I like the way he's said thanks, I think he's a nice bloke and genuinely means what he says. However as much as he's helped us, we've helped him too. Would he have progressed as well without us and made the Euro squad? Players owe clubs no loyalty really though, and therefore clubs shouldn't need to show them loyalty either. Selling him is the best decision regardless of whether he wanted to leave or not.
I don't think it's healthy to get so cynical about football that you start questioning motives. Moves are driven by the money and we can't expect professional sportspeople to ignore where that leads. But I don't doubt that in between all the haggling the likes of Fonte played with a massive amount of pride and cared about the results. He's gone. I thank him for his contribution. We March On.
I like it fair play On the Virgil note, if (when) he does leave in the Summer, would we become the first team to have 3 different pernament captains in a calendar year?
I don't doubt that footballers care a lot about the results and the team they are playing for and they care about their career. I don't believe any of the "love my fans" stuff anymore than I would believe any pop star saying "I love my fans." It's just the media and publicity machine whether they do it themselves or someone does it for them. And yes DTLW I agree it can be both. Still don't believe a word of most of it though. Nice words though and I'm sure he really does appreciate his years here. I doubt he will think twice about the fans once he's gone though. And then his replacement will be here to post "love the fans, you guys are so great" for a couple of years before he decides he's too good and wants out with the club talking about a lack of loyalty or is not good enough to go so stays here or our club discards someone forgetting their claims of loyalty.
Yeah I agree though as I've said before I don't think money is the defining factor in most moves (in our case). With this situation, I don't think anyone comes out with any credit really. There's most likely faults on all sides and we'll probably never find out the truth. I'm over it already really. I thank him for everything and am sad how it has ended up, as I am to see the last of the League 1 team gone. But my only concern now is who we bring in to replace him. Though I hope he doesn't get booed.
Nice blokes make mistakes and can follow the money too sometimes. I think he's a nice bloke with an ego. I bear him no ill-will, and neither do I think the club are to blame particularly. Onwards and hopefully upwards. There'll be no booing from me.
Nice message from Fonte. Have no reason to doubt the sincerity...his problems were never with the fans. He could hardly say so, but there is no doubt his years at Saints will probably be the best years of his footballing career....lots of good times and some terrific times. Thanks, Jose....sorry it ended like this, but it would have ended soon anyway.
Indeed. I think the trick to end all these eventual transfers out is to become a bigger, wealthier club than Saints already are. It's perfectly possible. There's very little that is 'traditional' anymore about football. It's time to start kicking over the traces again - to not know our place in the hierarchy. The sports media may enforce the notion that only a few clubs have the right to win things, but they don't make the rules and Saints don't have to abide by what they say.
Did you know you sent your last message via your SM-N910F using Tapatalk.? Incidentally, what happened to no 3rd party advertising allowed on this forum.?
I am sure its been said before in this post but can someone please explain. What did WHU offer him that we hadn't, to make him want to go. If he went to a club that had more chance of winning something or offered a lot more. I can't really see that on either front, so was there other mitigating circumstances - perceived clubs lack of ambition, constantly selling the best players, didn't get on with Puel?
Well this is where it comes down to speculation. My personal belief, which is just that btw, is that he fancied the move to United (for obvious reasons) and after it didn't materialise, stuff has gone on to make the relationship irreparable. So he's ended up taking the best offer there was. Like I say though, that's pure speculation on my part.
Maya has just posted the following. In Japanese, so this is the automated translation... I had learnt a lot from this guy. Thank you Amigo and all the best! José left, the League One and now those players disappeared. A rival and a role model, and was a true fellow! Good luck in your new world Champ!
I've got to say the whole club/les v player debate has gotten pretty interesting. However, we've surely seen this enough times now to realise that it's not all black/white? My take regards a lot of these transfers is the following: When the club signs a player, both the club and player realise there will be an exit point in the future, and that exit point has to be when it is good for both parties. Sometimes the player will want the move first, sometimes the club, but it will only happen if/when everyone is happy that the move takes place. In this case I believe (without any inside info), that irrespective of him wanting his Man Utd move or not, the club looked at Fonte as someone at 33 who would be better to move on for £8-9m with 1.5 years left as a Euro 2016 winner (selling high) rather than letting his performance deteriorate to the point where he wouldn't be a starter for us next season and then getting derisory bids for him. We didn't sell in the summer because we didn't have a replacement lined up, and we can now because this season will see us finish around mid-table regardless of whether he's here or not. The whole cover story about whether he was or wasn't offered a contract I feel is just that, a cover story. I think both parties agreed in the summer that his exit would be in January or the following summer depending on what suited both parties. We're run very much like a business, not a football club. With that in mind, we've always got reasonable fees for players exiting, and the players exiting have pretty much always left at a point where they have looked good and commanded more money for having played for us. The thing is, the club can't come out and openly say that they were equally happy to ship these players out as part of a business model for the following reasons: 1) Other clubs would start acting more suspicious and we'd get worse deals. 2) There would be large parts of the fanbase who would revolt if they thought that the club were equally/more responsible in some cases for shifting their favourite players on. So, we continue with said business model, and every time a player/manager leaves there's a cover story where the player says "I've moved because the new club has ambition" (money to spend on me), and the club pretends that on every occasion it was more the player than the club that wanted the move. Flying under the radar.
There is some wasted imaginative speculation here guys. You should be writing best sellers. Speculate all you like, we won't know for sure. Best move on.
