It didn't get us relegated at all, that's a profoundly silly comment. What got us relegated was the years of atrophy with our squad previously, caused by having an owner who was completely skint. It had been coming, we were fortunate that it came at a time when it wasn't financially crippling.
It wasn’t the sole reason, but you still got relegated. Those 3 city youth players didn’t help keep you up. It’s all hindsight obviously, but you spent around £30m on 4 city youth players and ended up getting relegated. If you’d got some more experienced players maybe would have stayed up? Just playing devils advocate, you made a £30m profit in a player, but lost 100m in tv revenue so aren’t any better off.
We spent quite a bit on experienced players. They were not very good. Our kids significantly outperformed the veterans last year; when healthy, Lavia, ABK and Alcaraz (bought in January) were among our best players, and the early-season injuries to Lavia/ABK were a major factor in our backslide.
Keep up! - we just signed another top young player from Man City (Charles). Anyway, please come back next year and dick about trying to sign him - it`ll get a few more quid for us out of who he eventually does go to.
Aw cute. Trying to talk down Lavia’s abilities because Liverpool don’t have the pull of Chelsea. Lavia is an unbelievable footballer, will become one of the very best. Your clubs owners are morons
Just as a breakdown of our spending over the previous two seasons, here are the kids: Livramento - very good, got injured. Lavia - very good. ABK - very good, got injured, wasn't quite the same thereafter. Alcaraz - very good. Bazunu - made a lot of mistakes, but god our defense didn't help. Sulemana - talented, but not a finished product. Edozie - see above. Mara - looked bright initially but contributed little ultimately. Larios - not a senior player at this time. And the older players: Perraud - decent but flawed LB (lacking recovery pace, got him in real trouble). Adam Armstrong - completely useless at the PL level. Onuachu - completely useless. Caleta-Car - completely useless. Aribo - completely useless. Orsic - so useless he barely saw the pitch. Maitland-Niles - completely useless. Lyanco - what he lacks in footballing ability he makes up for in sheer entertainment value. Bree - cost almost nothing and was brought in for cover, and that's about his level. The kids were a bit hit-and-miss, but the veterans were almost all misses.
A big reason for our relegation was that the squad was managed abysmally for the most part of last season imho.
Yeah - of all the places to come and try seethe and cope about the nonsense cheapskate haggling of FSG the last place I’d have thought to go would be a southampton message board after all liverpool have pulled over the years. And to do it by trying to talk down a player that Liverpool clearly wanted and is clearly a cut above. Baffling really of that Liverpool fan
I haven’t talked down his ability once? When we were linked 5 weeks ago I openly said don’t know much about him as I didn’t really watch much of saints last year. Only time I saw him was when he assisted Jota in the last game against us. No idea why are owners are morons? They’ve turned a 300m investment into 3bn (if you believe football finances). Wouldn’t mind being a bit of a moron myself if that’s what it gets tbh!!
Like I said, I’ve not talked down Lavia at all. Apparently a very good player according to you guys so I’m sure will do well as Chelsea. My post was tongue in cheek, clearly he wasn’t the reason you went down. But he was part of the team that did. Saying he was a good investment cos he got you 40m although true, you also lost 100m getting relegated. As I said hindsight is wonderful, who knows if you’re brought different players to the 4 city youth players you may not have sold one for a 40m profit but you also may have still been in prem. But then a season playing decent football winning games and enjoying sat 3pm is probably lot better than being shoved around for tv rights going to games and losing constantly. Relegation isn’t always a bad thing
On the last paragraph- I gather there has been more interest in season tickets this year than the past few. Reduced cost is likely a factor. But expecting to win more than two home games is likely another The signings point seems a bit muddled. Because if we had stayed up the same would have happened with him and he still would have gone. We knew that when Chelsea inquired after we’d only had him a few weeks. He was always off. So the entire issue including the profit can be looked at almost in complete isolation to relegation Unless the argument is that we shouldn’t have signed him specifically and played romeu and spent the 10m elsewhere. Which I guess could be what you are saying. But I’m not sure where else that 10m would have gone that tipped the scales. Especially since we tried and failed in 30m plus bids for Ramos and Gakpo. So it wasn’t a fund shortage. Maybe having that 10m and the other fees spent on young players available earlier might have let us land someone to score the goals? We failed in attempts to sign Ramos, Gakpo, Hojlund and Delap last summer. One of those is not like the other but given where the other three have ended up we were probably too ambitious and left it too late That wandered a bit off topic. It’s a small consolation but at least some success in the transfer strategy is worth being positive about
I was being tongue in cheek, deliberately provocative but meant no real dig at thing. Was more fact that sometimes some people seem more concerned about football finances than football itself, talking about profit in players and it being a good thing… when the bigger picture is that you got relegated. as I say, may have got relegated without him. May have signed an even worse player gone down, and not made any money to reinvest etc so never really know what may or may not have happened.
Lavia is so good that with luck he will become one of the most sought after players in Europe in the next 5 years. Profit in the books is what keeps smaller clubs going and they will always leave for a Chelsea or if there's no better offer, Liverpool. Some clubs will get the captain to hit up rival players on international duties or, worse, managers will take them for an ice cream in Blackpool. They'll then get them to down tools and force a move which is very ****y and shameful IMO. Thankfully fans of those clubs understand that those practices arent well regarded and tend not to lecture on what the smaller clubs should be doing. Rather than twats who are moving to Saudi because big money is all that matters, players that come to Saints now are obviously looking to be part of a project and are buying in for the coming years. Take, for example, young Shea Charles who I believe just signed for us from ...Manchester City? So you might not 'be sure' about elite youngsters joining us but we are because we know whats going on with the club and the players
And if they prove to be world class at Chelsea or Liverpool, they'll move again to a true global elite club like Man City, Bayern, Real Madrid, Barca, or PSG. There is almost always a bigger fish.
Consider yourself lucky to support a football club that never has to worry about staying financially afloat.
Obviously wumming but even so that’s rich. I read with interest all your previous, what sounded at the time, quite interesting & knowledgeable comments about the LFC transfer policy, of only targeting players who want to join you & wont engage in bidding wars. Ha! What a load of absolute tosh you wrote. Virtually every aspect of your comments were washed away with the Caicedo & Lavia deals! So I’ll take your above comments with a ton of sour grapes. Cheers for the extra £10m Jurgen. Ps. #varfree
Nathan Jones. Ruben Selles. Rasmus Ankersen. And a squad that was already on its knees from years of under investment. That’s why we got relegated.
Shambles of leadership and seemingly no plan was why we got relegated. We had the players., Under a competent manager we would have finished 12th. Nevermind.
