positivepete

The VAR rules for the Premier League next season are not the same as those you might be seeing in the Women’s World Cup. The indications are they will be far more pragmatic.

The (unverified) version I have heard is that the sponsors are a Chinese SME putting all their marketing funds towards getting international coverage. No idea what they do, but if you think in terms of company size, they are Veho not Virgin. (No disrespect to Veho intended)

Not taking sides here, but surely it is a perfect crossover; tree huggers don’t won’t people to travel, therefore free movement a la EU is against their core philosophy, ergo they must be pro Brexit Back on topic, be good to win our remaining home games, get at least a draw at WHU and finish the season with four games unbeaten, points in the mid forties and a few places higher up the league

In today’s Times Tony Cascarino predicted we will finish on 45 points and one place ahead of Bournemouth

There is another way to look at the run-in. No team with 11 wins has ever been relegated. That would require: Cardiff to win 3 of their last 8; Burnley to win 3 of their last 7; Crystal Palace to win 2 of their last 8; Brighton to win 2 of their last 9; Saints to win 4 of our last 8. It will almost certainly go down to the wire.

No team has been relegated with 11 wins, I think we should aim for that ...

Or perhaps we are considering a reverse takeover of a retirement home

Confucius also [might have] said, knowing a tomato is a fruit is knowledge, knowing not to serve it as a fruit is wisdom. I was in China for 10 days recently, and they still put tomatoes in the fruit bowl every day.

Quote: How many decent players have Burnely got? How does their wages compare to the bottom 4?they should not be able to compete but they do as the opposition is poor. Nine of this indicates teams getting better, it indicates weaker teams who can't compete with the top 6 in their own league, with European sides on a tiny budgets compared to themselves and teams coming up who are not spending 100 m each but easily stay in the league. In an article in The Times today the 2016/17 wages for Burnley was £61m, ours was £109m. They used the table of wages to calculate expected points, ours for this season, based on last seasons wages was 51 points. Burnley’s expected points was 35

He was highly rated when at Gillingham, a lot of top clubs were looking at him. He gets a few mentions in the book about scouting, The Nowhere Man, I think it was called. Why has he gone to Spurs to be 3rd choice, perhaps Stuart Taylor was telling about what a great carreer he has had?

In The Times today an agent, Sam Winstanley, is arguing against this - surprise. His reasoning is that it will drive prices up because deals would have to be completed early, and disadvantage the clubs playing in Europe, who could still lose players if the other leagues do not fall into line. The article is a thinly veiled attack on the "smaller" clubs.

Interesting article in The Times this morning regarding Danny Rose. Another player who has been out since January, who signed a new contract last year (£65kpw), and now wants out becuase he "knows what he worth". Walker getting a reported £140kpw for City no doubt influenced his thinking. The article goes on to say Watford are paying Andre Gray £95k a week. The similarities between Saints and Spurs approach to wages and transfer fees is clear, and probably the more sustainable one, though of course Spurs are trying to finance a new ground, and that will, like it did for Arsenal, restrict their player spend.

I would have thought that the "pressing from the front" style would suit Long more than Austin.

If yesterday's match is anything to by, it will be Gabbi, Long, Gallagher, then Austin. If one of those four moves on, as suggested in the Gallagher thread I would think it more likely to be Austin. I am not sure he is mobile enough to press in the way the front four seem to be set up to do this season.

To quote Wenger.... "Today, a player is worth what the club can afford to spend and I would say that the price of a player depends on the identity of the buyer. You cannot put it in the context of the market. It is the financial potential of the buyer that decides the price of the player.” https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/aug/03/arsene-wenger-neymar-transfer-arsenal-alexis-sanchez

You might be closer than you think....... I think you should make more of the under 9 rule!

Depending on how the season ticket money is accounted for it is likely that the cash includes the season ticket money, and so does the liabilities. It could be that the liability is reduced after each match by that amount. Sales cannot be pre-booked, so the weekly sales will include a proportion of the season ticket money after each home game. It has already been stated that the owner has made loans to the company, nothing wrong with those showing up in the accounts. Les Reed is part of the board, the board all have fiduciary duties for the company, so I would expect that he has a great say as the director of football, and as now as vice-chairman of football. No board of directors can let the owner make all the decisions, that is why you have a board to run the company.

Significant period in the second half when Austin went off and we suddenly started playing further up the pitch with more tempo. Too many subs to worry about the last 15 minutes, but the period from Austin going off until that point was much more like it

Tactical genius. Brilliant the way we are disguising our new attacking and pressing game from the scouts watching from our early season opponents. They will report back that we are still playing the way we did in the last five games of last season. Then we will show em

And Spurs have been even quieter than we have. Levy was quoted in one of the papers the other day saying that the market was overblown and will end in tears.

I would suspect that as part of the agreement over the tapping up claim, they are not allowed to bid unless we invite them to.

It depends on where you stick your rod!

I think this one of the posts where the potential price was first mentioned

I am pretty sure we had some indication from another reliable source on here, that we were asking for something like £70m, all paid up front, no add-ons, before we would discuss a transfer.

Palace are now linked with signing Chambers. They had previously been linked with signing Jaïro Riedewald from Ajax, and Bruno Martins Indi from Porto. Neither have signed to date. Didn't we have a rumour the other day about an imminent signing of an Ajax centre back? If we are now not expecting VVD to play for us this season, either as a result of being sold or simply not picked because he is in the wrong frame of mind, then either of these two former Palace targets would be useful additions