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Specifics of keeper loan can be seen in v7.6.2 "Temporary Transfers V.5. A “Temporary Transfer” shall mean the transfer of a contract registration effected in accordance with Rules V.6 to V.10. V.6. Subject to the conditions set out below, a Temporary Transfer shall be permitted: V.6.1. between Clubs; and V.6.2. between a Club and a club in membership of the Football League, the Football Conference, the Northern Premier League, the Isthmian League and the Southern League. V.7. The conditions referred to in Rule V.6 are: V.7.1. a Temporary Transfer to a Club may not take place in the Transfer Window in which the Transferor Club acquired the Player’s registration; V.7.2. during the period of the Temporary Transfer of his contract registration a Player shall not play against the Transferor Club; V.7.3. if during the period of a Temporary Transfer the Player’s registration is transferred permanently from the Transferor Club to the Transferee Club, the two Clubs may agree in writing (to be copied to the League) that the Player shall not play against the Transferor Club for the remainder of the Season; V.7.4. subject to any conditions imposed by the Board in the exercise of its discretion under Rule V.4.2, the minimum period of a Temporary Transfer shall be the period between 2 consecutive Transfer Windows and the period of a Temporary Transfer shall not extend beyond 30th June next after it was entered into; V.7.5. the maximum number of Temporary Transfers to any one Club registrable in the same Season shall be 4 and in no circumstances shall more than 1 be from the same Transferor Club at any one time save there shall be excluded from these numbers any Temporary Transfer of the kind described in V.7.6.1 or V.7.6.2; V.7.6. not more than 2 Temporary Transfers shall be registered by a Club at the same time except that there shall be excluded from that number: V.7.6.1. any Temporary Transfer which become permanent; and V.7.6.2. the Temporary Transfer of a goalkeeper which in its absolute discretion the Board may allow in circumstances it considers to be exceptional; V.7.7. a Club may transfer the registration of no more than one of its goalkeepers by way of temporary Transfer to another Club each Season, subject to any further Temporary Transfer of one of its goalkeepers pursuant to Rule V.7.6.2; V.7.8. any other conditions agreed between the Transferor Club and the Transferee Club or, in the exercise of its discretion, imposed by the Board. V.8. The Loan Fee payable on a Temporary Transfer shall be such sum (if any) as shall have been agreed between the Transferee Club and the Transferor Club and set out in Football Association Form H.2 or H.3 (as appropriate) or in a supplementary agreement. V.9. Any Loan Fee (including any instalments thereof) shall be paid on or before the date or dates agreed between the parties, the latest of which must be no later than 30th June immediately following the conclusion of the Season in which the Temporary Transfer expired. V.10. A Temporary Transfer shall be effected by submitting to the Secretary Football Association Form H.2 or Form H.3 duly completed and signed on behalf of the Club by an Authorised Signatory."

They're the standard FA rules, the Premier League Handbook details the Premier League rules which overarch those (p200) http://m.premierleague.com/content/dam/premierleague/site-content/News/publications/handbooks/premier-league-handbook-2014-15.pdf: v4.2 below mentions the discretion of granting a temporary transfer outside the Transfer Window: "Transfer Windows V.1. “Transfer Windows” means the 2 periods in a year during which, subject to Rule V.4, a Club may apply for: V.1.1. the New Registration of a player; V.1.2. the registration of a player transferred to it; and V.1.3. the registration of a Temporary Transfer. V.2. The first Transfer Window in any year shall commence at midnight on the last day of the Season and shall end on 31st August next if a Working Day or, if not, on the first Working Day thereafter, at a time to be determined by the Board. V.3. The second Transfer Window in any year shall commence at midnight on 31st December and shall end on 31st January next if a Working Day or, if not, on the first Working Day thereafter, at a time to be determined by the Board. V.4. Outside a Transfer Window the Board in its absolute discretion may: V.4.1. refuse an application; or V.4.2. grant an application and, if thought fit, impose conditions by which the Club making the application and the player shall be bound."

As they're 8 points ahead of the team in 5th and there are only 6 points to play for I think it's unlikely. They do have the most difficult run in, but the top 4 are set in stone after Saints and Liverpool lost today. Spurs have no chance of making up 8 points in 8 matches on City who are currently 4th and have played the same number of matches, either.

If you had £1300 floating around it wasn't either, but just saying "if you had a 0% card..." doesn't really address the issue for a lot of people.

I've been pretty much committed to half the team leaving every season after last summer, the quirk of being in the top 4 for so long was the only thing that temporarily made me reconsider. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we brought 3 more than we sell in though, especially if we're in the Europa. And if we get to those group stages we can probably expect to be mid-table as well.

IIRC, the interest they paid on loans was the interest they were paying on loans they'd acquired in order to pay off the outstanding player legacy debts (the £14m they've reduced to nothing), which suggests to me that they paid their player debts off early by acquiring another loan. I guess we may not know about that one until next year though, it might have been Robinson's money covering it, or indeed "the hard work and... " that allowed them to pay the debts off "early", i.e. less late than they'd originally planned. They do casually breeze over the fact that the main reason the £14m was paid off was because the parachute payments were routed directly to pay off the outstanding football debts (which presumably remained a condition linked to the FL allowing them to play in L1 back in 2012/13). What I find astounding is the number of people who saw the reporting of Skates turning a profit and have posted on the BBC comments wishing them well for definitely not financially doping themselves to an FA Cup they couldn't afford with players they didn't pay other clubs for, and then defaulting on £80m of taxpayers' money.

Lazy media, shock. That charge being removed after the accounting period is right though?

Oh, and just to be clear, I watched none of the first half until I rewound the shot before the goal and the goal, saw 2 minutes of half time cobblers from Hoddle, and had the second half on in the background as I was adding the Champions League and Europa League round dates to my calendar - until Pelle went off when I gave in to the missus wanting to watch Eastenders.

It's not just Townsend either, Pougatch was ridiculous last night, assigning "Rooney's shot off the bar" (aka Walcott's deflected header off the bar, as Rooney's shot was bouncing easily into the keeper's hands) as an "assist from Harry Kane", who headed the ball square to a defender in the 6 yard box to clear 15 yards before Rooney shot. It wasn't an assist, it wasn't even Rooney's shot which went off the bar.

I'm not sure why you think Pelle getting a really light touch on a cross is out of character for him? It's practically been his defining feature of the past few months - with the exception of hitting the bar last match and the numerous clunky shinners off the pitch where he makes his run too far short of the near post, his failure to make decent contact on the ball has been the reason he hasn't scored a high percentage of his chances. Wafting a leg or a head at it and not connecting properly is what he does a lot of the time, and it's what he did last night. The difference being it was what was needed last night, and not in the chances of the previous months.

There were a lot of people slating Mane on this thread, it was a majority of posters in this thread at the time (early December I think) - though I would imagine the majority couldn't be bothered to put up a defence of Mane in the face of a relentless onslaught of a criticism. It's a lose-lose situation, you'll never change the opinion of the kind of person that fails to see the bigger picture so spectacularly in the first place, and even if your argument is sound and logical, it's still just arguing with knee-jerk spoons on the internet.

Has this been bumped yet?

You're not getting away with it that easily. It is a football forum filled with opinions, but some of them are utter nonsense, knee-jerk over the top criticism, and based on little thought or evidence. You're in with that lot, and you do it frequently.

A lot of people have suffered from the squeeze on credit over the past 5 years or so, getting a 0% card if you didn't already have a card wasn't that easy.

What really annoyed me was the assumption that people would have enough money sitting around mid-month to be able to find it without the period overlapping a pay day (even if I'd been in a position to have £600 spare at that point). Still, thanks to friends and some creative accounting we managed to stump up for 2 STs all through Cortese's best efforts to be a d1ck for the hell of it.

Ok, layman's terms here. From what I can see, with my "definitely not an accountant" brain on, the charge was still outstanding in the accounting period to 30/6/14 but has been paid off since (MR04 above?)? Also, if these accounts are to 30/6/14, how come so many places are reporting that none of the transfers are included in the profit we've announced? Lambert was sold on June 2nd (£4m) and Shaw on June 27th (£27m).

Given that the season starts sooner and it also covers 2 paydays I don't think that's a problem. Still way better than Cortese's "bring it out on Friday, pay us cash before the next payday" version.

It's not irrelevant if the club uses how much the visiting team's fans are used to paying for home matches (which is a relatively accurate criteria for how much of a draw a club thinks they are) as part of their criteria for setting categories. Under those criteria Villa are in the top 7 and QPR are up there too - but obviously the club wouldn't JUST use that criterion because Arsenal have a stadium to fill and often drop their prices and QPR are trying to squeeze every penny from every seat due to their limited capacity. That explains why Arsenal are still Cat A (and who's going to argue with that anyway?).

It has ceased to be. Gone to meet its maker... etc.

No, because no-one has all of the previous season's category A/B/C breakdowns for every previous season to compare with. If they did I'm sure you'd find that we've had Cat A matches last game of the season before, like, say, 2004/5 when we played Man U and got relegated. I have no idea why this is bothering you.

They're not though. So what that Stoke was Cat C last season - it's Cat C this season as well. They're charging Cat A prices for one more match, and Cat C prices for one more match. Overall difference, not much. The fact it happens to be the last game is incidental, and, as I've said repeatedly, due to how much Villa charge Saints fans there. Because Newcastle and Saints came to an agreement, both sides have reduced costs to away fans. Did you go and widely broadcast this as a coup for fans and write a letter to the FSF? Did you hell. Calls for a boycott are frankly laughable and massively deluded. Literally no-one else even has a problem with it that I've noticed on here.

I think they're pretty similar players tbh. Both supporting hard workers who do the closing down for other people to score the goals (at least in theory, if Pelle was scoring). Neither of them have been prolific goalscorers in the Premier League. The main differences are Long has a couple of flashy tricks in his arsenal which Brett didn't, and Ormerod was never asked to play wide because 2 up top was much more widespread when he played. Long also doesn't have an excellent lower league goalscoring record for people to point at when there's an argument about his finishing ability.

It doesn't help the bouncebackability quotient when you've got the likes of Wigan and (particularly at the moment) Blackpool siphoning the money up for whatever purpose with no indication of it on the pitch.

The drop off in promoted teams going back down since 2007 correlates almost perfectly with the rise in Parachute Payments, which you would think would suggest that teams who come up are more likely to have been able to retain Premier League players from a previous relegation, helping them come back quicker and with proven Prem players. However, when you look at it there's no particular correlation in the teams promoted being the same ones who'd been relegated during the Parachute period - there are loads of teams getting up without parachute money (including Saints) - only QPR, Palace, West Ham, Newcastle and West Brom in the last 7 years have "rebounded" immediately. What can be seen is that from 2002/3-2006/7 there was definitely a step up, as all but one of those five seasons 2 of the promoted sides came back down. Which just annoys me more about Portsmouth's fluke escape in 2003. I can only assume that having Prem parachute payments can create as many problems as it solves - teams are able to shift on their best players when relegated (and often can't prevent it), but they also potentially get stuck with less motivated players at Prem costs and the parachutes get sucked up by wages (which to be fair was always the point of them). That makes it more difficult to regenerate a squad and turn around the losing habit.

Makes sense, at least!