shurlock

Agree- thought Gunter was excellent last season, esp at SMS. Very happy with Clyne (if we don't f**k things up). Also thought he might have gone to a bigger club.

Tadanari's translator never played the game at any competitive level but has got all his badges and had a coaching job with one of Huddersfield's youth teams before joining us.

Cork did...

What about the As - they've been a flop of late- they've had a sub .500 record and not qualified for a postseason for the past 5-6 seasons. Billy Beane is still there, doing his stuff. Either way, you're not principally talking about the A's though! They're only relevant insofar as they represent a more general approach and argument that davids can defeat goliaths -hence the discussion of moneyball and its limitations...

And I thought you were scientific old chap. Survivor bias and all that. So what if the Sox 'stole' these ideas, how about the teams that crashed and burned on them or ignored them altogether - Tony LaRussa, GM of the St. Louis Cardinals and world series winners in 2011, for instance, is passionately anti-moneyball. Either way, why would an approach -assuming it works- stay in the hands of a poor team. Sport is driven by imitation and competitive pressure -if we discovered some magic way of picking players up on the cheap, why wouldn't other teams follow suit or invest in the same processes?

No- Paul DePodesta was the wonk Beane hired at the A's and introduced Beane to moneyball. In other words, he was the purest incarnation of finding value in nontraditional measures of player performance. And when the sorcerers apprentice was let loose, mayhem ensued - see his time at the Dodgers. Clearly stats can be helpful but if they do make a difference, you can be sure everyone -rich and poor alike- will pick up on their value and so any advantage will be temporary. If anything, bigger teams can invest more in this infrastructure. And desperate doesn't refer to keeping an open mind - it refers to the fallacy of drawing on history when the world has changed. Budgets were much more compressed int he 80s -and as Miltonaggro points out, small teams could compete with the big teams on transfers and wages. If anything, this vindicates -rather than undermines- the argument that money matters - except now its the prerogative of a handful of teams.

Always the desperate last stand - Clough did it. The early 80s were a socialist paradise compared to today -budgets were far more compressed. See the Telegraph report I mention above for a dose of reality. And Billy Beane?!? People forget the epilogue of the story, that the mastermind of moneyball, Paul DePodesta went on to become GM of the LA Dodgers in 2004 only to be fired in 2005 after leading the team to one of its worst finishes in its history.

Kamil Kosowski - looked like a porn star and session musician from a 70s krautrock band - no doubt 'arry and rosie did quite nicely.

The Telegraph found a clear relationship between how much a team spends and its final league position. It noted that spending wisely can enable teams to punch above their weight but it only secures them a few extra places compared to where they are predicted to finish on budget size alone. So by targeting Africa for forwards and becoming Francophones, Newcastle finishes in 5th rather than the 9th or 10th place it's budget would have predicted. Decent but not exceptional. The harsh laws of football finance still stand. And of course we're talking about outliers, the shrewdest spenders, so this is the upper limit a team can hope for. So no, you're indulging in wishful thinking, using your usual selective, cut and paste approach to facts to lend a veneer of rigour and respectability to what is otherwise ********.

No miracle man but will do a decent job for them - expect them to be pushing for promotion. If Barney's worth 800K -or whatever was quoted in the paper, Antonio is easily worth 750K.

IIRC he made two worldies in the last min - both from basically the same position.

I thought it was a good laugh, plenty of gallows humour and the baiting of Kelvin. The defeat in the following season was infinitely worse - the game that finally relegated us and the day the reality of administration came crashing down. We were totally flat, deadmen walking, begging to be put out of our misery.

Sheff weds, the game that relegated us by a country mile. If you weren't there, you don't know how bad it was and never will. Wycombe, the goalless draw, the mauling up at Hull and the 5th round defeat at brizzle r are other immemorable mentions. With the exception of the Wycombe game which IMO was the nail in the coffin for Pards, you can't compare any of the poor away games in L1 with the championship. Yes we were often served up dirge but there was always the consolation that the club was in safe hands.

He's bit of a to$$er TBH. You see that Noel Gallagher interview? Bit of a reality check. Half the stuff that supposedly made him a genuine character -and why I liked him- turned out to be false while the stuff that was true just made him look like a self-obsessed moron - and no different from any other modern footballer.

Doubt Martin has anything to do it - or even a Clyne deal or whatever nonsense people were claiming. IF we get Zaha, Puncheon is more likely to feature in any exchange. FWIW I think Zaha's overrated but maybe he'll be more of a threat in a team that has goal options - Palace have hardly been prolific.

Basing it on Naughton's time at M'Boro and in particular Leicester - didn't see much of him at Norwich. Agree Clyne has only mixed it in the championship but I've rarely seen a fullback hound and get so close to attackers and rarely get skinned or beaten.

Clyne is better defending in one on one situations -and rarely gets beaten on the floor but Naughton is a more cultured footballer whereas Clyne is a very one-footed.

...and the real world

Or stick him on the left handside of the diamond where Lallana might be bit of a liability, leaving him to play in the hole.

While we're at it, we should look at Bony from Vitesse as well. Class player but probably out of our range.

Don't deny that-ffs we were filling SMS regularly with 18000+ fans in L1 - hardly the stuff of superlatives. My point was addressed more to the other poster who claims it's impossible to get tickets - as a member, I can quite easily get tickets -no twinning b******ks and can usually buy them at the last minute. It's a very fickle demand and fanbase- just look at the drop off when they were in the championship, even during their title winning season. Granted that season ticket renewals have been very strong, albeit inflated by the lure of big name signings and a chairman's big mouth, does that justify a doubling in capacity? Do our plans, even the most ambitious ones which envisage a much smaller percentage increase, look that crazy in comparison. I agree with MLG on qpr's attendance problems but totally disagree with him in terms of qpr being a benchmark. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I had to go in the home end when we beat them 2-0 in 2006-07 and had to sign up as a member - never been since (for a non-saints game) yet I get emailed deals for games all the time. It's almost pathetic.

Looks like the tip of the iceberg-if we're strengthening at CM and LB, suggests there's still plenty of activity to come-1 or maybe 2 CBs, a GK, a RM -all of which are priority areas- and possibly a RB and even a LM. Even after Buttner signs, reckon we'll see at least four more new faces.

Good luck pal- don't know you personally but you're always a voice of sanity in this madhouse.

Yep, a poor man's milner, though if we play a diamond, would provide decent defensive and attacking balance.