You need to include the way the Board want the club run financially too Beddy- I accept how they do it as it's their choice.
Yes I accept what you are saying....and as others have said a lot of it was to make us look attractive for the investor. Not sure they got the balance right and I think it possibly meant the loss of a European place. (Not getting a striker in earlier etc)
100% ^ Our best signings in recent years have all cost less than £15m, relative pittance in the crazy world of PL money... Wanyama £11m Toby £11m Alli £5m Dier £4m Hugo £12m Vertonghen £10m Walker £1m Rose £1m Trippier £3.5m Davies £swap Eriksen £11m Dembele £15m To put it another way, the core of our current squad cost far less combined than Paul Pogba. It's not what you spend, it's how you spend it. We'll never be able to compete with the Mancs or Chavs in terms of financial clout, so we have to spend wisely. In fact, I panic whenever I read that Spurs are bidding more than £20m for a player as they usually turn out to be ****e. The difference is that you guys are roughly where we were 8-10 years ago when our best players were being poached left right and centre because we weren't big enough to hold onto them. That has changed in the last few years.
Pardew to do a lap of honour on a Vespa after the game with Les Reed in a side car before being announced
Ffs.... whatever the rights or wrongs of it, just want to look forward, note weeks of fans infighting and negativity for players.... but I know it's not your fault...!!
I agree on Boufal but with Hojbjerg it just looks like he is unfit. HE doesn;t do too bad in the first half of games but from the second half he gets increasingly poor and his temper gets increasingly worse. Second half of games he starts getting really niggly and very red in the face (tired as well as angry.) I suppose you could say it is a match fitness issue from not getting enough game time but for me he should be lasting more than a half even without the game time. Boufal strikes me as another Gaston. Lets hope this time the second season (settled in) works out this time. Pied looks really good to me just from that one game (havent watched anymore if he has played more so only saw him v Middlesboro) Redmond does look like he has improved but he still is a petulant player that likes to have a go at this team mates a lot. I hear a lot about how we have suffered without Virgil and I accept that pretty much without really questioning however.....I was wondering what the with/without stats are! Did we do better with or without Virgil? Did we get more points with him or more without him? Did we concede more with him or more without him? Not questioning Virgil at all. I am questioning how much of a difference there would have been with or without him in those latter matches. Of course it is unquestionable that he is first choice CB but did not having him make as much difference as many are saying it did?
I'd like to think that could happen, something's clearly going/gone on and he should front up and be honest if he thinks the job is too big for him. On a side note, any rumblings in timing of takeover....?
If he's gone, get it done within the next couple of days at the most. Don't pussyfoot around and leave us until a couple of days before preseason without a manager.
If Branfoot had got us to an upper midtable position (and that would be pretty good in that era) would you be saying the same despite the style of football?
You are being generous there. You could see from the pre-season games that it was letting opposition teams play a direct ball from the centre line straight into their central attack and we were cut open several times in those friendlies by the exact same pass each time. Of course it didn't always result in a goal but it just showed that formation was going to lead to problems.
Claude Puel has go now with Southampton's miserable home form continued We have not inproved more like going backwards I hope he going and the board when the takeover done