The mess we're in

[CanadaSaint]

And the supposed sacking of MoPo....That is laughable. If that was the case why would he be upset about Cortese leaving and thinking about walking away? Didn't KL have to convince him to stay on?

 

I don't think it's laughable at all. If Pochettino had already decided he was going (probably after "unofficial" contact with Levy & Co, which may have pre-dated Cortese's exit), the sacking/resignation of Cortese provided him with the perfect excuse for walking out on his contract - and also an excuse for delivering unsettling messages to certain players.

 

There's a hell of a lot we'll never know - not his week, not next year, never. And one of the things, I suspect, is the part Pochettino played in the events that have unwound this summer.

[Ludwig]

There's a hell of a lot we'll never know - not his week, not next year, never. And one of the things, I suspect, is the part Pochettino played in the events that have unwound this summer.

 

How do you know that there is a lot that we don't know if you also do not know what it is that is unknown? Who have you been speaking to? Someone must have told you that there are things we will not know this week, next year or never. In fact, you could have just said "never" because that encompasses what we don't know this week and next year, but that is beside the point.

[Gingeletiss]

Thanks for the info. Sounds plausible.

 

 

 

Shocker, you in agreement with that....hahaha!, all 'in his opinion', nothing factual really, but Hypo will wum this to death now....'I heard from someone!'

[Faz]

 Retweeted by Simon Peach

 

Anthony Pulis @antpulis · 10h

 

Wouldnt surprise me if it comes out that an undercover Pompey fan is running Southampton at the moment! How else can u explain events there

[Giordano]

Steve; my view on your querying why the player sales as they surely lower business momentum and hence potential overall club sale value is that i don't think many would have valued the players we have sold at the prices we got for them.

KL has in effect probably converted £65m or less of on-paper assets into £100m of actual monetised cash/sold assets plus reduced the wage bill to assets / income ratio immensely. Great sale prices. It also ties in with playing more ( cheap wages) youth in the team. The overall effect is of a leaner club with all the financial (not playing) KPI's looking nice and healthy for the next buyer.

That bit at least is obvious to me as I've been part of a business to which that happened in exact same way. Its not a rocket science thing. Selling key assets under duress makes for lower achieved prices. Selling them in this way makes for premium prices. The net effect- possibly us £35-50M more to KL - all the difference between successful investment and not frankly for her in that world.

[St.Patrik]

Could it be that NC sold the vision about CL to the players and payed more wages and bonuses that Saints really could afford? So now there is this fire sale to pay back money spent on a dream?

[david in sweden]

Have the Club sold Crab Lungs?

 

good question..Robbie ... I'm back from holiday ...has he published it yet ?

[Sour Mash]

Especially the bit about Lambert being sold. If we had accepted a £7m bid why would we then accept a bid half of that offer 4 months later? The whole negative thing towards NC some have on here is pretty funny, because if you read the players comments about him they have nothing but praise for him. Some going as far to say he is really close to them. Even Lambert said about him "I'm not just saying it because I am at Southampton but I think other chairmen need to take a look at how he (Cortese) has done things and make it an example". That was only a few weeks prior to this supposed bid being accepted.

 

And the supposed sacking of MoPo....That is laughable. If that was the case why would he be upset about Cortese leaving and thinking about walking away? Didn't KL have to convince him to stay on?

 

The rest of it is pretty decent but all based on personal opinion.

 

 

The thing about MP being sacked by NC was reported by Adam Blackmore.

[david in sweden]

This. The holy goalie... More like the devil Goalie. It's all his fault. Top 4 would of been in the bag if we didn't lose that game

 

BULL **IT...in the 10 games that Boruc was out injured last season, our "other two " goalies let in 20 goals between them ..and we won only one of those League games! They lost it for us not AB.

[Gastón10]

I don't really post much and also haven't really got to "know" the other members. Usually when someone says they are ITK it is BS. So who on this site do people find are actually reliable? Thanks in advance if you respond to this.

[syd_barrett_saint]

I don't really post much and also haven't really got to "know" the other members. Usually when someone says they are ITK it is BS. So who on this site do people find are actually reliable? Thanks in advance if you respond to this.

 

You know things are bad when even our star signings are looking to this board to try to find out what is going on at the club! ;-)

[sir_fred]

As I see it we have to possible scenarios left.

 

1, We have a total incompetent board and director of football

 

2) KL is more clever than we thought and will shortly be the first person ever to make money on owning a football club. All done with tons of broken promises and betrayed fans.

 

To be honest, don't know which one I prefer.

[david in sweden]

There are bits in all of it, really.

 

Section by section:

 

Cortese's departure - multiple reasons (some of which can't be specified as I'd get in all sorts of ****), although it's fairly well known that he put up resistance to ANY control of spending from KL. A suicide mission if ever there was one.

 

Finances - correct with the exception of NC not leaking stuff to the press. He was all over both the Mail (Neil Ashton) and BBC (Ben Smith).

 

Possible sale of club - it's feasible, but the method makes no sense. If there are no buyers at whatever asking price has been set, you either drop the asking price or make the product MORE attractive for the price, not less! Selling the top players arguably drops the value of the club by more than the fees received because of the perception that the club has momentum in the wrong direction.

 

Lallana - feasible, but it's almost the complete opposite of what I'd heard, with the exception of the Man United stuff. He'd wanted out for months, Clattenburg was essentially right - having been away on international duty in November, he believed he'd "made it" and deserved to be at a club that elevated him to the same status as the England regulars. He wasn't entirely thrilled with being subbed off relatively early every game either.

 

Players - NC had lined up a deal with West Ham to sell Rickie Lambert for £7m in January. That deal was hastily pulled as soon as NC walked. Overall lack of communication - certainly true, but for most players, what "communication" are they expecting from the board? Daily briefings with an update of how many shirts with their name on have been sold? Over the summer, players are rightly left to enjoy their own time and not be pestered by club employees (I'd be pretty ****ed off if my boss was phoning me with updates while I was on holiday - the clue's in the name). The only ones who should have expected to have heard something are those who would expect new contract offers in the pipeline - Fonte and Cork being the two prime examples - but I don't see what the fuss was about over Fonte supposedly having received his in writing. I'd want any contract offer I was going to sign in writing before committing to anything.

 

The noise from Alan Cork on Twitter suggests Cork hasn't received an offer at all, let alone an offer that was then withdrawn. I can't say I was ever particularly surprised by that towards the end of last season, it always appeared to me as though Pochettino was never quite convinced with JC, and as he had long since decided he was leaving, why would he care about putting it to the board himself?

 

Pochettino - he'd decided he was off around Christmas. As mental as it sounds, NC was going to sack him in December around the time we had that bad run of injuries and results which tempered our great start to the season. He was talked out of it by a number of senior players, but MP felt he didn't have the trust of NC any longer, so decided he was off, and as the rest of the season wore on, made it very clear what his plan was to many of the players, despite NC's departure in the meantime. He basically advised them all to move on as they may not get another opportunity, so naturally they all got onto their agents and now we have the carnage we see before us today. MP was offered a new deal, and it had been on the table for 2-3 months before he went to Spurs - coincidentally it was offering exactly the same salary as he is now earning at White Hart Lane.

 

Koeman - from people who know him, he will not tolerate players who don't want to play for him. If anyone doesn't want to play for him, they can do one, and he'll bring in replacements who DO want to do so. Given his track record and status in the game, we shouldn't be short of players come the start of the season.

 

Summary - clearly the business has been done the wrong way around, replacements should have been signed before the others were let go, and that falls on the board to carry the can, and KL will have to accept that we'll be spending more for most of our signings than we anticipated as a result.

 

Some of that may turn out to be inaccurate, but those are the corrections to your War and Peace effort as I see them.

 

 

much prefer this version to the original, although buying in new players before the others leave does rather smack of " we know you're going, so .." . That way no-one can say we forced them to go.

 

PREDICTION: I think that there are more deals in the pipeline, but transfers (as I'm sure you know) are often FAR more complex than simply the player signing on the dotted line, and I don't accept the theory (by others on here) that replacements will cost twice the fee we received from the original sales. Nice summary though.

Edited 29 July, 2014 by david in sweden

[SOTONS EAST SIDE]

Poortlief and Co revisited http://teamapp.me/s/Ge23B1d85e

[70's Mike]

As I see it we have to possible scenarios left.

 

1, We have a total incompetent board and director of football

 

2) KL is more clever than we thought and will shortly be the first person ever to make money on owning a football club. All done with tons of broken promises and betrayed fans.

 

To be honest, don't know which one I prefer.

 

BOTH could be true

[david in sweden]

Any chance of Crab Lungs stating where his info came from?

 

Certainly not .... if he wants to continue getting more ITK info....AND publishing it .

[dubai_phil]

Imho

There is a massive flaw in KL's thinking.

She values the club at X st 200 mil having taken almost 100 mil out. Fair enough.

 

But, any buyer NOW will take weeks to complete a purchase leaving no grime to rebuild a competitive squad to stay up. We are likely to be relegation fodder by Xmas. January rebuilds rarely succeed.

 

Meaning IF anyone buys us now at a premium price you have to question their sanity.

 

which then means questioning their integrity.

 

Very concerned noe

[Professor]

Surely based on Crab Lungs has posted it makes no sense that we have signed Pelle and Tadic for 18 odd million if they wanted to continue with the bare minimum as well as some of the links with players. Don't believe it. Sorry.

Back in May, Reed explained that the club's large scouting network had identified a list of quality players who wanted to come here. Not a single player on that list has in fact joined with the only two incomers being the two introduced by Koeman. If, when Koeman was told that Lambert, Lallana and Shaw were leaving he told Reed that Pelle and Tudic could be the replacements, it would have been very difficult for Reed to turn that down as Koeman might not have taken the job if his first ideas on rebuilding were rejected.

 

Reed has now said that the club is targeting players and hopes to conclude some transfers. Koeman will know who those are and he must have given Reed a view as to whether those names are likely to provide what is needed but whether it will happen is another thing altogether. Reed has said we must be patient, and he does have 5 weeks to complete those transfers, but by then we could be bottom of the table. If we also have a disillusioned manager by then, there could easily be another vacancy.

[CamberwellSaint]

The ultimate 'look at me' thread?

 

This.

 

If you're new to this thread, read Steve Grant's reply and you won't have wasted too much time.

[Crab Lungs]

If pochettino really ran around telling all the players to go then why did the club help him with his new place in Soton?

[Unbelievable Jeff]

OK, so it seems to me we have 2 sides of the same coin on this thread. I however, am more inclined to believe SG as he has elements of truth in it that I was aware of (the 'nearly' sacking of Pocketing for one). However I am not saying CL is incorrect, although pretty much what I was expecting.

 

Let's hope the selling stops and the replacements start to arrive.

[syd_barrett_saint]

If pochettino really ran around telling all the players to go then why did the club help him with his new place in Soton?

 

Maybe he did it on the sly, in direct contact with the players & in confidence, with the board none the wiser?

[Joensuu]

Could it be that NC sold the vision about CL to the players and payed more wages and bonuses that Saints really could afford? So now there is this fire sale to pay back money spent on a dream?

 

This view seems to be echoed on here rather frequently. The logic seems to be that Cortese had ambition that exceeded the Liebherr family's willingness to invest, and therefore we should blame Cortese's ambition for the current mess. I can't agree with that argument; it logically concludes with stating that no club should a to improve, they should accept their current lot.

 

For me ambition is crucial for a club to progress. Keeping Cortese on board would have been by far the most sensible decision the club could have made. The departures would have been minimised, the next 'level' might have been reached. Losing Cortese was the worst thing to happen to this club since our last relegation.

 

KL has now made a tidy return on her investment. Her orchard has cropped, and she has sold the harvest. She will now try to sell the barren fields, and if she doesn't get the price she wishes, she will hang on until there is another crop to sell. I can't blame her for her actions, but wish she could have been swayed by Cortese at the end of last year. I can only hope she will sell as soon as possible, but fear it will be to the highest bidder, and not to anyone with the best interest of the club in mind.

 

Finally, those fans who 'celebrated' Cortese's departure, I simply cannot understand your position. Yes he was brutal, yes he seemed petty at times, but his focus was clearly on propelling us in the right direction, without him we seem completely lost. I'm wondering if Duncan et al. have reevaluated their anti-Cortese stance in light of current events.

[Gastón10]

OK, so it seems to me we have 2 sides of the same coin on this thread. I however, am more inclined to believe SG as he has elements of truth in it that I was aware of (the 'nearly' sacking of Pocketing for one). However I am not saying CL is incorrect, although pretty much what I was expecting.

 

Let's hope the selling stops and the replacements start to arrive.

Not just the replacements but the signings we should be making anyway to build a squad which is competitive a) in itself and b) in the league. We need depth and we need quality in that depth which atm we don't have. Certainly want a stronger bench than last season.

[Saint Fan CaM]

If pochettino really ran around telling all the players to go then why did the club help him with his new place in Soton?

 

Simple. Because it suited the clubs strategy to lose the highest paid players. This suggests he is complicit. This also suggests that this apparent debarkle was planned and executed...I.e. it's not an unplanned mess...it's deliberate and calculated. Make of that what you will!

[CB Fry]

This view seems to be echoed on here rather frequently. The logic seems to be that Cortese had ambition that exceeded the Liebherr family's willingness to invest, and therefore we should blame Cortese's ambition for the current mess. I can't agree with that argument; it logically concludes with stating that no club should a to improve, they should accept their current lot.

 

For me ambition is crucial for a club to progress. Keeping Cortese on board would have been by far the most sensible decision the club could have made. The departures would have been minimised, the next 'level' might have been reached. Losing Cortese was the worst thing to happen to this club since our last relegation.

 

Finally, those fans who 'celebrated' Cortese's departure, I simply cannot understand your position. Yes he was brutal, yes he seemed petty at times, but his focus was clearly on propelling us in the right direction, without him we seem completely lost. I'm wondering if Duncan et al. have reevaluated their anti-Cortese stance in light of current events.

 

I haven't reevaluated my position. The Cortese era ushered in a mentality that saw good people like Adkins chucked in the dustbin and people saluted that ambition. He ain't good enough. Get rid. We're showing ambition.

 

Well guess who else is ambitious? Dejan Lovren. Adam Lallana. Luke Shaw.

 

All supporters of ambition should be delighted in the relentless ambition they have shown.

[Unbelievable Jeff]

I haven't reevaluated my position. The Cortese era ushered in a mentality that saw good people like Adkins chucked in the dustbin and people saluted that ambition. He ain't good enough. Get rid. We're showing ambition.

 

Well guess who else is ambitious? Dejan Lovren. Adam Lallana. Luke Shaw.

 

All supporters of ambition should be delighted in the relentless ambition they have shown.

 

And this is it, the irony of us showing ambition yet expecting the players not to is q great example of the whimsical nature of football fans...

[Verbal Kint]

This view seems to be echoed on here rather frequently. The logic seems to be that Cortese had ambition that exceeded the Liebherr family's willingness to invest, and therefore we should blame Cortese's ambition for the current mess. I can't agree with that argument; it logically concludes with stating that no club should a to improve, they should accept their current lot.

 

For me ambition is crucial for a club to progress. Keeping Cortese on board would have been by far the most sensible decision the club could have made. The departures would have been minimised, the next 'level' might have been reached. Losing Cortese was the worst thing to happen to this club since our last relegation.

 

KL has now made a tidy return on her investment. Her orchard has cropped, and she has sold the harvest. She will now try to sell the barren fields, and if she doesn't get the price she wishes, she will hang on until there is another crop to sell. I can't blame her for her actions, but wish she could have been swayed by Cortese at the end of last year. I can only hope she will sell as soon as possible, but fear it will be to the highest bidder, and not to anyone with the best interest of the club in mind.

 

Finally, those fans who 'celebrated' Cortese's departure, I simply cannot understand your position. Yes he was brutal, yes he seemed petty at times, but his focus was clearly on propelling us in the right direction, without him we seem completely lost. I'm wondering if Duncan et al. have reevaluated their anti-Cortese stance in light of current events.

 

Despite what Cortese would have everyone believe, you can't crack the top 4 without serious backing and the fact is NC didn't have that backing. He shouldn't have gone around selling top 4 football to players when he had no way of delivering it. That is without doubt part of the problem we have today as undoubtedly the current board not showing enough "ambition" for the players really means they won't spend the necessary money to go where they thought they were going - the Champions League. And don't blindly believe Crab's post last night about players being "happy to stay" if the club showed some ambition. It's easy to say that, but when confronted with the offer of a 100k a week contract elsewhere I think even NC would have struggled to hold on to them.

 

That doesn't absolve Reed and co of responsibility for this mess as the way this has been handled is unprecedented in it's incompetence. Selling 7 first team players is bad enough (3 or 4 should have been the absolute maximum), but doing so without replacement deals lined up is inexcusable

[Saint Charlie]

IMO we have made a genuine upgrade with our manager

 

I know its an opinion, but what is that based on?

 

Would you rather have Koeman than Pochettino?

[Trout-Tickler]

Ahahaha... sorry!

 

One other note on player purchases... we're giving (Reed) that everything is under control but there's a lot of frustration from the staff that we're dragging our heels and missing out on some players. Caulker, an example, messing around with the fee then steaming in at the last minute with an acceptable bid and by then it's too late.

 

In light of what's gone on this summer everything you've written seems plausible. However, I don't see how we could have been messing about with the fee for Caulker as the terms of his release clause were quite clear: when a bid of £xM comes in then he can go and discuss personal terms. Why would be trying to offer a lower amount than the release clause? If true, ******** madness.

[Whitey Grandad]

Imho

There is a massive flaw in KL's thinking.

She values the club at X st 200 mil having taken almost 100 mil out. Fair enough.

 

But, any buyer NOW will take weeks to complete a purchase leaving no grime to rebuild a competitive squad to stay up. We are likely to be relegation fodder by Xmas. January rebuilds rarely succeed.

 

Meaning IF anyone buys us now at a premium price you have to question their sanity.

 

which then means questioning their integrity.

 

Very concerned noe

 

Tut tut Phil, you know perfectly well that she can't have taken anything like that amount out, may £20m or so at most.

[Window Cleaner]

They have all been spurned Katrinas advances. So they had to go

 

like Catherine the Great then, except that she had them killed.

[Minty]

Here's an interesting thought (and not one of my own to be honest, but from a fellow fan).

 

What if Markus' original investment in Saints had a potential exit planned at this point anyway? All investments usually have an exit strategy built in to them before they're even complete, so what if Kat is simply exercising part of a plan that her father may have already had in place?

 

Cortese was an investment banker who advised Markus on investments... who is to say what might have happened had he still been here?

[Whitey Grandad]

There are bits in all of it, really.

 

Section by section:

 

Cortese's departure - multiple reasons (some of which can't be specified as I'd get in all sorts of ****), although it's fairly well known that he put up resistance to ANY control of spending from KL. A suicide mission if ever there was one.

 

Finances - correct with the exception of NC not leaking stuff to the press. He was all over both the Mail (Neil Ashton) and BBC (Ben Smith).

 

Possible sale of club - it's feasible, but the method makes no sense. If there are no buyers at whatever asking price has been set, you either drop the asking price or make the product MORE attractive for the price, not less! Selling the top players arguably drops the value of the club by more than the fees received because of the perception that the club has momentum in the wrong direction.

 

Lallana - feasible, but it's almost the complete opposite of what I'd heard, with the exception of the Man United stuff. He'd wanted out for months, Clattenburg was essentially right - having been away on international duty in November, he believed he'd "made it" and deserved to be at a club that elevated him to the same status as the England regulars. He wasn't entirely thrilled with being subbed off relatively early every game either.

 

Players - NC had lined up a deal with West Ham to sell Rickie Lambert for £7m in January. That deal was hastily pulled as soon as NC walked. Overall lack of communication - certainly true, but for most players, what "communication" are they expecting from the board? Daily briefings with an update of how many shirts with their name on have been sold? Over the summer, players are rightly left to enjoy their own time and not be pestered by club employees (I'd be pretty ****ed off if my boss was phoning me with updates while I was on holiday - the clue's in the name). The only ones who should have expected to have heard something are those who would expect new contract offers in the pipeline - Fonte and Cork being the two prime examples - but I don't see what the fuss was about over Fonte supposedly having received his in writing. I'd want any contract offer I was going to sign in writing before committing to anything.

 

The noise from Alan Cork on Twitter suggests Cork hasn't received an offer at all, let alone an offer that was then withdrawn. I can't say I was ever particularly surprised by that towards the end of last season, it always appeared to me as though Pochettino was never quite convinced with JC, and as he had long since decided he was leaving, why would he care about putting it to the board himself?

 

Pochettino - he'd decided he was off around Christmas. As mental as it sounds, NC was going to sack him in December around the time we had that bad run of injuries and results which tempered our great start to the season. He was talked out of it by a number of senior players, but MP felt he didn't have the trust of NC any longer, so decided he was off, and as the rest of the season wore on, made it very clear what his plan was to many of the players, despite NC's departure in the meantime. He basically advised them all to move on as they may not get another opportunity, so naturally they all got onto their agents and now we have the carnage we see before us today. MP was offered a new deal, and it had been on the table for 2-3 months before he went to Spurs - coincidentally it was offering exactly the same salary as he is now earning at White Hart Lane.

 

Koeman - from people who know him, he will not tolerate players who don't want to play for him. If anyone doesn't want to play for him, they can do one, and he'll bring in replacements who DO want to do so. Given his track record and status in the game, we shouldn't be short of players come the start of the season.

 

Summary - clearly the business has been done the wrong way around, replacements should have been signed before the others were let go, and that falls on the board to carry the can, and KL will have to accept that we'll be spending more for most of our signings than we anticipated as a result.

 

Some of that may turn out to be inaccurate, but those are the corrections to your War and Peace effort as I see them.

 

Well done Steve, I can believe that, it's the most sense I've read so far.

[CB Fry]

Here's an interesting thought (and not one of my own to be honest, but from a fellow fan).

 

What if Markus' original investment in Saints had a potential exit planned at this point anyway? All investments usually have an exit strategy built in to them before they're even complete, so what if Kat is simply exercising part of a plan that her father may have already had in place?

 

Cortese was an investment banker who advised Markus on investments... who is to say what might have happened had he still been here?

 

 

Well, they should have sold the minute Prem survival was secured in season one. That was the high value point, and in fairness that's when I thought they would.

Edited 29 July, 2014 by CB Fry

[Joensuu]

Despite what Cortese would have everyone believe, you can't crack the top 4 without serious backing and the fact is NC didn't have that backing. He shouldn't have gone around selling top 4 football to players when he had no way of delivering it. That is without doubt part of the problem we have today as undoubtedly the current board not showing enough "ambition" for the players really means they won't spend the necessary money to go where they thought they were going - the Champions League. And don't blindly believe Crab's post last night about players being "happy to stay" if the club showed some ambition. It's easy to say that, but when confronted with the offer of a 100k a week contract elsewhere I think even NC would have struggled to hold on to them.

 

That doesn't absolve Reed and co of responsibility for this mess as the way this has been handled is unprecedented in it's incompetence. Selling 7 first team players is bad enough (3 or 4 should have been the absolute maximum), but doing so without replacement deals lined up is inexcusable

 

I feel the top 4 was closer than you might imagine. In fact I feel had either Ramirez or Osvaldo shown their potential we'd have been very close to Everton and Spurs last season.

 

Cortese was right in every way to sell an ambition of top 4 to the players. Sure if the owner subsequently decides that she has a directly opposed ambition this will backfire, however I feel it unfair to blame This on Cortese.

 

IMO, the only finance we needed to close on the top positions was for the owner to not take money out of the club. If we'd done this, this summer we would then have only lost Shaw and Lambert (again IMO). This would have left us money for transfers and wages. I genuinely feel that had Liebherr not wanted a return on investment we'd have been top 6 and closing by this time next year.

 

Seriously, what's the point of football if it isn't to be ambitious?

[Window Cleaner]

Any chance of Crab Lungs stating where his info came from?

 

Does Guan tell us where his information comes from...guess not, yet that's gospel and Crabbie's is to be considered doubtful. Think it may come from somewhere in the Pochettino

alliance though, just a hunch. The lad is at Uni here isn't he, plays for Totton?

[Foxstone]

Why doesn't Cortese find some backers, come back and deliver HIS vision. I'd back him.

 

Gutted when Cortese left us as he was the man who drove us forward, made us respected and gave us a lot ot smile about.

 

never wanted him to go and I would welcome him back in a heartbeat.

[Verbal Kint]

I feel the top 4 was closer than you might imagine. In fact I feel had either Ramirez or Osvaldo shown their potential we'd have been very close to Everton and Spurs last season.

 

Cortese was right in every way to sell an ambition of top 4 to the players. Sure if the owner subsequently decides that she has a directly opposed ambition this will backfire, however I feel it unfair to blame This on Cortese.

 

IMO, the only finance we needed to close on the top positions was for the owner to not take money out of the club. If we'd done this, this summer we would then have only lost Shaw and Lambert (again IMO). This would have left us money for transfers and wages. I genuinely feel that had Liebherr not wanted a return on investment we'd have been top 6 and closing by this time next year.

 

Seriously, what's the point of football if it isn't to be ambitious?

 

I think you're wrong to think these players were happy to stay here earning 30-40k a week and push for a top 6 finish when they had the chance to earn 100k at bigger clubs. And personally I won't criticise them for that as ultimately it's their career and how they choose to live their life is up to them. But i do object to Chambers talking about emulating the class of 92 and then ****ing off to Arsenal after making 21 appearances, or Lallana thumping the badge every week and telling the world he wants to be here forever, and then joining Liverpool to double his money at the first opportunity

[notnowcato]

BULL **IT...in the 10 games that Boruc was out injured last season, our "other two " goalies let in 20 goals between them ..and we won only one of those League games! They lost it for us not AB.

 

WHOOOOOSH

[Whitey Grandad]

I feel the top 4 was closer than you might imagine. In fact I feel had either Ramirez or Osvaldo shown their potential we'd have been very close to Everton and Spurs last season.

 

Cortese was right in every way to sell an ambition of top 4 to the players. Sure if the owner subsequently decides that she has a directly opposed ambition this will backfire, however I feel it unfair to blame This on Cortese.

 

IMO, the only finance we needed to close on the top positions was for the owner to not take money out of the club. If we'd done this, this summer we would then have only lost Shaw and Lambert (again IMO). This would have left us money for transfers and wages. I genuinely feel that had Liebherr not wanted a return on investment we'd have been top 6 and closing by this time next year.

 

Seriously, what's the point of football if it isn't to be ambitious?

 

What makes you think that money has been taken out of the club?

[CB Saint]

Southampton football Club make me sad

[Window Cleaner]

Southampton football Club make me sad

 

 

It's a life sentence though, still look on the bright side, you get occasional bright spots like the last few seasons.

[Heisenberg]

Southampton football Club make me sad

 

We need a few boosts thats for sure. ALL very very depressing at the moment

 

Glad its the summer and i can play golf

[Window Cleaner]

What makes you think that money has been taken out of the club?

 

Has anyone actually seen last year's accounts in detail, just asking, thought that there was speculation (probably just that though) that preparations were under way to possibly reduce equity or something, statement of solvency rings a bell.

[notnowcato]

Feels like I'm halfway through a novel, first half was really dark. What happens in the next few chapters will shape our season, absolutely critical point in the transfer window - will the owners release the necessary funds? Will the transfer committee line up suitable replacements?

 

The Southampton FC rollercoaster just keeps on giving. Buckle up!

[trousers]

We're officially a laughing stock now....

 

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/southampton-to-play-homeopathic-football-2014072989017

[Whitey Grandad]

Southampton football Club make me sad

 

Weddings make me sad

 

This is nowhere near that bad:)

[Professor]

The Daily Mash was fun but returning to the serious stuff, hope and wishful thinking is no substitute for evidence. We have a Board that has presided over the unprecedented dismantling of a top half premier league team while making public statements through the Chairman of the Board and the Director of Football that have proved to be so inaccurate that (1) the honesty of the statements when they were made has been challenged, and (2) the competence of the club management to carry out its stated intentions is in doubt. If that has caused major upset amongst the club's fans it should be no surprise that it has done the same amongst the players.

The scale of the crisis might prompt the Board to change its approach but if the sales continue as rumoured, it may be too late to recover, in fact it may already be too late. The panic action will presumably be to buy in some replacements but as we've seen before (Ramirez and Osvaldo) even international players bought for club record fees is no guarantee of performance.

Buying some players might keep the attendance up at the first home game but if the club is in the relegation zone by September they might struggle to get decent attendances after that.

[syd_barrett_saint]

We're officially a laughing stock now....

 

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/southampton-to-play-homeopathic-football-2014072989017

 

Absolutely ridiculous. Everyone knows that Le Tiss doesn't drink pints!