saint-crinny

As an aside, amusing to see #freecoutinho being pushed on Twitter, in no small part by Saints fans no doubt, in response to the Mail's article on Barca wanting him to replace Neymar.

Key point from him was "remains on strike" - as in, this isn't a new thing. And yet there he is in yesterday's training video, clearly not on strike, so I'm confused. Surely Tom28 isn't spouting unsubstantiated rubbish...?

Certainly looked like he was sulking as the club training video zoomed in on him for a good few seconds. Smiling and joking around is sulking, right?

Disappointed - you don't progress by staying still, and we always position ourselves as a progressive club. Concerned - every team in the Prem has plenty of cash, so why aren't we using some. Don't need to see us smashing out huge sums. Interested - is MP better than CP. Would make a direct comparison very easy. Ultimately though, I'm sure there will be a couple of more additions. We haven't done much business so far and we are never noisy about our targets, but that really has no bearing on what has happened by the time the window closes

Right. Not that I was overly concerned anyway, but I hardly think that the official club snapper will be putting something out there of the players congratulating VVD on his big move

Haha, I certainly don't. Just wondered who had originally posted the pic - someone associated with the club in some way presumably, to be close enough to take a pic like that?

Out of interest, who posted that VVD snapchat?

We've arguably achieved what we wanted to from it - Liverpool have pulled out of any attempt to sign him - and are probably happy with that. Push it further and I guess we risk coming under scrutiny for any players we might like to sign as well, and given it is accepted that some level of tapping occurs for every deal. albeit not at the level Liverpool seem to have gone to, we don't want that either

As are the ridiculous comments from Quinn on Talksport that are in this article... http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/813592/Virgil-van-Dijk-Liverpool-Chelsea-Antonio-Conte-Micky-Quinn-transfer-news-gossip Smug, classic Liverpool chat, and if true, which yesterday it suited every Liverpool fan to shout about, pretty damning as well

Tuchel available then - out of league or are we a relatively attractive job if you're looking to get into the PL? No better teams than us are likely to have a vacancy unless you expect Wenger to leave, which I really don't.

Nod to Yoshida as well - an occasionally sung rather than unsung hero this year, but was outperforming Fonte before he left and has done a possibly under appreciated job of holding things together at the back after VVD got injured, helping Stephens through the early games he played. Great season from him, no longer makes you shudder at the thought a prolonged run in the team - very good reader of the game and rarely made a mistake this year.

Going 5 games without a goal at home is ultimately unacceptable, so while I'm not especially Puel out, I totally understand if/when Puel gets the boot. We do actually have quite a distinct style of play and it can be very pleasing on the eye at times - falls down when we don't take our chances (has been the case all season), make a mess of the final ball (has happened a lot in the last few months), or that we don't quite have the players to fit the system. Add a more combative ball winner alongside Romeu in place of Davis and a Sigurdsson type instead of JWP and things would click a lot more often I think. You could criticize Puel and say that he should play a style that best fits his squad, but the obvious counter would be that he was setting the style now and will add further players that suit it this summer, which is entirely sensible. Which of the two options above the board choose will probably decide his fate. I'd suggest a vocal chunk of our fans would go for option one and want to bin him, others feel he deserves a second season to build. But what has happened over the past few months in terms of results and frustrations, coupled with Puel's perceived lack of charisma, means that everyone else is probably not that fussed if he stays or go. Which ultimately probably says that time's up

Fair enough on JWP, felt it was harsh when I suggested leaving him out. Just want Boufal in the centre basically. Pied in for Cedric on the assumption that he's injured? Cedric for me has been our best player this season other than Romeu

Would like to see Boufal start in this one, playing in the middle. Feel like he can create something against a Stoke team that have been pretty poor of late and hopefully we can take a chance or two (maybe wishful thinking). Hopefully a more attacking approach then we've seen for much of this season, would possibly drop Davis and JWP (harsh on JWP as he has actually done pretty well and was good enough last night) and go with the below: Forster Cedric Stephens Yoshida Bertrand Romeu Hojbjerg Tadic Boufal Redmond Gabbi Maybe a bit open and could leave us a bit exposed at times, but its the last game of the season and I'd just rather we went for it. I'd rather watch a 3-3 than a 0-0 if that is how it ends up. I know Hojbjerg has been very up and down this season, but I think he has enough presence to be solid in their with Oriol and then let the four in front create.

A relatively quiet summer would be fine for me, retaining our players, a couple of additions, keep Puel and hope he improves in second season now he's had a year to bed in. However, if we get taken over, sell VVD, Bertrand and Soares and bin off Puel there is quite a lot to get right in order to be successful next season!

Think the big issue with Puel is the style of football he has implemented - an obvious point probably but specifically... When it is good, it's very good. The style is such that when all the players deliver a top performance, it's very difficult for the opposition to live with and as a result, some of the games we have won have been really good performances to boot. Earlier in the season we were missing the type of striker that Puel really wanted to fit the system, so a few good displays ended up not being turned into wins too. The problem for me is that if a few players aren't 100% on top of their game, which is normal for most games, the style requires things to be so perfect that the performance dips dramatically and we look very average all of a sudden, our game becomes very predictable and we're easy to play against. This is the biggest issue - Puel doesn't then seem to be able to change style in game to do something different. So pretty much any game we don't play superbly we don't win, can hardly thing of any examples where we have won without playing particularly well and clearly you can't play brilliantly week in week out. The loss of VVD has hardly helped - feel certain we would have a few more points and very possibly a cup win too if he had stayed fit - Puel would be viewed quite differently then. Bit of a ramble, but essentially I'm not that fussed if he stays or goes. If he stays, he needs to learn the lessons of this year and I think he quite possibly could, he seems like a smart guy. If he goes, I'm sure there are plenty of decent options out there who could do a very good job for us too. Big summer ahead across the whole club - players, management, board

Renewed as well. In response to the initial question though, I doubt slower/less sales would significantly impact on expenditure plans - season ticket sales are such as small percentage of revenue for Prem clubs these days

Think the chat about a £13m release clause means we can pretty much dismiss that article - we don't do release clauses but if we did, why would we do one at that price, just a few million more than we signed him for, when he's since established him as a proven Prem player and signed a new deal last summer. Also, if I was Arsenal fan and Tadic was the man who replaces Ozil, I'd be more than a little underwhelmed. Media salivating at the prospect of meltdown #whatareweuptonow? plus agents getting to work = yet another Saints player leaving "news" piece

Zlatan won basically anything in the air in the final and when it came to the crucial moment, ran off our CBs for an unmarked header in the centre of the goal. Maya at fault there as well of course, but he is our best CB in my opinion, so it's between Jack and Caceres for the other spot. We've conceded goals against the physical teams when we've played them in the last few weeks - Watford, West Ham etc I think Jack will find it hard work against Benteke who will no doubt try and play on him - an international defender who knows a few tricks might be a better bet compared to a youngster still learning his trade. Hope I'm wrong, as I think it will be Jack and Maya again on Wednesday.

As 0-0s go it was a decent watch - thought we could have had it wrapped up it at half time if we'd gone in a couple of goals up, which wouldn't have been undeserved. A word on Dusan here, he did a few good things in the game and was difficult to pick up at times, but if you're going to play as the central attacking midfielder and complain about how you shouldn't get subbed, when you have 5 presentable opportunities you at least need to hit the target with one of them. But we didn't take any chances, and in the second half went for the winner with the substitutions but they didn't work out. We weren't able to counter the arrival of Wilshere, and for me this was Puel's one mistake in the game that almost cost us in the end. I would have got Hoj on to sit with Romeu rather than bring McQueen on. Disappointing the way we lost our way and in the end, I was quite glad when it finished and we'd got the 0-0 as they were all over us for the last 15 mins in particular (reminded of the end of the 2-2 with Leicester last year). But the doom merchants on here are way over the top - if we'd scored the goals we should have in the first half, the second half would have been very different - we wouldn't have gone chasing the win and instead just controlled the game, rather than experiencing the all hands to the pump ending that we somehow escaped from.

Yoshida has been excellent this season for me - has cut out the disastrous once a game mistakes in the main, reads the game well, pretty comfortable on the ball and has great pace. Anyone who watches us regularly would think the same surely. Stephens shows promise but nowhere near the level of promise that Stones showed at his age, clearly Stones will continue to improve and be a top defender over the next few years. If he's fit enough, I'd play Caceres with Yoshida as we know he has great pedigree, and if fit, should be a better player than Jack. It also won't do Jack any harm to come out of the firing line for a bit. Also, Benteke is exactly the sort of player that Stephens will be bullied by, as with Zlatan in the final

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4367698/Virgil-van-Dijk-keen-Chelsea-switch-summer.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490 Worst article so far from the DM on a saga that is going to get bigger and more annoying as each week goes by to the summer. He "prefers a move to London" apparently. This may well be true, but the context of the article is essentially "Sportsmail understands" (has made up) and then an entire piece follows - it's the attitude that he is basically already gone and it's just a matter of where that is so infuriating. Of course, with the kind of money we're talking about he's more likely than not to go, but these articles are unbelievably irritating. I don't know why I put myself through it and read them (every summer)

Gabbi out, Austin three week's away, Tadic dealt with internally and told to "show it on the pitch", Caceres available and Puel checking fitness of international players. Sounds like Caceres will start as discussed on the thread earlier

He has interesting possibilities at the very least

As bad as Boufal was against Spurs, if Tadic was dropped for this and Boufal started against Bournemouth I'd have no complaints. Hard to claim such detailed quotes have been taken out of context either. I like Dusan and he can be a really good player when he's on his game, but it has not been often enough this season. As others have said, deliver for the 75 mins that you are on the pitch and we'd be winning games comfortably, rather than worrying about the last 10 minutes.