Lallana's Left Peg

It's so clearly apparent to anyone with eyes I don't know what Koeman / the club were thinking in the summer. Build a foundation of a team on two physical mobile midfielders, sell one of them for £25m and then sign a player with the body of a 15 year old boy and supplement him with a £5m player. Bonkers to me I don't know what the thinking was.

Clasie is not cut out for Premier League football but it's ok people on SaintsWeb in the summer said Santi Cazorla is small and plays in the middle of the park so Clasie can.

Which I wouldn't mind if the defence and midfield were solid and cut out the schoolboy defending and mistakes. But we can't even defend properly these days and we can't score many either.

Not a surprise considering the lack of goal threat throughout our team.

Well their position on the field means they will be attacking. Whether or not they are good attacking full backs is another matter! If you are suggesting that as they are better defensively than attacking then in effect it is more of a 5-3-2 than 3-5-2 then I'm with you. They will be the only width on the pitch and neither of them can beat a man and in terms of crossing I think Targett is ok but Martina I am not sure about. But it might be one of those ones where by just taking up wide positions they create space for others and won't see much of the ball themselves.

It's definitely 3-5-2. It's not a back 5 - no-one does that.

He's suspended.

Yep. Palace team:

He has a lot of the intangibles you can't coach - determination, leadership, desire etc. Just need to see what his quality is like. He likes to defend and will have a career in football - it's his level of quality that will determine in what league.

Well we still couldn't beat them!

It's always hard to tell but Ryan Mason was a nobody at the age of 23 in Spurs reserves and somehow last season Pochettino polished that turd so much he got an England cap. EDIT: Sorry - meant that in reply to your post two posts up.

Pochettino leaving is nothing to do with the discussion. Pochettino is almost arrogant in his insistence to give young players a chance and to motivate and push them on. He won't do it blindly of course but if he sees potential he will push it. He turned Chambers into a £16m right back over the course of a summer of repositioning training and then playing him in half the games we had that season. Alli's played half a season and he must be worth a ridiculous amount now compared to what they paid for him. It is possible to integrate kids into our team and be no worse off than we are, I believe that.

I don't disagree with the sentiment but when we finished 8th in the League we had a Manager who would play many of the kids who Koeman has just declared not good enough. I'm convinced that Reed can contribute to this team more than he is being allowed to.

He is right in saying that the required standard has improved. But as has been mentioned above, he also lacks the capability to be able to develop a player via giving them first team minutes. That is the most disappointing thing given his record at Feyenoord. He'd rather play senior pros with known ceiling caps on their ability than see if a youngster can make the step up. I never thought that was the 'Southampton Way'.

Pretty sure everyone at the club is acutely aware that the player needs to be paid after he is purchased. Overall cost of deals are always factored into every signing whether they are a free transfer or under contract and require a transfer fee. Everyone is getting excited because they've seen the total cost of Ramirez to Saints over 4 years but the Osvaldo figures are far worse.

A definite toughening up there, at least in public.

When is the last time a player worth £25m went for around that transfer fee as a sideways move and only increased their wages from say 40k to 60k? Quite simply those sorts of players join better teams than us.

Think you're missing the default question posed to Koeman that has nothing to do with Southampton. Maybe one on the injuries at Liverpool or the FIFA presidency.

They don't always work out (Ramirez, Osvaldo), and some are hot and cold (Long), but the ones that have worked out (or look like they will) like Tadic, Mane, Bertrand, Forster and VvD are vital to our team. My belief is that the board do genuinely reinvest everything they get from transfers but at this stage we're now of a sound financial footing where if we sell a player for £30m we can spend £10-15m on a player on a good wage and seek to minimise the loss of the good player as much as possible rather than making signings with too many risks and then ending up with an indifferent season like this. And if other teams are better in the transfer market then that is fair enough, but I'd rather see us take the above approach then spend 25-33% of the sold players value on his replacement. It's a real big drop in quality of player. EDIT: Forgot Wanyama too - he's been a hit.

Yep - you can of course sign £5m players that are better than £10m players, but by and large the more money you pay the better the player you get. If we're going to sell players for £30m I'd prefer our policy to target and try to sign £10m calibre players (say, two of them) as replacements / enhancing the team rather than £5m players. Nothing is guaranteed of course when you spend money, but the general rule is the better players cost more and I think the thing for a team like Saints is that a £10m player can make a much bigger difference than a £5m player. We'll of course continue to sign duds just as much as we continue to sign players that work out well for us, but now is the time to start spending more on quality players that make a difference. We've seen this season what happens if we don't.

People turning on Mane already. There is a reason he's our highest valued player and that's because he is our best player. There is room for plenty of improvement in his game but he is already a handful for all teams he faces and does some things that people can't stop without fouling him (he's the most fouled player in the league this season for reference). And even if you think £30m is good value, who exactly do you think our club is going to sign to replace him? It's 50/50 whether any replacement for him is any good and any Saints team without Mane in at the moment is half the team it is with him in.

I live in the North-West and none of my Liverpool supporting mates are fans. They say he hangs onto the ball too long, is slow, and turns into traffic far too much as well. It's fair to say he hasn't done well at Liverpool.

I think its a mess personally. Didn't expect to finish 7th in the league and then 6 months later be 6 places worse off. Season can be somewhat salvaged but overall it has been a mess: 1. Didn't even quality for Europa League 2. Toby farce 3. Lost two other starters (Clyne and Schneiderlin) and failed to adequately replace them 4. Bottled second biggest game of season (Liverpool in the Quarter-Final, most important being the away game in Denmark) 5. 13th in the league and lost 7 of 9 And I haven't even mentioned the players refusing to sign new contracts. Don't think it will go down as an average season. It's ****e at best. Only a really strong second half of the season resulting in a Top 10 finish would be anywhere near acceptable, even then when you write down what has happened since June it's a bit of a joke. But that is just my opinion - I thought the club would do a better job at sustaining itself in the Top 8 or so but I think I my confidence was misplaced after this summers transfer activity.

Reed with the backing of the rest of the board.

Doubt he will walk like that. He has been allowed to bring in a lot of his own targets and he has struggled to get the best out of them this season. So whilst we may spend somewhat meekly and I think he would have a point, what we have spent on has been on a lot of 'his guys' so he is also responsible for the mess.