DuncanRG

What else could Pochettino have done, out of interest? He's entitled to assess his options.

Thank you for your patience, Sensei

If Levy made Spurs more attractive by offering Pochettino massive wages and a £200m transfer budget, our board could not be blamed for failing to keep him. We cannot compete with that.

It depends on what his conditions were - but nobody with any sense is blaming Pochettino or the board. It's football and good people go to good clubs, but more importantly we don't know what was offered. Maybe the board could and should have offered more, maybe the best they could possibly offer wasn't enough. We might never know. No player has said that. Some will leave but there will be no exodus. It just doesn't work that way.

Looks like he's on his way then. Ho hum.

Jim White reports that Pochettino's been Spurs' number one target since they decided to bin Sherwood and they hope to get a deal done this week. No surprises there, really.

A completely unreasonable assumption to make and a poisonous thing to say. The cause is Islamism, not Islam. It's fascism, not religion.

We don't have to be his dream for him to stay. I think most of us simply believe that the right offer from Southampton could be better than what Spurs can offer him. That's not to say that the board is to blame if he leaves - it may be that the best they could realistically offer wasn't enough. If, say, Real Madrid were interested, I don't think any of us would begrudge him the move or blame the board if he left.

Because he's a great manager! No good manager's dream is to manage Southampton and all good managers are professional and work hard wherever they are. Football management is like any line of work - we're all dedicated to our jobs and work hard, but we would consider a better position if the opportunity came along.

Sorry?

Obviously other people would have been involved but Cortese had the final say. He wasn't the type to leave things to other people and sign off after they'd made their recommendation.

Everybody knows it was!

Best of luck to him, I guess.

That's what I mean!

Or, y'know, get over it It's not a back page splash, it's a little column advertising the odds at Billy Hill

Are we still talking about that bloody picture?

None of them, not in a million years. Ameobi's in talks with Bradford City.

Is something unbelievable, yeah definitely?

Erm, the first paragraph of the Metro article reads as follows: "Mauricio Pochettino looks set to sign a new contract with Southampton despite reported interest from Tottenham." Doesn't say he's signed one, granted.

No more reliable a source than the Express or Metro, but the Daily Star are reporting that the Spurs boardroom are split over whether Pochettino is the right man and that's sabotaged the deal. If it's true Southampton are certainly in a position to capitalise.

He doesn't want to change from within, that's the point. He wants out. I'm not sure I agree it's hypocritical to be a separatist MEP, but Farage staying in Britain would serve Ukip well. For all the attention he gets here, next to none of it is for the things he says or does in Strasbourg. The problem is that if he withdraws from the European Parliament he becomes a party leader without an elected position. For me, the most interesting thing about Ukip after Sunday is how they'll prepare for a general election campaign. Farage has admitted himself that they can't go into 2015 as the one-man band they are now, but I honestly wonder whether they've got the numbers to launch a national parliamentary campaign without giving a platform to the nutters.

God, I wouldn't say that. The Lib Dems only won the parliamentary by-election with a huge postal vote campaign. If I remember correctly Ukip would have won if postal votes didn't count. Remind me, do you trust establishment media or not? Eurocrats running our country, immigrants free to take our jobs and establishment out to get us for saying so. It's barking about problems, as good protest parties do, instead of presenting a positive alternative which could improve the country, as good opposition parties do. The other parties are equally guilty in some regards, because they're attacking Ukip instead of presenting ideas of their own. I'm glad Labour is starting to turn things round and build a coherent policy programme, but no major party relies on division and resentment quite like Ukip does. In other news, I backed a winner for the first time yesterday. The Greens took Sheffield Central and it's a rather nice feeling.

You would not believe the effort they go to in balancing the panels. I met the producer the other week. He said the #bbcqt hashtag gets around 50,000 tweets per episode, half accusing them of liberal bias and the other half of conservative bias. So many people think it's unfair when somebody they don't agree with gets to talk. Spoken like a true bigot. Nice one.

Bear in mind he's not saying that Fonte will actually go. He's just saying that Steve Bruce wants him and is willing to pay £3 million.

Across the top three or four leagues, I believe, including England.