andoru

Anyone know this 15 year old with idiots for parents?

At Liverpool: (to pre-empt the inevitable "You'll never win again" that their famously witty fans will sing) "We'll Never Win Again" General: "Oh when the sale goes on and on Oh when the sale goes on and on Buy two and we'll give you a discount Oh when the sale goes on and on"

Considering the amounts all our other players have moved for, I think £20m for the man at the heart of our midfield is the minimum we should demand. Most tackles and most interceptions, as well as one of the highest pass completion rates, in the whole league. Morgan would walk into any side.

Feel a bit sorry for Morgan in a way (but only a little!). Of all the players he is probably the one who most deserves to get a transfer up the table, given both his long service to the club and his professionalism while some of his teammates were being anything but professional. He spoke to the board early on, agreed to meet with Koeman, and generally conducted himself well throughout all of this (as fas as we know anyway). But he's been left behind, assuming the board mean what they say about him not being sold. The ones who threw their toys out of the pram (i.e. Lallana and Lovren) or turned their back on the club that developed them (i.e. Shaw and Chambers) got their big money moves. What message does that send out? Morgan now knows that he needs to act like a petulant kid to get what he wants, and that's probably what this Tweet is about. He might have gotten some advice from his agent to do this and force his move. BUT, if he believes he is CL quality, he should expect to be sold for a CL-quality price, not the reported £13m that Spurs are supposed to have bid. He can't reasonably expect the club to sell a CL-quality asset for such a small amount.

It's clear that Southampton is not and never will be a 'big club' at first team level. But at youth level, Southampton are one of the biggest, albeit underachieving. With this in mind, why don't we refocus our energies on supporting our development squad in the Professional Development League instead? We're all sick of the way the modern game is run, so let's turn our backs on it and find enjoyment elsewhere. Instead of buying expensive season tickets to sit and be disappointed, go and watch our youngsters. Be a part of a new movement that makes youth football a bigger 'product' in England. I'm not in Southampton anymore myself, so it's not possible, but I've long argued for dropping the League Cup and promoting the FA Youth Cup in its place. If there was more interest and support for youth football, maybe the quality of England's youngsters would be higher. The U21 league could easily be as good as and entertaining as the Championship. Imagine what it would mean to play for our youth team if crowds of 15,000 or more were turning up to watch them every week. It would be good for them, and good for all us fans because we might actually see people in Saints shirts winning something. Just a thought I had.

Down. We'll be left with too many holes to be filled by our youth, and the youth team didn't do all that well in the u21 league last year. Frankly, I hope it's all over quickly. If we're going down, let's be down by Christmas so we can forget about the hope and/or despair that comes with a relegation fight, and just watch some football.

Saints? No. I'll always follow the Saints. But I'm done with the Premier League. Last season I bought a TV package that got me live coverage of every single game. I hardly missed a minute. I'm not renewing this year. I'm going to watch the Southampton matches and nothing else. I don't care what's going on in the rest of the league. I don't care what our results mean in the wider context – whether we go up, go down, stay where we are, etc. I'll take it one match at a time, and watch it purely for the entertainment. The league no longer exists to me. I'm not giving it any more of my money. It's a futile protest, but it'll free up a lot of time at the weekend, which will make my wife happy.

I didn't note much admission of their own club's complicity in it though.

I'm not convinced it would be that straight forward. Randy Lerner is having a hard time finding a buyer for Aston Villa, and we're not all that different in club size from them. Nobody who buys the club can come in and do a City or Chelsea now, that is, throw lots of money at the team. So it wouldn't be as much of a toy as those two clubs are for their owners. It would have to be run as a sensible business, and football is no way to make money. In a strange sort of way, I can actually see Saints being more of an attractive proposition at Championship level. It would be cheaper to run day to day, because player wages are lower. The club could keep producing Academy players to sell as a revenue stream to replace some of the lost TV money, and gate receipts wouldn't be hugely different. Enough fans would still turn up, and there are a few extra matches in the second tier as well. And as I said, the club wouldn't need as much income to run at that level anyway. They'd only need Championship-quality players to maintain a mid-table position, meanwhile behind the scenes the latest youth star is being developed and then sold for £10+ million. Of course, I hope this is not our future.

Living overseas I don't get as much exposure to the British press as some of you back in England. I read the Daily Echo site, here, BBC and check a couple of other football websites, but I don't see the newspapers and magazines. Are any serious football journalists writing about what is going on at Southampton? The reports I see are either matter of fact news stories (e.g. "Liverpool sign Lallana for £25m") or, if they are more editorial, they tend to be about the player or from the perspective of the signing club (e.g. "Why Luke Shaw is a good long-term investment for Utd"). I haven't seen any articles about the destruction of our team and what that says about modern football. Has anyone read such a piece? If not, why is nobody talking about this? It's not just depressing for us as Saints fans, but a sad indictment of the state of the game and should be of concern to all other so-called 'small teams' (God, I hate that term). Any links to reports about us would be appreciated.

Obviously I know this. I'm not an idiot. And I'm not seriously suggesting it gets shut down. I was just making the point that while it might be called Southampton's academy, it is only in name. It's nothing but a cash cow, not a real producer of players for us. Anyone who is fine with that needs their head examined. I won't be cheering when Reed or JWP get sold in a year's time. 15 million quid in the bank means nothing to me, especially when it's used to buy two players ten years older and of lower quality, as will likely happen. As a fan, all I care about is the football, and for once I'd like to see our best youth graduates stick with us as gratitude for being given the chance to play professional football. When I hear Luke Shaw talk about moving to Utd to further his career and how he's dreamed of it since he was young I want to slap him - he's only 19 for crying out loud. His career just started. He could give us a couple more seasons and then move on and achieve all he can in football. So what that we got 30m for him? If he ends up having a 15 year career at the top, like he really should, that will be 500k a season. Not worth it in my opinion. Oh well, I guess I was a fool to ever think we could have our own 'Class of X' like Utd did. Those days are, sadly, long gone in football.

Up to now, I've directed all my anger at the players for wanting out and not honouring their contracts. I bought the line that they were screwing over the club. But if Chambers gets sold, as seems to be the case, I'm going to question the board for the first time. Of all of them, it seems the most needless. We have money. We need players. So selling Chambers makes no sense at all. It really does feel like asset stripping, and I can't take this sh*t anymore. I actually feel embarrassed as a Saints fan right now, like I've been a mug all these years to think we could actually be 'somebody' in the football world. I never thought we'd break into the CL or anything, but had real hopes we could become a stable top 8 team and slowly chip away at the European places like Everton and Spurs have done. That's done now. We'll be lucky to stay in the Premier League next season, and frankly I'm not sure we deserve too anyway. Saints have become a joke. What's worse, the media says nothing about it. They write stories about the transfers and how great it is for Liverpool/Man Utd etc to get such good talents, and great for the players to step up a level, etc. No mention of Southampton's plight. Nobody questioning the fact that a young aspiring team is being torn apart from both inside and out now and what that means for the state of modern football.

It's a radical suggestion, but just what is the point of our academy if the graduates from it stay a season or two at most before moving on? We hardly ever see any return on the investment on the pitch, which as a fan is what I care about. I couldn't give two s**ts whether the club makes good money off the sales. Everyone bangs on about how great the youth system is at Saints, but I don't feel a lot of pride in it anymore. I mean, why should I? It's only our academy in name. Shut it down and force all the big clubs to start doing their own scouting and development. I'm fed up with it.

Don't seem like much to worry about. They're just soccer schools that anyone can join. Not a lot different to the summer training schemes I did when I was a kid.

Sounds like you've just described tapping up.

Because everything they print is true, right? Even so, without an official confirmation Luke wouldn't have instructed his agent to get the deal done. It would be pretty presumptuous of him to act without knowing for sure.

“It’s great. When I found out they were interested in me I didn’t think twice,” Shaw said. “Manchester United are the biggest club in the world. When I found out they wanted to buy me, I spoke to my agent, he got in touch with Southampton and it got done. I am really excited and happy to be here.” Quote from http://m.nbcsports.com/content/exclusive-luke-shaw-speaks-out-about-manchester-united-move So, he found out somehow that Utd were interested and only then Southampton became involved?

My idea has always been to limit Champions League and Europa League squads to those players who were a part of the squad that qualified for it. European football is always a season behind the domestic leagues. As things are, all players like Lallana and Lovren have to do is angle for a move to a club that's already qualified, so they sign straight into European football. They haven't earned it. If new signings were restricted to playing only in the league and domestic cups (e.g. FA Cup), maybe some players would be more hesitant about moving around. Think about it, would Lallana have been in such a hurry to sign for Liverpool last summer, after they'd finished 7th and didn't look like getting anywhere near the CL spots? I doubt it. He could still sign for Liverpool, but he'd only be eligible to play in the CL if Liverpool qualify for it next season. I think this might slow down, if not stop altogether, all the transfers for instant success that we see so much nowadays.

Redknapp will be under pressure from the off. QPR basically need to survive in the PL to survive as a club full stop. If they get relegated, they will be hit with such huge fines back in the Championship that they'll likely fold. So if Harry gets off to a poor start, the chairman will have a decision to make – stick, and hope Harry pulls out of it, or get rid and avoid the risk of doing so much damage it can't be undone.

Chances are he won't even be in the Spurs job long enough to make his return to St. Mary's in April.

No, it's not. When even clubs like Borussia Dortmund (Champions League finalists) and Atletico Madrid (La Liga winners AND Champions League finalists) can lose their best players, what hope do the likes of Saints have? I've been arguing this since I was a kid back in the 90s. I could see what was happening, and it happened.

Alas, Facebook is blocked in China and I'm too cheap to pay for a VPN to use it. You just adapt to not needing FB anymore.

If you're a Saints fan and will be in Shanghai for any or all of the upcoming season, give us a shout. I usually watch the games at home – a bargain at 300 rmb (about 30 quid) a season, for all the games in HD, just with Chinese commentary – but would be happy to join other Saints down the pub for a game or two.

Just looked it up. Pretty spread out. Flowers went in November 1993. Kenna went in March 1995 Shearer went some time in 1992.

With Brendan Rodgers buying or attempting to buy four players from Saints this summer, I've been wondering if this sets some kind of league record? Can anyone think of any other time when one team has signed/tried to sign so many players from the same club all at once? I can't think of one myself, but then I'm not that old. Maybe some of you with memories that go back further than the early 90s can think of any similar situations.