Wes Tender

You really do have no clue as to what her aspirations are and it makes you look a bit pathetic believing that you do.

Not long. You're the first. Congratulations, give yourself a pat on the back. Rather than some of the players leaving, we could do with some of the fans going, judging by the puerile, infantile drivel that some of them post. The OP really has to be right up there as one of the all time greats. It comes into the category of potential Skate on a wind-up. Surely none of our true fans would insinuate that KL would want anything but the best for the club that her late father bought? There is absolutely no evidence that those players would not have left had Cortese remained here. Neither is there anything to suggest that we will not replace them with Champions League standard players. After all, Cortese managed it with KL's money, so why can't anybody else appointed by her? You would do well to learn that patience is a virtue and that you are making yourself look ridiculous by arriving at conclusions without waiting to see whether we replace those players with others as good or indeed better.

I'm disappointed in you Roger. All the time I've known you, you and your family were Saints supporters through thick and thin. Even in the Lowe era and through the third division. So one or two of the stars we produced get greedy and decide to leave for glory clubs. So what? Surely it is better to wait and see what the entertainment will be based on what the squad is at the time of the new season kick-off. Shaw might have gone, but at least Fox isn't here either.

Is he having a transplant then? His heart clearly was not here, despite the sickening badge kissing.

It isn't just a truism that players from other leagues take time to adjust. Some players are superb for one team and then fail to make an impact at another club even in this country at the top level. Torres springs immediately to mind. Liverpool and Man Utd are buying Lallana and Shaw based on what they did for us, but that doesn't mean that they will produce the same impact there, they are bought speculatively, as will our replacements of them be. Lovren was a player who adjusted to playing here right away, so that is seen as a plus for other PL wishing to buy him, but he was seen as a bit of a misfit at Lyon. For every failure to adapt to playing here from abroad like Osvaldo, there are examples of players picked up at a relative pittance who set the league on fire. The English Premier League isn't the force it was, with Spain and now Germany becoming more powerful rivals. When we played hardball with Liverpool and United over Shaw and Lallana' s fees, there were numerous suggestions of players who were thought to offer better value from abroad for much lower fees. These are the sort of player we should be looking at. In Koeman, we have a manager renowned for his sides' attacking football. You rightly mention that we often dominated many games without making it count. Could it be that often Lallana had a powder puff shot on him, or that Lambert was increasingly having to go deeper to get the ball? There was also a valid criticism that we were too slow at getting the killer ball into the box, something that Rodriguez was capable of, but few other players. Yes, we were weak down the left flank when Shaw didn't play, but we're hardly going to have the likes of Fox deputising for him this coming season, are we? I'm quite optimistic that Koeman will be better tactically than the one dimensional Pochettino and will have studied videos of our matches assiduously to work out where our strengths and weaknesses lie. He will also be the sort of person with the knowledge of which players will remedy those shortcomings and he will have a big kitty to spend on getting them.

Agreed. But then Pochettino was as much of an unknown quantity to many as Adkins was when he came here. Koeman is quite a different kettle of fish. Although nobody knows with any certainty how he will fare in the PL, nobody can say that he isn't a big name manager. From that perspective, people are entitled to view him as likely to be an upgrade on Pochettino, even after the success he achieved last season. I know a few Spurs fans who are already thinking that they would have preferred to have had Koeman instead of Pochettino.

Cynicism, or ignorance? Talk about counting his chickens before they're hatched. I suppose his trouble is that it doesn't matter who we sign as replacements, they could never be better than Lallana, Shaw and Lambert, just in the same way that Koeman can't hold a candle to Pochettino, eh?

I think that you'll find that it had far more to do with personal greed and egos than with their ambitions.

One only has to look at how we came to have a team of stars desired by many of the top clubs to remain optimistic that we can do it all again and again. Lambert was picked up from the third division for £1 million and we turned him into an England International wanted by Liverpool. Shaw followed in a long line of Academy players destined for the very top. There are other players like him on the way up now, so no reason to suspect that he is the very best that we will ever have produced. We might well have said that about Bale until Shaw and Oxlade-Chamberlain came along. We discovered gems like Schneiderlain, Clyne and Fonte and nurtured their careers as we climbed the divisions and improved them until they have been become touted as, (or have become) Internationals. Lovren likewise was another gem bought cheaply and in a short time identified as a player capable of playing for the very top teams in Europe. Cork also has advanced his reputation here when he was out of favour with Chelsea and Rodrigues also has been talked about as a future England player. Even under the Lowe regime, we managed to identify players the likes of both Svenssons, Beattie and Pahars. We now find ourselves in a position of financial strength the like of which no Saints fan has ever known before. We are no longer a selling club by necessity, only by choice and only then for stupid money. Arguably, we have even upgraded our manager on Pochettino and appointed one who would have been a fantasy choice only a couple of years ago. This is a manager with a reputation at a Worldwide level, so that his name attached to a transfer enquiry for most players will add a gravitas and command a respect that Pochettino did not possess. We now find ourselves in a position of strength and although we may lose one or two players seduced by the prospects of playing in the CL for mega-buck salaries, there is also the possibility that those players might yet find that they become bench-warmers and that they could have done better staying with us. I see no reason to not feel optimistic that we can unearth players who are the equal or better than those we might lose, with the silly money that we will gain from their sales. If they are not mentally focussed on our assent further up the division, let them go and replace them with players who are.

A confident and competant display from him throughout the match. Did he put a single pass astray? He really made it look very simple, but he was effective in his distribution and must have made out a decent case for further progress in the team.

Italian fooballer Georgio Chiellini was taken to hospital yesterday after having been bitten by a mongrel Uruguayan buck-toothed pitbull terrier during a World Cup football match. He was given a tetanus jab and a precuationary rabies injection. Apparently this same dog has bitten two other footballers previously and faces being put down. FIFA are considering a lengthy quarantine whilst it is examined by an animal bahavioural psychiatrist, much to the chagrin of its scouse owners

Think captain of the ship as against a single member of the crew and you might begin to get some idea.

You mean the Texaco Garage at Horton Heath.

Congratulations Roy. You're on the verge of achieving what no other England manager managed to do since 1958; to fail to go through from the preliminary stages. It hasn't happened yet, but we are having to rely on Italy to beat the other two teams and we have to beat Cost Rica who beat Uruguay. Uruguay had one player who could change the game. Why didn't we have him man-marked? Unbelievable.

Bloody typical! Their captain Godin shouldn't be on the pitch. Already on a yellow and then he has his arm across our player's neck to stop a run into the box. No doubt at all it was the second yellow. And so the poor refereeing continues. Mind you, we are crap and the passing is wayward and the Uruguans are winning most of the ball in midfield. Going the way of Spain unless we buck our ideas up. Lambert would have had that header that Rooney got under. Stirling nor Baines aren't showing better than Shaw or Lallana would have so far.

You're banging your head against the wall with that load of arrogant scousers, pap. I love the "how dare little ol' Southampton refuse our offers?" attitude from them. After all, we're a selling club. Witness how we sold Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, Bale, etc. Lallana isn't worth more than £15 million, £20 million tops, etc,etc. We really do need to refuse to budge from £30 million up front for him and £20 million for Lovren, again all up front. Let's see who blinks first. They will learn a valuable lesson and all the other big clubs will watch them learn it. It is that we don't need the money and if anybody wants our players, then they will have to pay through the nose for them.

Come on Liverpool, go and take a running jump off the pier into the Mersey. You've already told us that the last offer was the final one and to carry on with subsequent offers is making you look ridiculous.

It has always been the case with the new board that we will only sell the players that the manager wants to sell. But he doesn't have control of the contracts, the amount paid or the paperwork, does he?

It really is interesting to read back all the bile aimed towards Les at the start of thread and then all the praise he is receiving now. There were Chinese whispers saying that he was disliked by the players, predictions from normally sensible people that we would start the season weaker than we neded it and now it appears that the reactions are a bit knee-jerk. It is relatively unimportant what the players' feelings are towards Reed and in any event reports suggest that he struck a very positive chord with our new manager. What is important, is how the players relate to Ron Koeman. Again, popularity amongst the players towards him is less important than respect, which I hope that he will command. With the appointment of the Koeman brothers, I am now confident that we might well keep those big players who have been the subject of much speculation, or if they do depart, that we will replace them like for like or better. Therefore I am now confident that we can begin the new season as least as strong as we finished the last one. Les Reed and Katharina deserve a pat on the back

A spot on assessment. Under Cortese, he had established a reputation amongst agents of being a bit of a bastard to deal with, but I'm sure that what went with that was a respect that he was no mug. It was apparently out in the public domain that he had binned a fax from Liverpool offering to buy one of our players. With him leaving, Pochettino leaving and with a newly appointed board finding their feet, we need to re-establish a reputation for being tough negotiators who will not suffer fools gladly. The new board made a bad mistake when Gareth Rogers naively released that statement that we had inherited a difficult financial situation from Cortese and a lot of this frenzy in the media and offers for most of our best players is the direct outcome of that, the belief that we have to sell our players to balance the books. By playing hard-ball with the glory clubs who believe that they only have to snap their fingers and the smaller clubs will be powerless to resist their overtures, we can send out a clear message as to how it will be with dealings for our best players in the future. These should be the salient points as guiding principles:- We do not need to sell any of the players we wish to keep from a financial perspective. The club's financial situation is stronger than most, including that of many of the bigger clubs. Our owner is wealthy and here for the longer term. There is no immediate intention to sell the club. Most of our top players are on long contracts. If we have no need or desire to sell them, only a stupid offer might turn our heads. Don't waste our time tyre-kicking if you can't afford to play with the big boys. The more the big clubs express interest in our top players via the media, the higher the price is going to go. That is basic economics, the law of supply and demand. We will have in place astute conditions both in the players contracts and the sell on clauses. This will entail a minimum release fee before negotiations can be entered into and a high percentage sell-on clause. Money up-front is how we like to operate. By all means have add-ons, but any add-ons like appearance bonuses will only be considered on top of a minimum fee paid up front that we are happy with. The more clubs after the same player, the more remote will be the opportunity to avoid paying the whole amount up-front. If that puts off the big clubs, so that we get to keep our best players, so much the better. That is what we seek to achieve That lot ought to do it.

Liverpool away, eh? That's a meaty one in view of our recent history with them

Surprised (or maybe not) that the Daily Fail didn't put two and two together in light of the media speculation surrounding Koeman's appointment by us and then reason that he might wish to sign Pelle now Lambert has gone and Osvaldo didn't work out. Virtually everything else they print is based on wild speculation, so this ought to have occurred to even a cub reporter as potentially holding more water as a proposition.

Learn to read something properly before commenting "At least nobody" doesn't refer to me, does it? "Who" is a throwaway comment, expressing the underwhelming response to Pochettino, although that seems to have gone over your head. It refers to my recollection of the general response by many on here when his appointment was announced. As Buctootim suggests, Google is the fount of all knowledge on matters like this and like many, I Googled him when he arrived to see what his background was. Whether knowing that he gave away the penalty to Owen added anything to his ability to manager us is a moot point, but frankly it is ridiculous to believe that somebody who recalled that is more capable of expressing an opinion on Pochettino.

I'll also decide whose opinions I'll consider too and don't have much appreciation of yours based on the flimsy method by which you assess other posters' ability to hold a point of view. Just to clarify solely for your benefit, like most other posters on here, when Pochettino arrived here, I Googled him to gain an insight into what his background was. Pardon me for having either forgotten the Owen penalty incident a decade before Poch arrived, or not having associated it with him, but your assertion that somebody that doesn't know a manager's background as a player isn't capable of commenting on his managerial ability (or vice versa) is a bit silly.

So according to you, just because I couldn't recall the name of the Argie CB who tripped Owen (who dived) in the box to gain us a penalty 12 years ago, I'm not really qualified to express an opinion which would add anything to the discussion? What arrogance. And ironic too when you are making such a fuss about people making too much of Koeman's playing record and then you say that people should have known about Pochettino before he came here on the basis of one incident when he was a player.