The9

Mmm, rubbish reffing generally, though not sure him going down a bit too easily instead of shooting is necessarily a good point.

It was also the reason we "got rid of him" - because he was one of the few saleable assets left when we'd already sold pretty much anyone else. The sale of Surman was the day after the Pinnacle deal collapsed (1st July 2009). Kelvin was also half way out of the door as the club tried to find the money to keep operating, and the takeover was completed on 8th July, after the date on which the administrator had said he was going to wind the club up.

FWIW, the indirect free-kick stuff I mentioned above: Applies to backpasses, plus As I mentioned above, "playing in a dangerous manner" is practically the same as reckless or using excessive force above, so is all but moot nowadays - you have to be "playing in a dangerous manner WITHOUT doing any of the following (the criteria for a direct free kick) in order for it to be indirect!

Depends on who's around and if the ref thinks the player has taken consideration of them, you could argue that Fonte should have been sent off under the current laws, or at least booked:

It's a difficult thing to use this data to judge in terms of overall academy success, especially when we've sold so many on to greater success - but it's decent for making a Harry Kane Song comparison.

You're right, James Wilson is missing - 13 appearances, 12 this season. He's 19 and they've had him there since 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson_%28footballer,_born_1995%29

What it means (assuming Europa League qualification, additional prize money etc) is that we have the potential to spend more if we want to without breaking FFP rules, because our revenue is higher as a result of that additional prize money, and the allowable players' wage limit is calculated as a percentage of revenue. Redslo has already pointed out that we're short of hitting the wage cap anyway because our wage figures include non-playing staff and the restrictions only apply to playing staff (i.e. we've got some wiggle room already, this just gives us more of it) and there's a bit more complexity than that as the limits are still being adjusted downwards year on year so teams are allowed time to adjust wages to meet the limits due to being held to existing contracts, but I'm sure he'll confirm if this is wrong.

I assure you I have done this repeatedly.

But is a rip off, shameful, etc. Or not, as most of us have been saying all along.

Thank you, much clearer. Though I did already know that.

Sunderland's tempo was anything but "high", they were bloody awful, two gifted penalties aside. If we'd been even remotely able to pass the ball to teammates and not made some awful defensive decisions we'd have beaten them comfortably. But then that's been the case for the past 3 matches and we've conceded 2 in each of those, whilst not looking like we'll score two goals in a match regularly for months.

As in, "wouldn't need to play until the third round"? What you posted wasn't very clear (there's the possibility of a missing "to" completely changing the meaning and the phrase used is unconventional enough to imply that's what you meant). Getting an extra bye isn't to be sniffed at anyway, means we wouldn't have to play in the League Cup until the 3rd week of September and there are only 32 teams left by then. 3 wins and a two-legged semi-final victory and we'd be at Wembley.

It was Garry Monk and it was at St Mary's (21st October 2001), but aside from that, Mike Williamson at the Dell was spot on. Weird thing about Mike Williamson was that despite going to plenty of matches between 2001 and 2005 and being au fait with the likes of Jacinto Ela Eyene, Ryan Ashford and Adrian Caceres I only found out Willamson was even ex-Saints some time around 2009 on here. Checking Soccerbase, that's because he didn't even make a sub appearance for the first team and we loaned him to Torquay, Doncaster and Wycombe whilst in the Premier League.

I assume you mean the League game as I missed the Cup one? I can't actually remember him doing anything much for Saints full stop, and he's running out of time to make a positive impact, but yeah, who knows what he MIGHT be able to produce. I'd say at this point signing Alderweireld would be tremendous, signing Elia would make sense based on his proven upside and glimpses of impact in the Newcastle and Man U matches, and Djuricic might be a decent addition if we get into Europa League because of the different style of play and his broad European club experience - though he's got 3 years left on his Benfica deal and doesn't look like a likely permanent deal at this stage. Plus we get Gaston back... I'm generally in favour of signing loan players if they've shown a solid upside, because you save on having to integrate them in the way you have to with completely new players. I think Djuricic might be a stretch at this point though.

New TV deal is 2016/17, so they'll probably just be getting 4-5 years of enhanced parachute payments compared to the current amounts - though the 2015/16 prize/tv money will still probably cover the cost of the higher wages they're going to inherit. Will be interesting to see how QPR and Burnley do next season - I can see the former losing a lot of players despite the parachute money, and the latter hanging on to most of theirs.

Interesting re:"revised" deal, but then must be worth doing if he wasn't signing the last one, and if the rumours are true that's been on the table for nearly a year already. Not to mention that Saints might have decided to offer a bigger deal overall but with more being dependent on appearances to ensure value for money. Could also be the case that we've added some more realistic European incentives compared to this time last year...

It depends whether teams are able to accommodate their limitations and exploit their benefits and how far they're prepared to go to do that. Cambiasso has hardly set the world alight at Leicester, and played in 2 draws and 5 defeats in their 7 matches in Feb and March. Surman is neither Pirlo nor Cambiasso based on what I've seen so far and it's unlikely Howe would built a team around his deficiencies despite his upside.

Europa League prize money is now 1:3.3 of the Champions League winner money from next season, compared to 1:4.3 previously. Only £11m for winning it compared to £70m for winning CL, but the payments for just being in it have risen significantly compared to rises in Champions League money so it's less, but it's not as much less as it used to be. Bigger picture however, is that all Premier League prize money from 2016/17 dwarfs even the Champions League money - the important thing is that the Europa League or Champions League money raises the threshold of the maximum clubs can spend on wages under FFP, giving us the chance to spend on more players or on better quality players if we want to.

As I pointed out, they qualified via League Cup so they didn't have the squad to challenge high up the league to begin with. They came 9th that season with 46 points, 15 points off 7th, and 26 points behind League qualification for Europa League in that particular season. So "where it got Swansea" was into the Europa League, and a season later, to a record points total and being within 4 points of a likely Europa League place through league position with 3 matches to go.

Djuricic just had his best game for Saints, which admittedly isn't saying much. I'm not convinced Shelvey would improve us much, though we are lacking anyone who can shoot from range (other than Alderweireld). I think Sigurdsson would be a good fit. If we can't have a Coutinho we could at least have an Eriksen.

Is that late? I think that's pretty standard. We've tended to get a shirt out in July (mainly due to contract end dates recently), then the training kit gets an outing mid July as the players come back to training, then the other kit start of August in time for the new season. If we end up in Europa League 3rd Qualifying Round that schedule might get a bit messed around - but then the first qualifier is July 30th so it shouldn't be a major issue even if we're away to a team in red and white and haven't launched the away kit yet. Would be pretty funny if we played Maritimo or Rio Ave away and couldn't wear either home or away kit.

Adidas teamwear with 2 year old shorts design (as worn in red by the club last season). Does look nice, but not going to be the next Saints kit.

He looks more athletic here than I've ever seen him on a pitch. Black's slimming though.

Ah, well that was the one I changed, not that it makes you any less wrong, as I'm still referring to how often they have had a yellow kit, whether away or 3rd or European or one-off.