saintwbu

Imagine supporting a team that plays James Milner at left back, and not being happy with Nathaniel Clyne

Take it there's no chance of us getting extra allocation for this one? Was desperate to go to this one but sold out two days before member sale! Presumably we'd have been allowed more than 1500 in a 25,000 stadium? Bank holiday weekend against a Prem newbie, surely we'd have sold loads more than 1500!

I seem to recall a thread from Koeman's first pre-season that asked the question "Where are the goals going to come from?", we won 8-0 about 4 weeks later. I wouldn't read too much into pre-season games, good or bad, personally.

I'm definitely one to be realistic and say when players are not as good as the pandemonium that follows their departure. Lallana, Shaw, Lovren I felt were all easily replaceable when they left, and so it proved. But for me there's been two players we've had over recent years that are destined to reach the very top of the football pyramid, and that's Mane and Virgil. We will not get players as good as those two any time soon, if ever, in my opinion. So people saying 'yeah he's good but..' are lying to themselves i'm afraid. He is exceptional. He is mentioned as 'one of the best CB's in the league', but the day he pulls on a different shirt he'll become 'the best CB in the league' without a doubt. Just like people are now talking about how brilliant Mane is even though he's doing the exact same things he did for us, except it's shown live on Sky most weekends rather than for 5 minutes on MOTD, so people believe it. There is life after Virgil Van Dijk, without a doubt, but we have a ****ing diamond on our hands and if he has to go it's got to be for absolute top dollar because we won't see the like of him for a very, very long time.

If you want to find a funny side to it all, it's always good seeing how much the Scousers think Virgil is desperate to only play for them at all costs. If Man City, Arsenal or Chelsea were even remotely interested in him and were willing to pay the wages Liverpool are offering, they really think he'd go 'no thanks i'm waiting for Liverpool'. Christ.

Can we stop talking about him as a £60m player, or this as a £60mil deal. He is worth far more than £60mil in today's market, given that John Stones cost £50mil. Van Dijk is arguably the best CB in the league (he is, in my opinion). John Stones probably isn't even in the top 10.

Will be more interesting to guess how long it'll take a United, City, Chelsea or Liverpool player to get banned. My guess is they definitely won't be the first!

I'm sure we were told when Gabbi joined that he couldn't play through the middle, and was more suited to coming off the left. Obviously for us he has demonstrated he definitely can play through the middle, but would still be interesting to see him on the left of a three to cater for Charlie.

Think it's what Tom28 said (he was right about the strike)

Watching that video has really given me a buzz for the season to start though. The thought of Boufal fulfilling his potential, and if Gabbiadini is really the player he looks to be, could we finally score some goals!?

I couldn't agree more LeG, sometimes I feel uncomfortable in the stadium because this type of player are so obviously singled out for excessive criticism. Redmond had it a lot this season, the groans are just that bit louder when they do something wrong. Sofiane has looked absolutely out of this world in 5 minute spells this season, and then absolute toilet in others, but that's the nature of this type of player. But he could win a game in that 5 minutes, it's down to others to make sure we don't lose it in the other 85 when he's not doing it.

For me, the victim tag is nothing to do with Hillsbrough. The best example I can think of is when the whole team wore shirts in support of Suarez, who had just been suspended for racially abusing a fellow professional. So they wore shirts in tribute to a racial abuser. Because somehow, some way, he was the victim in the saga. That's why that tag exists, events like that.

Blimey are we the first club to ever say 'not for sale'!? At the end of the day if we pay enough (transfer fee & wages) then people will deal with us.

Blimey we had Mane and Lallana together!? I must've missed that. That tweet doesn't say anything new at all. Of course Van Dijk expects to be a Liverpool player, he wouldn't be pulling out all the stops if he thought it was in vain. We have to make sure his expectations are not met, otherwise it's open season for ****housery.

His position isn't 'untenable', nor is he 'on strike' from what we've been told. Of course it could be downplaying by the club but it's been the manager's decision to leave him out of any team duties because he's 'not 100% psychologically', that isn't the same as him refusing to do anything. If the transfer window closes and he is still with us then in my opinion he will get his head down and play just as well as he always has done, as Schneiderlin and Wanyama have done before him. He's just playing the transfer game on his part, not many players genuinely would waste a year of their short career sitting around doing nothing, potentially jeopardising a move in the future. Let's see what happens before we start giving the impression we wouldn't back him.

If they weren't willing to meet the £30mil for Danilo i'm not sure they'll be getting Bertrand. Unless of course that's all they thought Danilo was worth.

RAWK's Van Dijk thread has already hit 158!! I'd be shocked if even 5 of those pages are meaningful.

The transfer thread on RAWK has 'No Bascombe' in the title, the guy who wrote that piece. Dunno why, I never knew what it meant 'til I read that article.

Some bloke on RAWK has spotted that 'ITK' post earlier about a transfer request being imminent. Off they go again..

TheVMan or something? Might be wrong on that one but I do remember he existed, prat.

Ha! I thought that. Monk (although I seem to recall he's lost some of his access?), K.Billy and Guan are the only voices I rely on

Christ i'm now seeing Arsenal fans say that Chambers plus 30-40mil would get Van Dijk. One even said Chambers could turn into a real talent so they should loan him to us for a couple of seasons and give us 40mil for Van Dijk. Am I in a parallel universe? Or is this real life?

I'm interested to know how an article saying 'If Van Dijk goes he only wants to go to Liverpool' (something the Scousers have told us all summer), has turned into 'Van Dijk has told Southampton he wants to leave' and that a transfer request is imminent. I've never been to Merseyside, but Twitter and the like gives me the impression that it must be a ****ing weird place.

Apparently Lukaku has a 25% sell on clause from Chelsea, meaning Everton will only see 67 of the eventual 90 according to Twitter, and if he doesn't his whatever the clauses it'll be less than £60mil, so given we sold Mane before Pogba blew up the market this transfer isn't that much more above Mane's relative value at the time, and Lukaku scored more last season than Mane did in his whole career for us. I also realise i've used Heisenberg maths in this calculation.

He got tagged in the message by the club so it would've appeared in his 'mentions', but of course a professional footballer probably gets thousands of 'mentions' a day. It's act of 'liking' a happy birthday message from Groningen which was posted after the Saints one that would've caught the attention of most, because it gives the impression he ignored the Saints one posted before it. Of course it could be an unfortunate accident, but it might not be, either way it gives something to talk about.