Interesting from Big Sam

[View From The Top]

All this boll ocks spouted about selling our best players and replacing them on the cheap is laughable. Anyone would think we sold Schniderlin and replaced him with some unknown from league 1 for £250k. We're replaced him with a highly rated young player from Chelsea and a Dutch international rated one of the best young midfield players in Europe for a combined fee of £13m. Last season we replaced Shaw with a player who cost £10m, Lallana with a two players who cost £10m, we are about to spend £10m+ on a centre back.

 

What exactly do people expect? That we replace them with better players who cost more? or we replace them with better players who cost the same. Because guess what, if a better player than Shaw, Schniderlin, Clyne, etc was available for the same price, Man United, Liverpool, etc would have signed them instead. We aren't replacing the outgoing players with league one nobodies and Carlos kickaballs, they are invariably young, highly rated international players or players who like Bertrand who have ability but whose career has stalled for whatever reason. Selling at top whack and replacing with two young players with potential is a good business model, of course they won't all work out and some will take longer than others to settle but not everyone can be brilliant straight away, less than a year ago Mane was the worst player we've had since Ali Dia, now he's the next £25m player we can't afford to lose. Still carry one moaning, trotting out recycled lines from talk sport and match of the day, with an Everton comparison every fifth post, some absolute clowns on here.

 

 

Totally.

[melmacian_saint]

There's also a lot of talk about how Koeman is frustrated bla bla bla...as if he's too good for us.

 

What makes you think that? He picked up a team that was always going to sell its best players, and signings so far show that he has had a big say on the players that came in: they were signed from a league he knew well, and in some cases a team he knew well. Last season we fizzled out towards the end and many of us started spotting some shortcomings in those signings and the tactics.

 

He won a cup in Spain but with an embarrassingly low league finish, failed to put a serious challenge in for the league title in Portugal, had a couple of top 3 finishes with a team in Holland that has seen much better times. Ronald Koeman is not too good for Southampton, nor is he having his ambitions blown away by the club. He has as much to prove now as he did last summer.

[sadoldgit]

I'd like to know where this stuff about Ronald is coming from. There is an assumption that he is frustrated. You would need to be made of steel not to be hacked off about starting a season with a couple of key players and waiting weeks to get the CB you want, but does anyone know for certain that the man is frustrated with the club? Yes he was up tight after the European game but I thought that was down to their blatant time wasting. I am sure he also get hacked off with the press running stories about players leaving when he has clearly said that no one else is going. That is different to being frustrated with the club though.

[The9]

Ronald will have known exactly what he was getting into when he took the job and the first thing he had to do was give his input into replacements for a bunch of players who hadn't even left yet. He knows our limitations and is not going anywhere. There's a reason he kept saying we started better than he expected last season.

[Toadhall Saint]

All this boll ocks spouted about selling our best players and replacing them on the cheap is laughable. Anyone would think we sold Schniderlin and replaced him with some unknown from league 1 for £250k. We're replaced him with a highly rated young player from Chelsea and a Dutch international rated one of the best young midfield players in Europe for a combined fee of £13m. Last season we replaced Shaw with a player who cost £10m, Lallana with a two players who cost £10m, we are about to spend £10m+ on a centre back.

 

What exactly do people expect? That we replace them with better players who cost more? or we replace them with better players who cost the same. Because guess what, if a better player than Shaw, Schniderlin, Clyne, etc was available for the same price, Man United, Liverpool, etc would have signed them instead. We aren't replacing the outgoing players with league one nobodies and Carlos kickaballs, they are invariably young, highly rated international players or players who like Bertrand who have ability but whose career has stalled for whatever reason. Selling at top whack and replacing with two young players with potential is a good business model, of course they won't all work out and some will take longer than others to settle but not everyone can be brilliant straight away, less than a year ago Mane was the worst player we've had since Ali Dia, now he's the next £25m player we can't afford to lose. Still carry one moaning, trotting out recycled lines from talk sport and match of the day, with an Everton comparison every fifth post, some absolute clowns on here.

 

That Turkish geezer talks sense sometimes.

[Cheeky Monkey]

When we had Lowe and got to the fa cup final ... We "pushed on" by buying cha,pions hip quality players. Prutton, higginbotham, ormeroyd, McCann, quashie etc. all these players were championship quality and were regulars in the first team. We then become a championship team. Not a surprise to me.

 

this time we have sold good players but have a deeper squad of premier league quality players. Think about it. Almost all of our players would be wanted to teams in mid table premier league if they were to be sold.

 

In short I am very happy with our buying strategy. The selling strategy we only have a limited amount of control over due to player power.

 

We will look back at this period as a saints fan as the golden years.... I just hope we are able to keep it up for 10+ years