The Terrible Trio

It's been no secret for the last six months or so that the futures of three of the most senior players at the club - Steve Stone, Shaka Hislop and Patrik Berger - remain undecided. All of their contracts expire in the summer and rumours have been flying; Southampton, Aston Villa, Wigan - all popular clubs for the three golden oldies.

You see there was a plan to deal with them. We were told in January that the contracts were going to be negotiated in March when we would be safe in the Premiership for another season, and so therefore could realistically offer wages knowing we weren't going to end up bankrupting ourselves with promises we couldn't match in Division One. Needless to say we all know what happened and it was only on Saturday that we finally reached the mathematical safety net of a whopping 38 points, so finally we can get around the table and sort things out.

So what of the three involved?

Shaka Hislop
He hasn't played since January and you've got to feel a bit sorry for him. Despite 100 appearances in which he barely made a mistake, he's been up against Chalkias and Ashdown for a place this season. Then he made the ultimate mistake - when relations with Southampton were at an all time low, he made a comment about keeping his options open about a move down the cost. Innocent enough, protecting his own interests - not the best idea considering we were about to play them in the FA Cup. Despite a minor backlash from some of the crowd and a bit of a slagging from Milan in the papers, hopefully people have calmed down a bit now. I reckon we should offer him a new deal and perhaps also the role of goalkeeping coach since Knightsie is off in the summer. After all he's got a lot of experience and Jamie Ashdown has been "bigging him up" as a good teacher and a valuable guy to have around.

Patrik Berger
Now Lordy knows that I love Paddy. Even in his first ever game at Fratton (against Feyernoord if you recall) he scored a lovely goal, and has gone on to score a fair few more. And when we look back we'll love him for that. But remembering that he's on around £20,000 a week, I expect a little bit more from a man who has got a lot of hype around him. There's no doubting that he's technically one of the most gifted players we've got and that he can do things with a football that can stun every spectator in the ground, but he doesn't do it nearly often enough. And, without trying to sound too vicious, I reckon he's played about five good games this season - and for how much we're paying him, that's not enough to justify keeping him on. Let him run free to somewhere like Villa; he'll get the last big pay day he wants before retiring (and that's fair enough since he's getting to the stage where he's got to think about life after football; not that he's ever going to be sat in a squalid flat eating baked beans but you know what I mean) and we'll have the memories.

Steve Stone
This is, as far as I'm concerned, "the big one". He's got the energy of a man half his age. He's still a very skillful player. He loves it here. His family love it here. He's got years of experience. He's one of the few options we have on the right side. He can only last for about seventy minutes a game these days, but that's not important. Steve Stone MUST stay. And if it were up to me, I'd offer him the player/coach role that was rumoured when Perrin first turned up on our doorstep. He's a great character, respected by his team mates and admired by the fans. He says he wants to stay, the club say they want to keep him. So let's do business.

So will we keep all three? It's possible Stone and Hislop will stay. Apparently we're only prepared to offer Paddy £20,000 per week or so for 12 months, whilst Villa will give him £27,000 per week for two years, not to mention a signing on fee of epic proportions - bit of a no-brainer, really.

Perrin says it's down to the chairman and finances as much as anything, and that he would like to keep them all if possible. However whilst securing the services of this threesome for another season would certainly be useful in the short term, we need to start looking forward. And I'm not just talking about these guys; De Zeeuw and Linvoy are getting into their mid-30s, Dejan is in his 30s - admittedly in the modern game age isn't such a barrier since health and fitness is a lot improved to what it used to be, but we still need to get some bodies in.

But who better to learn off than some experienced players who have been there, seen it and done it? Especially if they're in a coaching position and able to pass on their nuggets of information? Either way I'd expect there's negotiations to be done yet and this story is far from over.