Nordic Saint

Not forgetting the 90+ minutes of defensive genius from Fonte.

Juanmi scored the winning goal against Valencia today.

I don't know about personal friends but many seem to worship her like she's some infallible goddess almost on a par with the all powerful god Les Reed. in the past, we used to just support the players and managers and have no interest in who was on the board. I could reel of the Saints' teams and managers of the 60, 70s, 80s etc but can't even remember who was on the board of directors. Rupert Lowe was the first 'celebrity' director/owner I can recall. Nowadays, some fans seem more interested in them than the team.

Fair summary, Stan. The downgrading looks set to continue when Fonte and van Dijk are sold to be replaced by Kevin Wimmer (the defensive equivalent of Nathan Redmond). Factor in the fact that Puel is under orders to play Les's latest signings and players from the Academy as much as possible, then I'm not sure that any manager could do much more than he has. He's on a hiding to nothing.

And it sounds as though our best 2 defensive players, Fonte and van Dijk, are going to be sold next, which will leave our defence as weak as our attack.

Who is looking forward to the Middlesbrough game on Sunday? I'm a season ticket holder so I'll be there and I think I'll be happy if we scrape a 0-0 draw because without our one and only real striker now that Austin is injured that is about as much as we can realistically expect. At least it will be a point rather than getting knocked out of a competition. A 1-0 win and I'll be over the moon. I'm adjusting to our new level of expectations already. But, the next level, when Fonte and van Dijk are sold won't be so easy to swallow. I'll probably still keep turning up though.

Virgil made his own decision to become a striker tonight because he knew without Austin we didn't have one. He has a better footballing brain than Puel and Les Reed combined so he'll be off to another club next year and Les and Kat will already be counting the money they're going to get for him so at least they'll be happy.

You are joking? I've never seen him win a race for the ball with anyone. Have you? His lack of pace is one thing that has really held back our attack this season. When we attempt a swift counterattack, and look to play the ball through, he's still lagging behind the halfway line. As for a 5 yard sprint, defenders and goalies can give him a 2 yard start and still beat him to the ball easily.

I get the impression Les isn't that flexible when it comes to negotiations with players and managers. It was more likely a take it or leave it and the club offer.

Best to ignore the turncoats on here. Once they turn against one of our players, they really turn against him, no matter how good he is.

The way the club's PR spin works on players sales, they could just as easily have offered him a derisory 10 quid a week pay rise just so they could say to the fans he turned down a pay increase, when the truth is they'd already decided to sell him.

Perhaps he wasn't offered a big pay rise or a new contract and the club just wants to sell him, and have kept him out of European games to increase his transfer value to Man United.

Excellent post, and that's how I see it too.

"If he has a strop...":lol: If you really think any player other than a few madmen like Osvaldo would be prepared to commit career suicide like that, you are very naive. A more realistic way of looking at is that the more of their team mates you sell, the more you unsettle the remaining players, apart from the few fringe ones who wouldn't have got into the team otherwise.

The irony is that if she'd waited a bit longer before selling the players, she would have made a lot more money. We often seem to sell players before they reach their peak value so the buying club benefits from getting the best years of their career and can still sell them for a big profit if they want to. It's that policy which makes us look like a club which is overly keen to cash in on its players as soon as we get an offer. Mane, Clyne and Wanyama are improving all the time and already worth a lot more than we sold them for. The ones we retain, like Long and Clasie, are usually the ones whose transfer values are falling. Ultimately, although our scouting has been good in the case of players like Mane and Wanyama, I'm not sure our overall transfer policy is as astute as some people think it is.

Shane Long has always been an average striker who has averaged 1 goal every 4 games throughout his career. His one exceptional asset was his pace and although he is still faster than Redmond, he is 30 now and seems to have lost a bit of it this season and can't outsprint defenders the way he used to. That's not going to get any better but he should still score a handful of goals this season. Next season his days as a Premier League striker will probably be numbered. Maybe we could sell him to a top Championship club or even a newly promoted club in the summer and recover some of the money we paid for him.

Mane and Pelle didn't only play in league games last season. Mane was our top scorer last season with 15 goals followed by Pelle with 14.

You must have an incredibly short memory. It was last season's team which got us into the group stages of the Europa League.

No, in fact as far as the attack is concerned it's one of the worst ones in our years in the top flight. The sale of our best attacking players, like Lallana, Pelle and Mane, has resulted in an overall weakening of our attack, leaving us with mediocre players like Redmond, Long and Ward-Prowse and really struggling for goals.

His pride won't let him come back here, so forget about him. Time to move on. We haven't really missed him anyway.

More likely the absence of Redmond. He's slower than both of them.

Apart from some Saints fans, nobody else seems to think he's better than West Brom level. He's been found wanting by several top managers at France and Man United and none of them thought he was good enough. West Brom is exactly his level and even there he won't be a star player.

That's Arsenal reserves. Our first team would have beaten them. We've got no recognised right back in starting the lineup, no goal scorer up front and we haven't even got Austin and Fonte on the bench. We have won 1 trophy in our entire history so a semi-final place would be massive for us. Why can't Puel see that? I guess he doesn't realize just how much winning the League Cup would mean to the fans. If we lose tonight, fans are going to be very p!ssed off with Puel and his obsession with rotations, which basically means fielding weaker teams than necessary.

So is the awful form of Redmond. In fact, any game Austin doesn't start in, we're f..ked, unless we get an own goal or a penalty. And any game in which either Fonte or van Dijk don't start, we're going to concede a goal or two. So, that means defeat like we saw in Prague.

It's really only the Ward-Prowse one which spoils it.