I remember Keith Weller, came to you guys from Spurs I think? Or did he leave you for Spurs? The old grey matter has finally given up the ghost.
Well there does appear to be an increasingly apparent pass the smugball-shaped vacancy on this forum so consider this an audition
Please name one other club in your criteria who had the amount of players we did who the top 6 would want? Usually mid table sides only have 2 or 3 tops, who generally leave, we were just lucky/unfortunate whichever way you want to look at it to have a fair few more
Is that a different mark Wallington from the one who wrote The missing postman, and 500 mile walkies? I hope so because I was **** in goal and haven't managed to write any books so would be exceedingly jealous of someone who could do both things
Same thing here. Dinamo Zagreb picks everything of value and sells it abroad, it's owner is hugely despised because of the way he's running the club so the fans boycott matches and attendances are nonexistent. Hajduk and Rijeka are feeding of scraps, and other are just happy to survive.
And, the reality might be that the ceiling just can't be cracked. So whatever new owner came in would just keep us in mid/low table safety just like KL is.
My money is still Dalian Wanda as I mentioned in January when NC walked and feel they are waiting in the wings
Why should I? The ideas being peddled here are that any club that finishes 8th will lose most of the first team, that losing all those players is inevitable, that the board could do nothing about it and that this happens all the time. Which just isn't true. To paraphrase Friends: It's NOT that common, it DOESN'T happen to every club and it IS a big deal.
You cannot compare us to other sides who have finished 8th because of the amount of players we had who the bigger clubs would want. It is a very unique situation. There is obviously something going on behind the scenes aswell, but I think 90% of all of this is just as simple as big club wants smaller clubs player, player goes.
This is the line that is being peddled but it simply cannot be true. No matter how fanatical we are we cant ignore the fact that we werent THAT good last year and we didnt do THAT well. When JayRod and Schneiderlin go to spurs as sems likely to happen I expect Clyne will be off soon after. No way is this simple cherry picking by the top clubs.
Well either the scouts of Liverpool/Utd/Spurs/Arsenal disagree or you are underestimating the potential of our players. There isn't a mass conspiracy going on by the top clubs to sign all our players, nobody is forcing them to sign our players, and it is not like they are getting them at cut down prices. So what other reason is there apart from "cherry picking by the top clubs"?
And nobody is forcing Southampton to accept their bids. In the past other clubs have simply said "No. Not for sale." but our board are apparently incapable of doing that.
I agree with you here, and I do believe that the outgoings should have been restricted to 2 or 3. I think the boards inexperience at running a football club has basically meant that once the snowball started gathering momentum they had no clue how to stop it. Personally the only way I could think of to stop it would have been to offer the players big payrises as unfortunately they hold the majority of power in these situations.
Have they? or have you forgotten the part when they then sell the player soon after? Don't underestimate how many times clubs create transfer gossip themselves & then the chairman comes out with a "not for sale" statement just to appear to be in charge & placate fans. And how many times have clubs REALLY turned down huge amounts of money from much bigger clubs who have put in firm written bids? Maybe we will never know, but I'm betting its hardly ever.