verlaine1979

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1557592

You genuinely believe Yoshida would be the second-best CB at every one of those teams? Madness.

I'm not disputing that he's the best we've got or questioning his attitude - just his ability compared to our stated ambition as a club. And to be honest, if we hadn't made two botched signings in Hoedt and Vestergaard, he'd still be a distant third on our list of CBs, trying his best and having a bit of pace, but still ultimately not quite being up to the task of leading a top-half PL defence.

Yoshida being 'good enough' is a real marker of how far our expectations have fallen. Once upon a time he was a very distant third in our CB ranking, and he hasn't really improved a huge amount as a player in that time.

You seem to have quite a dislike for Boufal. Is it because he isn't Northern Irish and overrated?

Also noticeable that the players who went to Macau were mostly young and thus probably less prone to jetlag (which suddenly became a real thing only from my late 20s onward).

Not sure I've heard Ings name mentioned in the commentary at all.

I'm not sure why you think a 30 page thread, most of which is people saying he's **** and should leave is 'an easy ride'. Likewise, the only reason people were defending Ramirez is that so many others were writing him off. This in itself should be instructive. In the hierarchy of football, you have those players who are self-evidently great enough to receive universal admiration; next down you have the players who are inconsistent, who attract both admirers and detractors; finally you have the great mass of cloggers whose careers are measured in a handful of moments, either positive or negative, but seldom enough to actually have a long argument over. Boufal, Ramirez and plenty of other polarising players at other clubs are all in the second category. If they were in the first, they almost certainly wouldn't be playing for us.

TAA has already got more assists in the PL than Clyne, and has probably delivered more world class crosses in one season than most full backs manage in a career. I liked Clyne and I haven't paid enough attention to know how good TAA is as a defender, but his delivery is absolutely next level.

Probably - with the last set of league-wide figures, their wage bill increased by about £40m in 2018, but their revenue only increased by £18m. Under the short term cost controls they should only have been able to increase wages by £25m in that season (revenue + the standard £7m per season uplift).

Would love it to be true, but Long has been played football at a high level for 13 years. If he hasn't learned how to weight a pass or pick a finish by now, I suspect the problem isn't something that can be trained away.

You don't get Ajax's best player for £11.5m anymore.

You can see why RH didn't think there was much point in going. In the main, the squad he took has a distinct look of 'people young enough not to get jet lag for longer than a day or two' about it.

Who is the #12 they keep recycling the ball through?

In a world where proven top league ability now seems to start around the £50-60m mark, and the very best players are all £100m+, the kind of young players with potential we used to buy are already £20-30m+. You think a player with Mane's goal scoring record and European experience would still be £12m? Look at the contrast between his record prior to joining us and Djenepo's over two seasons in a similar quality league (45 goals 32 assists vs 12 goals 7 assists) - I'm hopeful that the latter will be as effective and exciting to watch, but in terms of demonstrable productivity, there's no comparison. If we'll never buy players above £30m, we're already priced out of the running for the next Mane.

On that basis, I'd definitely go with zero chance of getting him.

You're either being deliberately obtuse, or you have trouble following an argument. Why are we having this conversation in the first place? Because the reactionary response to asking for more signings is that someone always comes along and says: what, you mean recruit like Norwich/Middlesborough/Fulham/QPR?! To which an entirely reasonable and factual answer would now be - no, like Wolves. The rest of what you've written is just sophistry. Fulham and Wolves spent almost exactly the same amount of money; ten players IS equivalent to '91% of a new first Xi', everything else on your list can be written off as rounding errors in debate that are irrelevant to the crux of the point articulated above. To remind you: this entire conversation is the result of people arguing whether signing large numbers of players is inherently destabilising. If a significant number of posters didn't believe this to be the case, there'd be no need to have the discussion at all.

My point wasn't that they replaced 91% of their first XI, just that this is what an additional 10 players represents. Anyway, you just seem to be making it up at this point. Until Fulham and Wolves spent comparatively huge money on an unprecedented 10+ players each last season, it was the clubs recruiting 5/6 new players in the summer who were regarded as the doomed outliers unsettling their trusted squads. Maybe you have a more subtle point, but at the moment it just sounds like you're saying Wolves did well because they limited themselves to only recruiting 10 players, while Fulham were fools for recruiting 15, and so it proved at the end of the season. Thanks for that piercing insight, Captain Hindsight.

Either way, Wolves bought 91% of a new first XI and did very well with it. For a long time, received wisdom has been that anything more than 2-3 signings is proof of a team in turmoil who are bound for the drop. Wolves' example proves it means nothing of the sort. Well run teams recruit well and do well, regardless of how many players they sign. Poorly run teams recruit badly and do badly, whether they're buying 1 player or 10. All this really means for Saints is that a number of supporters believe we need more than 2 signings, and would quite like the club to transition from being poorly run to being well run. It's really not that unreasonable a hope.

I suspect the PFA is slightly more aggressive in pursuing contract breaches than you are. The union always seems to win in these disputes, hence why you almost never see clubs trying to short change players.

It's perfectly possible to have players on the books who aren't included in the official 25 man squad. Obviously a total waste of money, but football clubs are hardly 100% efficient businesses at the best of times.

True, though it helps that if you play any of the US's three main sports, their leagues are really the only game in town. So only around 20 team owners need to collude to minimize player power. To achieve the same shift back to the owners in world football you'd need a much greater degree of cooperation, otherwise the best players would simply decamp to a competing league at the first sniff of a wage cap or other contractual shennanigans.

I wonder if clubs would be happy for players to move to an at-will model of employment?

He seems to be convinced that employees have a moral obligation to their employer but not the other way round. First against the wall when the workers finally revolt.

My point is that all clubs recruit unsuccessfully, and I don't see any reason why our list of 'players with no future' (many of whom were matchday squad regulars last season) is any more of a burden than it is on other clubs of similar means who are able to outspend us.