Redslo

I didn't follow Southampton (or, for that matter, English football) back during the Delap days but I have a question. Did Delap have his great long throw when he played for Southampton?

The hostile attitude to statistical analysis sounds like what baseball fans were saying in the '70s and '80s. They were wrong but not completely. Now they would be completely wrong. We don't know whether football will turn out to be as subject to statistical analysis as baseball as technology advances and more science gets done but it is foolish to reject the idea that statistical analysis, when done right, can add insight to the process or running a football club.

Chambers probably needs to leave Arsenal too. After the first few months, he has hardly played. And he will not be going to the Euro's (one would hope).

The thing is that Fonte is going to be getting worse as he ages so I would like a good young defender to slowly take over for him. Yoshida is not that person. Gardos we cannot evaluate but we can rightly be skeptical. Stephens and Turnball are not there yet and may never be. So yes I would take Toby back. We could play him in a back three with Bertrand as the wing back.

Let's buy him back for 12.5 million then. Remind me, who has the headless chicken role for Southampton?

I would pay 4 million a year to beat Manchester United away. (By I, I mean on behalf of Southampton FC. I myself don't have that kind of money.)

I assumed this was a deliberate choice to make a point.

I also assumed that Bertrand had had enough of being overpaid to sit on the bench and moved to us because he wanted to play. If he went to Man U he would be on the bench as soon as Shaw is back. Maybe sooner if he has a bad game.

I think he objected to my typing.

I have to agree with the OP. I once sent Jordan Sibley and email and he didn't respond.

The real entertainment would come from watching Chelsea in the Championship next year--alas, something that would be hard to do from the USA.

I think it is pretty clear that, unlike Osvaldo, Ramirez has had no significant negative effect on morale.

I really have trouble envisioning him at Arsenal with his passing skills. On the other hand, he would improve Man U by putting him back next to Schneiderlin--especially if Carrick and schweinsteiger are going to have trouble staying healthy.

I think the idea would be that we are one of the bigger sides doing the hovering. Certainly, a high quality 19 year old with with a lower league English club is more likely to believe he can get a game with us that with Chelsea, Man City, or Man U. And for young players who are not automatically going to start, our salaries are probably pretty close to competitive with the bigger clubs. That was my understanding as well and it is what it says in this post: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?45712-Keeping-track-of-the-contracts

Do we really think that Stephens is ready to play in the premier league given he didn't get enough playing time on loan? Is Gardos close to full fitness? Is it likely that Martina can play CB at a premier league level? Don't we need even more back ups at CB if we are going to play three at the back? Don't we need to prepare in advance for Fonte's inevitable decline--he is 32 now after all? These are all questions.

can't you see his tweets via the regular internet without logging into your twitter account?

Don't we need a centre back to replace Caulker?

He is doing better right now than Cristiano Ronaldo.

Nothing you have said here is exactly wrong, but it is incomplete. First, everything I can find says Osvaldo was released and paid off on July 1, 2015. If true, his salary counts against this year and, therefore, would also be freed up for next year. Second, net profits from transfer activities can also be used to increase salary. Given our trading profits from the last couple of years--and the likely profit from this year--we have not really been limited by the salary cap plus 4 million limit upon which you are focused. We have been limited by the apparent intent of our owner to run the team on a sustainable (which I think means break even) basis. If this is correct, nothing else really matters. We will be at a significant disadvantage compared to owners willing to kick in money or willing to move to a bigger and more lucrative stadium. In other words, we are going to be losing ground (relatively speaking) on Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham, Crystal Palace, Liverpool, and both Manchester United and City. Third, any club that is hoping to make Europe needs to meet the UEFA FFP rules. Any club that is merely competing for survival or midtable status need only meet the much less stringent Premier League rules. Thus, we are likely to be in a position where we will routinely be outspent by clubs who are not currently as good as us. Fourth, growing our commercial income will help but not a lot. Certainly not as much as West Ham's new stadium or any likely influx of cash from Crystal Palace's new investor. If Southampton FC is to continue you compete successfully at any particular level in the Premier League, it will have to be by being better at scouting, recruitment, coaching, and playing that the other clubs trying to compete at the same level. There is no reason we should not be able to out compete the relegation candidates this way, but mid-table is going to be tough from now on. I discussed related issues in a couple of my blog posts last summer. Nothing significant has changed since then except we have had a suboptimal season: http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2015/05/shattering-glass-ceiling-part-five.html http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-new-financial-fair-play-rules.html No, it has not. There was a lot of talk about the relaxation of European FFP, but when you look at the rules as published--not so much. It is possible that there is greater relaxation in the rules that will come out when they are interpreted for eligibility in next year's European competition but those changes are likely to all be to the detriment of English clubs. I discuss this in the second blog post listed above. We do not know this yet. As far as I can determine, the Premier League has not yet decided on the size of the new automatically permitted salary cap increase. However, it is not going to be massive. Very likely they will do something like they did for the last TV contract and increase it by X pounds each of the three seasons. Since the increase in the TV money was larger, the increase might be more than 4 million pounds but we do not know yet. One thing that is certain, however, is that the owners of the Premier League will be happy to make a rule that stops them from giving all their new money to the players. The salary cap will certainly not jump 70% in one year. The current base salary total is 56 million a year. There is no way the increase from the new TV contract is going to be put entirely in the first year. If the total increase over the three years is 2 billion that works out to about 30 million per club per year (allowing for the fact that not all money will go directly to EPL clubs--parachute payments, for example). Not all of that is going to be allocated to salary and, as I stated, I think the increases will be spread over the full three years so maybe an increase of 8 million a year would be right--so 64 million next year and then 72 and 80. But again it doesn't really matter for Southampton FC because the limit that applies to us is that imposed by our owner's willingness to invest her own money.

But, aren't they really?

On American TV replay it was not offside.

Did they really switch sides or was it simply a decision to play Fonte in the middle when playing three in back and Betrand had to be on the left?

There seems to be a fair bit of nonsense or stupidity here. I will try to put some thinking into my response. First, John Cleese may well have made the Nazi salute as part of a sketch, but he did not making a living with anti-semitic remarks. Second, you man not think that John Cleese has done anything funny recently, but 40 years ago predates Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and Fish Called Wanda. And his recent appearances on American talk shows have been funny. More importantly, whether or not Spurs fans should be calling themselves Yids, the appropriate response is some version of "our club is better than yours" or "we are going to beat you today" not facist salutes or imitating the sound of gas chambers. If cannot see this distinction, your brain is broken and you should have it checked out immediately. In any case, the appropriate response to someone filing a complaint about racist behavior is not telling the complaining party to get a life, but is complimenting them on their willingness to spend their time and risk abuse to improve the world by identifying a problem and trying to fix it. The fact that fans of various other clubs have at times said inappropriate things about the events in Hillsborough, Munich, and Istanbul is not a reason to excuse or encourage similar behavior. It is a reason to be more vigilant when such things occur and work harder to stop this kind of behavior. Football's problem is not too little bad behavior by fans at the matches. A claim that the fans say these things only to wind up the opposing fans is not a valid excuse or justification. If anything, it is worse than the expression of racism by an actual racist who, at least, has the virtue of truthfully expressing a deeply held belief, not just trying to cause trouble. Of course, racist chanting cannot be excused on that basis and it is, in fact, one of football's big problems. To put it another way, it is possible to express a dislike for the Spurs without being a hateful bigot. Saints fans could, for example, chant about how they stole our song. One could also express curiosity about exactly what a Hotspur is. (I actually don't know but will look it up now--ok that didn't really help.)

When we buy players, their transfer fees are amortized over the life of the contract no matter when the cash is actually paid. On the other hand, transfer fees for the players we sell are income immediately (except for contingent add ons, of course). Thus, the 45 million is inflated relative to our true cash flow situation. Even more so if you assume, as I do, that the club wants to make sure money to pay salaries is available in case of an emergency (such as relegation, for example). I suspect we did not think that cherry picking other PL clubs would be the best use of money. Also, I really don't think we can expect to take players from Palace or other London clubs. And it is not clear to me which players from West Brom or Stoke we would have wanted this past summer. There might be some now, of course, but that is a different matter. Really, all we are missing is getting lucky with a goal scorer like Leicester and Watford have done this year. I am relatively confident there is no way to ensure that you get lucky that way however.

we won't get 40 million with just one year left on his contract.