Wes Tender

This would mainly be our old mate Barry Sanchez, berating us for our inaction when Norwich were signing the likes of Wolf's Winky. I wonder which club and which players he would be citing currently to illustrate our total lack of ambition?

The club's ambitions have been lowered? Since when? You know for a fact do you, that they are not any longer as ambitious to succeed as they were before? So Pochettino leaves and we appoint an even higher profile manager. Lallana leaves and we sign an even better player in Tadic. Such is our lack of ambition. Selling players like Lallana and Shaw to the glory teams doesn't demonstrate lack of ambition. It was as unavoidable as it was Liverpool keeping Suarez. Best wait and see how we spend the barrow loads of dosh we got for them before concluding that we have lowered our ambitions. But you're being a bit naive if you believe that players like Lallana and Lovren wanted out because they perceive that the club is less ambitious. It's just an excuse to justify them being greedy. If Morgan does go, I suspect that he will be more honest and cite other reasons, such as raising his profile enough to play for his country, desire to play in the CL, etc. At least he will be honest with us probably, and we wouldl respect him for it.

When Morgan played for France in the World Cup, for me he was the stand out player for them. One only had to listen to the number of times his name was mentioned in the commentary as an indication of how much he contributed. It was his passing, tackling and closing down in the middle of the pitch that kept France ticking over so smoothly. Quite why Didier Deschamps then dropped him for the next matches, Christ alone knows. The man is an idiot. I am still hopeful that Koeman can pursuade him that he can play a major part in our continuing upward trajectory and that the result would be that instead of using Arsenal or Spurs as a stepping-stone to the very biggest clubs, he could go directly to them in a year's time.

Why would he go there to play for his former manager, when that manager probably won't be there after Christmas? And no prospects of playing CL football either.

Players like Schneiderlin, midfield play-makers who can tackle well and distribute the ball with accuracy, are more difficult to find than players like Lallana.

I'm with you on this. Call me a blind optimist, but I actually do believe that our new signings can potentially strengthen us beyond the level we had reached at the end of last season. Personally I think that we have a better manager and a better player to replace Lallana already, with plenty of time to not only find replacements for Ricky, Shaw and Lovren if he goes, but also to do the fine-tuning required, by adding cover for our defence and up front which would have been required anyway. I think that we'll finish 6th next season. The one player that we might struggle to replace in my opinion, would be Schneiderlin. But then it is not nailed on yet that he will go; he might possibly be persuaded to stay by Koeman.

I suspect that losing Suarez will equate to a similar situation to Spurs losing Bale. Almost certainly Sturridge will not not score as many without Suarez feeding him with his scraps, and Lambert isn't his replacement. So they will have to bed in a new striker unless they are somehow happy with not replacing him, which I very much doubt. And last season their problem was their defence, so surely if they did sign the likes of Lovren, then they would also play him to shore up the defence, rather than playing the same one they had last year. So they will have key changes up front and at the back to accommodate. I accept that the number of new players is to add cover so that they can rotate players for the CL matches, but then it must apply that either new players will have to gel for the PL, or for the CL. Personally, I don't accept this angle that players necessarily need all that much time to gel. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It's a bit like "new manager syndrome" where often a team plays better when a new manager comes in, even though initially he doesn't know the players and might prefer a different style of play to what they are used to, but they play hard to impress him. Equally, new players brought into a team have to work hard to impress their manager and team mates and why shouldn't a professional football have some ability to adapt to different circumstances that present themselves to him?

Fancy being associated with such a crap car brand. Even if I were a plastic fan of theirs, I would die of shame having to advertise that yank load of crap.

When it is suggested that we might be able to actually improve our team by signing better replacements for Lallana, Shaw and Lambert, possibly Lovren and Schneiderlin, scorn is poured on the idea on the basis that the new players would take some time to gel. However, Liverpool are making wholesale changes to their team and I don't see many comments to the effect that these replacements will not make them a stronger team by the time the new season kicks off.

It seems a bit strange that there is a deadline for buying season tickets before the season even starts. No reason surely why somebody should not buy a season ticket even a week or two into the new season if that is what they want. By all means have deadlines for concessionary rates and for those wanting to change seats, but beyond that the club ought to want to sell as many STs as possible I would have thought, up to a certain percentage of the total seats available for home fans. Or is it the case that they are happier to reason that they will take more money on the match day?

Just as long as we don't allow him anywhere near a penalty kick

According to Tadic he has. I'm told that Koeman has a plan B and also a plan C.

Dusan Tadic:

Frankly, who cares? Now that Cortese is gone, Benali, MLT and Duncan are all back on board, more or less. Now that Dodd and Williams are gone, they and their mates like Beattie are sh*t stirring in their place.

I'm with you on this. I'd rather we sold him to some European team for less money than to Liverpool for £25 million.

Me too. It would be a subtle dig at Lallana. Or number 7.

Thanks, Vectis, and a happy birthday to you too. Five years ago must have been one of the more memorable birthdays for both of you, looking back.

Today is also my son's birthday. I didn't remember that Markus saved our beloved club on my son's birthday, but because of how big a fan he is, I can't think of a better present for him 5 years ago. In all the years we've supported Saints, these last five years have been the greatest in our memory and it actually feels more enjoyable that we sank so low to rise again so high. The club and the city owe a great depth to Maarkus for coming to our rescue and saving our football club and I hope that somebody at the club might keep an eye on this forum and pass on these messages of gratitude to Katharina, to show her how much our short acquaintance with her father still means to us all.

There is a mention in the media that we could be after Paulinho of Livorno instead. Of course, it could just be a tactic to put pressure on Pelle /his club/ his agent. But as he looks as if he could be Osvaldo's twin, I'm not keen on the idea.

I will stand by my opinion and recognise your right to differ. We'll have to wait and see. But I agree entitirely with you that these players are leaving purely for reasons of personal greed and that it is rather naive for some to believe that the poor dears are going just because they have been deprived of their dream of playing European football with us since Cortese left.

Regarding this debate about the huge sums of money that we have extracted from the two biggest glory clubs in English football. They or their media friends are hardly going to confess to the higher figures, are they, or else it will look even more as if we have pulled their pants down and rogered them. Naturally they will try and talk up what great deals that they have achieved, that they have bought exceptional players with silky talents, their future left back for the next decade, etc, etc. There is no need for the board to put the real details of the purchase price out into the public domain and provided that they can just sit quietly with smug expressions on their faces, and have plans on how to buy better replacements for less outlay with any surplus funds going towards improevements elsewhere in the squad, then we should be satisfied that they have made the best of it.

This is just so much p*ss and wind. Which PL players are these you want us to buy? The ones that are doing well with the big teams that they will want to keep, or the ones from the lower down teams that will probably not improve us? And it isn't even the case that a player who does well at one PL club, is guaranteed to do well at another. And part of the reason that we don't buy PL players is because we produce our own from our academy, the likes of Lallana, Shaw, Chambers, Bale, Walcott, Oxlade- Chamberlain, etc. As for those imports, you presumably believe that any of them we buy will be from inferior leagues to ours, like the German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian or Argentinan, so that it will be a step up for them playing in the English PL, won't it? And there have been a few players who come in from the continent who do manage to make an impact over here right away, too many of them for me to even bother listing as examples. .

Saint Richmond It still doesn't penetrate that the players wanting to leave are doing so purely for reasons of naked greed, rather than because they feel the club is not ambitious. It doesn't matter how many times you say that you believe the players, it doesn't make it true. As for your earlier pie in the sky assertion that KL is not as ambitious as her late father, as well as being asked to furnish us with anything that Markus stated as ambition to one day play in the CL, will you please also tell us how you know what KL's ambitions are? Because if you can't, then we will have to conclude that everything you say is based on guesswork. Regarding contracts, they form the basis of a legally binding arrangement between the player and the club. It might be that in the past it has been expedient for many reasons for both parties to settle their parting by mutual consent, but if we had the inclination to go to law if Lovren was in breach of his contract by withdrawing his services, then in my opinion we are a in a strong position legally. It has just been the case in the past that a club usually doesn't wish to keep a player who doesn't want to be there, so finds some other solution. In our case, by not taking hard action, we risk this situation becoming endemic with other players.

But apparently according to the forum intelligentsia, it will inevitably be a weaker side than that which finished the season. It seems that nobody of equal quality can be found to replace Lallana, Lambert and Shaw, despite us receiving such inflated prices for them. Several of the brightest brains on the forum insist that anybody who believes that we could even start the season in a stronger position is a fool. However, they fail to take into account that we will also be bringing in replacements for the likes of Sharp, Fox Guly and Osvaldo, so that even by doing that, the likelihood is that the squad will be strengthened.

It isn't obvious at all that we will fail to sign better players. You're making yourself look a fool by insisting that it is so. There are other CL clubs after some of the players claimed to be targets of ours, or didn't you notice? And foolsih also to concentrate your thrust solely on those players who have or might leave without taking into account whether the team might be strengthened by the replacement of other players not deemed to be good enough. Or is every member of the last team irreplaceable by somebody better?