same problems, the same results and everyone would be saying, "we picked the man who got Burnley relegated FFS!” There isn’t a managerial solution to all of this.

There have been plenty of other examples of new managers being a complete flop from the get go. In fact I’d say they were more frequent than the success stories.

By the end of the war they were capable of dropping a ten tonne Grand Slam on a target the size of a viaduct, railway junction or submarine pen. Russians have sporadic success on targets the size of a power station or small city.

I tried to draw one of those for AA and Moi but it just produced an invisible speck in the middle of the graph.

We’ve had a top six finish, been in Europe twice and beaten Inter Milan, had a cup final, two semis, beaten all the big teams at least twice, scored the fastest goal and hat trick in PL history, beaten someone 8-0, developed the worlds best defender and produced the only Englishman to score in a major tournament final since ‘66. Im not sure what you’re referring to which was promised and not delivered in the last ten years.