Lighthouse

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

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can’t just ignore finances because you want to. We have a bloated squad with some very high earners in it, some of them are going to have to go and the likes of Ramsdale and Fernandes will be more likely to attract suitors than ABK or Aribo. Whether we bring another keeper or not, and it looks like we’re certainly in the market, a player like Ramsdale was always likely to leave. We may well have had a gentleman’s agreement when he signed that we’d look for a deal elsewhere if we did go down, I can’t see him wanting to stay in the Championship.

Nope, they just didn't want to buy him because he was largely crap for them, so they didn't activate the agreed fee clause.

What do you mean, why? That’s literally the reason, his wages are amongst the highest at the club and will severely restrict our capacity to recruit.

I don't know why you'd think that. He'll still be a decent enough PL keeper with two years left on his contract. There'll be plenty of interest, not least from the three clubs who do get promoted, and no reason for us to accept buttons.