The9

Bloody hell Phil, Debbie Harry was already rough as ar5eholes when she launched her solo career in 1989. That was 25 years ago.

...though the source isn't necessarily reliable.

It clearly says earlier in this very thread that Rodriguez played enough matches to trigger a clause that meant contractually he had to be offered a new contract - which means that, yes, he is an exception.

Ah, I see your dodgy team above - there are still loads of players not listed though. Any team's going to look crap with a pile of first teamers missing - we did last season too.

He's THIRTY and a centre back, he's got at least 2 years at the current level and could potentially go another 4 without too much trouble, not that we shouldn't be looking to replace all players with better at all times.

Why have you left existing first team squad members Boruc, Ward-Prowse, Pelle, Cork, Tadic, Ramirez and Fonte out of this team? I can understand leaving Lovren and Osvaldo out.

I agree we should be maximising revenue, but a quick look around shows how no-mark most non-top 6 Prem sponsors are. I had also completely forgotten HP had sponsored Spurs that recently, which shows the flip side of selling shirt space to multiple companies or using different brands - I know their current ones are AIA, and they'd had Aurasma, Autonomy and various others in different cup competitions, but totally blanked on the "main" sponsor last season.

Compared to the regular mistakes made by Hooiveld and Yoshida in the Prem, Fonte is relatively mistake-free. Admittedly he's benefited from being alongside Lovren, but that didn't bring any great improvement in the other two. Fonte is comfortably good enough to be a starting Prem CB, though a different partner might be a problem. In normal circumstances I'd probably say we should consider the offer, but at the moment he could be the ONLY Prem CB we have, so we should definitely keep him - and should do so unless we sign two significantly better CBs and keep Lovren. Even as 3rd choice (I wish) he's worth keeping in preference to getting £5m with which we couldn't buy an equivalent replacement, and there's always the chance of extending his contract.

Revenue isn't the only measure of being a "nobody" or not, Standard Chartered are a nobody company apart from to people who work in the financial sector, and apart from anything Spurs aren't sponsored by HP any more, which tells you all you need to know about how worthwhile shirt advertising actually is. It's a strange animal that wants to sponsor a football team to appeal to people who don't watch football.

I can't remember a concert at St Mary's since I've been living here (post 2006 World Cup). I think Bon Jovi in 2006 was the last one, with Elton John the year before. There was talk of Bon Jovi again around 2008 but no idea if that actually happened.

Plastic Prem overseas fans would not care less provided one of their teams wins the league.

Not with the current squad (though I am assuming Lovren won't stay) we won't. Now if we add the rumoured 5 signings, yeah, sure it's a possibility. But anything resembling a long term injury to Boruc at the moment and we're screwed anyway.

We'll wear navy as we've said we will, they'll probably wear whichever of their kits they want to promote the most.

Yeah sure, he also said something about Cortese being regarded as evil for having ambition, a load of irrelevant cobblers about Lowe in which he implied that he was doing the right thing in not splashing out for players we couldn't afford (as if everyone wouldn't agree with that and it was some kind of genius move to support Lowe for it) and that everyone supports Katharina doing the same thing compared to Cortese - as I mentioned above, missing the bit that it's always been her money he was spending anyway. Also, that ambition isn't ambition if you can achieve it, and what's important is what you learn on the way, which is of course cobblers in the context of wanting to actually win things. Oh and he finishes up by saying he wants the club to have lofty ambitions and basically spunk a load of money trying to reach them - which is completely opposite to the prudence he was self-satisfyingly patting himself on the back for earlier for supporting Lowe.

I think Clyne is better going forward and more athletic, but is positionally weak and more prone to errors, and Chambers is better at actually defending. Depends what you want from your full back. I also can't see how having 2 decent players in the same position is any kind of a problem, if we'd had that standard of competition for every position we'd be in Europe this season.

He's going on about Cortese, somehow avoiding the elephant in the room which is Cortese's ambition being something he was in no position to deliver, because he was using someone else's money and hadn't actually agreed the expenditure when he was telling everyone what we were going to achieve. Not to mention that we didn't have the squad to achieve what he wanted last season anyway, despite spending about £70m.

It won't, overseas fans couldn't care less about crowds in the stadium, they could easily work around empty stadiums using stick footage if they needed to as well.

Except that Premier League football doesn't need "the fans" in the stadiums at all any more, it can go on as a TV product in Malaysia in front of no-one with the clubs still getting 80% of their revenue even if not a single one of us gave a monkey's any more. The problem with football is not the fans, it's the money that caused the top clubs to want a Superleague in the 80s and led to the FA supporting a breakaway from the Football League, which in turn led to the Premier League doing everything for the benefit of a few. Of course.

Well you already are by supporting a team that benefits from the Academy rules (and you're already not on the beard team for some reason).

Blame Nike for that one, even their biggest clubs don't get the "gap in the stripes" treatment.

Didn't Cortese's near exactly the same comments about not being given an acceptable level of investment last year do the same?

1 A new manager wastes money on transfers if you let him - Redknapp is a prime example 2 Use the wisdom of crowds - well, that of lots of informed people to average out their opinions, not actually fans. 3 Stars of recent World Cups are overvalued - hence my endless "get Ramirez and Osvaldo to the World Cup then sell them" posts last year. Turns out it also works for Lambert, Lallana and Shaw. 4 Certain Nationalities are overvalued - I mentioned this when we signed Guly, funnily enough. 5 Older players are overvalued - especially ones who were excellent as teenagers and are now jaded, injured, going through the motions unmotivated 10 year pros aged 28. 6 Centre Forwards are overvalued,goalkeepers are undervalued - Disagree with the first bit () but agree with the latter 7 Gentleman prefer blondes; id and abandon 'sight based prejudices' - Micky Quinn theory 8 The best time to buy a player is in his early twenties - see also 5 9 Sell any player when another club offers more than he is worth - as a business plan this one depends on the opportunity cost of relegation, surely? 10 Replace your best players even before you sell them - OBVIOUSLY. 11 Buy players with personal problems,and then help them deal with their problems - They'd have to be dirt cheap, you can ruin a good squad doing this 12 Help your players relocate. - This was a biggie for me in 2010 when we didn't have today's Prem Staff Bloatware and may not have been good at assimilating foreign players (which seemed to be the case with Tadanari Lee not long after). Oh, and 2 and 7 are slightly contradictory. Listen to overall opinion but ignore decisions made by the majority based on false premises like appearance? You just said the majority opinion was a good thing?

They already are, to me. BTW Newport County have a multi-millionaire lottery winner on the board.

They do get £240k for being in L2 from the Prem pity fund, but yeah, the £10k is just a token for showing them on the box, I suspect that amount is only for the away team though - I think the home team gets a bit more for use of their facilities and a "sorry for destroying your chances of selling more pies" award. You have to read between the lines with these Skate financial statements.

Yeah, this is how I read it - it totally depends on whether they count the extra £1m they received as part of their expected income, or whether they didn't, because they have a responsibility to reallocate all the parachute payments to their football credit... No, sorry, I can't even finish that sentence, this is Portsmouth FC were talking about. They've probably spunked it on some magic beans for the pitch.