stevegrant

Win

The primary issue for me is coaching. There simply aren't enough coaches of the required standard at youth levels, and a large part of that is because of the cost of getting the relevant qualifications. The UEFA A Licence course apparently costs anywhere between £2500 and £3500, depending on where in the country you are. In Spain, the course costs the equivalent of £435. It's little wonder there are at least ten times more qualified coaches in Spain.

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/_/name/bundesliga/id/647?cc=5739 Leverkusen and Frankfurt have already declared that they'll be disbanding their B teams. The main justification is that the level those teams play at (mostly regional fourth tier, with Stuttgart and Dortmund's B teams in the national third division and as with today's proposals, no promotion to the second division) isn't sufficient enough for the most talented youth products, and that rather than play them in the B team, Bundesliga clubs tend to send them out on loan to second division teams (or newly-promoted top flight clubs) for the season which gives them a much better test. The same is true with our kids. Those who get sent on loan to a much lower level are probably those who we've assessed and decided aren't going to make it at the top level so it's best for their own development that they get some competitive football at the right level. As Les Reed said on the Footballers' Football Show a few weeks back, we don't like to loan out youngsters who are on the fringes of the first team.

I'm amused that they used the Spanish and German league system as their beacons when if you delve a little deeper, they're not all they're cracked up to be themselves. From the summer, the German clubs have agreed that B teams for top-flight clubs will no longer be mandatory, so Germany, one of the nations we're trying to imitate, is already moving in the opposite direction.

I assume all those complaining about this will also be boycotting their favourite curry house in protest?

I got 2 out of 3 from predictions at Christmas, had money on Cardiff and Norwich to go down (Sunderland were my other pick but the odds weren't worth bothering with), and also had a bit on Fulham to stay up in February after they'd got a point at Old Trafford and should have beaten Liverpool a few days later. Sadly that one wasn't to be, but still comfortably in profit on those bets.

Hang on, they're charging an extra £20 for people who pay by debit card??

Apologies for the edit, but I'll get a load of grief from the Echo if I allow full copy-and-pastes of articles (especially exclusives) from their site.

I would hotly dispute that statement. The oft-mentioned "English premium" is a real thing, there are very few bargains to be had in signings made between two Premier League clubs, whether those players are British or otherwise, because selling clubs are so terrified that selling somebody for what would be perceived as a relatively low price could backfire on them (either he helps the buying club to success or the selling club falls away) and buying clubs are desperate to sign players with Premier League experience, as if playing in a different country is genuinely pot luck whether a player settles quickly or not. Take the likes of Joleon Lescott, James Milner, Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing. All four of those players have been bought and sold for £20m+ at one stage in their career. Some top nations haven't had a single player transferred for that sort of fee, let alone players who don't even get in their national team.

Because France have the likes of Yoann Cabaye and Paul Pogba to play in the same position.

If Adrian Durham says he's off, then the balance of probability shifts back dramatically in our favour.

I need 25 to complete

If we adopt Pompey logic, I assume we can now rightfully claim that we - and only we - cost them that £1m?

Horrendous idea. Who the hell is going to turn up to Stoke "B" v Morecambe? The solution for player development - if the FA are actually bothered about that - is to limit the number of players a club can have under contract at any given time. That'll prevent stockpiling by the likes of Chelsea and mean that players who would otherwise join them in the knowledge that they could get first-team football by going on loan while still being paid as a Chelsea player would have to think more carefully about which club they join. The loan rules should be changed, as well. No domestic loans between clubs in the same division, loans to lower division clubs limited to players under the age of 24 with the exception of a single 30-day loan in a season for older players (for those needing match fitness after recovering from injuries, etc). Also, the difference in quality between the bottom of League Two and the top of the Conference is so negligible these days, especially with loads of former League clubs in non-league. The concept of only having two-up, two-down between those two divisions is ridiculous. Merging the two and regionalising them has some merit, but there certainly needs to be more scope for promotion and relegation between those levels.

He had 4 scarves in the bag in the photo that was taken, FFS.

I genuinely struggle to understand how (supposedly) grown adults find it so difficult to just gloss over what someone they don't like has written on an internet forum.

I seem to remember from one of those Danny Baker "Own Goals and Gaffs" videos that Mike Newell scored an epic headed own goal for us while playing for Everton, a bullet header from the edge of the area giving Southall no chance. Annoyingly he scored at the right end as well and we lost 4-3. http://www.11v11.com/matches/southampton-v-everton-16-march-1991-90019/

They're as much a gossip paper as any of the others.

Ultimately you get what you pay for. If all you want is a seat on a plane to take you from one airport to another for bugger all cost, they're perfect. If you're expecting a first class service from them, you're going to be very disappointed.

Surprised Kompany is in there, don't think he's been anything special this season.

Being told players aren't for sale and that there is no fire-sale doesn't make for particularly interesting headlines. England player potentially moving to the country's biggest club for a world record fee for a full-back does make an interesting headline, regardless of how true it is.

Jamie Jackson is the Guardian reporter, who is their Manchester football correspondent. He'll have been leaked the Shaw stuff by someone at Man United, probably someone very close to Ed Woodward, the CEO. Cast your mind back a year ago, when Moyes and Woodward both started their new jobs. The press were reporting "done deal" on them signing - among others - Thiago Alcantara, Leighton Baines, Marouane Fellaini, Ander Herrera, Fabio Coentrao and Cesc Fabregas, and yet by the end of August, only one of those deals actually came to fruition, and even then they managed to make a complete pig's ear of it by paying £4m more than they needed to for Fellaini. Woodward is desperate that he and the club aren't seen to be running around aimlessly without the faintest idea what they're doing (again), so they've used some sympathetic local hacks to plant stories about players they're interested in to make it look like they're already working on signings so they don't get left behind for the second year running. I'm sure they've made contact with Shaw's agent and United have probably told him "we'd offer £100k a week" - that's the way transfers tend to work these days, there's very little mileage in clubs negotiating with another club for a player if that player's got no interest in joining them, so they'll make unofficial contact with the agent first (probably through another intermediary so they can claim plausible deniability if anyone ever called them up on it) to see if it's worth them pursuing. As a result, and assuming we can take Les Reed's word as the truth, if the club has not received any contact from Man United, it's entirely possible that Shaw's agent told them he wasn't interested.

Kane and Dawson are below the level we should be looking at, IMO, especially given the "English premium" that would inevitably be added to their price tag. Neither would be an automatic starter in our current first XI. Welbeck would suit our system perfectly, but his wages (and transfer fee) might price us out of a move, and you could almost certainly find better value on the continent.

My word A combination of players that many top clubs wouldn't be able to buy and a couple of players from Spurs who genuinely wouldn't get in our first XI. The only remotely attainable one would be Welbeck if his stance on leaving Man United remains despite Moyes' departure, but even then his wages must be astronomical. I must have missed that long list of players we've already sold for knockdown fees.

Depends which Financial Fair Play model you use as the basis. The Premier League's own FFP regulations are much more relaxed than UEFA's (£105m loss over 3 years with the PL regulations compared to around £40m over the same period with UEFA), and as we're not currently competing in UEFA competitions, their regulations are ultimately irrelevant to us. Samuel's article made a reasonable point that the FFP regulations do a lot to maintain the existing hierarchy, but that doesn't mean that a club of our stature can't still spend big money where it deems it appropriate. Transfer fees are amortised over the duration of a player's contract, so paying £20m for a player and giving him a 5-year deal will only look like a £4m payment on the profit and loss account. The trick, as ever, is making sure the players signed are the right players for the club and team - but that's the case regardless of whether there are FFP restrictions or not. Get the scouting and research correct and we can still make big signings by our standards. I wouldn't expect us to break our transfer record again, but there's no reason why we couldn't spend £10m on a player this summer.