Nordic Saint

I agree with you Charlie. He's one of the best players I've ever seen play for Saints, and I've been going since the 60s. His combination of pace and ball skills is breathtaking. Obviously he's still in the early stages of his career, but I'd rate him up there with Keegan and Channon. You're right. He could eventually be worth the sort of money that Bale was when Spurs sold him to Real Madrid. What a privilege it is to have such a talented player here.

That's the question you should be asking Reed, my favourite stalker. By the way, congratulations on your excellent reaction time to my posts, my little angel. You must be waiting all night for my first post with your finger poised.

I hope the media reports that Reed didn't even ask for a non-poaching clause in the Koeman release agreement are untrue. Because if they are, we can say goodbye to Van Dijk and any other of our players Everton want, as well as any transfer targets we had lined up for this summer.

Seriously, how on earth do you know that Koeman doesn't have any morals? This hate campaign against him is pathetic. He has been an excellent manager for us and from what I've heard, he wanted to see out his 3-year contract. I was really looking forward to next season with him in charge. It's true he didn't want to extend his current contract yet but there was no reason why he had to do that now. From what I've heard, Les Reed has forced him out a year early. Does that mean Les Reed had better morals than Ronald Koeman?

Tonight Graziano Pellè won his 13th cap for Italy, all of them since he joined Saints in 2014. José Fonte has 11 caps for Portugal and Virgil van Dijk already has 7 for Holland, all since they joined us, and I'd expect them to get many more caps. We also have seen quite a few of our players win their first England caps. It's certainly a plus point in our favour when players are considering which club to join.

I agree with the majority that the best option would be Emery but unfortunately we won't get him as another club wants him.

Replace the man who in his disastrous spell in charge at Charlton was voted the worst manager in the history of the Premier League with somebody who gets on with players and managers and inspires loyalty like Le Tissier.

So, basically, Koeman was a man of his word and wanted to see out his 3-year contract, but Les Reed has driven him out a year early with his 'negotiating skills'.

Eh? That's impossible if Southampton haven't given Everton permission to speak to him.

I used to like the days when we could identify with our manager and players for a few years at least before being incited to turn against them. That's what being a fan was about. We used to have favourite players and managers and we felt part of a team. Les Reed has wrecked all that for me. It's now almost instant hatred for every player and manager who arrives because you know Les is going to drive them to a rival club very soon and tell you to view them as money-driven, selfish nobodies. Now it's all just about how great Les and Kat are and that's not what football is about for me.

How much would we have to pay Everton to take Les Reed away? I know he is revered by some on here almost as much as he wants to be but this Echo comment sums up my feelings about him: Reed is a Machiavellian character. That can drive him to personal success but it can also mean that everyone around him is dispensable. He's done a remarkable job of promoting his own image. Everything good that happens at the club is his doing and anything that goes wrong is other people's fault. Anyone who falls out with him, and in the end everyone does, is labeled selfish and money-grabbing. As long as he’s here, we’ll not keep our managers, players or staff. In the case of the managers, I’m not sure he even wants them to stay long as he begins to see them as a threat when they take some of the credit for the team’s success away from him.

There's no chance Everton will want Clasie. They might be interested in Mane, Wanyama, Van Dijk and Forster tough. To be fair to Pochettino, he didn't poach any of our players. Hopefully Koeman will be as honourable.

He'll have to be a pretty easy-going character as Les won't want another one who stands up to him. A few of the potential candidates will probably be aware of that.

Does anybody remember when a few ITK posters on here leaked that Les Reed wasn't happy with Koeman as he wasn't following his instructions to put more of the Academy players in the first team shop window? I guess it wasn't that tough a decision for Les to give Everton permission to speak to Ron then.

Even if they don't get Koeman, Everton will have caused a few problems for Southampton, a club which has recently taken their place in the pecking order. With their talk of 6 million a year contracts, they are forcing the club to spend more than it might otherwise have had to, and they are probably also unsettling one or two of our players with the speculation over the manager's future just before the transfer window opens. To be honest, if we can keep Koeman for another year, we'll have done better than most clubs. The average PL manager's tenure is just over one year and few Premier League managers stay at one club for more than 2. I don't buy this talk of it would be better to let him go now rather than let him see out the final year of a contract. No, it wouldn't. We want him here as long as possible. Fingers crossed that he rejects Everton.

Good point. At the very least, we should keep him until the January window and then take a look at our position. If we do sell him, it certainly should not be to a Premier League rival. Would Liverpool or Spurs sell key players to rival teams just above them? Better to sell him abroad even if it's for a bit less.

He wasn't just covering for Clyne. At the end of Chambers' time here, they were viewed as equals and Clyne was dropped for him on a couple of occasions. That was why it was felt we should sell one of them as it seemed unlikely we could keep them both happy here. As it turned out, we probably sold the wrong one, as Clyne wanted to go to Liverpool in the end anyway. Chambers already has 3 full England caps as well as A Toulon U21 tournament winner's medal, A Charity Shield winner's medal and an FA Cup winner's medal and 83 1st team appearances for Saints & Arsenal, including 10 Champions' League games. Not bad for a player who's only just 21. It would be great of we could get him back here, even for just one season, as next season is potentially the most crucial in our modern history, with Europa League group stage matches and a real chance to break into the top 4 and win a cup.

He's only just turned 21 and he has been superb at centre back for England U21s in winning the Toulon tournament. There can't be many better centre backs of his age out there right now.

He is a top class international striker. That's 5 goals in 12 games for Italy and 23 goals in 68 games for Saints. The top Italian clubs are all going to want him but it would be very hard for us to get a replacement as good. Fonte and Cedric both got their 10th caps for Portugal tonight too. Saints players could be some of the stars of the Euros this summer.

The team now is the best in that period so we really should consider current players. Best: Fonte Lambert Bertrand Van Dijk Mane Worst: Osvaldo Ramirez Delgado Hooiveld Fox

Yes, as history has shown us, any club can: Huddersfield, Preston, Burnley, Wolves, Nottingham Forest, even Portsmouth. In 50 years' time, the top clubs will be completely different from now. Last year the naysayers, were adamant that the only clubs that could possibly win the league this season were Chelsea and Man City and no other clubs' fans should even dream of trying to compete with them. Any that disagreed were called 'mongs'. There are some right, miserable pessimists about: fully paid up members of the ever so 'umble, I know my place, brigade. Some Chelsea and Man City fans were probably saying they had no chance of ever competing with Man Utd and Arsenal not so many years ago. I'm looking forward to seeing Saints take their turn as a top club. We very nearly did it in the 80s.

There aren't many clubs with season tickets as expensive as ours. The club sets the price to just fill the ground, and you could argue they've got their pricing exactly right as we have averaged more than 30,000 in all of our top flight seasons at St Mary's. It's not just about the money though, is it? If it were, we'd only need a capacity of 100 as long as we filled it with billionaires. Football is tribal and the big tribes ultimately prevail. It's all very well trying to stay a small, non-threatening tribe which never grows, but the trouble is, if we do that, some ambitious, expansionist tribe will one day take over our territory. It's what happened to us in the 1920s when Portsmouth built a much bigger stadium, while we stood still. We suffered from that lack of ambition for the next 50 years.

Hands up. Perhaps I did lay it on a bit thick with that post, but I get the impression, perhaps wrongly, that a few of our fans, by no means all, don't view Mane quite as fairly and objectively as they ought to, when he looks to me like one of the best players we've ever had. I'd be as gutted to lose him as I was when we lost Channon, Shearer and Keegan.

That's great news, especially with Koeman staying too. Really looking forward to next season more than any other I can ever recall.

Let's be blunt about this. If Mane had the physical appearance of Clasie, he would be being universally hailed by Saints fans as one of the best players ever to play for the club and NOBODY would want him sold for any amount of money. Conversely, if Clasie had the physical appearance of Mane, he would be getting called all the insulting names under the sun by just about every Saints fan and would be labelled as having a poor attitude.