shurlock

He doesn’t hold the ball up enough to suit Brighton or Burnley. I know you’ve had a crush on him but he’s washed at a PL level.

As opposed to having the logo of some oriental matchfixers blazoned across every adult and child’s chest?

Don’t be so jealous pal.

Fair play. Someone using their midlife crisis to do some good in the world.

Run by leftie, liberal pinkos, innit pal.

Didn’t dune get banned on here for posting a monkey picture in a joke about a black Olympic athlete?

aintforever, the forum linguist, what a tit

Preston away 2008: two down at HT, with McGoldrick scoring the winner in injury time. For a side in free fall on and off the pitch, it was a pretty amazing comeback. Our win at Brighton in our promotion season -two goals in the last five mins against a side unbeaten at home all season with no less than 3 points necessary to keep Huddersfield off our backs- was another highlight.

Good lad

And Juventus, Real and Bayern aren’t some of the most experienced, cynical and wily teams around?

Overshadows the scousers achievement.

Only happened if Cabbage Face said it.

Dele alli has been atrocious for months.

Not according to Mosin

And you managed your emotions without saying “famous European nights” even once.

Well done on tonight’s winnings pal. The apprentice has well and truly deposed the master (Glasgow).

Ffs

Leisurewear - can't help but think someone's taking the p*ss and sending a message.

Those are all possibilities; but then again, how likely are they? Re (i) Its hard to think of many squads that have been built largely or entirely on free transfers. They are a small and arguably declining part of the game confined to the lower leagues. Clubs go to great lengths to structure contracts and time sales so that they maximise the transfer value of players. At worst they'll sell a player with a year or so left on the contract and accept a small hit (a la Wanyama and Clyne) and the buying club will get a player at a smallish discount (a la Cedric). More important, insofar as clubs do use free transfers, you have to further assume that some clubs systematically use them more than other clubs; otherwise the effect will cancel itself out across clubs and won't particularly affect overall figures. I can't think of many circumstances in which this assumption holds. Re (ii) I think you're answering a different question which is about the quality or efficiency of investment. The fact that we've loaned out alot of dross doesn't change the fact that we've incurred those fees.

Am sure City could have afforded VVD when Liverpool bought him which is the more relevant comparison; rather they were sniffy about spending so much money on a player with a limited track record from little ole Southampton.

Makes sense as it doesn’t adjust for transfer fee inflation which has been ramped up by the latest TV money, so will skew upwards those sides that have spent longer and featured more recently in the PL.

Who’s said they hate Gao? Another classic saintsweb strawman. A number of people are concerned and have questions but that’s something that reporters close to the club like Adam Leitch also share.

I guess you don’t use numbers a lot pal. Very few people rely on one year’s results which by their nature will be very noisy and volatile but instead look for trends over time. That’s especially true with transfers where building a squad usually takes longer longer than a year.

Clearly it has its limitations but that’s true of virtually every metric when used in isolation. Salaries certainly matter, though principally in cases where a club sells a player for a fortune and buys several cheaper players with all the proceeds (our business model to some extent). Other things being equal, buying several players will mean a higher total wage bill than the wages saved from selling the star player and won’t be captured by net spend (or gross or raw expenditure for that matter). Otherwise effects are either relatively small relative to fees or will wash out (that is, they are randomly distributed across transfer expenditures and income), so won’t excessively bias the use of a metric like net spend. Again the problem is not the use of net spend; it’s the singular reliance on it. But to swing to the other extreme and call it meaningless and fail to acknowledge the additional information or context it provides on metrics such as gross spend is as, if not, more stupid. Only a moron would ignore the difference between gross and net results of any kind.

You need to work on your thought experiments pal.