 | News
Comment | Why A Win Against Swansea Is Vital
at 18:47:15
Was it an article in the Echo that was saying nine wins? It does assume that we aren't going to draw many, but we do tend to either win or lose.
We are likely to be the bookies favorites for the following:
Swansea (H)
Queen's Park Raisins (A)
West Ham (H)
WBA (A)
POOLACE (H)
Burnley (H)
Hull City (H)
Stoke (A)
Sunderland (A)
Foxes (A)
Aston Gorilla (H)
So 8 from the 11 above & 1 from:
Bin Dippers (H)
Chelsea (A)
Spuds (H)
Citeh (A)
So I think the answer is..... if the players keep the same level of performance we'll be there and there abouts. I've looked at fixtures in relegation battles before & not been able to give us this good a chance, on a few occasions. That being said, it's still winning 9 premier league games. On paper we might have 4 gimmies at home but you can't take anything for granted. |
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Comment | Saints Need Top Clubs To Win The Two Domestic Cups
at 17:57:56
Europa league would be an absolute disaster for us. No time on the training pitch, it's all travel and recovery & the competition doesn't pay anywhere near enough to cover the squad needed. Every club that qualifies for Europa nose dives the next season, pretty much without exception.
I want Liverpool, Utd & Arsenal to say in the cups as long as possible so that they have to play enough matches that they lose the advantage over us of having twice as many senior first team pros. We need to be fit, fresh and having clear week's to work while they are travelling, recovering and picking up injuries and fatigue. |
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Comment | The FA Cup Is Regaining Its Former Glory
at 11:52:40
It's fair to say that Portsmouth winning the competition ruined it for a generation, it probably needs a Saints win to return it to being a trophy worthy of winning. It could be lucky enough to be the new JPT!
In all seriousness though, the Europa is absolutely ruinous. It requires a champions league number of senior pros, gives you no time on the training pitch because you are constantly travelling or doing recovery & you don't even get the extra revenue to pay for it all. It happens every single season, look at Everton this year. I'd like to win the FA CUP and then play the 21s in the Europa, not even have the seniors travel. |
| News
Comment | Rodriguez Still A Way Off But Good News On Others On Injury List
at 23:29:56
http://www1.skysports.com/news/11095/9656321/
"However, he has failed to find the net in his last six appearances and has not even made it off the bench for the recent wins over Hamilton and Motherwell with Leigh Griffiths starting up front."
Lost his place to Leigh Griffiths. I wouldn't mind clarifying every point I make, but then people moan because I write too much! The obvious point is that his time at Celtic seems a bit mixed. I like the look of the player, but he famously had some sort of weird virus that meant he couldn't walk for ages and after it cleared up he went to Stoke and didn't feature. Plus we seem to be well covered for forwards, certainly not thin enough for the club to want to throw money at the problem, so I can't see this deal happening now. I wouldn't be shocked if he came in the summer though, maybe with Long leaving. |
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Comment | Koeman Gives Jack Cork Deadline To Agree Contract Offer
at 22:59:13
Goes back to the Sol Campbell principle. I don't know how much Jack Cork is worth, but based on figures recently, let's say 8m for an English 25 year old in a specialist position with proven premiership quality.
The figures going around are, that he is on 20k a week & that he was offered 40k a week to stay. He won't be offered first team guarantee but history shows that because of his quality and attitude he always ends up getting games.
If he leaves, then the club buying him get an 8m windfall straight away, which his agent can use to get him a far richer deal. So depending on how desperate they are, he might get a 4m golden handshake and a 75k a week contract & still have the buying club saving at least 4m because getting English home-grown players is both difficult and expensive.
Jack to go to a club paying him more and be in the same situation squad wise as he is with Saints OR he could go somewhere he is sure that he's likely to play. Either way, not much of an upside to resigning with us. Particularly when we took him for every bit of that term he'd signed for, when others like Gaston were on three times his salary and doing nothing for the club.
What we should have done, with both Jack & Maya and any player in this situation going forward, is to not let them get into the last 24 months of contracts. I understand the club doesn't want the commitment of long-deals and they also have to pay agent fees, signing fees & raises every time they get somebody on a new deal. But if it's a solid, good pro in his mid-20s like those two, you aren't going to be in a situation where you can't get rid of them for love nor money, unless of course they get injured. We should have given Maya and Jack new contracts last summer, then if we don't want them, you list them in the summer coming and take whatever fee they are worth. It's nonsensical letting players of proven premiership quality go out of contract when they aren't even in peak years yet. Ron didn't know if he fancied either player, but was no reason not to give them contracts I'd say. |
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Comment | Rodriguez Still A Way Off But Good News On Others On Injury List
at 22:48:45
Nah a bit different for Toby, Ron said he liked the player but we had no chance of signing him. At that point we looked like we were last in line of about 5 clubs, but the Cow man worked his magic.
Ron said he not looking for a forward looking at the squad and the club's strategy I believe him. Guidetti apparently not played for ages & he has a contract with Celtic till the end of the year, so I'd be surprised.
Another load of stories about J-Rod coming out tonight, so at this point, I have to think there is something in it. It's been going on in the press for absolute months. Man City need him because he gives them a "home-grown" player and will replace Millner. I don't know why they would be so desperate to get it done this window though. |
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Comment | Will Saints Add More In The Transfer Window
at 14:22:28
Guidetti is a no then. I didn't think so, I was surprised that Echo poll had 50% of fans saying that we needed another striker. They must not rate Shane Long cause I think it's a stretch to say we need to sign somebody else when we've got a 12m striker that hasn't had a run of games in his position yet. Shane Long is one of my favourite players in this squad, an absolute top lad and professional. It would also upset me a bit if we fooked him around by making him move his family again after him not even have a proper crack at the first team. That being said, come the summer if we get our money back on him, might be better for everybody for him to go somewhere he is going to play.
I think the most likely business is for Jack Cork to turn down his deal. If that happens the club might try and get him out this window for a fee & try to bring somebody else in. Personally, I'd just let him run his contract out and go on a free. He's our best cover in defensive midfield and right back for the rest of the year, rather have the option and lose the 3 million or so, than end up playing Maya at right back and leaking goals. |
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Comment | Inter Milan Trying To Terminate Osvaldo's Contract
at 23:08:11
The whole thing is daft. The guy is one of the biggest scumbags in football, but Saints signed a player that was an obvious nutter, then we act like he's Hannibal Lecter when he nuts somebody.
Then he goes to Inter, who know he's tuppence short of a shilling, then kick him out after he shouts at somebody. I mean it's completely obvious that he had absolutely no intention of playing for Saints, but I don't know why people are signing are nutter & than acting surprise when he acts up. He's the sort of bloke that you've either got to indulge or steer clear of.
It's a shame we don't have Vincent Tan as chairman as he'd probably try and sue MoPo to take the fook with him. 13.8m he cost the club, by vouching for a player that everybody knew was a nut bar, who then promptly proved it. I won't argue with Cortese taking some of the stick either, but the manager had worked with the player before. In any other industry you'd be sued for gross incompetence. Some desperate club has got to be willing to pay a few million for him surely. |
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Comment | Saints Selected For Live TV Game Again
at 13:27:18
Personally I'm happy when we are featured, hopefully the curse has been broken this season. Last year, we got less TV money than Newcastle, despite us finishing above them, because they were featured more times than us. We could be in the daft situation come the end of the year, where we finish 4th & have the 7th biggest share of the cash, so seeing our name on the roster a few times can only help. |
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Comment | Saints Linked With Guidetti
at 10:57:33
Didn't fancy this in the summer & still not sure we need him with Pelle, Long, Mane & J-Rod who want to play through the middle. That being said, he's a fantastic talent and if he's proved his fitness after losing seasons with a weird illness, could be another top Ron bargain, with little risk. He's one of the few footballers that Ron follows on twitter, and at that point I've got a let Ron sign who he wants attitude to the whole thing. He's on fire. |
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Comment | Manchester United & Liverpool Set To Battle It Out For Nathaniel Clyne
at 13:46:14
Fonte was forced because he was pushing for a move to Cardiff who apparently wanted to double his wage.
Yoshida was allowed to run down his contract to the point that he was able to negotiate with other clubs before he was even offered a deal.
Cork hasn't been offered a contract till last week despite his service, performances & the fact that he'd be worth a decent fee if he was signed.
Targett was on a youth development contract previously, so a no brainer for all concerned.
Punch was going out of contract and the club wanted to secure a fee.
Kelvin's deal is obviously not a significant sum of money. I assume the same with Steven Davis, who I expect is decently paid but nothing extravagant.
As far as the others go, I would have said "this administration" instead of since we've been promoted because under Cortese we were obviously happy to spend more, for better or worse. I didn't say it though, as I'm trying not to give the current lot too much of a kicking when the team are delivering so much on & off the pitch. The reality as far as I understood it, was that none of the want away players who were offered huge increases in salary for leaving leading up to the end of last season were offered new deals. The "reward" strategy for getting players under contract is going to be the only way you'll get England internationals to re-sign for the club.
The 2012/2013 season was different in that the players were signing contracts based on them being good quality for a bottom ten side. Completely different scale to when they are being courted by champions league clubs. What the club can or should pay is open to debate. The last published figures have Saints as the 15th biggest wage bill in the league and considering our summer business, I'll be shocked if that's shifted too much. When you look at the higher earners, Osvaldo and Gaston (though we've since shifted the wage) I can see the argument that the club can work against the assumption that the correlation between wages and performance is going to be binding. What is a guarantee though, is that if we pay 50% of what players will get to move to a bigger club, once the players get that interest they will move.
Nate Clyne is quality but he's still a right back. If we get the kind of figures for J-Rod in a position we are well stocked for, when he's done his ACL, I don't think we'll have many complaints either. What will 100% annoy me is if JWP or another youth team prospect gets sold before they reach maturity like with Chambers. I don't want another one to go before the age of 23 at the earliest and especially not because they are getting paid far less than they would be if we would have bought them and not brought them through. |
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Comment | Manchester United & Liverpool Set To Battle It Out For Nathaniel Clyne
at 10:49:45
I expect Utd would win the race & not penniless, pointless Liverpool.
Clyne's not going to sign a contract, but that's due to the club's strategy. When he proved himself a premier league player, we could have give him a premier league wage then, when there was enough on his contract for him to have an incentive to sign. The club are clearly holding players to contracts for as long as possible & then selling before they start to devalue. The only player since we've been promoted, that was given a contract extension without it being forced, was Steven Davis.
The club are sweating every pound in the club. It seems counter intuitive when you are creating a situation where you a paying so much less than market rates, but the club is clearing gearing to sell players & if you don't tend to retain then it makes financial sense. While the results are on the pitch, it's hard to be too critical, though as fans we get attached to players. |
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Comment | Cortese A Year On
at 13:36:03
Nick your points are always daft because you are completely unable to be objective, nor to accept that are biased.
To say that Cortese had nothing to do with Saints' success is like saying that Branson had nothing to do with Virgin, that Steve Jobs has nothing to do with Apple & that Bill Gates has nothing to do with Microsoft. You see where I'm going with this? In any other field other than football, the man at the top of the pyramid gets the credit because it provides a simple narrative and a personality on which to attach success to when it's impossible for the layman or the press to really understand what is going on in a professional organisation and who to attribute the success to.
The reason why your Cortese articles will always remain complete nonsense is because they are based on the idea that the performance of the club under his time wasn't good enough. You have always used the same justifications. That corporate hospitality isn't sold out. When an entire box, for an entire season costs less than a week's wages for Gaston (about 40k). That commercial deals can be signed to compare with premier league clubs, when a club had recently come from the lower leagues and didn't have a comparable brand. That all signings the club makes should prove to be good value, when not a club in the Premier league gets close to that.
The reality is clearly that the bottom line is that he was the man in charge of the club when he took the owner's money and gave them a return which is far greater than the investment. He has a share of the credit, there is plenty to go around. I for one are happy he left when he did. But if you tried to explain your reasoning to fans of countless other clubs, they would laugh in your face. Birmingham, Leeds, Forest so many clubs have been managed into the ground during Nic's reign. By all means be happy he's gone, but to not have any perspective just makes you look daft and vindictive. Now the club have shown we are better without him, it's time for you to say thanks but good riddance. |
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Comment | Cortese A Year On
at 14:04:40
"So in hindsight Saints are all the better for his departure and yes we do have things to thank him for, but we could never move forward to our potential till he went, this time last year he was holding the club back not moving it forward."
How was he holding the club back? It's pretty much public record that probably the principle reason why Cortese left was because Kat refused to put any more capital into the club. Was Nicola a scumbag on a personal level? Yes. Was continued capital investment the way to go? Well I'm personally still not convinced that the current administration can be realistic about a top four position with a bottom five wage bill & a 40m surplus in the transfer budget. Did the club make a few crap transfers? Yes, but show me a club in the premier league that hasn't. You could look at Alex Ferguson's record & selectively make him look like a no-hoper as well. On balance, the club gotten insane value from the money invested in players.
I'd sum up Cortese by saying that he put together & led a five year plan that did something for this club that the rest of the football league would sell there grandmothers to get anywhere near. He left when he did, because he was a lunatic arse hole unwilling to compromise or to work collaboratively with anybody. We were extremely fortunate to have him & fortunate that he left when he did! It worked perfectly for us. |
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Comment | Are Saints The Subject Of A Campaign Of Disruption In The Media
at 14:12:59
Christ if you keep posting articles based on what UTS says, you'll have to do one on Anti-Swiss bias against Saints orchestrated by the E.U.
Cortese had gone to ridiculous lengths to ensure that he didn't have the slightest semblance of goodwill from the press (including you by the sounds of it.) Hence the Daily Echo's comments today as well. The articles were based on speculation due to the fact that he had brought the club up from the third tier of English football after back to back promotions.
"of far more interest to the general public across the UK than Southampton Football Club." - Such a daft statement. Do you think the articles are of interest to Liverpool & Utd fans?
On the football weekly podcast, the Guardian's head of digital as good as admitted that the briefing on Shaw & Lallana had come from Woodward (or his office.) This Liverpool story is also 100% standard for them. They brief on targets, then make derisory offers before the player goes elsewhere. It's there M.O down to a tee. The players they actually sign, never reach the press prior. |
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Comment | Why Is Pochettino's Future Such An Issue
at 19:57:41
@densham41
You might want to remember even further back, when Rupert told us what a well run club we were. How we had no debt, a sustainable wage bill & great commercial prospects. The league changed, particularly in regard to wages & we sank down the league like a stone. Then we found that our sustainable business model was based on being in the premier league, because nothing else can even come close to bridging the gap in revenue. We ended up hours from liquidation.
The club isn't about to go bankrupt. The owners have spent 50 million. Just our playing staff are worth more than double that. Turnover isn't the only indicator of organisational health, if it was than Google & Facebook would be worth about twenty quid each.
Whether the owners want to/should continue to invest is a fair question for debate. Evoking bankruptcy is nonsense. As is guys like Kreuger and Hofstedder talking about "financial difficulties". When NC saw that a new premier league deal had been signed, he bought players to establish us in the league, then he structured the deals so they would be paid off the year that the club got the first excess payment from the new TV deal. Some people would call that a smart move. Not all debt is bad debt, if you borrow 100k for an asset worth a million, then it's time to smile. |
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Comment | Why Is Pochettino's Future Such An Issue
at 17:41:58
@SaintNick
I think that's a bit binary. From what came out in the press it seemed like the club had a review every season, which resulted in stand-offs regarding capital investments that Cortese got the better of, all the way up to this year when he didn't. It was clearly Cortese's plan, but she did fund it for a number of years even with objections. Cortese's point was that he was providing value for the investment. |
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Comment | Why Is Pochettino's Future Such An Issue
at 15:35:18
The "why" is super simple. MoPo and the players were sold on the "this is our time" shtick which was a plan to put Saints in the Champions League with a combination of player development and capital investment.
If the new administration aren't prepared to finance that & want to replace that vision with a business which makes a profit in turnover every year by aiming for mid-table then the manager and players who are being coveted by teams who do have ambition, will want to go. I don't see how anybody could blame them. Even guys that care like Lallana would be stupid to stay with a club that might struggle when he could be earning double while playing at the highest level.
MoPo's future is in doubt, because the project he was sold on has ended & nobody as yet told him what the new project looks like. The same goes for the players. I don't think that Spurs are a "big club" they are a bigger club but not be degrees. If MoPo ends up managing them, it will be because he wants to leave us, more than a desperate desire to be associated with the Spurs go Marching In, side-parting brigade.
If you aren't going forward in the Premier League you are going backwards as so many teams in relegation trouble have shown this year. Everton are the only club that have managed to be a selling club while performing and that was down to stability on and off the pitch. On the other hand, the bottom ten in the league show you all you need to know about what happens when you have no investment and instability. |
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Comment | Cortese Earned Nearly £2 Million
at 18:24:16
Again I don't know why the commercial revenue of the club is being pointed out again when it was established in the last article that for the period published, our commercial deals had been signed when we were a member of the football league. The performance on the playing side has easily outstripped any chance of the commercial department keeping up. To suggest otherwise is nonsense. The amount of eyeballs watching league 1 & Championship football is negliable & the potential for brand integration is slight.
Cortese was sacked because ultimately, he forgot that he was an employee. Sooner or later, behaving as he did, he was going to have to go. But as with Adkins, his performance in the role should still be celebrated no matter how pointed the briefing from the current administration gets. |
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