Useful Idiot

Didn't they turn down about £12m+ from Burnley for him a few months ago because it wasn't enough cash?

Vokins isn't very tall and he's not precisely a unit either. Looks a decent defender on the deck but might struggle a bit in the air. Never seemed a particularly powerful athlete but seemed to be pretty agile and have a good change of pace and a good left foot. He's certainly not another Shaw or even a Valery, but seems to be pretty good on the ball and he takes up good defensive positions for a young player. There's an academy spot on him:

Apparently not, no. This is from last year: "Southampton look set to miss out on bonus payments should Liverpool win the Champions League final against Real Madrid on Saturday. It had been thought that Southampton had clauses inserted in the contracts of players they have sold to Liverpool that would entitle them to bonus payments for winning the Champions League. However, according to the Times, no such payments were agreed in the sales and bonuses are only due after appearance milestones and Champions League qualification." https://saintsmarching.com/2018/05/24/southampton-saints-miss-champions-league-bonus/

I think the bra-raised shirt was marginally uglier, not a lot to choose between them though. The last design I really liked was the anniversary sash, every kit after that has been a bit crap in comparison.

He's just talking about the games of go fish he's been playing.

The only players in the squad that you could realistically think of as being weak links are Delph, Lingard, Henderson, Dier, Barkley and Wilson. Ward-Prowse is not as effective in central midfield as Delph, Henderson, Dier, or Barkley are. All of them are more powerful athletes who can win the ball more effectively than he can. Barkley can also drive forward from midfield to effectively join counter attacks. JWP just doesn't have the pace to be as good at that job as him. Delph is also capable at covering as a left back if he has to. Lingard scores important goals for England, though I don't particularly rate him. He's probably the player that Ward-Prowse is closest to replacing. I expect if he has a bad run of form for England I expect he'll be dropped and JWP will get a chance. Redmond is just not as good at CF as Wilson. England need to pick an extra full-time striker in case Kane's fitness doesn't hold up and Rashford picks up a knock. If Kane was 100% fit I expect Redmond would possibly have been in with half a shout over Wilson, but that would be too big a risk with the current situation (and even that is clutching at straws a bit. Wilson has something like 14 goals and 9 assists this year and is in the squad by merit).

I'm cautiously optimistic about him. Looks to have a lot of pace, seems difficult to knock off the ball and looks like he has decent touch and a good bag of tricks to beat a player. Not entirely sure about his end product, but everything else seems to be there. Would be good to have an attacking player who is properly quick in the side again.

I didn't say he would be a good signing, just a new one!

With Ralph's training plan he'll be like a new signing!

You never know, if we're really lucky he might turn out to be the next Mayuka!

No, Pelle scored 50 league goals in 57 games over two seasons for Feyenoord. At least doing something impressive over two seasons in a row suggests it wasn't just a fluke. Also, we only paid about £8m for him, so he didn't precisely break the bank.

Don't know a lot about Seferovic but he doesn't fit the profile of the young 'first or second contract' players Ralf suggested we would be going after. Sounds more like agent talk trying to drum up a move/get a pay rise for his client after he has one excellent season after a career with a goal return that looks suspiciously Shane Long-ish.

It'd be quite funny if Derby got promoted though, virtually all of their good players are there on loan from Chelsea or Liverpool and they'll have to give them all back. They'd pretty much have to buy and integrate an entirely new team for next season!

Unfortunately it'd never happen in real life as they are too scared to play our reserves, but kind of funny that FM 2019 allows it to happen I have to say that the game is very easy so far. I used to play FM quite a lot but stopped at 2017. Just picked this up for £15 with a discount code and have found the core Saints squad to be really, really good with very few additions. Stephens, Shane Long and Hojbjerg in particular are far more effective than their attributes suggest they should be. I'm 6 league games in and have won 5 and drawn one after signing Scott Mckenna, a centre back from Aberdeen. So far I beat Spuds 2-1 away and drew Manure 1-1 at their place so far. Hojbjerg top scorer on 4 goals, Long and Ings on 2 and five players with one apiece. I've let in 4 goals so far and I'm currently second in the league behind Liverpool. I swap in between 4-1-4-1 vertical tika-taka, 4-4-2-diamond-narrow gegenpress, or 5-2-3-wide fluid counter depending upon who I'm playing against and if I'm in the lead. I've not even adjusted the preset instructions for the formations, though I do change the player roles to fit who I have available at the time. Have a feeling I'll hit a wall and lose 5-6 games in a row at some point as the squad is pretty thin if I pick up injuries to key players.

fixed for accuracy

That would be xenophobic, not racist. Racism is discrimination due to ethnicity, xenophobia due to nationality. Houghton sets his teams up in a way that makes them hard to break down but also pretty dull to watch. That, combined with a string of poor results, is the reason he was sacked, not the colour of his skin. I just wish Burnley would sack Dyche, his brand of football is even worse to watch.

Djenepo is from Mali not Senegal, no updates on him in the media recently.

Great play by Bertrand and Gunn there.

I don't get why people are surprised Stephens is starting. We have two senior central defenders fit and he's one of them!

There are very few clubs who buy 'good proven Premier League' players. Other clubs do manage to sign players from the top leagues in Portugal, France, Germany, or Spain though. I think we'd be better off looking for up and coming players from those leagues instead of 25 year olds who have a great season against lower quality competition.

Only five teams have scored fewer goals than us this season. That hardly puts our attack in the top ten.

Well, I particularly dislike Alli and Rose from Spurs, and Van D1ck, Lallana, and Lovren from Liverpool. I quite like Poch while the media's worship of Klopp annoys me. On balance, I hope that a quantum vortex opens up in the middle of the stadium during the match and sucks both teams and all of their supporters into a different dimension.

He can cross pretty well. Shame he's not quick enough to get away from anyone in order to do so.

I already posted the net spend tables from 2003 earlier, which I stated made more useful sense. My whole point in sticking the 2018-19 table up there with the facetious sentence above it was that short term analysis of figures is highly misleading. Thanks for your input though, pal.

The player spend values are so skewed by time in the league that the period we were out of the top flight makes virtually no difference to our overall figure. It does show that Liverpool invested heavily in their team when money went much further as well. How about this table then? It only has the figures for this year and shows that Chelsea definitely tried to buy the league, and Liverpool almost succeeded while Man City were conservative with their outlay.