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Saints Transfers Thread - Deadline Day


Saint Charlie

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Finishing seventh, then sixth isn't bearing fruit? Christ almighty.

 

And I wouldn't accept that not winning a cup is the root of fans frustrations. The League and FA Cups have been merrily written off by the types you mention on here as a Mickey Mouse waste of time.

 

Good. I'm pleased we disagree.

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Finishing seventh, then sixth isn't bearing fruit? Christ almighty.

 

And I wouldn't accept that not winning a cup is the root of fans frustrations. The League and FA Cups have been merrily written off by the types you mention on here as a Mickey Mouse waste of time.

 

Finishing seventh, then sixth was fruit bearing. The worry is that the orchard hasn't been fertilised and cultivated sufficiently pre-season.

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Good. I'm pleased we disagree.

I would suggest you have yet another fruitless season ahead then, exactly the same as every single SFC season for the last forty years.

 

Personally I think the last few seasons have been great.

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According to the Echo, Puel wants one more signing before the window shuts.

 

If no senior players leave, and we sign one good attacking midfielder/number 10, I'd say that is a pretty good window. Perhaps a little weaker than last season but not by much. Then it's just up to Puel to get the tactics right.

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The last few seasons have been good, not great.

Chin up. In the next twenty years I'd say it is highly likely we won't see many better seasons than those two and absolutely certain we'll see lots of seasons worse, or much worse, than that.

 

So that will be fifty odd years of nothing bearing any fruit. Try and enjoy it anyway.

Edited by CB Fry
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So at what point do we stop selling ? even with all the extensions signed we still have moved out 3 very significant figures from last years team, its ok arguing that it because they have proved themselves that 'bigger' clubs want them but at what point do they all decide actually i'm better off at Saints? how do we make that transition? Wet Sham have not been raided , Leicester lost one major player ,

 

We appear to be changing from the style that has won us admiration , and our players moves , so maybe that's the plan , less desirable football , means players not in the shop window, rather we continue with the old systems where we can interchange personnel and still be successful , or have we been punching above our weight? have we got lucky ? is this the WGS to Woggy change that Rupert masterminded or will we be announcing two big signings that will really want to be part of the next chapter of Europa league and flirting with CL qualification?

 

Much as I dislike them Spurs have moved on from selling to Europa and now into the CL , my fear is we've settled for a profit and securing the big names to secure future profits

 

The club have stated that the strategy is to build up as a "pathway" club. Signing what it feels is great talent that can be developed and which sees us as an opportunity to flourish and move onto one of the worlds bigger clubs. This is true at youth and senior levels. Mane would have come on that basis as did VVD and Homburg and several of the recently signed youth. They leave better players, we've enjoyed watching, we are stronger as a club financially and reputationally. We repeat the process hopefully getting better players in (wages, FFP etc) and closer to retaining some of them each time.

 

Don't see the problem myself. The club has proved it can do it and has the owner to manage any "blips" that might happen in the journey or facilitation required (Staplewood - maybe stadium expansion at some point?).

 

I personally think it is a fantastic journey and based on the last five years or so I have every reason to trust the board to deliver this strategy.

 

Enjoy the ride fellas (and girls!) and giving a few bloody noses but don't be disappointed when we sell a few for big money.

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I'm having trouble understanding all this talk about target men or slow to medium paced strikers not fitting our style of play and we are instead focusing on pacy strikers who can receive through balls or balls over the top and a number 10 capable of creating those chances.

Didn't we have that exactly in Juanmi and Gaston?

I agree these players did not fit in RK style of play which involved loads of crossing and a fair load of long balls.

Gaston had already left when Claude came in as he was out of contract but didn t we sell Juanmi a little early knowing we are now looking for exactly the same type of player?

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The club have stated that the strategy is to build up as a "pathway" club. Signing what it feels is great talent that can be developed and which sees us as an opportunity to flourish and move onto one of the worlds bigger clubs. This is true at youth and senior levels. Mane would have come on that basis as did VVD and Homburg and several of the recently signed youth. They leave better players, we've enjoyed watching, we are stronger as a club financially and reputationally. We repeat the process hopefully getting better players in (wages, FFP etc) and closer to retaining some of them each time.

 

Don't see the problem myself. The club has proved it can do it and has the owner to manage any "blips" that might happen in the journey or facilitation required (Staplewood - maybe stadium expansion at some point?).

 

I personally think it is a fantastic journey and based on the last five years or so I have every reason to trust the board to deliver this strategy.

 

Enjoy the ride fellas (and girls!) and giving a few bloody noses but don't be disappointed when we sell a few for big money.

 

That's all well and good, I'm not doubting it as a sensible way to run our club but a fans aspirations are generally different to this.

 

I'm pleased we are well run and it is good to see progression but success in the boardroom is not necessarily deemed as success in the stands.

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That's all well and good, I'm not doubting it as a sensible way to run our club but a fans aspirations are generally different to this.

 

I'm pleased we are well run and it is good to see progression but success in the boardroom is not necessarily deemed as success in the stands.

 

 

The club is in part a victim of its own success seven straight years of improvement has seen fan expectations go sky high in a way I've not seen in saints fans in my years as a supporter.

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Chin up. In the next twenty years I'd say it is highly likely we won't see many better seasons than those two and absolutely certain we'll see lots of seasons worse, or much worse, than that.

 

So that will be fifty odd years of nothing bearing any fruit. Try and enjoy it anyway.

CB are you truly happy with that? When I was young I had the thought that whatever Saints did was great and we were the centre of the universe, after following them for nearly 50 years I now am getting more impatient for the glory and experience of actually winning things. 1976 is a lifetime away. Whilst I still have the memories of the day and the cup run I would like fans who never have sampled it to see why we long for it so much
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How would you compare them with the years when we were perennially struggling against relegation with Le Tiss practically keeping us up single handed? Because that is still my deeply ingrained idea of a normal Saints season, not finishing 8th, 7th and 6th in successive years.

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This place is infested with people who love to be negative, remind us of our glass ceiling and delight in stating this fact repeatedly as if it is a medal that can be warn with pride to beat down those with actual ambition and passion for the club.

 

All despite evidence to the contrary with the latest glorious example being the mighty Foxes.

 

We've done well despite flogging and banking a profit for several consecutive seasons. Imagine if we'd had some real ambition.

 

And at the end of the day... all these managers and all these players keep leaving.... Yet they are always to blame and it is never something wrong with the club or the board. No smoke without fire etc.

 

But nvm, lets carry on supporting the saints. They have us all by the balls in that regards, we were here in League 1, so we'll obviously be here when we flog our soul each summer and under achieve as a result.

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Fans aspirations and financial reality are not natural bedfellows.

 

That is my point, really. I am not an advocate for sh!t or bust but when you perceive the only success for our club is how it is run that will eventually lead to despondency within the fan base. I do believe we are giving ourselves a sensible chance of success (cup final, winning a final) but would love to see it converted.

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This place is infested with people who love to be negative, remind us of our glass ceiling and delight in stating this fact repeatedly as if it is a medal that can be warn with pride to beat down those with actual ambition and passion for the club.

 

All despite evidence to the contrary with the latest glorious example being the mighty Foxes.

 

We've done well despite flogging and banking a profit for several consecutive seasons. Imagine if we'd had some real ambition.

 

And at the end of the day... all these managers and all these players keep leaving.... Yet they are always to blame and it is never something wrong with the club or the board. No smoke without fire etc.

 

But nvm, lets carry on supporting the saints. They have us all by the balls in that regards, we were here in League 1, so we'll obviously be here when we flog our soul each summer and under achieve as a result.

 

 

So you want the club to show ambition and then use Leicester of last season as an example of the way forward....

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So you want the club to show ambition and then use Leicester of last season as an example of the way forward....

 

Agreed that proving a point by the exception is not worthy. I really don't understand "showing ambition" as a point either but looking at real results the last 7 FA Cup Finals have been contested by teams such as: Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Hull City, Wigan, Liverpool, Stoke City and Portsmouth... (maybe I should have only gone back 6 years...) That's what you'd expect a club like ours, as well run as it is, to be achieving.

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So you want the club to show ambition and then use Leicester of last season as an example of the way forward....

 

Don't think he was really saying to run the club in the same way as Leicester, more stating that success is possible if you're a smaller club, how that success is achieved is the crux of the matter.

 

I'm sure the club have signings lined up but as fans it's hard to get excited about how much money the club have brought in when you see the players who we've lost. Like it or not what builds excitement in fans is seeing new players arrive, bigger clubs have to excite their fans by buying ready made, world known players, whilst fans at clubs like Southampton are more content to see lesser players or players with potential arrive. The trouble with buying potential is when they realise that potential and the big clubs want their ready made players.

 

Either way fans need to be excited as the new season approaches, currently I'd say most of us happy to let the club do their thing behind the scenes, we've made a couple of decent signings and we may yet make a couple more, however it would be nice to make at least one signing that gets the fans excited, instead of having the continual feeling of the rug being pulled from under you. It is a pretty **** feeling when fans of other clubs think they can just take our players at will.

 

Fact is united, city, chelsea and to some extent liverpool were all in a season of transition at the same time, causing a perfect storm which Leicester took advantage of, this is not likely to happen again for a while.

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Just be nice for us not to see 3-5 first team players leaving every summer. Let alone our managers

 

No other club around us does that

 

How many other clubs are size have finished top 8 in last three seasons?

Admittedly could have held on to Lallana, Lovren and Mane and Shaw all for a year more (no matter the first two's strop), but then remember we are a business, we will be looking to maximise profit and replace cheaply, something we have done to very good effect so far.

 

I regret the day the transfers all go wrong.

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Every time I hear or read the expression "I want the club to show more ambition" it is clear that what is actually meant is "I want to see the club spend significantly more on transfer fees".

 

Why don't people say what they mean?

 

Because I don't think they do. Hojberg proves there are good players out there. Just season has started and the usual exodus has left us weaker at the moment with no indication of incomings to cover weak positions or injury cover.

Benteke offer of 23m turned down why don't we offer 24? :-)

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Agreed that proving a point by the exception is not worthy. I really don't understand "showing ambition" as a point either but looking at real results the last 7 FA Cup Finals have been contested by teams such as: Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Hull City, Wigan, Liverpool, Stoke City and Portsmouth... (maybe I should have only gone back 6 years...) That's what you'd expect a club like ours, as well run as it is, to be achieving.

 

Don't forget Cardiff City..........

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Just be nice for us not to see 3-5 first team players leaving every summer. Let alone our managers

 

No other club around us does that

 

I agree with this sentiment.

 

It's just exhausting to have change like this every summer.

It's the case that 'club' players leave on a consistent basis, even those we bring through club structure and academies, walcott, chamberlain, lallana, shaw.

 

Not even the southampton way, ingrained into the teenagers and U18-U23s, isn't enough to keep them.

 

We want to match the loyalty shown by us fans with the loyalty shown by players and it seems we are in one of the very few positions in the league where this kind of change happens.

 

Other clubs of a similar size/league position, have those older, experienced, loyal players who won't go anywhere else. players of that ilk at Saints, who do we have? Davis? That's it, others, like young players who are very loyal but not of good enough quality to sell for a reasonable sum, such as JWP who still continues to our surprise to be a first team player. And Fonte is stalling on a contract, having shown loyalty, yes, but feels as if he is now on the fence with the promise of spending his final years at the Top.

 

In other words if they are top top players they will leave, and if they aren't good enough to leave (too old, too poor) then what, they are the core of Southampton FC playing squad for the next year?

 

It isn't bed wetting, since I am optimistic and hold out for transfers and a good league finish. But where does it stop, eventually?

 

I wonder sometimes whether Southampton FC doesn't have as much ruthlessness as other clubs, and all this talk of the Saints way and player personality profiling is actually hindering us. At the end of the day we can be as pleasant and fun as you like, it just isn't matched by the majority of the players we bring in. Someone like Hojbjerg, Bertrand, Redmond is the type that buys into this. Others either seem like mercenaries - for want of a better word.

 

Why not match therefore the cowboy attitude of some players with a similar recruitment strategy? Drop the personality/Saints way stuff, recruit cheap, solid performers from this league or the continent and if they don't buy into the "way" then who cares? Sell them in 2 years time.

 

Treat players as a means to an end just as they treat us the same, a stepping stone to greater things.

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It will happen every year, unless we shut Staplewood. The jump up from seventh to sixth in size is just too big. It's roughly £100m a year, and we are never going to do that.

 

Southampton's speciality isn't just the academy, it's the whole of the operation at Staplewood. Everybody improves, whether they join us at 9 or 19. The Sadio Mane that left us was a far better player than the Sadio Mane that joined.

 

So get used to them leaving, and start worrying when they force a move to Palace or West Brom.

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It will happen every year, unless we shut Staplewood. The jump up from seventh to sixth in size is just too big. It's roughly £100m a year, and we are never going to do that.

 

Southampton's speciality isn't just the academy, it's the whole of the operation at Staplewood. Everybody improves, whether they join us at 9 or 19. The Sadio Mane that left us was a far better player than the Sadio Mane that joined.

 

So get used to them leaving, and start worrying when they force a move to Palace or West Brom.

 

You say that but we finished 6th last year. We should learn to hold firmer when we get offers. It seems to be the case that every offer that we receive we accept, or even if we don't accept the first one, you know they're eventually going to go. It's almost like we advertise it.

 

There is no excuse to want a negative net spend with the amount of money in the premier league. If Katherina wants to look after the asset, then she needs to make sure we're not in danger of relegation. At the moment we are....a few decent signings and we could be a top table side, it just doesn't help when you have to rebuild the club every summer.

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You say that but we finished 6th last year. We should learn to hold firmer when we get offers. It seems to be the case that every offer that we receive we accept, or even if we don't accept the first one, you know they're eventually going to go. It's almost like we advertise it.

 

There is no excuse to want a negative net spend with the amount of money in the premier league. If Katherina wants to look after the asset, then she needs to make sure we're not in danger of relegation. At the moment we are....a few decent signings and we could be a top table side, it just doesn't help when you have to rebuild the club every summer.

The last set of accounts shows that we spent pretty much the whole of the TV income on wages alone. We have significant other day to day running costs, which again were just about covered by commercial revenues and gate money.

 

That leaves sod all to pay off the fifty-odd million quid of debt we ran up when we spent our way from the bottom of L1 to the top of the PL. Not to mention the forty million we spent on Staplewood.

 

There is a club in Hampshire that doesn't pay it's old debts, but I don't support them.

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You say that but we finished 6th last year. We should learn to hold firmer when we get offers. It seems to be the case that every offer that we receive we accept, or even if we don't accept the first one, you know they're eventually going to go. It's almost like we advertise it.

 

There is no excuse to want a negative net spend with the amount of money in the premier league. If Katherina wants to look after the asset, then she needs to make sure we're not in danger of relegation. At the moment we are....a few decent signings and we could be a top table side, it just doesn't help when you have to rebuild the club every summer.

 

We aren't in danger of relegation. Every year some absolute garbage manages to avoid the drop. Look at Sundeland and Bompey last year. If you think teams like Burnley, West Brom, Bournemouth and Hull are better than us because we've lost Mané, you need your head looking at.

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A lot of fans think it's just us that let's players go.

 

It isn't. Over the last few years we have just been the best at taking kids or younger players for reasonable money and turning them into 20 -30 million pound players. They then go on up the line. OK Clyne and VW were different as we didn't get the full value due to their contract situation - which they wouldn't sign.

Other teams like Stoke, Palace, West Ham etc haven't sold players like that, because frankly they never had any.

Had the top 5 clubs come in for any of their players then they would have gone the same way ours did.

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The last set of accounts shows that we spent pretty much the whole of the TV income on wages alone. We have significant other day to day running costs, which again were just about covered by commercial revenues and gate money.

 

That leaves sod all to pay off the fifty-odd million quid of debt we ran up when we spent our way from the bottom of L1 to the top of the PL. Not to mention the forty million we spent on Staplewood.

 

There is a club in Hampshire that doesn't pay it's old debts, but I don't support them.

 

Yellow card (Offence: too much common sense on a football forum)

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We aren't in danger of relegation. Every year some absolute garbage manages to avoid the drop. Look at Sundeland and Bompey last year. If you think teams like Burnley, West Brom, Bournemouth and Hull are better than us because we've lost Mané, you need your head looking at.

 

With the squad we've currently got, we could get sucked into a relegation battle. I don't think we will be or should be, but it is possible. We don't have many goals in our side at the moment, and not particularly strong at the back, especially if we don't replace Wanyama and Fonte (if he goes) adequately. Chelsea proved last year that it's pretty easy to get bogged down into a rut, and look at the players they have.

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A lot of fans think it's just us that let's players go.

 

It isn't. Over the last few years we have just been the best at taking kids or younger players for reasonable money and turning them into 20 -30 million pound players. They then go on up the line. OK Clyne and VW were different as we didn't get the full value due to their contract situation - which they wouldn't sign.

Other teams like Stoke, Palace, West Ham etc haven't sold players like that, because frankly they never had any.

Had the top 5 clubs come in for any of their players then they would have gone the same way ours did.

You should post more often.

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With the squad we've currently got, we could get sucked into a relegation battle. I don't think we will be or should be, but it is possible. We don't have many goals in our side at the moment, and not particularly strong at the back, especially if we don't replace Wanyama and Fonte (if he goes) adequately. Chelsea proved last year that it's pretty easy to get bogged down into a rut, and look at the players they have.

 

We've replaced Wanyama with Hojbjerg. It isn't like for like but he looks a very good player, with passing and dribbling skills Wanyama can only dream of.

 

We have no reason to sell Fonte unless it suits us, I don't know why anyone is fretting about this. We hold all the aces. He is contracted here for the rest of his Premier League career.

 

So Redmond isn't as good as Mané, he was still one of Norwich's better players. There is nothing about our club that a neutral would look at and think 'relegation candidate'. From the stadium, sate of the art training facilities and boardroom all the way down to the youth team.

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Just be nice for us not to see 3-5 first team players leaving every summer. Let alone our managers

 

No other club around us does that

 

It's because we're punching well above our weight. You won't see Stoke City having a player of Mané's age and quality.

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