Wes Tender

Well, as DigDig is so pessimistic about our chances this coming season, I'll go the other way and predict that we will finish higher than last season. Naturally I have as little to go on as he does two months before the season starts, but I'm encouraged that we have a better manager than Pochettino and although we have lost an ageing striker, a young left back and an over-rated attacking midfielder with a powder-puff shot on him, we have received more cash for them than we could have reasonably expected. If we sign a striker like Pelle, he ought to be better than Lambert. If we sign Tadic, he should be better than Lallana. If we don't get them, they are the calibre of player we have in our sights, which is aiming higher than we ever have before. The sort of money we got for our young defender ought to be sufficient to buy a replacement as good or better than he currently was. The difference between us and any other team below 8th, is that we are awash with dosh to spend on our team at a level that most of them can only dream about, whilst still having the core of a team that is better than most of theirs to begin with.

So you ask where this information came from about Lallana threatening to go on strike and when people tell you, you throw a wobbly about the source. I did qualify my post with the caveat that it was only the Star where the report was, but then pointed out that if it was untrue, then it was probably libellous. You seem to have overlooked that possibility. Lallana has not refuted the report, unless you in turn can point me towards anywhere he has, and do you also have any explanation to offer for the terse statement made by the club? It was hardly an amicable parting, was it? And I really am highly amused at your implied reason for Lallana's departure, that the nasty fan base is capable of saying horrible things about him. You can think that if it pleases you; I'll prefer to think that he left for a glory team for the sake of his over-inflated ego and the massive increase of dosh. And some of these opinions on here relating to his departure embarass you, but you call those who made them bedwetters? I think that you're a bit too sensitive to be a football fan if something so trivial causes you embarassment.

I'm loving this article suggesting that Tadic is close to being able to replace both Lambert and Lallana with what he achieved last season. OK, it's the Dutch league instead of the PL, but nevertheless, any player who achieves that sort of return has to be a pretty decent footballer. http://bwinbetting.com/uncategorized/stats-say-southampton-target-capable-replacing-lambert-lallana,57323.html

Gladly. http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/386823/REVEALED-Angry-Adam-Lallana-made-Southampton-threats-to-push-through-Liverpool-move OK, it is only the Star, but even they have to be careful making such allegations which would amount to libel if they were without foundations. And of course, Lallana could easily have refuted them in his Echo advert if he wished. Add in the rather terse statement from the club and it begins to look as if there was some foundation to the story. What do you think?

if he comes here, do we have our replacement penalty taker to Lambert?

So we were supposed to be eating humble pie having read his crass sentiments in the local rag? I'm sorry Adam, but the best piece of advice I could give you, is that when you find yourself in a hole, the best course of action is to stop digging. My further advice is that if you employ a PR firm, sack them; they are doing "Brand Lallana" no good at all. If you don't currently have any PR advisors, then employ some urgently. You obviously attach a great deal of importance to the accumulation of obscene amounts of money and this sort of negative publicity can seriously damage your earning potential. The article in the Echo is suggestive that you attach some personal importance in the way that you are preceived by us, the fans, and just to let you know that the way that you have acted over your departure has irreparably damaged that warmth we had for you too. This will become abundantly clear when you come down here with your new team, if they select you to play, that is. Observe the warm reception that Lambert will receive and contrast that with the derision that will aimed at you. Whilst you bothered to outlay a small trifling sum on saying goodbye in the Echo, excuse us for naively thinking that you would have availed yourself of the opportunity to set the record right regarding the perception that was given in the media that you had threatened to throw your toys out of the pram if the club didn't allow you to leave on terms that would satisfy your new employers. As there has been no denial from you refuting this, and no notice of legal action against those who made these allegations, I presume that we can take it that in fact that was precisely the way that you behaved, holding the club that developed your talents over 14 years to ransom. And yet despite this, you have the brass-necked temerity to believe that your trite little farewell message will make everything OK. Bear in mind that despite you now being able to buy a large mansion, it will be over 250 miles away from friends and family down here. You were a big fish in a small pond and now you are a relative tiddler at a club like Liverpool. If you enjoyed playing as much first team football as possible, you will spend a lot more time on the bench now, no longer first name on the team sheet, but rather an afterthought for when bigger names are injured or suspended. And console yourself that as soon as your replacement arrives and begins to prove himslef a better footballer than you, the bad taste left in the mouths of most Saints fans will disappear. No player is bigger than the club and soon you will become a footnote in our history. A shame that you won't ever achieve legend status, but that isn't accorded to players who treat the club and its supporters with such shabby disdain.

There is a perfectly good thread concerning Lallana's departure and yet for some reason you feel the need to start a serarate one of your own. Where is the vitriol and lack of grace shown by the club? Their statement might have been terse, but how can you therefore describe it as lacking grace or being vitriolic? What exactly would you have liked them to have said in the circumstances when having nurtured him as developing player and him having been our captain and player of the season, it appears on the face of it that he threatens to withdraw his services to force his departure? And are you privvy to the financial implications of this course of action of his? And as for the reaction of the fans, then who are you to criticise them? Different people feel different things, so if some feel betrayed by his actions, so what? If others feel that he has been greedy, disloyal, badly advised in his comments, the victim of poor PR, immature, or whatever, then they are just as entitled to express those opinions as you are. It is the other side of the coin for Lallana. As a star player, he takes all the celebrity and the plaudits, but when he falls from grace, he must accept the brickbats. All very well when he is seen as an idol by fans, the young local lad who did well for us and gained a cult following for staying with us through the divisions, potentially the next one-club man to follow MLT into becoming a Saints legend. And if those fans of his are disallusioned at him for shattering those dreams of theirs because he is just another greedy big club glory hunter, if some don't blame him for taking the money, then others are entitled to vent their spleens through their anger that he wasn't after all the man they thought he was. Naive perhaps to expect football players to show these rare attributes of loyalty and humility, as they are only people particularly good at kicking a ball about, when all is said and done. Equally their fans are also a broad church comprised of people of many diverse backgrounds, so quite why they should expected to be capable in the main of producing the polite, diplomatic and well mannered responses that are sought after by the OP, I don't know.

A few suggestions:- "When we said you made Messi look sh*te, we lied" "Pochettino upgraded to the Koeman brothers Lallana upgraded to Tadic" (if it comes to pass, please God) Lallana - does your car still have its wheels?

I forgot to add the theatricals' greeting, Adam. Break a leg.

I console myself that if we get Tadic as a replacement for Lallana, his stats are much better, as shown in this article:- http://hereisthecity.com/en-gb/2014/06/30/le-southampton-closing-in-on-12m-lallana-replacement/ I hope that Lallana gets a warm reception from us when he comes down here next. A very, very warm reception; one that has his ears burning and leaves him in no doubt that he has lost any respect that he had built up with us over many years. If he or any of his mates read this forum, perhaps he ought to know that when we chanted that Adam Lallana makes Messi looks sh*te, we were being ironic. He really doesn't. With luck, Tadic or whoever else replaces him, will make Lallana look ****e, so that we end the season looking back and thinking how well we did getting shot of the greedy bastard and getting in a better player, at the same time shafting Liverpool for much more than he was worth.

I agree. But Osvaldo can be blamed on the last manager's poor judgement and he isn't here either. Whether Koeman gets his own temperamental Italian and whether he works out better than Pochettino's remains to be seen. Wolf's-Winkie was held up by Bazzer Sanchez as the sort of young dynamic player we should have been signing a year ago and as you say, look what happened to him. Michu was great one season and mediocre the next. But we aren't short of funds to buy pretty decent players and on paper at least we can upgrade even on that strike force from last year. We will have to wait and see how they pan out, but there really is not any reason at this stage to believe that it will end in disaster as predicted by the Hammer fan or some on here. It could equally be argued now that those players from last year would have done worse than they did this year had they stayed, but that isn't something that crosses peoples' minds; they only usually comment on whether changes are better or worse.

Osvaldo contributed the grand sum of 3 goals. Lallana, it depends on whether you class him as a striker or a midfielder, but a creditable score of 9 goals plus 6 assists for a midfielder. J Rod's 15 was pretty good, but as I said, he might be back anytime from September. Lambert not so spectacular with 13 and might well have faded next season anyway, but his assists were invaluable. But care to respond as to whether the line-up I have suggested as a possibility would be an improvement on what we had last season?

Who is this Ossie who scored 44 of our goals? I must have missed that. So if we signed Pelle and AN Other striker, perhaps even Ings, had Gallagher as back-up, replaced Lallana with Dusan Tadic, wouldn't we be potentially upgraded on Lambert, Osvaldo, Lallana, Guly and Sharp?

Precisely. Apart from Lambert, this was a problem that needed addressing anyway, regardless of any sales of other players. Lambert was rumoured to be off under Pochettino, but got a stay of execution because Pochettino cocked-up royally by bringing in the temperamental Osvaldo. Rodrigues may well be back before December, possibly as early as September, but would have needed back-up regardless of the sales of these other players too. Guly was never good enough at this level, so that many potential strikers brought in with monies received from Shaw and Lallana would offer a probable improvement. The point is that effectively we only realistically had the ageing Lambert and the injured Rodriguez as a decent strike force Rodriguez will recover fully with luck, and we will probably improve on Lambert with Pelle or such like. Beyond that, we will have enough cash to buy in a further striker or two, plus Gallagher to give us much better quality and depth than we had with Guly and Sharp. As for whether we would get better strikers through Pochettino's contacts or Koeman's, my vote goes to Koeman's.

Has it? Chelsea favourites to buy this player, Liverpool favourites to buy that one. Price agreed of X £s. This or that player offered as a make-weight. At one point, despite many red-tops stating things as facts, the club were able to say that no offers had been received for any player. OK, eventually one or two journos got it right with their scatter-gun forecasts, but that is much the same as me choosing 10 horses to win the Grand National and claiming that I was right all along when one comes in first.

Head in the sand, blind, misplaced optimism? Or ability to see the wider picture within the boundaries of greater perspectives, beyond the more limited imagination of those who only see doom and gloom? What is the significance of our new manager being Dutch? He speaks better English than the last one who had never managed in the PL before. Man Utd's manager is Dutch too. Anybody questioning his credentials, ideas or ability?

Taken in isolation, yes, we might. But the circumstances here are hardly the run of the mill situation that pertain to most clubs, are they? Our talismanic striker came from the third division for £1 million, our key midfielder and our top full back came though our academy, the manager and coaching staff all came in together as a unit, as will their replacements. What is this entire strike force you talk about? Rodriguez is still here, isn't he? Guly? Osvaldo? Sharp? In view of the exceptional circumstances that we sold those players for vastly inflated prices and have wealthy ownership who have pledged to give our well-regarded new manager all of the money to re-invest in their replacements, there might be cause for the more pessimistic worriers to be concerned, but there is no reason at this juncture to believe that there is no upside to the situation, and that things could actually turn out for the better.

It doesn't matter who Koeman brings in? So if we bought Messi, Ronaldo and Bite 'em Suarez, we would still be in for a rocky ride? The sale of these players will give the club sufficient funds to buy good cover in more depth for the paper thin squad you talk about us having last season, so it is a problem that can be resolved by selling them. And the number of players we might have to blood is not as many as Liverpool or Manchester United will be adding to their squads, but presumably they won't be flirting with relegation because of it? Some players take a while to gel with their team mates and others fit in almost right away. We have a new manager, but that isn't a rare problem for teams these days, more the norm. Again, some produce instant results and others take some time to make an impact. Spurs are in a similar position to us with a new manager and having signed several players to replace Bale last year and wishing to add more of ours this season. Do we have dire forecasts of their relegation prospects? And it is great to see that anybody who shows a little optimism is labelled as having their head in the sand. This rather smacks to me of the parallel where the so-called liberal intelligentsia state that anybody who doesn't agree with them must be a bit thick.

I ceased to take this idiot seriously when he arrived at this conclusion, presumably based on his assumption that if we spent the mega wonga received for the departing players on replacements, they would obviously fall well sort of the players they replaced. Plus for some reason he doesn't factor into the equation the possibility that might well have replaced a good manager with an even better one. Add in the line that the best players we could possibly buy with that money were the ones we were selling and one can only conclude that he is a sandwich short of a picnic.

Generally it is a good thing if we replace them with players as good or better for less money which goes towards other players to strengthen other positions. That caveat has to be added, of course, and any other conclusions for or against have no validity without it. The situation regarding the likes of Shaw and Lallana are purely hypothetical anyway, as although they shone in a team comprising other players that they developed with during a period of several years, that situation does not exist now, as they will be playing alongside other players whose style and character they might not meld with. On the face of it, it ought to be eminently possible to replace the two of them with a whole host of alternatives. I would place Schneiderlin as more difficult to replace than any other player, so we really do need to say that he is not for sale, or for a minimum of £30 million. On paper, Pelle ought to be an improvement on Lambert and Dusan Tadic appears to be a good potential replacement for Lallana. Let's get one thing straight; there are very few clubs who are not selling clubs. That includes Liverpool and Manchester United. The fact that they covet players of ours proves that we have produced players of a quality that is good enough to play for them and they may or may not prove to be astute purchases for them, in much the same way that their replacements may prove to be improvements or failures for us. What is clear though, is that those who talk about fire sales, impending relegations, the end of the World, etc, really are very immature to hold such unbalanced knee-jerk opinions.

How much is down to Reed'd judgement and how much is down to the scouting reports and subsequently what the manager wants? Take the case of Osvaldo for example. Surely that is a case that Pochettino wanted him because of their past association and Reed rubber stamped it and got the paperwork sorted. The blame for that poor decision rests firmly on Pochettino's shoulders. How many of the other signings are directly attributable to Reed's decisions rather than to others?

It's somehow a little strange that whenever Cortese mentioned that his intention for us was CL football, the experts on here pooh-poohed the idea as delusional. We couldn't possibly ever end the season ahead of Man City, Chelski, the Arse, Liverpool, Man Utd, let alone Everton or Spurs. And yet we are asked to believe that professional footballers who would know these things better than the average forum armchair fan somehow believed Cortese's dream, such was the power of his magnetic Svengali personality. Not only the players who had been with the club for several years, but also those who had played in the higher echelons of European football also apparently believed it. Now all of a sudden, with Cortese's departure and also that of his managerial disciple Pochettino, the scales are fallen from their eyes. Seemingly it was only possible with Cortese here and despite no change in the club's ownership, we no longer have the same ambitions. Well, it appears to me that there has been indecent haste by players wanting out all of a sudden, so that either they haven't had the decency to find out how the club intends to proceed, or the club have not communicated their plans well enough to them. We have amassed substantial funds from the sale of Shaw and Lallana and the players must know that Lambert's departure was not in the same vein. But as a statement of intent, Ronald Koeman's appointment as manager really could not have been bettered for a club of our size. Surely the calibre of player being sought as replacements for Lallana and Shaw will say much more than hollow words ever could. Whereas it is often better to release players who don't want to be here and replace them with those that do, if the next batch suggested like Lovren and Schneiderlin wish to leave, the formula should be the same. None of this £10/£15 million mullarky, we want £25/£30 million for them, or bugger off. Otherwise I would applaud a statement to the effect that we are drawing a line in the sand and they just aren't for sale at any price. It would surely be sensible in any case to see which players we could get in to replace them first before letting them go and if they are impressed with the calibre of player bought in to replace Shaw, Lallana, then they might realise that they wish to stay here after all, or wait until January to see how we fare under Koeman.

I'm mightily encouraged by the solutions presented by the experts from England's top clubs. When we were playing hardball with the ridiculously, ludicrously high prices we were prepared to accept for Shaw and Lallana, they began to suggest that there were players who could do at least an equal job to those players, but at much less money. The solution is simple. Let's cast our eye over that list and buy the best players from it who wish to play in the PL, not warming the bench at Man Utd or Liverpool, but playing most matches for us.. And we just repeat the exercise with any others like Lovren and Schneiderlin. Ludicrous price and then if they go, we buy from the list of alternatives that are suggested as being as good for less money. It's a winning formula.

The assumption that Saint Richmond would be in possession of large sums of money is worthy of derision, I'm afraid. Nothing in any of his posts suggests that he would be capable of accumulating such sums, so the hypothetical situation would never arise.

It would be nice to think that Koeman's attitude would have been that if those players preferrred to take their chances between playing here or bench-warming at some glory club, then let the greedy buggers go. Perhaps his attitude is that he can easily replace them with players as good as them (for frankly the obscene amounts of money we received for them), with players who are wholeheartedly behind him and his ambitions. Our success had been due to the team unity that developed between the mixture of youngsters brought up by the club, together with players brought in who showed promise, or who had a last chance of proving themselves after a poor start to their careers. If we have succeeded in choosing those players and brought them to a standard where they have been coveted by the top clubs in England or Europe, then we can do it again. There are other players coming through the academy, other Ricky Lamberts in the lower divisions and other Lovren's in Europe out of favour with their current teams. Koeman has a far better list of contacts than most among the top clubs and with some very good players. All the bed-wetters blaming the board for these greedy players leaving, ought to have the temerity to express their opinions on whether they believe that Koeman was an exceptional signing and a declaration of our ambition and give the board some credit for appointing him.