So what you're saying is Bale himself told you that he in fact never played for Cardiff, and was never contracted to them?
The problem with this is that you need an owner like Man City or Chelsea to pump ridiculous amounts of cash in without expecting it to be returned. Then you need the fair play stuff to be eradicated. If Saints hold on to all their young players and don't sell then they can't progress. KL isn't scrimping but she also isn't going to push £100m into the fund every year. So we either sell the odd player and buy 2/3 players or we keep the same small squad and don't progress. To me it's a no brainer. We can try and work our way up very very very slowly or we can cash in on a couple of players every now and again and if reinvested wisely can make a big leap in competitiveness each time. The first scenario also relies on minimal injuries / suspensions as we can't afford the quality back up. Shaw going doesn't worry me at all. Not at that price anyway. I don't think we will miss anything in the next couple of years if we get in a £10m left back. It's not as if we are replacing Shaw with Buttner or Fox. So every time we sell for 30m we can then get 2 or 3 quality replacements which helps us more as we then have squad depth and not just a first 15 as we have now.
He really is dim, isn't he. Not going to miss being constantly concerned about him doing something stupid on Twitter.
Luke Shaw moves one step closer to completing his boyhood dream move to the Playboy Mansion for a threesome.
Just that we are going to get a **** load of money for him? I guess they have already sown the seed though, saying no player leaves unless it's good for us...I guess they'll just say that this is good for us as it's going to be reinvested into the squad etc.
Bale was spotted by Rod Ruddick of Saints' Bath Academy playing for Cardiff Civil Service in an under-9's tournament in Newport. That's the closest association he ever had with Cardiff City, i.e. none at all.
@GraemeBailey: And Lallana and Shaw will just be the first Southampton departures, expect a couple more big money deals to go through in coming weeks.
