SaintJackoInHurworth

So we have been told that deals relating to Salisu and Hojbjerg are done and the KWP is just about done. Yet, there is nothing on the Saints website. Why is that?

Fair enough - but that doesn't really change my main point which was that it is possible for both the reports of The Echo & BBC South and the Spurs originated reports from Ornstein and co. to all be correct. To explain again one possible way that this could work: * Spurs pay £15m up front * They pay further instalments up to about £19-£20m * There are then add-ons beyond £20m That could potentially satisfy all the various media reports, but presented differently and selectively by each club.

So, on the one hand, reporters for BBC and the Echo say we have received much closer to our original asking price of £25 than was previously bid by Spurs, with one of them saying we are receiving £20m with add-ons. On the other hand meanwhile a reporter for a football website is claiming we will receive £15m rising to £19m. Firstly, I know which one of those sound most reputable to me and it's not the guy who works in internet journalism! Secondly, though, while those figures do seem mutually exclusive I wonder if there is a way in which both can be correct or close to correct...?! Let me suggest one possibility... * Spurs pay £15m up front. Then they will pay £4m in instalments over the next four years I e. £1m each year. On top of this they have a number of add-ons relating to number of appearances, success in Europe, International caps, etc. In that scenario, both reports could be deemed to be vaguely correct. On the one hand, we are receiving in the area of £20m guaranteed (actually £19m but it's close!) with add-ons on top. On the other hand we ARE also being paid £15m rising to £19m - albeit there are other add-ons too! Just a thought!!

Nightmare yesterday right up until late last night since when it has been fine. Hopefully you have got all the necessary tweaks done now. Thanks, Steve, for all your hard work with this and I hope that you are able to close the funding black hole and get suitable advertising revenue.

So, some people seem delighted to accept a situation where we just cave in to Levy's demands and sell PEH to Spurs on their terms. Maybe if it is laid out like this some will realise that it is not as simple as that... Option 1: Sell PEH to Spurs for peanuts and pay over the odds for KWP; other transfer business - not a lot as we can't afford it having failed to get a decent fee for PEH. Option 2: Sell PEH at the price that every other club is prepared to pay (£25m) and buy KWP for what he is worth now (probably £10m accepting that his value has appreciated as a result of his success for us during June/July); other transfer business - we have £15m to spend plus a little from our other successful transfer business, allowing us to contemplate signing either Salisu, McKennie, Rodriguez, Cash or whoever with that money. OK - of course the truth is going to be somewhere in the middle, but let's be clear: the poorer the deal we achieve in selling PEH and bying KWP, the less likely we will be able to do much other transfer business.

I don't understand that some Saints fans are prepared for the club to accept poorer terms in our transfer business than the club are seeking. Do they not realise that we have other transfer targets as well and that some of those may well be dependant upon getting the transfer money from selling Hojbjerg at somewhere near our valuation of him? Let's not compromise with Spurs and let's be clear with Hojbjerg: "We have talked and talked but Spurs don't value you highly enough to buy you, so what would you like to do? You can move to Everton or one of the other clubs who value you highly enough to meet our valuation of you or you can stay at Saints and sign a new contract? The choice is yours." OK - I get it that Hojbjerg could dig in his heels and insist we keep talking the hind legs of a donkey in the hope that Levy might have a personality change, but at some stage even Spuds are going to have to change tack - they either pay what we want or they buy someone else. Let's force them to make the difficult decision. Mourinho is not going to be best pleased if he doesn't get what he wants!

By financial year 2019 do you mean year up to 2019, year commencing 2019 or is this based on a calendar year? From what I can see, while 2019 was a bad year, it only cancels out profit made in 2017 and still leaves us with a cumulative profit over those four years, albeit partly/largely funded by player sales.

Unbelievable that Saints fans are advocating that Saints just roll over and allow ourselves to give in to Spurs demands. Indeed some even seem to have decided we should accept even worse terms than are currently being offered! Having said that I do find myself wondering if there might be the odd Spuds fan contributing to the discussions here! I just don't get that Saints' fans are going along with their suggestions. Let's be clear - if Spuds don't want to up their offer to an acceptable level we do not have to sell to them. If they don't want to pay that much they can look elsewhere to sign a cheaper player. Once they do and Hojbjerg realises that Spuds don't want him we can look to sell him to Everton... if in the meantime they have not looked elsewhere. Of course, we all want this sorted sooner so we can get on with signing other players, but simply selling Hojbjerg on the cheap is not going to help that either. After all, we need money to buy those players and selling him on the cheap won't provide that money (albeit we may be able to arrange to pay by using credit terms and paying in instalments). If both Everton & Spurs look elsewhere he has two other choices - sign a new contract and knuckle down to playing for Saints or accept an offer from a foreign club if they are still interested. In my opinion, Hojbjerg himself also has an interest in encouraging Spurs (through his agent) to accept Saints' terms.

I totally agree with this - both Hojbjerg and Spuds needs a deadline - if they can't pay the money by a specific date then Saints will begin the paperwork to transfer him to Everton or one of the European clubs. If Hojbjerg refuses to budge on that then just tell Spurs that we are not prepared to sell him to them so that they move on elsewhere leaving Hojbjerg no option but to change his mind and either sign a new contract or go to Everton. The key thing is to make sure we act quickly enough that Everton don't lose interest.

A few things to consider here: Typically midfielders cost more than defenders. Other defenders of KWP's ability seem to be available for about £5m. At the start of all this speculation the talk was of PEH being worth £35m At the start of all this speculation I seem to remember some talk of a swap deal of KWP + £25m for PEH. So, I find myself surprised at some people talking this deal down! I think the club have got to get the best deal we possibly can here. Recognition needs to be made of PEH's status as a key player and (until all of the speculation) club captain of Saints. His experience is not without value. While I accept that Spurs also want to get the best deal they can, let them worry about that - if PEH is their key transfer target, let them show it by stumping up the cash! OK - we are unlikely to get a deal of the level of £25m + KWP, but let's get as close to that as we can! While I would quite like us to sign KWP, I think their desire for PEH is greater than our desire for KWP, so let us use that and the fact that we have other options (which will only cost about £5m) to our advantage!

I thought that until I mapped out the results and realised that even with 53 points we might still only be looking at 10th position. Of course it depends entirely upon the results of others, but we shall see. Hopefully you are right and we can get 9 points and Sheff Utd, Spurs or Burnley will do less well than I have predicted, though I have only put Spurs down to get 4 points and Sheff Utd 2 points, so if anyone is goinbg to do less bad than I have predicted it is more likely to be Burnley. (PS I have now posted the table as text instead of html so hopefully it is now readable!)

It is looking very tight between the clubs in the middle of the table. How do you think the last few matches will pan out for these clubs? How will they do in each match and therefore where will they and we finish? I experimented with some possible results (albeit I was quite negtive in some of my predictions for other clubs and quite opimistic for Saints) and it is pretty clear that it would be highly unlikely for us to qualify for Europe even if Man City's ban is upheld on Monday: Wolves 52pts Result Pts Sheff Utd 51pts Result Pts Arsenal 50pts Result Pts Everton (H) Win 3 Chelsea (H) Draw 1 Spurs (A) Draw 1 Burnley (A) Draw 1 Leicester (A) Lose 0 Liverpool (H) Lose 0 Palace (H) Win 3 Everton (H) Draw 1 Man City (H) Lose 0 Chelsea (A) Lose 0 Saints (A) Lose 0 Villa (A) Draw 1 Final Points 59 Final Points 53 Final Points 52 Spurs 49pts Burnley 49pts Everton 45pts Arsenal (H) Draw 1 Liverpool (A) Lose 0 Wolves (A) Lose 0 Newcastle (A) Draw 1 Wolves (H) Draw 1 Villa (H) Win 3 Leicester (H) Draw 1 Norwich (A) Draw 1 Sheff Utd (A) Draw 1 Palace (A) Draw 1 Brighton (H) Win 3 Bournemouth (H) Win 3 Final Points 53 Final Points 54 Final Points 52 SAINTS 44pts Newcastle 43pts Palace 42 pts Man Utd (A) Lose 0 Watford (A) Draw 1 Villa (A) Draw 1 Brighton (H) Win 3 Spurs (H) Draw 1 Man Utd (H) Draw 1 Bournemouth (A) Win 3 Brighton (A) Draw 1 Wolves (A) Lose 0 Sheff Utd (H) Win 3 Liverpool (H) Lose 0 Spurs (H) Draw 1 Final Points 53 Final Points 46 Final Points 45 This would place the positions from 6 to 14 as follows: 6 Wolves 7 Burnley 8 Spurs 9 Sheff Utd 10 Saints 11 Arsenal 12 Everton 13 Newcastle 14 Palace OK - I accept this is unlikely but it's not impossible. Indeed, in this scenario we would only miss out on Europa League qualification on goal difference! How would you predict the other club's results and ours? How do you see it finishing? One of the interesting things with this 'prediction' is that if Man City get reinstated to European qualification or if a team finishing below 8th wins the FA Cup then both Spurs and Everton would miss out on European qualification. What impact would that have on Hojbjerg's transfer?!

I notice that his performance was so good on Sunday that Garth Crooks has put him in his team of the week: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53306819 That is pretty high praise - effectively saying that over the weekend he was one of the top three defenders in the country on the basis of performances.

Thanks for these responses to MLG's challenge. I think you have pretty much summed it up. My element of concern is not that we shouldn't qualify so we can qualify the following year - it is that I do not feel that we are ready to compete in Europe next season and that it could effect our overall season adversely. Too many teams have seen their performances in the league suffer during a season when they have started out competing in Europe - especially when their squads have not had sufficient strength in depth. I fear that with a limited time between seasons we will find the extra pressure on a limited squad could have a significantly negative effect. Having said all that, if we do achieve European qualification, I will be delighted, and hope that it will enable us to sign some quality signings which may counterbalance the above mentioned negative aspects.

The expert's for today's match were saying that Saints have every chance of competing for eight place in the EPL, which could mean European qualification. Now that we know that the FA Cup winner will be out of Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal, the likelihood that the top 8 will all play in Europe next year is even further enhanced. So what do you think? Do you think we can finish in eight and do you think that doing so will yield Euro-qualification? Personally, I think it will definitely be a top 8 go to Europe on the basis that Man City's ban will be upheld and Arsenal will not be the FA Cup winners. While I think we could have a go at finishing 8th, I suspect we will just fall short of that and finish in something like 10th or 11th. It is a nice dream though! In reality it may actually better if we don't quite qualify for Europe this time out as it would be hard to fit in all those extra fixtures next season - though if we can get close then maybe that will help us in the transfer market so that we can make a decent push to qualify for the following year.

8-0 would take us above Arsenal... but so would 7-0 (on goals scored)! 😋

So, this thread seems to be getting away from its main topic. Can I just ask then... * What is the current situation with Hojbjerg? * Is the touted interest from Everton and Spurs genuine or just press speculation? * If there was genuine interest, does that interest remain? * As asked above, is there a contract offer on the table for Hojbjerg and is it still on the table? What is the likelihood that he will sign it? * Should we be concerned that Pini Zahavi is his agent? * If Hojbjerg does leave, will Saints replace him or will we use the money to strengthen in attack and defence? Who will take over Hojbjerg's role in the team in that case?

So... if Arteta caught it off the Olympiakos owner then does that mean that he will have been infected when they played Pompey? Potentially that will mean that the next British club to go down en masse with the virus could be Pompey!

With JWP injured tonight, what is the news on Valery and KWP - are either of them ready to return for our next match?

Middlesbrough away would be my preference, because: 1. I live in Darlington and down the road from the Middlesbrough training ground. 2. If we play Middlesbrough that means they have knocked out Mourinho's Tottenham. 3. We usually do well against them. 4. Away Fans are the most loyal Saints fans and always get behind the team - even when the chips are down. That is part of why our away results have been better than at home for much of this season so far! So, for those who claim that the only proper fans are the ones who want a home fixture, put that in your pipe and smoke it!! Failing Middlesbrough, any of the other Northern teams away from home, though prefereably not Mancs or Liverpool. Any of these though: Leeds, Newcastle/Rochdale, Sheff Utd, Sheff Wed, Hull City, Barnsley, Burnley or Carlisle (if they beat Cardiff). Also: Blackpool if they beat Reading or Tranmere if they beat Watford.

I find it quite shocking that so many people are begging for him to be sacked to be honest. Bigger questions have got to be asked about recruitment and so much more than just our manager. He showed that he is a good manager last season but he seems to have been pretty unlucky this season. He wasn't helped by the failure of the club to recruit a decent centre back over the summer - Danso really isn't up to the task and his past record says it all! Also, while the club did recruit what seemed like a decent centre forward, he doesn't seem to have continued his great pre-seson form and can't seem to score anything. That having been said, I do wonder what is going on in training when we are not seeing any improvement in our attacking penetration. I would have thought that we would be starting to see more understanding building between e.g. Redmond and Ings/Adams, yet we still seem to be failing to put the opposition under pressure. I'm also concerned that there is rarely enough pace when we break forward from defence and that in particular contrasts massively with other clubs.

Thanks - I thought that must be the case - why do BBC never have any clue about these sorts of things??!!!

Can I just check - is Danso playing left back or is it Valery? And who is at right wing back? Is it Valery or Wrd-Prowse? BBC feed suggests that Valery is left wing back and Ward-Prowse right wing back, but that doiesn't seem to be what everyone is saying on here!

A lot of us are giving far too much attention to another signing for our academy...!

Great...! So he helped Wolfsburg achieve their greatest ever result by scoring their eight goal into his own goal!!! Not much sign of any clean sheets when he played and seems to have actually conceded a whole shed-load of goals when he has played - sometimes resulting in him being dropped! Let's hope that Ralph has seen in him the potential to be a great player... if this does actually get over the line!