I actually feel sorry for Fraser today. He was on track for a rare clean sheet and made a decent save, but yet again his CB’s let him down.
And therein lies the problem: our CBs have been mostly okay, save for a couple catastrophic errors per game. In our position we can't afford those errors, though. They are consistently costing us points.
Saintsweb saying VVD sold and can't get injured so not playing. No surprise I just hope it's not Liverpool.
https://m.independent.ie/sport/socc...rsuit-of-virgil-van-dijk-report-36434315.html Independent saying Liverpool for £70m
Nice one Les, while you’re at it, double season ticket prices and keep Pellegrino for the rest of the season. Cracking job mate, last summer was really worth it wasn’t it, you transfer-blocking superhero.
I really don't care who signs him, including Liverpool. The key for me is just getting as much as possible, which ideally would be £70m. But it does make last summer a complete waste of time. If we're going to sell him in January, I'd have rather we sold him in the summer, and reinvested the money then. We just wasted six months, for no real reason. (And before someone says that the board can't win; they get criticised if they don't sell, they get criticised if they do sell - I am always completely fine about selling players, subject to a sufficient fee being received, and the funds being reinvested).
If we do sell him to Liverpool, we'll have completely undermined the message we were supposedly sending in the summer. Oh well; talking big without backing it up is seemingly our stock in trade. I have no qualms about selling him at this juncture, but letting a team systemically unsettle our squad and giving them what they want is going to have consequences.
Haha would be truly pathetic if he ends up going to Liverpool. Surely he would rather City? Guess they just won't pay as much.
I agree with this, apart from the wasted 6 months bit, because that is easy to say with hindsight. We took a stance and hoped he’d knuckle down and perform. He did look like he was doing ok at that up until a game or so a go. It hasn’t worked out and sounds like he is being a pain in the arse and we are now going to get rid. Nobody knows if these things will work out how you want or not, so on the subject of selling him in Jan rather than back in he summer... the board can’t win The only person to be angry with on that is Virgil himself. If they hadn’t taken that stance everyone would be saying we just rolled over again. They had to say no then and ideally we held it together until the end of the season. As for the fee, heck yes, we must get the right fee and it must be very big. I’d expect £70m package.
Well seeing as they are dealing with him on a daily basis they should've been able to see whether or not he was going to knuckle down, they called his bluff and it backfired. I agree with you that he hasn't been as bad as people make out, but it was obvious he would want to go and be kicking off as soon as January rolled round, he wasn't suddenly going to change his mind that moving to a big club is not a good career move. I said in the summer we should've sold then as there is pretty much no point in standing up to wantaway players, just get as large a fee as possible and move on. If the board manage to get a bigger fee in January than they would've got in the summer then that is a success in my mind and worth the extra 6 months, but we will never know if that is the case.
There is just no way your first sentence can be held up saintmagic. You can’t always tell how people will be. Adam Lallana said at Xmas he wanted to stay at saints for ever - he ****ed off 6 months later. I’ll also give you Morgan. Had a hissy fit, not sold, played well. Brendy won’t like this, but this proves they really couldn’t win, because for every one of you, they’ll be one slaughtering them if they’d sold. It is what it is. A **** stick. Let’s sell him now and move on. No-one knows what fee we would have got in the summer.
Yes Lallana said that to the fans, nobody knows what he was saying privately. Publicly people are going to say what will appease people the most, especially footballers/managers. You said yourself that VVD has played ok since the summer, so in that sense he has knuckled down. But now another window is upon us, teams want him again and we are going through the same thing. Morgan went a year later after playing well. VVD has essentially done the same thing, but 6 months shorter. Key difference for me is that we could've really done with the VVD money in the summer to strengthen the squad, we didn't need the Morgan money at the time as (from memory) that was the summer everyone left. And that is on the board. Of course there will be people criticising the board no matter what, that is part of any business. There will be people who agree and disagree with decisions made. That is not a reason to defend them.
I’m not really one to defend Lallana but it also wasn’t just that he changed his mind. The club’s chairman and manager had both left between him saying that and him leaving. Pretty significant changes.
??? I’m not sure we have grasped each other’s view here or are overlapping. What is not a reason to defend them? Do you mean the Board? If so, I am happy to defend them on not selling Virgil in the summer. We had to say no in my opinion and the evidence of Morgan’s situation was reason enough to do that and hope he played well for a year. My view on this one is simple. People kept moaning we sold our best players and the board should stop doing that. They stopped doing that, yet that’s wrong too?? I’m only talking about the not selling of Virgil here.
I find it somewhat interesting that two decisions which could be described as populist amongst supporters, the sacking of Puel and a hard line on player sales this summer have had a detrimental effect on the team, yet two of the most unpopular decisions in recent memory. The sacking of Adkins and the great summer fire sale saw the team move forward. Perhaps Pulis is the best move after all
