mrfahaji

I dunno, I think it works quite well. Collar and shoulders could be better (i.e run the white all the way up and over, maybe with some black in the collar), but when I'm picking at this sort of detail it must mean I'm pleased overall. Last season it was the other way round - trying to find little details of the shirt I DID like!

Well it is hard to dispute any of that. I guess that's why I eventually moved to the 'Puel Out' camp, because in several games (though admittedly, some of those were away games) we showed glimpses of something good and there was reason to think things could get better. But eventually the lack of incisiveness happened too consistently, and in actual fact the cautious football probably increased in the last couple of months of the season.

Don't forget the Alderweireld saga! Agreed, don't want to see any of our players go there.

Ok fair enough, I was a bit hazy on that game, but definitely recall feeling a little frustrated when they equalised straight away, but maybe we didn't deserve the lead. Think the others stand though.

Not sure Howe 'failed' at Burnley, have read this a lot. Sure he didn't do anything spectacular, but went there after relegation - following Stuart Gray, no less - and finished 8th. The following season they were 13th. I never thought Burnley were a side that should have been in the playoffs, and he also oversaw the development of some good players, including Rodriguez and Austin. One thing that did seem to be true though is that during his tenure Burnley went through purple patches and sticky patches, similar to how Bournemouth do now - a 6 game unbeaten run might be followed by a 6 match winless run, for example. I wonder why that is? Perhaps because playing open attacking football requires everyone to be clicking, confidence high etc, so once something falls out of place you become easy pickings. Contrast that with a more pragmatic manager like Puel or even Koeman - you know it's not likely to be pretty but it rarely feels like you've been dispatched with ease.

Hmmm... I don't disagree with the general sentiment that we haven't been decisive, quick or determined enough in attack at times, but not all the ones you've listed are valid. We weren't that bad against West Ham, losing was a mix of bad luck and keeper howler, Bournemouth were all over us for the last 30 minutes but we should have been in front before that stage. We deservedly took the lead against West Brom and immediately conceded and then Robson-Kanu scored a brilliant goal, had Tadic hit the target from 10 yards out we would have led against City, and although the United game was frustrating, we weren't awful. I think you're right to point out the lack of tempo and the inability to capitalise when we were on top. Even the games I've defended above, I'll concede that we were only decent for bits of the game, rather than scintillating throughout. But just don't feel as though it's fair to lump them all together as similar performances.

Bournemouth have done a similar thing both seasons they've been up. First third of the season look pretty good, get a few points on the board and don't look like relegation candidates, then slip alarmingly towards the drop zone where it seems they lose to everyone - a fixture vs Bournemouth is suddenly an easy three points - and just when they start being seen as a team in trouble, they finish the season with a fluorish and say "what were you worried about?" Obviously I would like us to have a bit more of their panache, but at the same time am grateful we were never in huge danger of going down (the win vs Palace was crucial in that regard, else things may have been different).

Hmmmm. Maybe everything is all under control at St Marys, maybe Semedo isn't very good after all, but it's this kind of thing that makes fans wonder if those at the club are once again twiddling their thumbs or playing silly buggers over transfers.

I know odds are just put together by a random person who doesn't know much and then betting patterns dictate the ups and downs, but I hope Saints have a few names up their sleeve compared to the list on oddschecker... Barely a name on there I'd be excited by!

Haha, p1ssed away the money on... Mane and van Dijk.

So if you're a good employee and accept a job somewhere else, your firm would refuse to let you leave? And if they did refuse, you would continue to work there without any negative effect on your morale? What about if your firm was due compensation if you left? The fact that players are employees but can also be bought and sold makes football a very unusual 'business', and the way you have tried to draw parallels to every day business doesn't really work. thorpie the sinner also adds "as long as we continue to buy quality" as a caveat - this is the key point. Reinvest well and the model can be successful and sustainable. Recruit badly and we're in trouble.

I hope we can sting them with this complaint, but it does feel a little bit Alderweireldy all over again. Oh and I definitely wouldn't prefer him to go to Everton over Liverpool. As much as seeing all our players go there is frustrating, as well as Micky Quinn being the perfect example of an odious chip-on-their-shoulder misguided self important scouser, ultimately Liverpool are a big club (probably top 3 in England), with Champions League football and unlikely to be a league-place rival for Saints bar the odd season here and there. Everton fans are totally deluded about how massive they are, and they finished one place above us in the table and have Europa League to contend with next year. We shouldn't be allowing them to strengthen.

The beauty of passive voice.

The difficulty is that 2-3 years is a reasonable period of service for our good players who want to, and could be competing for honours. It means there are always 2 or 3 players coming up to that length of service, and unless there is good reason to think that 'one more year' will result in us in cracking Champions League, why would they be happy to stay? Then it's a vicious circle, because we keep losing the players, so we keep taking a step backwards and we never reach that point of being "one step away". If VVD & Bertrand go this summer, then who next year? Romeu, Cedric, Gabbiadini? I think therefore the only way to slow down or stop the yearly exodus is for the replacement signings to hit the ground running and ultimately improve the team. It's unlikely that, for example, Semedo will be better than Van Dijk, but Semedo, Sakho and Sigurdsson just might be (not saying we'd get them all, but as an example). Last summer we had the likes of Redmond, Boufal and Hojbjerg come in. Still reason to think they might come good but they certainly didn't have the immediate impact needed to feel like we made progress.

Yeah I think this is the key problem. And even though £60m is a awful lot of money, how many players in our usual bracket does that buy you? 3? You need to hit on two of those three to make it a notable success, and even then one of those isn't going to be as good as van Dijk.

I think the answer is something to do with us being able to attract good players because they know we won't stand in the way of a move to a top club. So the fact we sell our good players is exactly the reason we have those players in the first place. It's pretty gutting of course, but I'm not sure how worthwhile it is for a club of our size to turn down £60m. Maybe if we felt we were one season away from breaking into the top 4, and even though it's not inconceivable, on the balance of what we've seen this season does it look like we're going to achieve that next campaign? And perhaps more saliently, does it look possible to our current players? Instead what I ask of the club is that we dig our heels in a bit, get the best deal (whether money or re the club we sell to), preferably force the player to issue a transfer request, have deals for replacements sorted early and re-invest all the transfer money. Losing our best players feels inevitable, but how it is managed makes the difference between a steady improvement or steady decline.

While I'm normally quite pragmatic about our chances of keeping hold of players (and Bertrand hasn't looked massively interested in recent weeks anyway), there is something galling about a news report which says that Team A have put a high price tag on a player, and therefore a Southampton player is going to be signed instead...

I hope that even if we agree a deal with VVD and the other club to sell in principle, we put it off until we can make some signings. As soon as we sell for £50m+, everyone else will hike up the price. Obviously they may do it anyway in anticipation, but at least try not to make it quite so obvious we have a load of cash burning a hole in our pocket.

Obviously scouser McNulty would be only too happy to report that. I met someone who worked at BBC Sport a few years back who said that most people there thought he was a kn0b. Really wanted him to join Chelsea. This Liverpool thing, whilst preferable to Spurs, is getting a bit ridiculous.

I thought so. But isn't Dusic also Saint Charlie? Seems odd as agree with him or not, Dusic posts are at least coherent, whereas all 9-3 does is start new threads about nonsense.

I read somewhere that Puel has gone on holiday. Guess that means it'll be another week or two before anything is announced one way or the other. I had today in the sweepstake, thought I was sitting pretty while all the other trigger happy posters went for things like "in the next two hours!", but even that looks like being way too early.

And that's why people don't post info on here. They probably think benji's reply is genuine and further evidence of the rumour being true... Maybe the person behind that twitter account is a member on here. Plonker.

Not quite a walk for me, but not far and I haven't been to Griffin Park. Damn, just seen the date, can't make it... :-(

To say he is useless is unfair, but eelpie asked for specific weaknesses. Would you disagree with anything I've included, even if I fully accept he has time to improve on such things?

Have there also been games that we've lost but you've enjoyed, or as enjoying a loss is unrealistic, at least seen the positives? Middlesbrough at home was an extremely dull win, but West Ham at home was a bit of a freak loss mainly down to goalkeeping errors.