Beckenham Saint

To be honest, having seen your level of optimism shining through across the board, I'm not surprised that you might find Townsend an exciting prospect. There are so many wingers that may not be as quick, or as willing to run the flanks as mindlessly but pop up with more assists and goals and have more in the locker than him that I would love to see us go in for. Players like Bakkali or Depay from PSV or Insigne from Napoli who are all of a similar age and would be much more an exciting prospect than Townsend. Like I said, there is a reason that he has been sent out on loan 9 times.

By virtue of having more experience. He may be better than what we have, but we could also sign a lot better than Townsend. He would seriously underwhelm me if we got him because all he is good for is running fast with the ball and then doing nothing with it!

Townsend is one of those players who really flatters to deceive. He looks like he's doing a lot because he runs at people and he can run really fast but there's a reason he's been peripheral at Spurs and loaned out 9 times, and that's because his end product is severely lacking. Might get the fans excited as he covers a lot of ground on the ball but apart from that there is little to get excited about with him.

Ings and Bryam, Wickham and Redmond aside, too...

There's a guy in my office, he says he's never heard of Gardos so he couldn't possibly offer an opinion. Just passing on what he said.

Move on, he's exploded. We don't want to sign damaged goods at over the top prices!

Man, it must be boring making all these promises that he's never actually made!

Mid-to lower Mid-table. Think we'll finish around 10th / 12th. Season of transition while new players bed in and a new style is put in place. I don't think we will be in any real danger of relegation as we have a good manager in place, and our new players look like good acquisitions. We have a very good starting XI and we have decent youth coming through, but as we all know, we just need depth. We need a solid addition at the back, and we need either another striker as an alternative option to Pelle or we need a sort of second striker to pick up all the balls he will knock down as he is clearly very accomplished in the air. If we have those, I can see us pushing the top half. This year we are stronger between the posts, weaker in the central defence but our first choice full backs are both very good so no problems there (it's just the cover we need to worry about, but the club are clearly looking into that.) Midfield we are arguably stronger than last year, especially with the addition of Taider who looks like a really good player (he came from Inter Milan though, so of course he would!) Tadic looks like a good buy and Ramirez has impressed me in his appearances this pre-season, as has Wanyama. We are a bit light up top, but am sure we will add another player there and Rodriguez will be a boost when he returns. I am so much more excited for this season than last year. Didn't overly warm to Pochettino and was never Lallana's biggest fan, so I'm pleased in a way that he's not there so everyone can stop creaming their sheets every time he does a Cruyff Turn! He lost the ball more than any other player in the league last year, a stat that is often over looked. Shaw not the biggest loss in the world considering he never got a goal or assist and Bertrand is perfectly capable of defending well and has a bit more experience. If we replace Lovren well then we will do OK at the back. We are back to a defence that kept us up the year before last, so I'm not overly concerned with those, but obviously if we want to push on again we will need better quality, both next to Fonte and on the bench. Can't wait for this season and am feeling rather optimistic about the coming campaign.

Boruc is talking about the Legia Warsaw / Celtic fiasco in his tweets. He retweeted an article containing a link to an an interview he gave about it, and then has his say over the next couple of tweets...

Haha apparently so! So based on that supposed logic, Danny Ings is following some saints players on Instagram, is it safe to get "Ings 7" on the back of the away shirt I'm going to order?

He made 7 appearances, scoring one goal. Came off the bench for them in the JPT Final and apparently looked good. Agree with that, think Isgrove could make a good impact sub - he showed a few nice turns of pace in the last 10 or so minutes against Brighton, but I'd be a little worried if he's on the pitch from the start on sunday! I think you're RE him being more of a central attacking midfielder, although he seems to be pretty comfortable drifting anywhere across. While I think it would be good to have someone like Redmond, I don't think he's got that same ability to pop up anywhere across the attacking midfield, which gives the players like Tadic and Ramirez more of an edge (to me, Koeman might want an out-and-out winger) - Adam Blackmore said something about Koeman still looking for a Lallana replacement. Could be Belhanda?

Calling Batman - are we now a top, top team or will we just struggle for 17th?

Hoping Isgrove doesn't start too many games, to be honest. We noticed at the game yesterday that although he often looks like he's doing something, he very rarely actually makes anything happen. Ramirez came on for him and within minutes had won a free-kick and had a shot, more than Isgrove did all game. If Ramirez and Bertrand can strike up the same sort of connection that Tadic and Clyne have on the other side then our flanks will be looking very strong. Thought Bertrand looked great yesterday, did everything you can ask a LB to do. I'm really positive about our additions, this year!

They all stem from this, the Roma team photo where Ashley looks to have really settled in well with his new team mates! My favourite one has to be the one with him looking in through the window behind Cheryl Cole and her new fella... Was at the game yesterday, I can't believe how stupid some of our fans are. Bloke behind me came up with "If Pelle is a like-for-like Lambert replacement, then I am a like-for-like replacement for Mike Tyson." Seriously, the amount of rubbish coming out of his mouth, I wish he'd bitten my ears off so I couldn't hear him. Pelle looked great at winning the ball in the air (he loves a chested pass, doesn't he!) so just needs someone to pick up his knock-downs and then he will start to be really handy. Think J-Rod will link up well with him. Wanyama was an absolute tank, won almost every tackle he went in for. Thought Tadic and Clyne have clearly struck up a good partnership. Massively impressed with Taider, is clearly a quality player, but then, he came from Inter Milan, so i didn't expect anything less. Really excited to see him play this year, and really hoping Ramirez gets a solid run as he and Taider were the players that looked like making the difference yesterday when they came on.

Oh no, he didn't. Maybe is the optimum word here, the post I replied to has Koeman saying we would sign 2 over the weekend, when quite frankly he didn't. He said he hoped to have two or three done, but then again, wouldn't we all! haha

That's not entirely true, in the age of FIFA and Ultimate Team, a lot of people I know already knew of him because they'd signed him on their Ultimate Teams! I remember playing against a few of my mates who had him at CB earlier in the year, and I'd signed him on FM before, too. (I know they're just games, but a lot of people my age have got a good knowledge of world footballers from them!)

Oh stop it, no he didn't. He said deals were close on a couple and he hoped they would be done over the weekend. "Hoping" and "saying that" are quite different...

Burnley fan. I keep trying to get him to ask all his mates up north to do some digging about Danny Ings but there seems to be no rumours at all. As an aside, on Ings, he follows a girl from my office on Instagram - I didn't believer her at first so I checked out his page. He follows 151 people, about 90% of which are young, attractive girls - Ings seems to be a player in more than one sense! I asked Adam Blackmore last night who he thinks would be first choice in goal this year (silly question, I know, considering we're about to pay £10m on Forster) and he thought Forster would be our starter. Shame, I think, because on his day Boruc can be one of the best in the league, if Forster is better than that, I will be thoroughly impressed!

Not yet, he's probably trying to work out how he can make his tweet as indecipherable as possible before hitting send!

I get your point completely, I'm just winding down the clock in the office whilst trying to still look busy. I know none of them were as big a loss as our own (and I'm only counting Lovren, Lallana and Shaw in that, possibly Chambers as it's entirely reasonable to consider that Lambert wouldn't have been our main striker this year anyway, given that we tried to replace him last year and reports we tried to sell him in January), but, I was just pointing out that in the list of four players you picked out and said they were the only players that were first team regulars that left was wide of the mark. I don't particularly care about what I'm arguing here, nor does it matter to me, I'm just pleased that my boss thinks I'm typing away more than anyone else is this afternoon!

You get 3 too many, IMO...

Half would be 19, right? So 10 of those I listed played half or more, and 6 of those played 25 games or more with only 6 of my list playing less than half the games. I'd say the majority of those I listed initially were first team regulars last season...

See my post above