If we qualify for this cup , how seriously would you want saints to take it? Go for it 100 per cent (and possibly see the league form drop off like Everton) Play a mixture of youth / reserves and keep the focus on the premier league? What we will need is much more squad depth , which im sure Ronald will sort.
If the management replace anyone who leaves and adds another 3-4 quality players then I would like to go for it but if we simply replace then blood a number of the youngsters as we want to keep our league standing and try for top four again
Koeman has already shown that he treats cups with respect....he will put out his best team for an European match. No point in playing silly buggers and losing your league match anyway. Go for every game.
Depends how large our budget if making Europa would be, because we'd need an extremely deep squad to take that competition seriously without torpedoing our league form, and that'd mean a comical number of additions over the summer.
We will have to buy more players, but the club and Ronald know that. Waste of time qualifying for it, if you don't want to win it.
It's more than a few players, though. Assuming Clyne, Morgan, Jay and Toby are gone (and no one else), we probably need a keeper, two fullbacks, two center backs, two central mids, a striker, and to sign the current loanees on a permanent basis in order to be able to rotate the squad properly; the league plus a decent run in Europey and the cups could easily take our season to 55-60 games, all told.
I think we'll go for it. It's almost definitely going hurt our league form as our squads already small enough at present. We should still have more than enough to not have to even worry about relegation next season though Much rather enjoy our qualification as it won't happen every year.
Gk: Forster , New keeper Rb: New player, New player Cb: Fonte, New player, Yoshida, Gardos, McCarthy. Lb: Bertrand, Targett Cm: Wanyama, Reed, New player, New player or Gape, Davis, Prowse, Djuricic, Hesketh. Wingers: Mane, Tadic, New player, New player, Sims. Foward: Pelle, Long, New player
Yeah, that's eight additions (and I'd still like to add another DM to the mix), and a couple of them would/should be pretty significant spends; even with loanees perhaps filling a couple gaps, and perhaps as much as $60m inbound for Clyne/Morgan/Jay, we're talking a busy (and expensive) summer.
Is Long off then?! On a serious note you need more than 1 striker in the PL, let alone bloody Europa! I know Roko will go all out every game but I wouldn't want us trying hard if were ill equipped. If we keep as many as we can and add 3 good signings maybe?
Absolutely. Just a lot of moving parts, and consequently the pain of trying to get other teams to understand that they can't have all of that money for their one player.
