Well, if it don't work out, good luck shipping him out. £100K a week, two and a half year deal, hmmm that's too expensive for China!
Tbf....we all knew Fonte was below par. We wanted to keep him because we had lost Virgil and out of pure sentiment. He would have been good enough for a back up at West Ham, but was never going to carry their defence.
I sort of hope Hull stay up over Crystal Palace, partly because of Allardyce, but mainly because it's totally unfair on me to relegate the three most northern teams.
Les and Jose must have one hell of a plan because this attempt at taking down one of our rivals is clearly an inside job.
Definitely Hull but also want Sunderland and The Boro. It isn't going to happen but I want a few local matches. Newcastle looks a good bet. Even Sheffield is quite local. After trekking to Sunny Scunny in League One anywhere not in the North Sea is good.
Don't really want to think about Jose at all now he's gone but this did make me chuckle. How many meal deals can Saints get for what they got I wonder?
They really aren't much better than us. We have a better defence and midfield overall. The difference is they have a world class striker that guarantees 15/20 goals a season. Think if we have a player like that over the past 3 seasons, we would have pushed top 4.
And yet when Liverpool took Lovren off our hands, everyone thought that it was Jose making Dejan look good. Could it be that Maya Yoshida is our true defensive rock ? Alternatively, what we have at Saints is a very good team set up - take any individual out, and we can replace them (Jack Stephens, for example, has stepped in and is rather good), but the individuals who go to other teams find that they are not effective individuals in a team that plays differently (ie far worse). Hey, have we discovered the 'Southampton Way'? Quick, someone point this out to Virgil
Go Bolton (and MU). https://www.buzzfeed.com/benhenry/team-stonewall?bffbnews&utm_term=4ldqpho#4ldqpho
Oh I would say that they are easily better than us. Unlike many on here, I still like and rate Ron as a manager - but I don't think he's doing anything special there. 7th is the bare minimum they should be getting. He'll be fine achieving that this year, and probably next year too. But unless he adds cup wins/finals to that, it'll soon not be enough. In my view, Williams would get into our team alongside Virgil; Coleman would just about get in ahead of Cedric, albeit not for much longer if Cedric continues his progression over the past year; at least one of Morgan and Gueye would walk into our midfield, and there's a case for saying that the other would get in ahead of Romeu (even though Romeu has been brilliant for us - Sanchez is a great player, but Messi is still better); Barkley offers them that central link between midfield and attack that we badly lack (goals and assists, in and out of the box); and just all-round they offer a threat across their attacking line - even with Bolasie injured, they can still loan Deulofeu out and often leave Mirallas (who I greatly rate, above Tadic and Redmond) on the bench. And yes, that does obviously include Lukaku: he might be too good for them etc, but he can't just be shifted to one side when comparing the two teams. He is an Everton player. The hope I guess from our point of view is that Gabbiadini can ultimately prove himself to be equally of good (although unlike Lukaku and Everton, the downside to that is that it would just lead to us selling him). Flip it around: Virgil and Bertrand would walk into their team, absolutely no question in my view. But anyone else? I'm struggling. Forster in previous years yes, but he's not been great this season.
Forster easily better then Robles. Bertrand better than Baines. Van Dijk better than Williams. Yoshida better than Jagielka. Coleman better than Cedric. Romeu better than Gueye (close but I wouldn't swap them). Morgan better than Davis. Mirallas better than Tadic. Barkley better then Redmond. JWP better than Davies. Lukaku better than Gabbiadini. I'd say most would be in agreement with the like for like comparisons with the close ones being Romeu and Gueye, Yoshida and Jagielka and perhaps Mirallas and Tadic. Also it's tough to judge Morgan as he has hardly played of late. Anyway, a like for like comparison shows 6 saints players and 5 everton players coming out on top. Even if you disagree with a couple it shows there isn't much in it and they aren't much better than us, which was my initial point. The reason we have struggled and are so far behind is that we have rarely actually got to play our best 11 due to fixture pile up/ over rotation. Also we didn't have a striker capable of scoring for a few months between Austin and Gabbiadini.
