mrfahaji

Fair enough, I see your point, and I actually agree with it! The example of him getting injured (rather than just not turning out to be very good) made me think you were making a different argument. By the same token, you could probably say that a lot of Lowe's managerial appointments made sense at the time and only looked bad in hindsight. For example, I thought (for my sins) that Redknapp was exactly the right man to get us out of trouble...

Surely 'outcome bias' is only relevant if the outcome is something that had a low probability of occurring? If you buy a house and it increases in value, is that a good investment or are you just lucky because the house didn't burn down during that time? I may be mistaken in how I remember things, but I always thought the biggest damage to the club was done in the period when Rupert wasn't in charge (think it was Wilde). We spent lots of money in the Championship trying to get back up and we failed - a bit like Leeds gambling on getting back in the CL a couple of years before. I also think a lot of his managerial appointments could be justified.

I've always found the desire of fans to label their club a "big club" strange. Obviously it is relevant from an objective point of view regarding transfers etc, but from a personal point of view, who cares? Isn't it better to be a more integral part of a smaller club, and actually have a meaningful association with them? Southampton are probably in the top 20 in the country, but nevertheless they are still small enough that friends think of me when they see the Saints score, in the same way that I may think of my West Brom or Gillingham supporting mates. If I meet someone who supports a slightly lesser club, I am always interested to chat to them about their team. When I meet someone who says "I support Man U", I generally think "oh right, another one", and move on to some other topic. Tottenham fans are particularly bad in this regard, probably because they are in a perpetual state of inferiority compared to other traditionally big clubs. It says a lot that their strategy seems to be mimicking a club that consistently finishes below them in the league. Talk about lack of ambition!

A search for "Van Dijk Pelle" threw up this quote, I couldn't find anything else: "When assessing the quality of defenders in the Eredivisie earlier this season, Feyenoord’s 27-goal star striker Graziano Pelle said he felt that "van Dijk is head and shoulders above the rest," adding that "he is very strong in one-on-one situations." The Italian frontman’s words were a huge compliment to a young defender in a league which consists of highly rated defenders such as Toby Alderweireld, Stefan de Vrij, Mike van der Hoorn and Jeffrey Gouweleeuw."

"By waiting on players to leave before we look to sign their replacements, are we in danger of missing out on our top targets?"

I think we've tried to be clever and get something done on the cheap. Unfortunately Levy got involved and no-one is going to beat him in the sneaky-underhandedness stakes, so it has backfired. The fact that he has joined the club who provide our best target of cracking the top 6 is sickening. I'm sat at work and can't concentrate because I have a mixture of sick feeling and angry shakes. I hope he gets injured in pre-season and never plays for them. I know it's not right that something so innocuous as a football transfer should make me feel such animosity, but I really hate that parasitic club. Even Rupert had it right about them.

Just to follow up on my post from earlier, I knew that the CFO "had left" on June 24th. If he has indeed “dropped a b0ll0ck” regarding the Toby deal/contract, then Southampton have known about it for a while, it hasn’t come to light over the last few days. Spurs are such parasites.

All I know is that my hatred for Tottenham and Levy is increasing by the day, sure I won't be the only one feeling sick if he joins them.

Damn, I actually knew we were getting a new CFO, could have been an ITK claim!

This would definitely be up there for me, moments after Crouch could have sealed the win by either scoring or booting it into the stands...

£25m for a defensive midfielder might be a lot but I think that label doesn't really do Morgan justice. His best qualities may be breaking up play but he is also adept at starting moves and joining the attack. Did I read above that Tottenham have failed to meet the asking price? Surely that can't be true...

As England manager, Redknapp would really have been able to demonstrate his best skill - convincing everyone in the media that any success is down to him and everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault.

Tough, but I'd rather the Europa league made life harder for games that we could well lose anyway. In addition, the opposition here will also have midweek fixtures, I think? Don't think much of the opening fixture, Newcastle will be on the backs of the team after a few weeks but they might be a little more supportive in week 1.

Swansea (H), Man Utd (A), West Ham (H) as our first three. Watford on Boxing Day.

I was beginning to think that when it comes to international football, you have to put club loyalties aside and accept that someone with Hodgson's experience, who sees all the players play and train, knows better than a partisan commoner. And ultimately, the England side continues to win, so something is working. But these comments are troubling; it is admitting that you are picked on the basis of name and status rather than whether you are the best man for the job. It is one thing sticking with a proven player going through a bad patch (like Joe Hart), but another to persist with Phil Jones, who I for one have never seen have a good game - for club or country!

Not a patch on the Muvi kit from this season (2014/15).

Is a membership going to help in any way get away tickets for London games? If they all sell out to Season Ticket holders then it defeats the point of it for me. Managed to get to Arsenal in the cup and Fulham the year before, but it seems the league fixtures are snapped up straight away by season ticket holders. When it comes to St Mary's, I'm not too worried about which Category game it is, as I go to watch Southampton rather than the opposition, so the away games are the crucial factor for me.

Yep, I totally agree that our model works as a basis for building a successful team & club, because we can make good money on our academy players and find cheaper (and hopefully equally able) replacements. However, this is not consistent with having 50% of our players in the starting XI. To do this we have to produce top quality players from our academy at a faster rate than we sell them. Possible, and as you say, the more we improve, the higher chance of the good ones sticking around, but I still think the draw of money and glamour from the bigger clubs makes it unlikely.

Unfortunately we seem to be getting further from, rather than closer to this aspiration. If we want to continually improve and compete higher up the division, then we need the players from the academy to be at least mid-table Premier League quality, which is a big ask in itself. Then when you factor in that anyone who demonstrates that quality gets snapped up by one of the bigger clubs within a couple of seasons, I will be mightily impressed and surprised if we are able to achieve this goal while remaining near the top of the table. Hope I'm wrong, I believe in the business model of producing players through the academy, it's just our ability to hang on to the ones we want that I'm not sure about.

Pahars vs Portsmouth. Svensson vs Spurs in Cup

A few people have mentioned Fer, not sure about him but surprised Matt Phillips name hasn't cropped up (at least I don't think so). Difficult to know whether he'd be an upgrade, but he certainly created a few and got on the scoresheet a bit in the second half of the season. QPR might want a chunk of money for him though... Agree with the rest of the list.

I think once we starting to sign a few players it was less of a risk, but when we sold Chambers there was definitely a sense of "who next?" and wondering what the intentions from the board were. As you say, hindsight is a wonderful thing and we now know there was a plan for reinvestment and to continue taking the club forward but it wasn't clear at that stage. I was generally ok with most of the sales - could see that the players wanted to leave, we got good money and saw most of them as replaceable, but I admit I started to worry when we spent £12m on Shane Long... It wasn't until we picked up a few others I started to feel like we weren't just hoping to survive.

Not sure what the Mane chants are like at the moment, but given his recent form and now he will surely be forever in the PL history books, I started wondering about songs. I think this one would work but need a bit of help with the chorus, can't quite get words to rhyme, flow and be 'singable'. So, to the tune of Abba's Money Money Money (bet you can't guess how I'm going to use that line...?), picking up from the line "In my dreams, I have a plan". I turn on, the radio Another goal, from Sadio He gets the ball and beats them all, our number ten from Senegaaaallllll clap - clap - clap - clap Mane, Mane, Mane! Yes he can play, On the left or right Mane, Mane, Mane! Scoring all day, In our red and white As I said, I don't like the 2nd & 3rd lines of the chorus but think the rest of it works. Would be good to come up with something about his hattrick record but not much rhymes with "Mane"...

He stopped one at the near post with his shoulder, was a great save, remember thinking it was going in from where I was sat. However, it wasn't spectacular and looked a bit like he was just 'in the way'!

13m euros is only... About £10m? Take the £1.8m off and you're looking at a figure pretty close to our original option anyway!