ScepticalStan

Oh cry me a bloody river. When I first graduated with a 2:1 from Southampton I was working at an unscrupulous employer writing market reports just outside the City earning bloody £17k - along with a tonne of other young graduates who had to suck it up to get a foot on the professional ladder whilst competing with the rest of Europe's youth. At my job now I'm surrounded by Europeans, there are 300k French and Italians in London alone competing for professional jobs. So why are plumbers entitled to protectionism when we're not? If the Polish family are making a net contribution to our coffers then its our own stupid fault for not building enough schools and houses. He's doing his bit. As for your concern for the drain on the Polish treasury We'll have high immigration (ideally circular) like it or not. If I thought that leaving the EU would preclude us from keeping a decent amount of EU immigration coming our way I wouldn't vote OUT. As I said before however - that doesn't mean I don't want to control it or have deportations of known terrorists stopped by the European Court of Human rights - or indeed be obliged to let in any old randomer that Germany, Holland, Belgium or France would have every intention to throw a passport to once they get wind of the fact he's on his way to the UK.

I would agree that immigration is a bit of a red herring as we'll get it from somewhere whatever the case. Plus EU migrants are a massive boost to the economy. So why don't we want control over it? The ideal EU migrant (Polish plumber who costs nothing to send to school, pays tonnes in taxes between the age of 25-45 or so and then heads back home long before he's a drain on the NHS or pension pot) would still be welcome. We could, however, turn away the undesirables that countries like Germany will hand passports out to like confetti. I think EU migration has been a massive benefit and it should and would still remain high in terms of pure numbers - that doesn't mean I don't want us to have control over it.

Can someone describe to me why the British-incorporated subsidiary of a profit-generating, British taxpayer-contributing, German and British-employee hiring, German prestige and economic power-generating German company is going to suddenly withdraw from the UK in the event of a Brexit vote? Or why the leaders of Britain or Germany would have any incentive to insist that they do?

You haven't actually been able to argue against the points I've made concerning the fact that it'd be in Germany's interest to have a free trade deal as much as it would be our own, have you? You sound a little like a petulant teenager, folding her arms whilst repeating what the nearest adult has calmly said, but in a sulkier and angrier voice.

Glad that we're finally going to show some muscle when it comes to the Mane transfer. The guy has funnily enough, actually had a fairly naff season all-in-all - apart from his burst of goals at the end; so much so that I'm not convinced he can really do any worse next season. At the other end of the spectrum; I can absolutely see him notching 20-25 goals in the Premier League alone. Bottom line is he's a bloody brilliant player and won't lose any of his transfer value for having one, rather than two years left on his contract; the value of his transfer fee will be on account of the competition for the players signature and inevitable bidding war that follows. We should hold firm. Victor we can sell and replace; but for the love of God lets do that sooner rather than later instead of going into our opening games of the season half-cocked like we did in this one.

I'm afraid that given that the Tories won the relatively recent election with a comprehensive majority on the back of a manifesto that included a referendum on EU membership as a front-page policy, the likes of David Mitchell are welcome to speak for themselves and themselves only. Will you therefore be declining to vote due to your belief that you're unqualified to make a decision on the subject?

I'm a business journalist by trade. The source was a senior credit officer at Moody's although needless to say I can't reveal his actual identity. Put simply; its in neither the UK's nor the EU's interest to put up trade barriers when neither side will benefit. Stupid little England Brexiteer idiots like Roger Bootle say much the same thing. The whole thing reminds me of when Nissan said they'd pull their operations out of the UK if the UK didn't join the Euro, then proceeded to grit their teeth and double their workforce. They weren't in a rush (surprisingly) to move from 20% corporation tax Britain to 33% corporation tax France or 30% Germany. We'll definitely stay in the EU but if the idea that we left we'd find ourselves in a tariff war with countries who have absolutely no incentive to get into one with us is laughable.

Post Brexit the German car manufacturers will be keen to preserve free trade with one of their most profitable markets - the UK. What they want will dictate what Germany wants and what Germany wants Germany gets in the EU. If somewhere like Latvia wants to veto a deal with the U.K. In the Brexit negotiations the Germans will ask it to cover the missing net £8,500,000,000 contribution that Britain used to put in the EU pot. I imagine they'll pipe down at that point. As will the French.

Lots of views but not so many replies... Surely we can drum up some support for Tayo!

Relegation odds are ridiculously short at the moment. Leicester are the same odds as we are with most bookies to be relegated (25/1). That's way too short for both of us.

Great! Please keep us updated on here and let us know how it goes!

Indeed. When the Emperor looks naked, the Emperor is naked. The most frustrating thing is we tried the same effin' thing two years ago when we tried to convert Gerrard into a Pirlo-type role and duly compounded the error by building the team around him. The result was a complete catastrophe and to suffer the humiliation of England having to play a dead third group match should have had the nation calling for that scraggy-faced imbecile's head. The expectations for the last World Cup couldn't have been lower and couldn't have been more reasonable, yet we still ended up disappointed and embarrassed. And we never learn of course... But hey, 'Ask not what Rooney can do for England...'

Fantastic! Let us know how things go. I was speaking to him recently about efforts to get him to St. Mary's. I don't know whether the club could get involved at all (it would certainly make for great publicity) but there has been occasional chatter on his page about setting up some kind of a crowdfunding campaign to give him a chance to come along. Obviously we can't just gift him the money and there'd need to be some kind of measures taken re. security etc. but I'd happily chip in a tenner or so if there were enough people willing to do the same and we could guarantee that it all went smoothly. Aside from being a heartwarming project it wouldn't half make the club & fans look good.

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006500737202 Has anyone been following this guy at all? He's a Nigerian Saints fan who has built himself up a little audience on Facebook with his combination of enthusiastic support, slightly elaborate messages and just generally infectious online persona. Tayo has been featured in the match day programme in the past as well as in the local papers as well. If you've got a moment it's worth looking back over his posts and photographs of the smiling kids in Nigeria that he's rallied to the cause. He's also a good guy to send old spare Saints shirts to if you've got any lying around. Have a read - the stuff he posts will put a smile on your face!

Right-o. As this'll be a campaign lasting for a minimum of three months/six fixtures I suppose we may as well get it started! When's the draw?

Heh, that too. You can add Man United not wanting to look daft by selling him back to us at probably about 2/3rds of the price. Bottom line is its a no-go.

A good player, but replaceable. We do need a proper replacement though. I really, really like Romeu and would have him in the team ahead of Clasie but (whilst it pains me to say it), he's a clear step down from Wanyama and that will have a tangible effect on our points tally throughout the season. Much as I'd love to get Morgan back his wages will be through the roof now.

Hmm, this is kind of an interesting debate but I'm not sure Spurs are a great example of that. Don't forget that they completely threw the tie against Dortmund in their pursuit of the PL title. Perhaps even more tellingly, take a look on their forum: many of their fans have attributed their lack of strength in depth (the loss of Dembele and Alli in their final few matches being far more damaging than it should have been) as being what cost them 2nd place (Mason being the direct replacement for Dembele has come in for some utter vitriol).

Yeah that's another good example actually. Can't be 100% sure that he'd have been a rubber-stamped success if not for the injuries, but certainly a good example against the idea that playing for a team that were relegated proves that you're definitely not good enough for a top-half side. QPR were terrible and were relegated as the worst team in the league, but their centre-forward was a good player.

Sissoko's a decent player and at only 26, still relatively young. He's in France's senior squad for the Euros and has 35 caps. You don't get that without having something about you. Put it this way - he'd give us an option to stick in the number 10 position if we want to go for a crude-wrecking-ball-of-energy option rather than the tippy-tappy neat passing option. He'd certainly strengthen our squad and give us an option we don't have at the moment. A larger point I'd make is that we should be guarded against the idea that players from the bottom 3 are never ever ever going to be good enough to make some kind of useful addition to our squad because we've finished 6th. Its only one example but look at Liverpool buying Crouch from us in 2005, he was never intended or expected to set the world alight but nonetheless was a savvy little purchase that gave them an extra attacking option off the bench. If we're going to try and make a better fist of competing in Europe and have to juggle a far busier fixture list than we have in these past couple of seasons, then those are the sorts of purchases we should look to make. Sure, we'll probably pull a Juanmi now and again, but for every Juanmi there's usually a Romeu, who despite being predominantly a bench player and only costing £5Mn, has probably made a tangible contribution to our overall points total and league positioning. Now don't get me wrong, there's no-one from either Villa or Norwich that I think is good enough to take a look at and I think Sissoko and Wijnaldum are the only two from Newcastle that we could maybe cast a glance over (maybe not even the latter), but we shouldn't dismiss players purely because the teams they've played for have been relegated.

I think it had far, far more to do with the other teams reacting to Leicester than it did to Leicester intentionally changing their style for the sake of injecting some kind of spurious sense of 'variety' into their play when their super-direct tactics were working so well. You think Leicester's games away to Watford, Palace and Sunderland would have transpired the way they did if they were played in August and September rather than March and April? It was only towards the very end of the season where mid-table clubs began to look at a draw at home to Leicester as a good result that they had to change their style accordingly. They went bull-at-a-gate away to Man City in February the exact same way they did against Sunderland on the opening day. They succeeded in scoring 2 or 3 goals away from home against Norwich, Newcastle, Sunderland, West Brom, Swansea, Everton, Stoke, Saints, West Ham and City. Their cavalier style turned out to be entirely sustainable and only stopped manifesting itself in 4-2s and 3-2s when other teams started sitting back, which as I say, actually only started happening very late in the season.

Do you think its possible for a country like ours to have too much migration? Say, if we had 500k or 1.5Mn per year? Or maybe 10Mn per year? Is there a number beyond which you'd step back and say "right, this is too much, we just can't economically handle this many new people"?

I think Pelle's one of those players where we'd be making a mistake taking things to either extreme. For instance here; lets not go nuts, he's done well but we do look better with Long and Mane in the side. I've long defended Pelle against the amount of scapegoating he tends to get but lets be honest, he's hardly the hub of all of our attacking play. I don't think we'd have been able to beat City the way we did with Pelle ahead of Long for instance. Having said that, he's a useful weapon to have as part of our arsenal and definitely has got a role to play at the club. Useful from a defensive point of view too.

I'd still be genuinely very surprised if they win at Stoke. I'm normally as pessimistic a fan as they come but I strongly, strongly believe we'll get 6th tomorrow.

So? There are tonne of potential explanations that one could cook up to 'fill that gap'. Maybe there's a cultural difference in the importance of science in terms of various demographics? (In fact, I'm quite convinced there is - betcha east-Asians are overrepped in science for that matter). Point is this: pointing to a demographic gap, wondering why that gap is there, and then jumping to the conclusion (without a shred of evidence) that said gap MUST be caused by discriminatory hiring practices is logically no different from saying that such a gap MUST be down to differences in average intelligence between races. Its just an explanation plucked out of thin air that 'fits the bill' but actually has no evidence for it. Its a little like the earliest religious people who wondered how it was the sun rose in the sky every morning to grant them light and warmth and happened to leave the sky at just the time when they needed darkness and cool air to sleep - and so figured that the only explanation was that the sun had a will of its own and was interested in looking after humans. If you have evidence for discrimination - show us this evidence.