Lighthouse

Pretty much agree with this. Top half and into the knockouts in Europe would be decent. Domestic cups are more of a lottery. Losing a semi against Port Vale would be far more disappointing than being knocked out at Old Trafford in R3. Depends entirely on the draw.

I don't know who to trust between David Sullivan and Glasgow. Both the mark of upmost integrity.

How can people not get this.... We sell players for so we have money to reinvest in the club. If we didn't, right now we would be trying to replace Lallana for free. How good a replacement do you think we'd find on a Bosman? Good news though, we wouldn't have sold Mané because without selling Lallana we couldn't have bought him in the first place. People genuinely can't see to realise why players leave us for Liverpool and Man Utd. They have more money than us, it's that simple. If Everton offered Tony Pulis or Aitor Karanka £7m a year, they'd have gone to. The just didn't because Koeman is better. It's the same with players. We aren't the only club either Everton sold Rooney, Lescott, Fellaini, Stones, Arteta, Gravesen and Peinaar West Ham sold Defoe, Carrick, Ferdinand, Tevez, Mascherano and Lampard Spurs sold Bale, Robbie Keane, Modric, Berbatov, Carrick and Sol Campbell (who buggered off on a Bosman)

Yes but they almost always involve people like Mike Ashley, Schteve McLaren, Rupert Lowe and Steve Wigley. Even the Newcastle and Saints squads which went down were far weaker than ours is now.

So you'd rather we just had players like Callum McManaman and Ben Watson, so we could keep them for ever and no big clubs would ever steal them?

Happily? we sell them because we don't really have a choice. If we'd held on to them we would be well over £100m poorer by now and have a badly motivated squad of players who didn't want to be here. Even so, we held on to Morgan and Victor longer than they wanted, so we aren't exactly a soft touch. How is are back 4 shaky? Virgil, Forster, Bertrand and Fonte are all top draw. Pied, Yoshi, Targett and Cédric are perfectly fine too. If you see Romeu as VWs replacement then Hojbjerg is a 'bonus' signing and not replacing anyone, which means we've gained some excellent depth to our midfield.

We've replaced Wanyama with Hojbjerg. It isn't like for like but he looks a very good player, with passing and dribbling skills Wanyama can only dream of. We have no reason to sell Fonte unless it suits us, I don't know why anyone is fretting about this. We hold all the aces. He is contracted here for the rest of his Premier League career. So Redmond isn't as good as Mané, he was still one of Norwich's better players. There is nothing about our club that a neutral would look at and think 'relegation candidate'. From the stadium, sate of the art training facilities and boardroom all the way down to the youth team.

We aren't in danger of relegation. Every year some absolute garbage manages to avoid the drop. Look at Sundeland and Bompey last year. If you think teams like Burnley, West Brom, Bournemouth and Hull are better than us because we've lost Mané, you need your head looking at.

There seems to be a certain amount of having cake and eating eat going on on this board. On the one hand people are bemoaning our signings for being too late in the window and leaving us underprepared. On the other, people expect us to sell players right at the end of the window and somehow expect more cash. Other clubs aren't all run by mugs, even Liverpool. If we don't come close to agreeing on a valuation, they will move on. The rest of my post is pretty much a given. He wouldn't sign a contract extension and obviously nobody else was interested at £40m. He would almost certainly have thrown a strop and we would be in a very weak position to negotiate next summer.

Then you're just comparing a player from last season with another, if we're talking about the strength of our squad it's Hoj in for VW. Victor may have played that role last season but he was along side Clasie or JWP, both of whom are weaker than Hoj.

Alternatively... We hold out for £40m, Liverpool refuse to pay it and sign another target. Nobody else wants to pay that much for him either so at the end of the summer he is still here. 'Great' you say until about 5 games into the season when he obviously doesn't want to be here and looks as disinterested as he did both winters he's been with us. Then next summer he has a year left of his deal and we are forced to sell for about £12m like we did with Clyne and Wanyama.

Yoshida and Target started pretty much every game when Fonte and Bertrand weren't fit, which is obviously the case here. Not sure why you are comparing a couple of short term injuries to players being sold. JWP started plenty of games last season, as did Romeu. We may not have Wanyama but if Spurs offered me a straight swap for Hoj, no strings attached, right here and now I'd probably say no.

Scored once on all 4 visits to OT since we got promoted, so we know half the score.

Soooo.... You'd rather lose to prove we're sh*t, rather than win away to one of the title contenders and briefly go top because that might prove that we're actually half decent. What a weird, self-fulfilling project that is. You hope we're really sh*t because that would prove that we're really sh*t.

Gaston we loaned out so that Hull and Boro could pay a percentage of his wages till his contract expired. Osvaldo we would have compromised with and paid up some of his contract to bugger off. Mayuka signed for another club. We probably had to pay the difference in wages for 3 years, assuming he took a pay cut. There is no way on Earth we sold Lallana for £26m and gave him £12.5m of it.

Thats a separate issue. The nuances of different contracts will vary from player to player and yes, there probably are clauses on transfer requests and invalidating certain bonuses.

This has got to be a wind up. If you sign a contract with another club then you're agreeing to terminate your current contract. What you're thinking of is the suggestion that we can kick a player out who wants to stay and doesn't have a buyer. Then we would have to pay up his contract. The idea that we had to pay the likes of Lallana and Lovren millions of pounds so they could bugger off to Liverpool is laughable.

Absolute nonsense. It's up to the player if they want to sign a contract with a new club but the old one doesn't have to pay up their contract.

Song and dance? Normally it's just a Twitter post and article on the OS. Hardly an open top bus parade.

I'm still not convinced he knows anything. All I've seen is a load of rumours we already know about from various media and Twitter sources, dressed up as being ITK.

We got Austin because he was available at a knock down fee and QPR didn't want to lose him for free. We don't really have room for both in the squad. If we are bringing in another tracker, Mané's replacement if you will, assuming he starts that's Austin, J Rod, Redmond and probably JWP all on the bench. We don't have room for another, when you consider our stated aims is to give more game time to players like Hesketh, Gallagher, Seager and a couple of others.

Danny Fox scored in the 6-1 at Arsenal. A goal doesn't make a good performance.

Nice to see you haven't made any knee jerk reactions based on one game, which could have gone either way.

I thought he was half decent. Overcommitted and got mugged off once or twice but the ingredients are there for a decent player. Better passer than Wanyama IMO.

Yoshida was good today, he made one very sloppy back pass, as did Virgil. I'd much rather have him than Fonte, if the latter is even less fit than Cédric looked this afternoon. How we allowed that to happen I'll never know.