I see West Ham being linked with Pelle. Surely he is happy barely playing in China and earning 260k a week than moving to a club like West Ham?
I don't think anyone would argue that Long has a lethal delivery - if he did, he'd be at Liverpool. As an all round competitor though, he's top drawer. He pulls defences all over the place, do people really not see that?
Goals and assists and last ditch tackles and shots on target and crosses and successful first touches and decent second touches and just general ability to make contact with the ball without it ending up 80 yards away and so forth. Long does what Long does well, but ye gods he isn't great at the rest of it,.
I haven’t said he is. You’ve been on here Long enough to read my views on Shane. Love him, but he isn’t good enough for where we want to get.... however right now, having him in our current plight is useful as long as we don’t play him as a loan striker and have someone else getting the goals. Just think it’s a bit pointless people slagging him off (criticising). He’s here, we need him. Let’s just hope that he gets used properly. He’s useful on the trenches and we are currently in the trenches. I’d be happy if Guido is a roaring success, helps us win lots of games and Shane never steps foot on the pitch again, however I suspect we will need Shane in a battle.
Long certainly isn't useless, but as with most players we need to play to his strengths. Can't lob the ball up to him to hold up, because his touch is abysmal and there's a very good chance it'll end up with the opposition. He's a useful outlet, but only if someone else has served as an outlet to get the ball forward first.
Or if we turn the opposing defence and get it in the channel. He’s very good at that too. I agree on the rest.
A loan striker? I thought he was signed up. I've heard many a fan of opposition teams express the view that they don't want to see Long on the field as he can be such a pain in the arse for defenders. The problem seems to be, as you said in an earlier post,FLT, he is not getting the service he needs. Additionally, all that pulling defences around is good stuff, but if the rest of the team stand back and admire it then goals don't follow. His partnership with Mane, for example, was terrifying when they both clicked. The first time I really noticed him was a 3-0 home defeat to West Brom when he created so much space for Lukaku that it was embarrassing. I was at that game with one of my Liverpool supporting sons. On the way home, he advised that we should sign Long. He regretted that last January, but I never have. I agree we need to move up a level, but the fans who think Long is crap make me wonder about their ability to see what he can bring to the team. More disturbing, I'm not sure the manager knows either!
Sky mentioned WHU in for Graziano this morning. Thankfully they are not always right. I'm afraid if this happens we will have to take a contract out on him.
That would have been OK in Don Cortese's day, but if you haven't noticed Southampton FC contracts are not binding.
As much has i rated Pelle, the contract WHU would probably offer will be laughable enough! Probably an expensive one for a player with no re-sale value. That said, whats annoying is, he will do a great job for them.
Given that he has already experienced the PL, and given that he is getting on a bit, I would think Pelle would be far better off staying in China on his mega wages.
Does anybody else think we're actually going to sign anyone else apart from Guido? Me thinks not! So where's the money gone.......?
I think most people will be asking the same question if the window shuts and we haven't signed anyone else. Until that point though, I'm still hopeful we will be adding to our squad.
Well they did say earlier in the window that we would spend the money over several windows. If we buy someone like Promes then that would be roughly £50m spent in this window, adding in the Celtic % and wages and we would have spent roughly all of it. So I wouldn't be too surprised if we didn't sign anyone else.
Would be a bit strange as you would assume they want him to go somewhere and be first choice. Spurs fans I know rave about him and he would probably only go from being 3rd choice at Spurs to 2nd choice here.
