The9

And "worldie", FFS. W@nkers. Facepalms, especially mcinnes facepalms, are perfectly acceptable.

Not if he's got a legally binding contract with Saints it won't. Unless he then decides to agitate for a move immediately - which seems out of character for him.

"he had been responsible for the club’s finance, IT, human resources and legal teams" Hmmmmmm...

This is why I have doubts that the refusal to adhere to our unbroken contract will be difficult to uphold, it undermines the whole premise of contractual law.

No idea, but sounds as likely as anything and any other information on the subject would be useful at this point.

I don't know why you keep trying to make this about Spurs over Saints or vice versa, it's all about legal enforcement and Atletico's desperation to get money in, the player's choice hardly comes into it. If the contract with Saints is no longer valid from the break clause, he's probably signing for whoever Atletico tells him to, especially if their preferred option gets him better personal terms.

Any ideas who it was who put about the information on here last summer that in order to conduct an international loan to buy you have to negotiate the permanent deal and complete all the documentation prior to the loan? As I can imagine that's relevant at this point.

There have been stories doing the rounds that Atletico plan on paying the break clause with the money from selling Alderweireld to Spurs! Arguably we don't have right to buy as we already bought in 2014, they had right to cancel, and haven't. Also, this:

Here's my response: 1) It's practically impossible for us to break into the top four full stop, without restricting it to the nationality of players - we should look to take every angle and every advantage in development and recruitment of players, and try and adopt approaches which unearth marginal talents we can improve. In short, we need to find the good young players before the bigger clubs do, that means looking everywhere they do plus other places, and metrics for performance they don't have. What we do have is fantastic, but we should never settle. The bigger picture is that we need to do this substainably, and the club really needs to be building on our recent higher profile with money-making deals to give us a chance to compete on wages when a player is key and disproportionately difficult to replace. No amount of shrewdness is a match for just having more money to play with, and wages are the main determinant of finishing position, what with football being a free market and a meritocracy and all. We have to take our opportunities to exploit the inefficiencies in that market (loans, human relationships, loyalties) and get the players who are "too good for us" for as long as possible. 2) a) Our intake of foreign players is good value due to the cost of English talent AND the general level of technical ability you get for that money. Why restrict ourselves with artifical constructs on top of the regulations we already have to adhere to, when we need to find value in everything we do to be able to compete? b) Our identity is in the city, the stadium, colours, the supporters and the badge - the team is a dynamic entity of individuals and it is more transient than even all of those things (all of which have changed over time) - it doesn't remotely bother me where players come from as long as they are good players, appreciate playing for the club and do the best they can whilst they're wearing the shirt. I'm the rational consumer.

It doesn't matter morally, it matters legally. Legally he appears to be our player, and no amount of pretending otherwise by anyone else is going to make it not the case.

Gael Kakuta? I'd suggest that there's no correlation between player ability and the likelihood of becoming embroiled in a complex transfer contract situation beyond the obvious fact that at the top end contracts are complex and most likely to be international with the possibility of multinational and/or multilingual legal terminology.

Quite (scenario 3 of my list above). The only thing of discussion is whether the clause was invoked or not, the rest of it is pretty much irrelevant.

Shall we consider just for one second the desperate nature of Atletico (who apparently couldn't raise £1.5m to make the problem completely go away), the desperate nature of Spurs (Levy's previous scatterbomb dealings), and the generally awesome way Saints run the club as a competent sustainable business, and consider which of the three involved parties is most likely to have "bungled it"? We literally could not do anything more with the deal (other than pay through the nose for the player when we didn't have to) until we knew whether the loan-to-buy clause had been invoked or not, and now we've already leaked an "OI!" threatening action if they sell a player we're obviously convinced is ours.

We'd have done exactly the same to, say, admin-ridden Crystal Palace over, say, Jose Fonte.

That's precisely the nature of the interview, and all of the subsequent media reports. As I pointed out at the time, it was entirely predicable to see everyone in the media fail to jump to the conclusion that Saints were signing Vertonghen, which was just as likely based on those comments alone. Also, no point getting het up about Spurs, Atletico have clearly told them he's theirs to sell, and if anything all Atleti are doing is lining themselves up for legal action from Spurs for misrepresenting the player's status if it turns out we have the watertight legal case we probably think we do. I note Alderweireld isn't one of our international stars returning to training today on the OS...

Completely different scenario. Portsmouth's failure to keep up payments to Udinese for Muntari (even after they sold him at a profit) proved that once you have the contract signed there's no recourse to getting the transfer overturned even if you don't pay. None of those transfers contain a clause that say an existing deal can be broken with a specific payment - which they appear not to have paid. All indications are that we had to get the terms and contracts of the full-term deal done last summer to get the loan in. That specific contractual clause is the be all and end all of this legal situation. Without them making that payment in time, they no longer have any rights to the player. They can notify us all they want, but if the contract specifies payment before a certain date (which seems likely), they've failed to meet those terms. It's not the same as "failing to meet a scheduled payment" because they had to actively do something to prevent him being our player as per the 2014 deal. Also, he can't be forced to choose unless Atletico HAVE paid up the break clause (and I seriously doubt we'd be saying they hadn't if they had), in which case I suspect any negotiation with Atletico on our part after that would just be to drive the price up on Spurs. FWIW I have seen today that Atletico's plan is to sell to Spurs and pay us off with that money. Er... good luck with that if the break clause hinged on Atletico paying in time.

Yes, but he has already agreed to a Saints contract - which is addressed by the question I mentioned in 1) about whether the full-term paperwork has to be done up front for international loan-to-buys, as was suggested on here last summer. If that is required up front (including term, wages, etc), he's already agreed to the transfer and there's a 4/5 year contract which says so and an unenforced break clause which says it's now a valid long term contract. ------------------------------ Having re-read that, you're just being odious again and pointing out that they can't "do what they want" without his say so. Yeah, we know... but it's completely irrelevant. In that circumstance (scenario 2), as far as we're concerned they can do what they like, as it's none of our business.

If what Saints have said is the case, Atletico don't have a player to sell, as contractually he's already ours. As far as I can see there are only three possible situations of fact and two of them are legally binding. 1) Atletico didn't pay the clause to cancel our loan to buy deal in time. No discussion to be had no matter what Atletico try and do, he is our player, we can pay them whenever we feel like it and he's still our player. In fact, taking the Portsmouth precedent as an example, we can even not pay them and default on a load of agreed payments to them for a player and there's still no contractual basis for "returning him" to his previous club. But that's an aside, we wouldn't do that. The point is, they had a legally enforceable cut off date and if they have failed to meet it, he's our player. This does somewhat rely on the information on here from a year ago being accurate, that in order to complete a loan-to-buy internationally, you have to have agreed the contract for the full term for the player. If we don't actually have signed contracts for the full term already signed, the failed attempt to invoke a termination deal could in itself be evidence for legal enforcement of the long term Saints contract, otherwise what would Atletico be paying Saints for? 2) Atletico paid the buy out in time. He's their player. We don't have a leg to stand on, loan contract is fulfilled, break clause completed. They can do what they want with Alderweireld, including selling him to anyone they like (which still includes Saints, who in this situation are already £1.5m better off). 3) There is a genuine legal dispute about whether the clause was invoked or not. This could involve Saints not having received notification or the payment but Atletico having proof of both those, or some questionable language in the contracts which show ambiguity. Lawyers win, Alderweireld's contractual status probably gets held up until lawyers sort it out. I'd be VERY surprised if Saints weren't exceptional in these matters given our general competence in these matters. I fail to see how any of those situations involves anyone paying compensation or a higher transfer amount to anyone. They have either invoked the contract break to prevent Toby being our player, or they have not. Nothing to consider, no legal basis for us to pay any more money to them (we have a fixed, agreed, contractually binding fee) and no negotiation to take place. Atletico can claim what they want and try and run roughshod over us if they wish, but if they've agreed a binding contract and failed to meet the conditions of the break clause they haven't got a leg to stand on. The only real question here is which of these three situations is actually the case, and if it was 2), Saints simply have nothing to gain from challenging it - they obviously think they have grounds to block Atletico selling what is effectively already our player to someone else. So I'm inclined to think it's 1) and Atletico are taking the p155 or 3) and there's a genuine ambiguity in the contracts which could be a bundle of hassle for everyone.

Two things. 1) Don't bother to read what fans who know nothing, and can't even comprehend a legal scenario, think about the situation. 2) The use of the word "cringe" is in itself utterly cringeworthy.

Yeah, THAT'S not a club being helpful - from what I've looked into with far-eastern UEFA nations it's a mark up of at least a couple of hundred quid on the actual cost with indirect flights, though the travel time via indirect flights from Baltic States or via Moscow had lengthy layovers and you were lucky to make it there in under 30 hours all in.

We didn't have to exercise any option, they had to exercise their option NOT to have sold him to us. If what was discussed last summer was right, we already had to have a full contract in place for the rest of Alderweireld's term at Saints (i.e. the four/five years, whatever it was) in order to complete the loan. So, that being the case, if Atletico failed to exercise the clause he is ALREADY our player and already contracted to play for us. Can't help thinking this is a little bit like a family meal with everyone shoving cash in the middle to pay and some people refusing to take it.

Schneiderlin wears adidas boots, Man U can't wear their adidas kit until the first game of the season because Nike insisted on continuing to provide kit right up until the start of the season, guessing adidas would like an adidas player to be unveiled in adidas boots along with the new kit. But the timescale makes that preeeeetty silly in terms of his pre-season.

I have a term for it: "of thicko". Having said that I gave up trying to change internet thickoes about 5 years ago.

You're right, I scanned your original text and then found the same thing!

Only just found out about this one though - not the same book and at worst about a year old. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Money-Soccer-Soccernomics-Unterhaching-S****horpe/dp/1568584768/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435972134&sr=1-10&keywords=football+analysis