The9

Apart from the brightness (there seemed to be far fewer lights overall so I would imagine that's why the ones there were were brighter) I thought they were positioned quite strangely, they didn't seem equidistant or in any obvious pattern. We won't get the true effect until they're used in "proper" dark though, the players only had one shadow on Saturday evening, and that was from the big bright round thing in the sky (and I don't mean the Nike Ordem Premier League match ball).

Simple fact is, if we hadn't sold anyone else this summer, selling our vaguely promising backup right back for £16m would look like a fantastic piece of business.

Did it? I haven't seen it. I saw a BBC article saying "at least one Saints player had a provision in his contract should Cortese leave" but they've never in any of the articles I've reread in the past couple of weeks stated it was Shaw, that came from someone saying it on here. Anyway, that's an aside, you're right that their situations were different, one was a starter and known to be wanted, the other was a squad member who we all assumed wasn't going anywhere, and for whom we got GREAT money.

All we'd have to do is completely change his predominant kicking foot, easy. Isgrove on Saturday showed how difficult it is to play on the "wrong side" when you're being asked to do something which puts you in a position which necessitates you using your weaker foot more often. Clyne at left back doesn't have the same threat either for this reason. It's less pronounced at CB but the left/right side CB issue can't be ignored, unless Chambers suddenly pops up as a LCB rather than the RCB he was yesterday (or Fonte becomes a LCB) it's really not a comparison.

Newsflash, this has been bloody obvious since it happened. Also, as I'm on page 3 of this thread and I've only seen one reference to it (from Olallana), Chambers played right sided centre back, we had one of those and still have. And he's Arsenal's THIRD MOST EXPENSIVE PLAYER OF ALL-TIME, FFS! Calum Chambers! Take the money!

F'sure.

Inspired.

Soccernomics: "use the knowledge of crowds". Hence the usefulness of FM stats - lots of geeks having a big online argument about how their opinion is best, along with loads of clips of stuff like Arjen Robben sprinting clean past Sergio Ramos at the World Cup for comparable data and Steve Grant controlling the ball over his head from every ground pass he receives. Oh wait, the last one was only relevant to my Southampton IFC team database for FM13. The long and short of it is that Lambert's PA score was obviously hugely underrated for the 10 years he was in L1/L2 because he was clearly a Champions League player in disguise. But no-one knew it - because the number of times a player achieves their maximum PA as set in the game should be negligible, literally everything should have to go right for them, club facilities, training methods, skill development, personal match performances and form, team performances, etc. I did some PA experiments with FM13... As the whole point is that it's a game, what actually happens to players isn't a "prediction", but the skills given are meant to be based on opinions verified by fact and comparison across other teams (and no doubt endless simming by SI) so you'd hope that what they produce reflects reality pretty well. However, the fewer people involved in the process, the less accurate you'd expect the ratings to be - I know MLG has said plenty of times before that when players transfer in he's often not impressed with their characteristics compared to their new team-mates (but he can't do anything about it), and you can imagine that the lower down the pyramid you get the fewer people are actually able to critique players and the less accurate they are. They do at least seem to have the sense to realise that some characteristics can be present at all levels of football (eg pace) and it doesn't necessarily follow that a L2 player will be slower than a Prem one at sprinting without the ball for instance, which is something the likes of PES/FIFA seemed to have a problem with for years.

Fixed it.

We can't "not pay him" because there are certain provisions within players' contracts as universally approved by the PFA for these kind of situations. I can't track them down online, but the gist of it is that no player can ever be fined more than 2 weeks' wages as a general rule anyway, and provided there is an agreed training plan in place for the player, and he follows it, then the club has no grounds for fining the player because he's keeping himself in condition to perform if called upon and doing what the club asks him to - however there's some other stuff around having to be involved in a certain number of games over a certain period (some detail would be useful here, obviously) or the club OR player can be in breach of contract. It's a tricky one because obviously it's in the player's interests to stay fit for their career prospects, and the club's interests for them to be in a condition to use or sell them, but at the same time you don't want players getting paid for doing a minimum amount and not being available to play. I suspect if the club started getting "finey" about it, Schneiderlin's legal people would be pointing at the treatment of the likes of Barnard, Forte and Sharp over the past few seasons as precedent of the club paying players in full but not using them with no financial ramifications. I'm sure someone else can add more detail or clear up where this is vague, as I'm going from memory on cases like the Winston Bogarde at Chelsea who basically sat out his contract for about 3 years but was always at training.

Unless we sell him first!

Cumulative effect of the other transfers. Disbelief with the first 4 turned into outright fury with the Chambers move, Schneiderlin was the one fit wantaway left. Nothing but unfortunate timing for him. Also, it hasn't been stated (Krueger has said FFP had nothing to do with it, but he also said we didn't need to sell anyone and then all but apologised for it afterwards) but I get the impression that contractual bonuses (Cortese's legacy) would have been a lot more expensive than the 2013/14 wages were due to their finishing position last season. That would make sense in terms of the Hofstetter comments about a "difficult financial situation", and also explain why Ramirez (who didn't play that much last season) is still here when he's a high earner. Pure speculation on my part, it would assume some kind of 2013/14 appearance-based wage enhancement bonus package for 2014/15. Maybe the club didn't want to honour it due to FFP impact and costs and instead got rid of the top earners, who coincidentally were keen to be going anyway. I can understand the self-sufficiency thing, I'm not too bothered about Katharina not wanting to pile loads of cash in, that was always more hope than reality even when Markus was around, but I do think our blithe expectation that we'll have a transporter of kids ready to be sold every year is naive, we've been chucking out a Champions League standard player about every year and a half for the past 10 years or so, but there's no guarantee that will continue to be the case.

I would imagine something along the lines of "not enforcing a salary cap which means that every team not in the Champions League is prevented from spending as much money as those in it", for a start.

He put in the kind of performance you'd hope for from someone trying to impress. Looked industrious, worked hard, great quick control and moving the ball and quick decision making. Showed a tiny bit of a tendency to go backwards too much but understandable given how little he knows about his teammates. There's clearly a bit of a language barrier too from the time he cleared the ball practically from Boruc's hands but that'll come. He looked like Cork with more range to me and I didn't see him give it away once.

Pellè looked a bit more likely to attack the goal than previously, but it's no surprise we struggled to score, he looks really isolated and (unsurprisingly) we don't look remotely like a team at the moment.

You massive hypocrite.

Yeah, but who would be able to tell?

World Trade Center.

If he played for England after he signed he counts, if he didn't, he doesn't.

The clue's in the first two letters of your post.

We're buying a keeper to compete for the number 1 position, the one we've already got is also very good. I wouldn't be surprised to see Boruc keep his place until he drops a clanger, similar to the Friedel/Lloris situation at Spurs when Lloris first came in.

Much as I'm loath to back up (ha!) Roger here, he's not suggested who will be backup, just that we'll have two decent keepers. I see it as competition, I think the people saying Boruc is too old are nuts, and also think that Boruc is the kind of player who needs competition to be at his best, because he's hugely confident and he needs to be at maximum concentration to stop himself tipping over the edge into over-confidence (see Arsenal away).

Oh I don't know, we've got 5 goalkeepers with squad numbers already, it's only a small percentage increase in overall goalkeepers.

What, we get 2 decent Prem players and 10 million quid and sell a player (albeit our best one) in a position where we've actually got plenty of players?

Breaking news, everyone knows every club is for sale, that doesn't mean they've been actively promoting it to buyers, or that we're selling players to make it more attractive to someone who wants a cheaper but less successful club for some reason.