The9

The guy at Leeds is the only person to have actually failed it, to my knowledge, and then it was overturned on a technicality anyway.

An equally lame point - firstly the rules have changed since then, secondly, you had to be playing a side comparable to another side recently fielded with obvious changes to your usual line up. Our starting line up for this season does not have to be comparable to our starting line up of last season, and "just being shiiit" isn't against the league rules, or Derby would have been hammered for it in 2008.

Oh FFS, REALLY? What is it that makes everyone want someone else to blame - as said above, this is exactly the kind of whining crap that the Skates would trot out - "don't blame us guv, we fort the FA would make sure the dodgy no-bank account tyre-kicker from the Emirates with no cash was on the level"... You don't understand the fit and proper persons test, and the (incredibly difficult to fail anyway) criteria definitely don't apply to Saints' owner.

Holtby looked a prime contender to start for Spurs with the way he was pressing in their preseason friendly I watched on the weekend. He'd have been a great signing last season, not sure he'd be available now.

Check that list this time next year and see how many of them are still there. "And the like" refers to "no-one else" as well.

Totally agree with that. The upheaval has provided an opportunity for players to jump ship when most probably would have stayed in the event of the status quo being maintained (along with the meaty bonuses being sold to them by Cortese).

Offers from top 6 clubs back when they were playing for a bottom half Prem team? No. Maybe some in January, but at that stage no-one knew what was happening with our League position and it's a lot easier to leave a club when you're not in the midst of immediate success. Lambert certainly didn't get one from Liverpool before January or he'd have gone there immediately. Shaw and Chambers were in their first full seasons, Shaw would have been sounded out but probably would have left even if we were in Europe and Chambers probably wouldn't have had offers until very recently. Lallana lacked consistency before this season just gone, might have had someone like Hull or Swansea sniffing around, but no better. You wonder why he didn't leave for Everton if they had been interested as he was a fan - but they're not in the Champions League. Lovren didn't even play for us before last season and very few players leave after 6 months anyway as they miss out on loyalty payments.

5 years eh? Let's take the team that played the first match after the last transfer window closed as the benchmark and the dates of their first team League debuts: A Boruc (Sep 2012) - 2 years C Chambers (Aug 2013) 1 year L Shaw (Nov 2012) - 2 years J Fonte (Jan 2010) - 4.5 years M Yoshida (Aug 2012) - 2 years S Davis (Aug 2012) - 2 years A Lallana (Aug 2006) - 8 years M Schneiderlin (Aug 2008 ) - 6 years J Rodriguez (Aug 2012) - 2 years V Wanyama (Aug 2013) - 1 year R Lambert (Aug 2009) - 5 years So actually, only one player who was with the club 5 years, 2 others with 6 and 8 years since first appearances, and the vast majority (7 of the 11) being with the club for at most 2 years. So not really 5 years to build, was it? Pretty much 2 years to build excepting the ones who we had before the Championship, and no-one's going to tell me Lallana, Lambert and Schneiderlin were made Prem-quality players in L1 or before 2011. In fact the average (mean) time is just over 3 years even including those long-term players.

They were all happy to play for us until they got a better offer, how is that difficult to understand?

To get £100m every other season we'd have to bring through 5 x £20m players every 2 years, whilst remaining a Prem side. Even Man U with their Class of '92 lot only managed to do that once, ever...

Of course the stupid thing is that Man City will have known all about Ward-Prowse since he was about 8 anyway...

Starting to worry about you now. This is utter garbage.

So difficult to stay in the sense that we didn't immediately offer them double their wages or Champions League football?

The theory that the value of the club is being lowered by selling off the players to make it more affordable for a sale seems logical. But then so do the "crippling bonuses to keep players who got to 8th" and "massive profit on players to be reinvested" theories.

That is an absolutely hopeless analogy.

Jeeze that's an awful selection of players who the top 6 definitely aren't interested in. Nice try. Aside from the keepers (top sides seem ok for those, especially as Vorm just went - he'd have been on the list last week, right?) Coloccini is past it and has been at Newcastle for 6 years, he'd have gone when he was younger than 32 if anyone wanted him, but he's injury prone too. Ben Arfa can't even get into Newcastle's team! Sissoko? What's he ever done to make him saleable? Shawcross had his moment 4 years ago and is at his level. Reid and Tomkins? Really? Whilst Bony is being touted to anyone who'll listen. Meanwhile, Calum Chambers (who is at least as midtable as those named above but a lot younger and English) is Arsenal's third most expensive signing of all time. I can't complain about any of the fees in isolation.

I think you'll find Cortese did his rolling over in January. The money was not going to be there whether he was or not.

His vision got the players here under false pretences and that was always going to unravel as it was based on a never-ending stream of spending someone else's money how he saw fit without any comeback. It collapsed as soon as anything resembling market forces started to have impact on it, and the existing players wanted more money. We ALL felt that "with a few additions" we'd be able to compete, but keeping the ones who've gone would have swallowed up piles of cash too. I respected his ambition, but retaining the same players which only got us 8th anyway on hugely inflated wages or bonuses PLUS the cost of even more £20m+ players and wages to strengthen the squad further was a completely unsustainable premise. Not entirely unreasonably, Katharina doesn't seem to have wanted to go along with this - which apart from anything was probably impossible to achieve within the parameters of Financial Fair Play. Even three years ago some of us were saying how much we needed to build the other revenue streams to enable us to expand, yet for all his "financial know how" the guy upset potential customers and partners left, right and centre and was probably a key reason we didn't get more revenue in. We couldn't spend much more even if we wanted to - that's why we voted against FFP. The phrase Cult of Cortese clearly applies to some of the players who have left as well as some of the fans. The people saying "this wouldn't have happened under Cortese" are wrong - if he'd stayed the money still wouldn't be there and the same thing would have happened - that's why he got out when he did. None of this of course means I support the sell off of almost every decent player we have, even at the huge fees we've received - more efforts should have been made to retain the core players, and the whole thing is disappointing. The next few weeks will show if the club is even going to attempt to provide decent replacements or if it is a prelude to a club sale. One thing's for sure, no-one's making as much money selling a Championship club compared to a going concern in the Premier League, so it is a very risky strategy.

Except that doing that completely removes the opportunity of negotiating the kind of fees we have received. So we'd have had all the sales, but far less cash.

Still waiting for link...

God no. Horrendous little man, also no credibility now as all of his vision spiel has been shown to be based on absolutely nothing,

So, this will come down to whether we get 6 or so new players in the next 35 days or not really. As for the club being sold, the cost thing makes sense but I'm not sure how putting it in a position to get relegated would help recover the cost of an investment.

I'm still waiting for 19CIAM.

Fits me, a XXL that is. Shoulders fit well, body is a bit long. I was in a large of the last shirt.

A statement wouldn't make the blindest difference to how many turn up for the first home match. And that attendance will be down because it always is for the first match anyway due to holidays.