Lallana's Left Peg

I wouldn't sell Long but if someone could give us our money back for Juanmi I'd be delighted. Pelle and Rodriguez injured, Ramirez frozen out and Juanmi still can't get minutes. What purpose he was signed for is beyond me. £5m that could have sorely been used elsewhere.

In terms of the overall health of the club we're in the best spot we have been in my lifetime I agree. And I think next summer we can really make some signings of intent to push on (though some of that will be tempered by the fact many other clubs can too). This season hasn't been great though - in fact I think it has been poor - and I don't see why pointing that out is a bad thing. Bad decisions have been made in transfers and in important games and it has really cost us.

Better than this time last season?

Ah right - yep, I mentioned in another thread how we should have lots of scope this summer to increase our wage bill. There is the 80k a week that FFP allows us to anyway, plus no wages for Caulker, Stek and Ramirez as you mention. I think we should have a good 200k a week or so to play with if we want.

It won't be anything like that. We'll only have three players anyone will be interested in: Mane, Wanyama, and maybe VvD. VvD's contract means his value is protected and he will stay. Mane will leave (2 years left this summer) and I suspect Wanyama will as well. Can't see any interest in the rest of our players whatsoever. But we should invest in better players this summer if we can still attract them. There will be plenty of scope to do so. Who knows - maybe a net spend for the first time in two summers!

What sort of perspective are you looking for? The club was at an apex this summer having qualified for Europe off the back of a fantastic season. I don't think anyone was expecting us to get better but a fair few of us believed some standards were set and yet since then: 1. Lost two players we publicly said we wanted to keep at the club and another who 24hrs before he signed for Spurs we said we were confident of signing. 2. Invested in the squad in players of which we can only say one is right now up to the level / standard we set last season (VvD). 3. Bottled Europe which would have been a more than adequate sweetener for a so-so season in the league. 4. Bottled a cup quarter final It's been a poor season thus far, I don't know what perspective you are looking for. We've come a long way in a short time and it has been fantastic. It's been a great journey and whilst I didn't expect us to push on from that (I would say it would be impossible) I also didn't expect us to so quickly fall back to mid table obscurity and become irrelevant again. Big summer coming up.

With a team that cost half ours as well. Not sure why our £60m team needed to be 'on it' to contain a £30m Palace team. I'm not being arrogant, I'm just wondering how standards are so easily slipping. We should expect more.

Koeman made two big mistakes in our two biggest games this season (in Europe and in the Capital One Cup) but overall I think he is doing a decent job with the players he has at his disposal.

I don't think you read what I posted. I said a draw at Palace wouldn't have been anything to be proud about, not a win. Any point(s) away from home in the Premier League are valuable, I just don't like the idea that Southampton need all 11 players on par to achieve an away point at Crystal Palace. How the mighty have fallen in that case...

A draw at Palace would have hardly been anything to be proud about and it's numbing to think we'd need 11 players on par to achieve that.

Positive thinking does not make the team play better. The best clubs win because they have the best players. We sell our best players and replace them with players who may or may not turn out to be good. That is our very publicly stated business model. But guess what...when you buy a player in the market we operate in it is 50/50 whether they turn out to be any good or not because every transfer we make has a risk. Right now, thus far, the summer transfer business has been POOR. And our team has suffered as a result. That is all there is to it.

I don't believe so, unless transfer revenue is counted as commercial revenue, and I don't think it does. So basically if we sold a player earning £20k a week for £20m and his replacement cost £10m and has wages of £40k a week then that is 20k a week extra out of our wage budget we need to account for even though we have £10m in surplus cash spare.

We were a little handicap with what we could do in the summer (though I maintain the signings of Juanmi and Romeu were not great). FFP rules state that we can only increase the wage bill £4m a season plus anything we gain from new commercial deals. We know our commercial revenue is awful and that is being worked on (and that is why this summer is huge for us) so basically in the summer we could only increase our wage bill by a net increase of £80k a week. So if I were to just guess: Out Schneiderlin- 40k a week Clyne - 30k a week Hooiveld - 20k a week Mayuka - 30k a week Alderweireld - 50k a week (even though he was on loan we paid his wages and they would have counted towards our cap for last season) Elia and Djurcic I am not sure about - I've left them out for now. I have not included Osvaldo as he was on loan last season and his wages would already be off the wage bill. As it turns out we paid him ~£8m to go away in the summer regardless. So basically that is a really rough guess that 170k a week in wages was free'd up and we are allowed further growth of 80k a week - giving us a wage budget of 250k a week to fill (if we wanted). It is quite normal for many players to have wage increases built into their contract - especially young players and new signings on long term deals. It is another complete guess but lets say 50k of that 200k budget is eaten up by commitments made to existing players. That leaves 200k. From that 200k you can see quite quickly how that would be eaten up by the following: Loan cover for Forster (Steklenburg - maybe 40k a week) Loan cover for Gardos (Culker - maybe 30k a week) VvD - 50k a week Clasie - 40k a week Cedric - 30k a week Romeu - 30k a week Juanmi - 30k a week That's 250k a week estimated right there leaving me well over my estimated budget of 200k a week. So I really do believe the club has spent all it can under the rules - you can debate whether or not it was done wisely but we haven't stood still. Onto this summer - we get another 80k a week to play with, Ramirez will leave (50k a week?), Stek and Culker will leave (70k a week) PLUS we get those nice new sponsorship deals (new short sponsor, new kit manufacturer, and anything else) which if they are average will give us another 80k a week to spend on wages. So that could be 280k a week to spend and that is completely independent of departures. Now the rest of the league will have more money as well of course, but they won't all have the scope we will to increase their wage bill. And that is where we can make good gains as a team and as a squad.

I haven't seen much of Imbula at all (and just online stuff last summer when we were linked with him) but one thing I really like that he can do is carry the ball forward in the middle of the park and drive past people. It opens up so much space and we really lack that in our team. However, I don't know what he is like off the ball and that is where Wanyama is really important for us.

It's going to help if we stop overhitting every second pass. It's really bad.

3-0 now. The U18's aren't very good at all this year. Time to bump Slattery up to the U21's and keep him there as games with the U18's aren't going to do him any good in my opinion. Lack of talent and I'm not too convinced by Fleming either.

It's important not to confuse form and consistency with what the players are encouraged to do within the tactical framework they are given. We've played some fantastic stuff under Koeman when the players have been on it and in good form. Even on Saturday we could have scored 5 or 6 and that was coming out of a poor run of form. We can be very fluid in the final third but the players aren't always on form. Compare that to Van Gaal's Man Utd where £30m+ players are asked to fulfil disciplined roles and can't express themselves on the ball then I think it is a world apart personally.

Saints are far more fluid and better to watch in the final third in my opinion. They do both like organisation at the back - but to be fair, what sort of Manager doesn't? I think Koeman is far more adaptable tactically.

She will definitely do that but in October our CEO said this of our latest financial results:

As a club we are in great financial health and the summer should give us lots of financial power - the inevitable Mane sale, the new TV money and the new shirt sponsorship and manufacturer deals should not only give us more cash but also more breathing room in FFP to increase the wage bill. However from an owner perspective we owe her estate £60m and the Board have made a commitment to reduce that over the years. The challenge is clear and fair from Koeman though.

I absolutely believe the club when they say that all the transfer fees received have been reinvested into the first team. I just question the approach (with the benefit of hindsight of course). The squad needed to improve but I don't think they only way that was possible was to the detriment of the first team. From memory this summer: Out: Schneiderlin (£24m) Clyne (£10m) In: VvD (£13m) Cedric (£4m) Clasie (£8m) Romeu (£5m) Juanmi (£5m) Martina (£1m) Plus the loans for Caulker and Stek to cover long term injuries. Transfer fee wise that is break even or so - and I suspect the wage bill has gone up too. My own personal preference would be to retain a good first 11 and use the Academy to fill out the squad. Reed and Stephens could do the jobs of Martina and Romeu (just my opinion - I know some like Reed and some don't). Juanmi was a peculiar signing that appeared driven off the fact he was available for just £5m rather than any need for him and him fitting into the way we play. So say that was £11m saved in transfer fees and wages there. Could we have got a better player than Clasie and Cedric? Or could we have spent that on a single player who would have made us better? It's hard to know the answer or if it was possible but for me it feels like that would have made us a better team and given us a better chance.

It's about perceived ambition though. The club have been on an upward curve the last 6 years and we're in a space now where we are probably at our normalised level and any gains will be marginal. It is also fair to say that every player we have sold since we have been back in the Premier League has been to a bigger / better club who can offer more money. No complaints there from me - that is football and we get on with it. The club is in great financial health now and this summer we have the new TV deal along with new sponsorship and shirt manufacturer. We will have the ability to offer more wages and spend more money. Say we sold Mane for £30m and signed a player for £10m to replace him. And then spent another £10m on a couple of other players. Fans are going to lose interest because it appears like we aren't trying to push on. No-one is going to say that we should have kept Mane, but why can't we sign two £10m players and improve the team? This summer we only replaced one player with immediate quality and that was Alderweireld (who wasn't even ours) with VvD and look at the difference that made. Schneiderlin and Clyne left and it appears two players have replaced them both (Romeu and Clasie, and Cedric and Yoshida) who are not good enough right now and we've paid the price for it and aren't as good this season. That sort of stuff will turn fans off because they will wonder why we are doing this when the club are reporting profits etc. Of course half the problem is that we buy and develop good players - if we settled on having an average team with the odd signing here and there then perceived ambition wouldn't be a problem but as it goes the club talks up a big game these days and whilst I have sympathy with losing players (I don't think there is much the club can do there) this summers business was a little contradictory in my opinion which leaves a disconnect with what I see in the transfer market and what I hear as what the club wants to achieve.

Where did I say I would lose interest? Bit presumptuous of you. But fans will lose interest if the club stagnate. Happens with every club.

U21's back to their usual efficient self tonight - a very good 2-0 win away at Spurs who were unbeaten in 8. Spurs the better team but Saints very organised and professional and made the most of their chances. Martin Hunter back in charge.

Nothing changes solely off the back of positive thinking. In football there are a few things you can guarantee. The biggest is that if you continue to sell high and buy low you cannot sustain progression. We are all frustrated because over the past two years we are the only football club in the Premier League who have not had a net spend on transfer fees. It is even more frustrating because we can see the team is close to being good but we just lack certain things which mean progression is unlikely. For me this summer is huge - it is the summer we have to start spending more emphatically to improve the team. More VvD's than Juanmi's. Otherwise fans will lose interest because of a perceived lack of ambition.