mcbendy

He's only 23 years old. 6" 5 inches. Athletic, agile. I thought he was excellent against Groningen. There are so many aspects of goalkeeping that can be developed with experience, confidence and coaching. I hope we keep hold of him. Seems like a nice lad too.

Your share settings are wrong - currently private...

I don't disagree with that. However, a point worth making is that scoring goals fills the stadium, sells shirts and gets more live TV coverage and hence TV money.

Remember that this was a game that a Feyenoord fan picked out as one of his good ones... I was as guilty of being on the Gaston band-wagon last time around and am again guilty of having been on the Clasie band-wagon this time around. The YouTube videos looked amazing. Watching that 90 minutes has left me feeling rather less confident. Hopefully a good pre-season can get him up to the pace of the prem. There is no doubting his talent with the ball, or his abilities to harry opposition players etc. But he just didn't look fit enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Yes. Slightly concerning that one of their fans picked this out as an example of him playing well and showing real leadership. I thought the game largely passed him by. He seemed to jog around slightly off the pace of the game, not showing enough to give the CBs easy passes. As you say, he did very little with the ball when he had it. Miles and miles off the midfield general that was Morgan...

Just watched this full 90. I've got to be honest and say that, having watched that, I am pretty concerned about whether Clasie will cope with the pace of the prem. He seems to take quite a bit of time to recover from each moment of exertion and didn't look totally on the pace of this game. Maybe with a full pre-season with Saints under his belt he can step up?

Good song for him :-) You are my Jordy, My Jordy Clasie, Our little dutchman, in the midfield, You might be tiny, but we still love you So, please don't take our Jordy away..

An important point worth making is that if roster becomes synonymous with squad, then we could end up with a large team/squad photo folded up inside the match day programme or the Echo, labelled as the Saints FC Roster Poster.

Can he defend?

He cost about half of what Callum Chambers cost Arsenal. Can anyone explain that?!

To be honest, guys, I come on SaintsWeb in the hope of finding some true information. Anyone who posts true information, regardless of whether they copy-pasted it, is a good egg in my book. BUT - to find the true information I have to wade through page after page of egocentric bickering, pathetic trolling and ill-informed opinion. I was GUTTED to see that the ITK snippets thread had been locked. I do wish some of the more opinionated (but less informed) posters on here would shut the **** up!!!

I too am very excited by this signing. Dare I point out the fact that twice in that video he said he looked forward to playing here for a "couple of years"...? Maybe this is just 'lost in translation'?

I'm hearing that he found some boys trapped down an old mine shaft and went to get help.

Really excited by this (potential) signing. I think we'll see a lot more forward passes and we'll be better able to capitalise on the pace of Mane and JRod. There were times last season when we were crying out for someone to drive forward with purpose and break through some lines, or to play a killer pass. Excited!

Thanks for that transcript Redslo

Agreed. The word avergage however is a shocker....

Aye good point. Let that be a lesson to anyone who tries to leave Southampton...

Confirmed by Ronald as 'close'. Utility defender who can play in three of the four defensive positions (he didn't specify which). Needed an extra defender, plus Bertrand out for 5-6 weeks after surgery on both knees.

Yes, good point. Let's merge the 'Toby', 'Schneiderlin' and all other threads into that one. That would be really sensible. What you really mean is "I got there first! Me, me, me, look at me!". Which is rather childish and tiresome. This forum should be about a shared love of and interest in Saints, not egotistical willy-waving. Anyway... delightful as this distraction is, how about we actually discuss the potential signing, rather than argue about who copy-pasted the news from Twitter first and where the appropriate place to copy-paste it to was???

https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tubantia.nl%2Fsport%2Ffc-twente%2Fcuco-martina-van-fc-twente-op-weg-naar-southampton-1.5059637%3Fref%3Dvoorpagina-featured_latest_news&edit-text=&act=url

Well done Connor - proof that we are both on Twitter and can both read. Here is very little info on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuco_Martina

Right-back from FC Twente - stated as Saints-bound

It comes from e.g. should've which people hear as should of. Anyway: Rupert Lowe should've appointed better managers following the move to St Mary's. That said, who here would change history? Some of the best moments of my Saints supporting life have been in the last five years, and our Phoenix-like rise.

The blog is great. Keep it going!

Really interesting reading your post on FM 2015 salaries for the Prem. I hope you don't mind, but I have taken this information and done some further work: I was interested to see what we could learn from looking at how average salary (of top 20 earners) compares with league position. Does money always buy you success? Obviously this is simplistic for a number of reasons - 'big' clubs will tend to have bigger squads, for one thing. However, the average salary of the top 20 earners is probably a pretty good indicator of the overall wage bill. So, what I have done is use the 'average salary' to rank the clubs ('salary rank'), then compare the 'salary rank' with the finishing league position to create a 'value index'. A club which finishes in a league position equal to its 'salary rank' would have a 'value index' of zero and could be considered to have invested its wage bill averagely well. A club which had over-performed relative to its 'salary rank' would have a positive 'value index' score and a club which had spent loads of salary and finished low down the table would have a negative 'value index'. Here are the results: Saints come out reasonably favourably based on this analysis. The top four are Stoke, Crystal Palace, Swansea and Leicester. Bottom of the pile are Man U, Everton, Sunderland and - rock bottom - QPR There are obviously many more ways in you could (should?) go about measuring how successfully/effectively a club is being run, but I have found this to be an interesting exercise. I'm happy for you to publish this if you want, or to extend the analysis further - I can send you the spreadsheet if you want