Again Mikey, a well constructed piece. How dare we be potential upstarts! Surely success is reserved for certain big City clubs only
In the old days smaller clubs could not compete because of smaller grounds and thus smaller revenue to invest in bigtime players. Those days are over now as the bulk of money is from TV- 90 million a year for every PL club I believe which changes the game abit. We are after young not too expensive (we seem to like the 10 million mark)players with flair, our top earners are on around 35000 a week, NC is a prudent man and will not over stretch the club but will put together a rather good team that could be challenging top 10 next year, If at every window we buy 1 top quality player then why can we not be up there. Some on here have Knocked the Sturridge deal, 12 million and I guess 60000 a week is more than we could or would pay, but he has taken the pressure of Saurez and Pool are a good side to watch as a neutral, Rodgers has taken 15 games to get them to play how he wants, just hope MP can do it quicker
If they lose Suarez, they'll have a shedload of cash to buy better players - including those that are only considering coming to us because Liverpool can't afford their club's valuation. Let's face it, Liverpool have already hit their low point - they are only on the up now, and will take a while, but with Rodgers, and as only a casual observer, they are definitely on the right trajectory back to the top. United may waver when SAF leaves.
I agree with a lot of this but one thing has been forgten. Cortese said the goal is to be self sufficient and not rely on heavy backing. That means we have to go for youth and not pay high wages. I believe this can take us far but look at aresenal they have a far far higher revenue then us but just can't compete at the top end wage wise. If we truly stick to being self sufficient then I doubt we will ever reach the very top as to keep world class players you need to pay the big big bucks. Consistent top half with occasional top 6 seasons could happen though!
That would do me for the next few years! I'm sure 99.9% of Saints fans would settle for that too. Question is, would Nicola?...
You would think that Liverpool would understand better than anyone that a trophy case full of hardware means very little. These players are 20-25 and have been led to believe their whole lives that they were destined to be champions. They don't care about tradition, only money and titles. That eliminates a good deal of the supposed big club mystique right there. But the fact that Liverpool has been good recently and Saints have not still matters because players want to go to the best team. The best team NOW, though. Not the best team 20 years ago. Coutinho is said to prefer LFC, and I don't think any of us are that surprised by that. But even then, it doesn't matter what Coutinho prefers if Liverpool can't get a bid accepted. And Inter doesn't care at all about who is the bigger club or better team, only who has the most cash. Liverpool has a long, rich history. Chelsea and Manchester City were nothing sides, comparatively. But all it took was loads of cash and suddenly the big three become the big four and then the big six and now it's maybe back down to the big four again because Liverpool and Arsenal may have dropped out. At first I was happy about this, because I enjoyed seeing the big teams get their comeuppance. But now, its a lot less fun because it's just so clear it is all about money nothing else matters. This is the harsh lesson we just got served last week. The team that wins is the one with the most cash that invests it wisely. Right now, Saints have both. Liverpool got stuck with Hicks. You only have to look at what happened here in the US. Hicks owned the Texas Rangers and they were terrible. He was forced to sell the club, and they have good owners and more cash and now they are one of the best teams in baseball. When I said we would soon be competing with Man U for players, I meant it. Does anyone doubt that the Leibherrs have the cash or that Cortese has huge ambitions? But competing with Man U for players is the easy part. You just have the same amount of cash they do. Competing with Man U on the pitch is harder. And running a top franchise on a sustainable level is very hard, and that's what we all should be hoping for rather than European glory. If the Leibherrs sold the club or if it turns out Cortese isn't getting the funding we think, we could be back in League One before you know it. We almost did a Pompey once, we could do it again. As could any club.
I think ML arranged for us to have a pot to fulfill the dream, the Leibherrs carried out his wishes, but I doubt that they will put any more money in to the project without a guarantee of a good return. After all, they have no links to us other than the fact that we made their relative's last year enjoyable. Nicola has to manage with what he has is my guess.
If we assume that Nicola is constrained in his spending to some degree but we still have enough to spend 50 million on players a season then why wouldn't we be competing with LFC, Liverpool, Man U, etc. for players? If you're willing to pay 10 million for young players not in their prime you're competing with the big clubs. That's exactly how we lost Bale, Walcott and Chamberlain when we were broke. I think Bale and Walcott transfers ended up being 8 or 9 million pounds. We're bidding 10 million apparently now. So now we're doing it to other clubs. If you think about it, we develop one top 10 club level Premier League player a year on average-- eg. Lallana, Bale, Walcott, Chamberlain, Shaw, and Ward-Prowse in the pipeline. It looks like we can produce at least one similar level Premier League player via purchase each year-- Lambert, Clyne, Schneiderlin, Ramirez, Boruc, with Rodriguez in the pipeline. So really we've been there all along, Cortese didn't really have to do that much. It just takes time to fill up the entire squad. And it's impossible to do if your youth keep leaving. But perhaps now we have turned the corner if Shaw signs. Just look at the names above. If we'd been able to hold on to Walcott, Bale, and Chamberlain and develop them properly isn't that is a team that could compete for a European place? And that would be 50% academy players.
Mate yes I have ....I cannot see anything particularly insulting with them......towards you or the Liverpool team. Obviously something has narked you to persuade you to come over here and have a dig. What does it matter if a few lads feel that going for the same players as Liverpool is raising our game and our expectations. They are mentioning Barca because our chairman has made it his wish that we as a club emulate them. We may be a small club and we may at the moment be punching above our weight. However the mighty pool isn't doing so brightly itself is it? You are trying to buy players to improve your lot....same as us. Coincidence they should be the same players...... Realistic comments in my view but don't blame our fans for wanting to emulate your History no one would deny we are at the moment a smaller club than yourselves but our chairman has made it plain he wants to compete with the best. Because you have had more success than us over the years your fans are less understanding than perhaps ours. However that doesn't make them more ambitious. You are going to have to match our chairman's financial prowess if you wish to get the players you want. As you have said as always there is plenty more fish in the sea......
Havn't read this thread so apologies if I repeat anything! There is a big difference between ambition and reality. If, a few years down the line we are above Liverpool, then that would be great. But for the time being we are not competing with them. They are also a team on the up, but with a higher starting point than us, with a larger fan base, better players and a higher league position. We are only competing with them, in the games we play against them for the time being. Furthermore, Southampton fans are getting a bit of a reputation of thinking we're a bigger club than we are, and this will do us no favours. What happened to the level headed fans who were happy with good performances. Growth is a slow process, we cannot rush or itll go tits up, ala Portsmouth.
Okay, ala QPR in 2013/14! Also as I'm not from Southampton, can't say I dislike them immensely! Southampton fan, not a Portsmouth hater..
You misunderstand us I think, we aspire to be a bigger Club, we are a long way off of that yet, the Table doesn't lie, we are in a scrap at the bottom, we would like to be scrapping at the top, our Chairman is on a mission, we have to stay with it, that's the difference. Level headed fans are still happy with good performances, we have a few imature people that lose the plot when things go wrong and tend to throw their dummy out of the pram.
A few are saying we are competing with Liverpool for players! I know we are hugely aspirational, I am too. But i, for past mistakes, don't go shouting that in 5 years we will be in Europe, as it will come back and bite you in the arse. I think our fans just miss the bigger picture, they look at each game at a time, where they should probably look at it from a season perspective. We're a learning club and for the time being we need to learn very quickly. We are used to winning, so losing a game we dominate is often our downfall and the fans magnify this. Can't argue i want us to be battling at the top, just think we need to slow down and approach carefully as fans, as football has a funny nack of not going according to plan!
With all due respect, it is the fans of other clubs and possibly yourself that are deluded. The original post had to do with Cortese's plans and whether he intends for us to be a big club. The answer is "Yes." He said this the day he took over, and you will never read anywhere that Cortese lacks ambition. All of his actions have been consistent with those plans and in fact if anything most of are worried he is TOO bent on pursuing them and is moving too fast. So yes. We are competing with Liverpool. We have been competing with Liverpool since the very first moment Cortese took over. We were in League One, but the competition even then was Liverpool not Hartlepool. I'm sure Cortese doesn't think we were or are winning the competition but the goal is to win it eventually. I'm not arrogant. I'm not really sure I like Saints being a big club. I'm not very comfortable at all with the sacking of Adkins or how he was treated or the ban on reporters. I think that might be too high a moral price to pay. I'm also not sure yet that Cortese isn't shooting for too much and too fast and this could come back and hurt us. But I don't get to set the goals for the club. I can tell Cortese to slow down, he doesn't care. So YES. Our competition is Liverpool and it can't have been made any more obvious. We all have to get used to that now and the reaction that gets from other fans all of the other stuff that is good and bad that goes with being a big club, because like it or not, that's where we are. We can't be "little old Southampton" anymore.
But we are?!? It's a fact, isn't it? Liverpool seemed to at least have some mild interest in Coutinho, Forren, Ramirez, and Astori. We signed two and reportedly bid on the other two. We are also competing with the big clubs for our own players. If we didn't intend to compete with them, we would have cashed in on Shaw this month, gotten relegated, enjoyed the parachute payments and we could be a solid Championship side/yo-yo club for years.
Nor should you....It is well known that I too am not a pompey hater..........It was just as usual we could not complete a thread without someone mentioning our dear near neighbors......
I've skim read the posts since my last post (I apologise, i'll come back and discuss other points in more detail later) but outside of Liverpools under 21 team I'm quite ignorant to how other u21/academy teams are getting on. If southampton's are so good why did you only scrape in to the elite league in the under 21's league and why are you not in the Next Gen competition? We dominated your side last week and you were lucky to lose only 1-0 our boys are competing in the next gen as well. If you're academy is as good as you say it is, why are you not doing this?
