I'm still not fussed. So long as get decent fees for these players, I've currently got no issue with these players leaving. I am perfectly happen to wait and see what we do in the remainder of the transfer window. Only when I look at our squad list once the window has shut, might my feelings turn. It all depends on what I find myself looking at. I've pretty much spent these last few weeks just thinking back to Steve McManaman on BT Sport back in Jan/Feb, when they were showing our game against Sunderland (the cup one, I think - they did of course show both). Steve was very clear on his opinion that we wouldn't be able to hold onto our players this summer, but immediately after saying it, people on here were destroying him for his comments. Two posters in particular (you know who you are) absolutely laid into him. But I just sat back chuckling to myself whilst reading them, wondering how so many people could be so bias and naïve. And rightly so, because he's been proven to be 100% correct. We're not the players, we're not the board. We're not even ex-players like McManaman. Whatever opinions or feelings you might have, they are just that. They're not facts. So who is to say that we wont go and spend £60 million, maybe more, in the next month? I mean, all the people who thought there would never be a mass exodus and McManaman was talking a load of bull have been proved wrong, so why not also the people who think we wont make some decent signings now? We don't know what is going happen, so I am content to just sit back and wait and see, rather than wetting myself and, at the same time, calling for the board to up sticks and leave.
My main concern is that we are leaving it pretty late to buy the number of players needed. Pre season should be used for gelling and bonding the team on and off the pitch, as well as fitness. We need to hit the ground running as we have a lot of winable fixtures to start and points against those teams will set us up for the season. The season starts in three weeks, that is not enough time to buy and gel a team.
Players don't need a lot of convincing to join teams like Arsenal. Bigger club, higher wages etc. Players aren't exactly going to be falling over themselves to get a move to Southampton, we have to work on luring them here and that will naturally take longer than it would take bigger teams.
Because they generally offer sufficient money (or close to it) straightaway, so the negotiations are shorter. From the comments coming from Celtic regarding Forster, and the comments from Guan 2.0 about Ings, it sounds like we're trying to move teams off their valuations. Which is perfectly fair when you're chasing one or two players...bit trickier when you need seven or eight.
And when every club in the world knows you've claimed to have a transfer budget of about a billion pound
We should have had the players lined up before the exodus. We knew it could happen, so you would hope the board did. We were more appealing whilst those players were still here and we wanted to push on and win things. Easier to sell that two months ago than now. The players we sign wouldnt need to know Shaw etc are off, get them in and maybe others would have stayed. Would be interesting to know if Lallana partly signed, thinking he would be playing with Suarez.
Liverpool didn't exactly wrap the Lallana deal up within 24 hours, and they STILL haven't been able to confirm the Lovren deal yet. But yeah, unless we want to go over-board with our cash, we don't really hold the cards here. Other teams will want to be screwing us for every penny they can get (like I hope we've been doing), whilst players from those teams might just want to hold out until as late as possible, just in case a bigger club comes in for them.
