Wes Tender

Until we have signed a replacement and had a season out of him, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the value of Lovren to us, whether we got a great deal from selling him, or indeed whether Liverpool got value for the price they paid for him. My position is that if we bought him for £8 million, we not only have the possibility that a similar replacement can be found for that amount, but that we have an extra £12 million available to spend on a more expensive and more highly rated player than he was when we bought him from Lyons. Agreed that it is important that we try and keep the midfield cover in front like Wanyama, and Schneiderlin and that to an extent the best form of defence is attack, which I'm sure is Koeman's philosophy as much as Pochettino's. But if we managed to get a replacement for Lovren and Shaw of decent quality for much less money than they were sold for, then that releases quite a bit that could be applied to a marquee signing up front. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

You obviously missed that my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I made some of those comments, although other parts of the post are justified, I believe. But as it is my opinion, it is rather arrogant to label it wrong just because your opinion differs. But it is obviously not the case that you need to sign a player of proven quality in the PL for it to be a like for like signing. Every player is different as is every team that they join, so the variables are too extreme to make generalisations. A simple illustration of this point would be the example of Torres, who was good at Liverpool, but crap at Chelsea. Where is the jury on that one? He was proven quality in the PL for Liverpool, but had he signed for Chelsea first, he would not be. We absolutely screwed Liverpool for the £20 million we got for Lovren and I stand by my claim that there is another Lovren out there of proven quality for the £8 million that he cost, but that might be proven quality in the CL, rather than in the PL. Sure it is more of a gamble buying from out of the PL, but if there is a premium to be paid for proven ability in the PL, then an increase in the fee of 250% is clearly a rip-off. There is even no guarantee that Lovren will be a success at Liverpool, although he probably will be. He has a different manager, a different goalkeeper and defence around him, a different style of game, plus a potentially higher number of games, some in Europe's CL no doubt. These are the sort of variables I meant when I said that it makes it difficult to make generalisations.

Yes, every club has a catchment area beyond the immediate city area, but their success in attracting supporters from the surrounding area is also dependent on the competition of rival clubs in that vicinity. The nearest clubs to us in the PL are in London and there are none to the west of us until you get to Swansea. Granted that there will always be a core of support for their local teams that will benefit Portsmouth, Brighton, Swindon, Reading, the Bristol clubs and the smaller ones in between like Yeovil, Aldershot, etc. But as has been pointed out already, there is an element of plastic fans who will support their most local PL club, providing that the transport infrastructure in terms of road and rail make the journey relatively problem free. The dyed in the wool fans will naturally travel much futher, albeit that the more extreme distances will mean that attendance is a lot more patchy as a result. We are lucky that transport links along the coast with the M27, northwards via the A34 and M3 mean that an hours drive will provide a radius of 40 or 50 miles in several directions with no PL clubs within it, although going along the M3 makes the South London clubs attractive by the time you get closer to Guildford/Woking.

Loan players "may" contribute to the team? If they play, then obviously they will contribute. Whether the contribution is a good one or not will be evident afterwards. But why should their contribution be necessarily less than that from a purchased player? Please explain. Surely they are in the shop window as it were and have more to prove than a player at a club with a 5 year contract? I suspect that most reasonably intelligent Saints fans would rather look at the quality of the player introduced into the team, rather than whether he was a loan or a purchase. Would you prefer us to have Messi in on a season's loan, or to have bought Osvaldo? I didn't misread your post at all. I was just surprised that apparently you seemed to be dismissing our loan players as being an irrelevance and not worthy of any consideration towards increasing fan confidence in the team. I didn't ask you to list our midfield players. I asked you to name the ones that were to your mind better than Taider. On the face of it, he is most like Cork or Davis as a box to box midfielder, or as I pointed out, he could be just there to add squad depth in the event of injury or suspension to others. As you or I don't know how good he will be until we see him play in the PL, it is pointless arriving at conclusions that he isn't worth having before he has even kicked a ball in anger for us. Which Saints fans are these who are journalists? Anyway, regardless of who they are, I prefer to make up my own mind, rather than have it made for me by some hack, friendly or not. You obviously prefer to believe that the media has a firmer grasp on our situation than the actual fans of this club. But as you yourself admit, it will only take a couple of marquee signings to turn it around anyway, so the media is as shallow and as fickle as anybody else. If you accept that premise, then it is evident that not too much weight needs to be given to their views anyway.

This decision to award Celtic the decision is a travesty that will have everybody laughing at UEFA. They are already accused of bumbling incompetence and of bribery and corruption and now you can add crass stupidity to the list.

We should, but then we would get the usual suspects on here moaning that a player brought in couldn't possibly be as good as the player sold, unless he costs the same. Here there is a dilemma, as Rojo's position is unclear. If he is a replacement for Shaw, he would have to cost £30 million to be any good, whereas if he is to replace Lovren, then £20 millions should see the moaners satisfied. The more sensible ones would reason that as Lovren only cost £8 million or so just over a year ago, it ought to be possible to replace him for a fairly similar amount with a bit of digging. The inflated price for our players was achived because we didn't need to sell them and several top clubs were after them. In the case of Rojo, I suspect that the need to sell is greater, although there are supposedly others chasing him. It is all simple supply and demand as usual and depends how much we and others want him, and whether an alternative player as good can be had for less money elsewhere. I can't help but feel that Rojo would have been a better fit for our last manager, although him signing Osvaldo points to him not necessarily being capable of getting the most from his fellow countrymen.

You seem to be a bit confused over this issue of whether buying in players is a better option to loaning some when it comes down to strenghtening a team. Had we loaned Lukako last season, would he have strengthened the team? He seems to have doen a pretty good job of strengthening the last two teams he has been loaned to. Two players to replace 5 "Internationals"? As far as I'm aware, we have brought in 4 replacements of International quality, but you don't seem to count loan players at all in your assessment. The argument has been debated several times already that had we loaned Osvaldo for example, we would have been much better off and had he proven to be as good as he promised to be, we could have bought him. As he was crap, we could easily have rid ourselves of him and not taken such a financial hit as we most likely will. As for whether Taider is better or worse than our current midfield players, you just don't know, do you? Which midfielder are you making the comparison with? How do you know whether Koeman has specific plans for him to play a particular role that he is better suited to than what we have? How about considering that he might be cover to add depth? But the opinion that really gets me laughing my head off, is the one where you regard what is printed in the media as a reliable gauge of the lack of confidence in the board. You would rely on the gutter press who sensationalise much of what they write to colour your opinion, would you? Regaining confidence is not that difficult. You even provide the solution yourself. All the club have to do, is sign a high profile player or two and the likes of the ageing Lambert, the prodigy boy wonder (x2), the wandering head CB and the badge-kisser will all be forgotten soon enough.

Really? Some of the players in the squad were with us for that amount of time, but half the team were only with us a year or two. It is arguable that the squad we have now is stronger than the one that came up to the PL under Adkins, with time still available before the closure of the transfer window to strengthen it still further, so quite how you conclude that it could take 2-3 years to get a stronger squad than the one we just sold is a mystery to me. It isn't even beyond the realms of possibility that we might yet start the seaaon with a stronger squad than we finished with in May. It depends who we are yet to sign, and then it requires some time to assess the players against those they replaced, but it certainly won't take 2-3 years.

A fascinating and insightful post. You should post more often.

It really is very simple. They wanted to move to big clubs for barrow loads of wonga. You believe that there were other reasons if you like, but I suspect that most others will have concluded that this is the real reason for the players wanting to leave. The club allowing them to depart was for precisely the reasons stated, that they screwed the buying clubs for over-inflated prices and disposed of players who would have been disruptive to changing room morale had they stayed.

So long as they wear them the right way round, with the shade bit at the front, I'm OK with them. It takes a particular type of moron to wear it at the back and think that they look cool.

The Merlin Group HQ is based at Poole and is like a who's who of the Theme Park/ Entertainment industry. A good CV for somebody brought in to oversee the growth of our commercial activities. So who is our legal eagle now that Hofstetter has gone?

The Merlin Group HQ is based at Poole and is like a who's who of the Theme Park/ Entertainment industry. A good CV for somebody brought in to oversee the growth of our commercial activities. So who is our legal eagle now that Hofstetter has gone?

The Merlin Group HQ is based at Poole and is like a who's who of the Theme Park/ Entertainment industry. A good CV for somebody brought in to oversee the growth of our commerical activities. So who is our legal eagle now that Hofstetter has gone?

We will still have a fairly healthy British core, especially with the arrival of Bertrand and probably Forster. So we lose three and replace them with two, plus possibly other British players. As for loans, well some work out and some don't. If they fail, then at least we have not splashed the cash on them. If they succeed, we can hope to buy them. As for the "now we are like the rest of them, full of foreign players who may or may not cut it", presumably you mean the likes of Man United, Citeh, Chelski, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc? Our academy and the English players it produces is still the envy of of many, arguably since the sale of Shaw and Chambers, maybe even more so than before. It hasn't suddenly ground to a halt and stopped producing players of that quality and if the policy is to integrate them into our team when they are ready, then we will restore the core of English players again at some stage.

Have we made no progress then? In my opinion, Tadic will prove to be an upgrade on Lallana, Pelle will prove to be better than Lambert and Koeman will prove to be the better manager than Pochettino. As nobody knows that this will be so until some way into the new season, then it is all about opinions. But those who believe that we will not end up stronger than we finished the last season have no more validity to that opinion than those who take the opposing point of view.

So now patience, level-headedness, rationality and other good qualities aren't virtues but are seen as arrogance by those who do not have them? A rather weird viewpoint and it sounds as if you're rather proud that you don't possess them. I don't see anybody particularly accepting what RK says unequivocally, but at least there are those who are prepared to accept what he says at face value, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. You obviously don't and it seems that you cannot even wait a couple of weeks to see where we are then in terms of whether players brought in have strengthened the team to a level acceptable to you and some other doubting-Thomasses. Your mind is already made up. As for the longer term effects, then we will have to wait and see how that pans out too, but from the depths of the third division, we have had much the same posters decrying the sacking of Pardew, asking who the nobody was that replaced him, then there was the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Adkins was replaced by the Argentinian nobody and now that he is gone, all is doom and gloom once more. Things are far worse than they have ever been before, of course, because not only have we lost our manager, but also Cortese who masterminded our climb from the third division, and the cream of our players are also gone. How can we possibly survive? Our owner is asset-stripping us before selling us, our chairman is a liar and we are bringing in poorer quality players than we lost. Woe is us. But despite all this catastrophe in the minds of some of our less robust fans, most fans (the arrogant ones) are prepared thankfully to wait and see what transpires before jumping to idiotic conclusions based on hearsay and conjecture.

You still don't appear to be capable of understanding the points that Nick made, as also evidenced by your misunderstanding that the remark made about Lallana and Lambert was Nick's conjecture about Koeman's thoughts on them. Nobody is talking about a "gold standard" of 2012/13 season apart from you. Nick references it to make a point about progress made in certain players brought in since, or improvements in experience of those existing players. When so-called star players left, there was a knee-jerk reaction from a fair number of posters that relegation was now a distinct possibility, so it is entirely reasonable for Nick to attempt to rationalise why he believes it will not happen, especially as our position has already been improved by incoming replacements since then and will almost certainly continue to improve further. Ironic really that you cite Palace as a team that finished 11th as having a difficult ride. Undoubtedly so, but then again, it is possibly the clearest evidence yet to support the position that despite the seemingly desperate position that some of our more hard of thinking fans find us in, there is clearly the possibility of significant improvements to come over the course of the season, let alone within the next couple of weeks.

Yes, patience is a great virtue, isn't it? It goes hand in hand with an ability to look at the bigger picture and to be capable of remaining calm about matters that may happen in the future, but have not happened yet. People possessing these virtues tend to be the more rational, level-headed ones and their demeanour often comes from an innate understanding borne out of maturity and long experience. I thought that you had been around long enough to have gained some perspective regarding the trials and tribulations affecting Saints supporters, Nick, but it seems not.

It doesn't say much for your intelligence if you find his post barely comprehensible. You ask why comparisons aren't being made between last season's team and the current team, but that would be a difficult comparison as the squad almost certainly isn't complete yet. He has picked areas where he perceives we are arguably stronger both now and from the season before, but as both of the past seasons have been in the PL, then comparisons pointing to progression have some validity. Krueger has stated that it is our aim to start the new season stronger than we finished it and depending on our signings still to come, that is not an impossibility. Regarding Lallana and Lambert , Nick thought it feasible to speculate that RK might have regarded them as squad players for the coming season; it wasn't his opinion. The comment about Shaw's inexperience regarded the season before. But it illustrates that it is not impossible to blood a young academy player to do a decent job and whether there are other players of his capabilities who are ready to step up remains to be seen.

What he said was "half of your starters." Now that the main ones likely to be disgruntled have left, that situation has changed. So Schneiderlin might still be upset that he wasn't allowed to join the exodus, or was it his agent who was mainly upset? He wanted to go to Spurs rather than Arsenal apparently, because he probably wouldn't have been first choice there. But he will be first choice at Saints and now that he has calmed down, he might realise that he is better off here in terms of raising his profile, especially if Koeman's team is built around him. Another factor that he ought to consider, is that wanting to follow Pochettino will be pretty pointless if he then gets the bullet at Spurs half way through the season. Rodriguez isn't a dissent problem yet, as he has not returned to full fitness, so might as well stay and have another think in January. As for the part about not all of them being starters, that is true, isn't it? In the same way that there is all this discontent on here that will dissipate somewhat when the season starts, I'm convinced that the players are also a bit tetchy in the lull between seasons and will buckle down when they are playing again.

Of course, as it is a criticism of your constant whining negativity, it isn't for you to say whether it is incorrect or not, is it? However, I will gladly accept the views from those who I respect.

It wouldn't matter if there were tons of developments which could be used as a measure of success; I'm sure that you'd still feel that he had failed in some way.

Two serious newspapers. Let the red top gutter press rags put their spin on it and sensationalise it, rather like some of our own posters on here do, as they already have in fact with this interview.

Thanks for posting the link, Pastor. I'm enormously encouraged from reading it. We can be that rarity in English football, a self-sustaining, well run club, producing the young talent for the future, living within our means. I'm sure that is what you would want too, isn't it?