Lallana's Left Peg

Yeah but if all those 500 players are established players then half the appeal for me would be lost as I would rather invest in relative unknowns or emerging players and wait for their big move or their profile to be raised and cash on. Otherwise you are by and large basically just predicting periods of form for known players? Fair enough - I mean short term trading rather than long term investments in prospects.

Came across this earlier today. Looks fun but limited to 500 players so presume its a lot of short selling rather than long term investments.

Centre half. He's come out of nowhere this season for the U21's much like Will Wood did in the same position last season. Right now we have a lot of young talent in that position (Stephens, Turnbull, McCarthy, Wood, Jones).

The popularity of English football within this country has nothing to do with having the best players. The popularity of English football outside this country has a bit to do with having the best players. If we lost the great players that play in England to a nation like China we'd lose income in the game but the fans wouldn't stop supporting their team so I don't really care much from a Saints perspective. Our support is not reliant on foreign fans like other clubs.

Koeman's press conference bits and bobs on the Saints twitter account says he expects a "higher level" of performance from him an I guess he can't do that unless he plays so he's starting with Long I presume.

Concentration and awareness are skills that can be developed but they aren't something guaranteed to improve if you work on them. Some players just have low concentration and awareness. Tactical nous and the ability to understand situations and what is expected of you in those circumstances are traits high up on the list that Saints (and most other clubs) look for in any new players.

No - they are not making the wrong decisions on purpose. But their human error - both in their judgement and being influenced by players - is a part of the theatre of the game. If football was a sport played without human error by the officials it wouldn't be as exciting.

I'll keep repeating myself because those moaning about the Academy need to understand how player recruitment works. We recruit players at the age of 8-10. That isn't a strict rule but that is largely when players first properly train with the Academy and the club has a proper handle on their ability. Two things impact this: 1. The quality of the scouting. 2. The quality of the recruitment. Scouting depends on being aware of young talent and (crucially) ensuring you are a part of the conversation when trying to attract them to the club. This is because other clubs will be interested in them as well. Your most important thing when scouting is to have a network. You don't need dozens and dozens of scouts employed by the club watching 8-10 year olds every week. You need half a dozen scouts watching identified talent and those scouts just as importantly need a network of contacts so they can be made aware of emerging talent. Sometimes those scouts will go to a game to watch a kid that has been recommended to them and identify someone else. Recruitment is about how you convince the talented kid and his parents that Saints is the place for him to be. It is about how you provide evidence that his on and off field development is best served at Saints as opposed any other club. There will also be personal factors at play which may or may not play to the clubs advantage but it is rare clubs can control them and they just have to deal with them. Now, good scouting requires money. Good recruitment requires money and the club being in a good state. Many of the last two years U18 intake were 8 in 2006, 2007 or 2008. Saints were not in a good shape back then. Budgets were being cut and the club was going in one direction. It affected our ability to identify talent and our ability to attract talent. So much so that for the past few years we have had to supplement our U18 intake with kids released from other Academies (Chelsea and Arsenal in particular). What you get with Academy investment is a payoff 10 years after you get it right. Conversely, if you get it wrong you get the issues 10 years later too. Right now the intakes are from a time when the club was not in good shape. It is not a reflection of the current regime in any respect. Neither, by the way (and in the interest of fairness), was/is JWP, Luke Shaw, Calum Chambers etc. They came into the club before the current takeover. We'll only know if Les Reed got recruitment right for the Academy team from 2019/20 onwards. That's how long it takes.

Exactly. People who want a fairer sport with more integrity aren't going to get it with football but don't understand why not. Lots of very fair sports are largely boring and definitely don't attract as much money invested into them. There is a direct correlation.

In my world if the system allows you to cheat then why wouldn't you? There are many parts of being a professional footballer that are entirely unprofessional. But the game allows it. Answer me this then. If other sports like Rugby have managed to introduce such a strict punishment system for abuse to officials and the players adhere to it (mostly), then why can't football? They can - make it a yellow card at the Ref's discretion for any foul and abusive language, or any view that a player has cheated or attempted to influence them. State you are going to do it and then do it - players will soon learn and stop it. But they haven't. Why is that?

Is that Patrick Kluivert's son starting for Holland?

It's a loss we can cope with which doesn't make it a great loss, but in my opinion its better the Devil you know in football when it comes to transfers. I'd prefer to keep him. Plus this sort of stupidity from him moves him further away from a club (and wage) that would make it more likely that he would leave in the first place.

We've even admitted it ourselves. I don't see why anyone would disagree. The idea that all the clubs in the world bar a handful are selling clubs is different to those clubs who purposefully invest in young players to develop them and sell them on for a profit. A "showcase" club or whatever it is that Les Reed said. Other clubs would understand they will always sell to bigger clubs but they are unlikely to admit it so easily in public.

He agreed a pre-contract deal back in the summer. Been a stop-start season for him injury wise, and I believe he is now injured for the rest of the season as well.

You can go through the FA rulebook if you want and 80% of it will not be adhered to. That doesn't mean a thing. It's professional because they got away with it and achieved what they wanted. Just like 'buying' a foul is, just like timewasting is etc. It's all a part of the game.

Ah - basically I am saying that without human error in officiating in tennis it means the best players win all the time and when the best players win all the time it makes the sport boring to watch. Ever watched the early rounds of a tennis tournament? Everyone is going through the motions. It feels pointless. Human error in sport (including by officials) makes it more interesting to watch - be that the chance of an upset or big clubs getting decisions etc.

Because in tennis the rules are black and white. The ball is either in or it is out, it has either hit the net or it has not. In football many of the rules are open to interpretation, not least because it is a contact sport. When the official has to make a decision based on interpretation rather than having the facts to hand he is open to be influenced because it is impossible for a human to be objective in this situation - we all have inherent biased in our decision making. So because of that players seek to influence refs and that impacts their behaviour. The most common one is when a player is offside. Often he has no idea whether he is or not, but regardless he'll give the lino abuse because he wants to cast doubt in the linos mind (the lino doesn't get to see a replay either remember) so the next time the lino isn't sure and the player may get an advantage. The West Ham players were being professional when they hassled Clattenburg on Saturday. They saw an opportunity to get angry and shout and scream at the Ref and seek to influence his behaviour - and it worked. So if it works why would you stop doing it?

Yes. It's boring to watch until the final or at best the semi-final, and even then it is only ever contested between the same players. Imagine just for a second football was like that The errors Refs make are clearly influenced by the home crowd, players, size of the club and other things (probably even Managers on the sideline). If Ref's got it right all the time then the game loses something. I'm not saying players being respectful to Ref's then mean they get decisions right all the time, but the theatre of the game means a part of it is how players act towards one another and the Ref (rightly or wrongly).

If I want to watch a sport where players are respectful to officials I'll watch Rubgy. But football is much better and good Ref's won't help it much - if we created a sport where everything was fair and correct it would be boring and rubbish to watch. Half the appeal of football is the batsh*t crazy nature of it, and the officials (their standard of officiating and how players interact with them) is a part of it.

I agree. I've set a limit of what I am prepared to pay for an away ticket this season for the first time ever. Anything more than around £35 and I won't go. Have missed out on some great away games but I'm standing firm - we're now entering a phase were ticket money is shrinking in terms of overall income for clubs and its time for a change.

In bold:

But they are both earning far more than any other team would pay them. So even if Liverpool wanted to move them on I can't see any takers based on their current wages. Lallana in particular turns 28 in the summer so whatever club buys him next will know he will have little resale value after they sign him. And lets face it, if both are at a club that appears above their level then they have no incentive to leave.

Lovren and Lallana both have futures at Liverpool, but they aren't the players the club thought they were buying a few years ago. Both attempted to better themselves and thus far neither have to the degree they would have hoped. But they are richer. Much richer.

That is a small part of it - but overall it's basically buying a development 'package' from Southampton and applying it to your club. But I don't think it will work well because a lot of how Saints develop players is down to the amount of contact they have with them and they won't have anywhere near as much contact in the US and then you have to take into account that any good player will then be recruited by a college (at the age of around 17) and then the rest of their development is in the collegiate system. So as I said - access to our IP of how we develop players and then applying it to your environment.

An interesting idea but basically we're charging ten clubs money to have access to our IP and then we'll see if that positively helps the way they develop footballers. I'm guessing it won't because of the massive difference in how players are coached and the amount of contact players have with their teams over here compared to over there but I suppose it is worth a shot.