Lighthouse

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.

And we ended up one whole point worse off than we did in 2012, which we'd probably have had if we hadn't rotated the squad against Stoke.

I'd wager his value will go up playing a season of PL and CL football, rather than playing for us in the Champ. He'll still have two years on his deal at the end of the season, which is a reasonably healthy position from which to negotiate. Getting his wages off the books is a no-brainer financially and the loan fee could probably cover two decent Championship players, on loan from somewhere else. Whether or not we'd sign another keeper, I don't know. Like it or not, the club don't view Bazunu with anywhere near the disdain being exhibited on this message board. Ramsdale out, Bazunu in goal and a couple of decent loans in other positions, all for a net financial gain makes an awful lot of sense to the accountants.

Agreed, I do hate it when people post about fantasy signings nobody else has heard of.

I highly doubt most of the lioness squad would get into a men’s National League side, it’s a non-starter. Anyone saying one of them could get a PL game is either delusional or trying to be edgy/controversial for attention and clicks.

Nope, we're all done with the horse puns. Anvilla can f**k off, with their £20m.

TBH I normally have a tug over stuff which is so niche and obscure that it doesn’t actually register as porn. So far I haven’t had to put any personal details in order to watch Delia Smith basting a four bird roast.

Is that a website for piste conditions in Verbier? Seriously though, it appears to quote a doctor, who has no involvement with Dibling, saying that a minor ankle injury is unlikely to derail any potential transfer. No actual news or facts in it at all.

What makes you think we haven’t? If we got £15m+ for Sully, I doubt we’re donating one of our best players to Oxfam.

I’m hearing from my sources that Isak wants out.

Eight years here, over 200 appearances and yet I don’t feel any warmth towards him. I think it’s a combination of things which go against him, the main one being that such a poor footballer has been a mainstay of our team for so long. I think his loan to Villa just about sums him up; five months in a proper squad with some actually decent players and he didn’t get a sniff. They immediately realised how crap he was and sent him back early. Then there’s the fact that he was in both 9-0s, both relegations, a couple of stroppy tantrums and the dubious honour of having the worse game week in the history of Fantasy Football. Yeah, thanks Jan but in all honesty… meh.

No. Those two batsmen earned the right to complete their centuries, it’s in poor spirit to expect them to forego that, just so we can p*ss off home half an hour earlier.

We aren't going to sell Bednarek and THB (Our two first choice CBs from our last promotion) and replace them with just Quarshie. If they do both go (probably for something not far off £35-40m) we'll be bringing in a new first choice player.

If we sell him, who are we going to rely on to score in a 3-2 defeat this season!?

Why? He seems like the kind of player who would get easily wound up and sent off for something rash.

Which would have left him with two players to play in preseason. Like it or not, we’re going to have to build a team which is 75% last season’s sh*te so most of the players we haven’t sold are going to get a run out. If Stephens wasn’t playing yesterday it’d only be Wood at CB, or Suga or Bree at RB coming in and lord knows they’re none of them are an improvement.

Not Saints related but this reminded me of a similar interview with a Mr A. Lallana in 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c860l3d10j6o

Fairly obviously to intercept the through ball and if he'd got his foot out another two inches to the side he'd have done it very well. Fine margins but this wasn't some sort of howler.

Clearly I'm not as upset as some people about an unfortunate deflection by our (most likely) third choice CB in a pre-season friendly. If he ends up starting every game despite making regulary howlers, then I'll start to get more concerned about him and Still.