Wes Tender

Your usual interesting and very readable insight into Saints. Only one point to make, Hans Hofstetter is a business lawyer specialising in corporate governance, not finance. However, it was he who made the "difficult financial situation" remark, so an easy error. Gareth Rogers is the bean-counter.

Or is somebody prepared to wait until either the start of the new season or the closure of the transfer window before making their minds up. Comparing favourably those who have so far come in against those who have left does not make anybody deluded or a club stooge, even if you wish to believe that. You are entitled to your opinion, if you wish to base it on circumstances that are not yet complete.

Recently = this year

There is already a thread about CBs recently opened by Alpine

That's exactly how I remembered it. I seem to recall that there was a lot of research done as hardly anybody knew anything about him and that as a result there were murmurs about taking on a player who appeared to be out of favour and a bit of a bad apple. Doubts about his character have proven to be justified, although we got good service from him up until the time that he turned into an ungrateful greedy bastard. The sensible way to look at his departure, is that he only cost us £8 million and proved himself to be worth an over-inflated £20 million a short while after. Therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there is another equivalent player out there somewhere. Up to our scouting network to find him.

As well as the blogspot being highlighted on the transfer rumours thread, there is also the thread about it titled "On the assumption that this is correct" I suggest that the title of that thread be amended to cover FFP, as there really is not need for it to be covered in three places.

This is my conspiracy theory. Here we are at a stage where there is almost as much dissent on the forum as when Lowe returned in liaison with the Quisling and suddenly this erudite and capable American legal expert turns up, and by analysing the Financial Fair Play rules provides a very plausible theory that could explain the actions of the board in selling our star players and replacing some of them by loans as a way of circumventing the rules. It is all being masterminded by Krueger, and Red is a board plant on here to calm the troubled waters. If this is not the case, then he is a welcome addition to the forum as somebody who has a grasp of the implication of the FFP rules and akin to having Clapham Saint on board when we needed some expertise regarding Company matters financial and Administration Law

Fascinating insight into an area that I'm not very knowledgeable about. If what you say is correct, it throws some light onto quite a lot of the reasons for some players' sales, taking in loans, etc.

The Club are on a hiding to nothing with fans like you. Keep quiet about things in the pipeline and you'll bleat that nothing is being done. State that it is hoped that signings in the pipeline will be completed soon and you'll use that as a stick to beat the club with if it doesn't happen before you wet yourself. As for your theory about Katharina asset-stripping the club, I wouldn't think too hard about it, as it clearly is a painful process attempting to exercise your brain, judging by the conclusions that you reach at the end of it.

Tadic was half the price of Lallana, and could well prove to be the better player. As Lovren cost us £8 million a year ago, why should it not be possible to unearth a player as good as him for a similar amount? Liverpool bandied about a list of alternative players who were supposedly the equal of Lovren, but then allowed us to screw them for £20 million for him. Getting decent players at reasonable cost is a question of scouting them, not comparing those known to everybody like Lovren was when Liverpool rather lazily thought that they would raid us instead of finding alternatives.

Schneiderlin has been here in the UK for the past 6 years. Who knows, he might even have had a decent smattering of English from school before he arrived here. Quite why there was any need to even express your feigned surprise that he should speak decent articulate English having been here so long is almost as idiotic as the other interpretation of your comment, that he's quite articulate for a Frenchman.

Is he more or less intelligent than your average Frenchman, Hypo?

He was probably receiving advice from Gerrard about how to take a penalty

Psssst. A quiet clue as to who might be able to throw some light on this. Go to the Waterloo Arms at Lyndhurst and have a word with the Landlord. He'll be able to fill you in, in the strictest confidence of course.

We have players of several nationalities with us. I think that should any of them express an opinion to the media, it would be instructive to have some prior notice from Hypo as to whether he thinks that they measure up to the stereotypical notion that he has as to whether their thoughts are quite intelligent when measured against their fellow nationals. Where do we English stand when our intelligence is measured against the Japanese for example? The Italians? Polish? What is ironic though, is that Hypo believes himself to be qualified to make a judgement on other peoples' intelligence.

I'm afraid that you won't find the likes of Lallana capable of such an erudite and philosophical riposte. I expect that J W-P's attitude will be more along the lines that what's the point of having several flashy cars when you can only drive one at a time? Lallana can watch J W-P's progress playing football for what is almost his local team, whilst he watches from the bench, (once he's got over his injury that is).

Son of a barrister, so not your usual footballer's family background. Maybe that has something to do with the way that he comes across as an intelligent and thoughtful individual.

Pochettino's teams were exciting to watch, no doubt. But by the end of the season, his one-dimensional approach had been sussed out by the cannier managers who devised tactics to overcome it. He had brought something a bit different to the PL, but we saw several other teams in the World Cup playing the Bielsa style and it won't be a surprise to see it becoming more widespread in the PL. I believe Koeman to have more about him tactically, but we'll have to wait and see. Personally I think that Pochettino made a bad error of judgement going to Spurs, whose expectations are greater than their capabilities and he will probably find that instead of using them as a stepping-stone to a really big club, his career will take a backwards step.

Totally agree. This repetition of the same old tat is becoming boring. The discontented elements of greedy bastard players have left for their dream teams, whose badges they will be kissing instead of ours, we have screwed them royally over the fees and can rebuild a team with players who want to be here.

What he meant was that he struggled to get a game on those three occasions. If I remember rightly, Village Saint has previous as a WUM

So initially it was a rubbish signing, but now its suddenly either a poor signing or even an average signing. Why don't you tell us what you really think?

The reason why I said that, was simply because of your reputation for exactly the sort of premature ejaculation, initial knee-jerk response you made about Bertrand. There was therefore a very good chance that your reactions would have been similar for previous signings. So to paraphrase your opinion on Bertram, he's rubbish, but you hope he does well for us. Is that a reasonable summary?

Me: Isn't it ironic when you accuse me of needing to read properly, when you have just illustrated your own inability to do so? Of course, had you just done what the more sensible posters had done and just said that although you were a little underwhelmed that we had signed him, but you hoped that he would nevertheless do well for us, then that would have been fine. But as your initial reaction was "rubbish signing", followed by the other damnation by faint praise, then you must expect to be labelled a moaner, which is what others have also called you.

I am perfectly capable of reading and indeed comprehending what I read, thank you. You learn to think rationally. Hypochondriac's various contrbutions: When asked what you were expecting, you responded players of the standard of Wanyama and Lovren. I really can't be arsed to go back and look, but I expect that I would find similar comments from you when we signed the misfit Lovren from Lyon and the raw Wanyama from 2nd division standard Celtic, when many of their forum revelled in mugging us for the amount we paid for him. Reading the uninformed guff that I have listed above, it is hard to comprehend how you can spout that and then try and justify the sensible position that we have no idea he will do for us and you hope that he does well. Do you suffer from a split personality?