mrmojorisin75

Southampton apparently don't give af this year

This basically yeah. Poch gonna have to play 3 responsible midfielders I reckon, such as Wijnaldum, Paredes & Verratti and hope they can get enough support from the FB positions & one midfielder.

Have you lot seen their fucking team/squad? You're acting like they've added Messi to a bunch of clowns. They've more than enough to win it, comfortably, they just need to find the balance really.

i didn't realise where's the bacon was so ubiquitous we deserve nothing good unless the fans come up with a where's the bacon song

Fair fucking point that.

Really feel like Southampton are flirting heavily with danger myself, if Villa force a move for Ward-Prowse you'd have to start worrying about them

I read that. In there it said something along the lines of "he's done well to finish where he has in the last two seasons but Newcastle fans think they should be finishing higher with the players available" or words to that effect. Do we? Mid table is surely the ceiling for this group of players unless managed by an all timer like Rafa and even then you're surely pushing it. The problem with Bruce is how he's actively making it much harder than it needs to be because he's fucking terrible.

He was considered a player with a bad attitude but bags of talent as I recall it.

Look, I'm sure if he wanted to sell for anything but an immediate, healthy profit in cold hard cash he'd have done so by now.

Bang on, plus in his specific case I don't think you can discount his eye on the next WC. He'll want to protect himself and hold something back which he'll be able to do in France.

Plenty they could ship if they wanted like. Use Ling as a makeweight for a start surely. Was reading that PSG were strongly pushing for Pog before this Messi deal happened, now they've asked him to sit out the last year of his deal.

Wonder why manyoo (or someone else) haven't moved for Rice. I think they become legit contenders with that level of CM/DM play after Sanch/Varane.

That was 100% a Rafa buy no?

Wasn't it done on the back of winning the 3rd CL in a row and the stink surrounding the tax dodging stuff? Football wise everyone seemed to agree it was the right time to move on and try to win it somewhere else, plus he didn't want to go to jail. But yeah good point about the difference between the two moves judgement-wise.

well there's some words

Rafa will be going mental at that I would say, front 3 of Insigne, DCL & Richarlison would be tasty af

Aye but there's a whim and there's knowing enough about NUFC and their famously loyal fanbase to have in the back of your mind how you're going to exploit it.

You do wonder if Ashley calculated this when he bought us or if he just realised what he could get away with as things developed after the Keegan fiasco. I'd lean towards the latter probably.

At least we'd still have Shelves

Yeah totally, Kamara a DM who can play CB right? Imo if we're actually still in for him Hayden will be gone to fund it.

Last year of contract was the chelp, lower fee

Think I read it was us that didn't want the loan, Arsenal were happy enough with the obligation/option to buy at the end of the season.

if £25m is all we've got we'd arguably be better going for that lad at Marseilles at half the price and trying to wangle another forward from somewhere with what's left unless they're going to give him a couple of loans on top as well

holy shit bakayoko is still there? Batshuayi to add to that list as well

I mean, I don't believe it, but there's possibly an argument that says Bruce handled him quite well considering it was his first spell of first team football and he was getting success coming on as a sub. I know he's shite but maybe sometimes does things right. Suppose Jones might have told him what to do