Redslo

I just published a transcript of this interview on my blog. http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/ http://redsloscf.blogspot.co.uk/

From my current perspective of age 57, the difference in maturity between a 20 year old and a 29 year old seems minimal, I know that it isn't. We can not expect a team full of youngsters to succeed without some older and wiser players on the squad. I would think having Pelle around would help out Gallagher, for example.

I will be posting a transcript on my blog later today. (Today in California time, not that crazy English time.)

I don't think people would have been happier if they were refusing to answer questions about them.

A FULL DAYS WORTH OF RESPONSES IN ONE HANDY POST: I have to admit my surprise that someone actually provided an actual answer to the question. Which is probably just as well since we need them to sign their 18-year old long term contract rather than just a 17 year old two year contract. I partially agree with you. However, I am not convinced that Koeman would leave early if a big club came in for him. I expect him to sign a one year extension and then take over Holland after the 2018 WC. This is speculation. I am not claiming to be ITK. If you think this is bad you should see what Republican candidates for president get when they open up their twitter account for questions. Perhaps. But you won't be asking any of them. So you are saying that you status is so well establish that bringing it up is unoriginal? This. However, I suspect that the legal maneuvering is still ongoing so he can't answer them now. Good point. Why is MLG so hesitant to express his opinion about Southampton FC? You would think that someone in his position would have a detailed position on every player and every aspect of the skill set. He should also have an opinion not just on how good our current players are, but how good they can be. MLG, stop goofing off and get to work. It is possible Toby did not know he wanted to go to Spurs for two months. Or maybe he did, but lied about it to the club. From the outside, it looks like the club's Toby strategy was to exercise the option, wait for Athletico to buy out the option, and then negotiate. They never bought out the option. Instead, they ignored the contract. I am not sure how they should have anticipated this. (Although they (and everyone else) should anticipate this in the future when dealing with Athletico. They contrast poorly with Juventus, for example.) I left out the rest of your post because this part, with which I agree, more or less negates you individual criticisms. We do not know enough about what has gone on inside the club to know if any of the criticisms are valid. I certainly think it would have been smart to resign Clyne before selling Chambers last summer, but do we know the club didn't try to do this? Depends. It may well turn out to be a negotiating tactic that gets us more money for a player we never owned and were not going to be able to sign. That would be a disaster. Instead of selling him for a big loss now, he stays and helps us and we take a slightly bigger loss next year. Actually, that didn't work as well as it should have or we would have finished 5th. I guess he actually answered some of the crazy questions here, albeit neither directly nor intentionally. Not sure how you can reach that conclusion.

I would ask "Aren't you glad you have a real job working for Southampton FC so that you are too busy to read the ignorant, foolish, malignant drivel so many fans post on the internet?'

The players will all be wearing VR glasses too so they will see massive stadiums full of fanatical supporters.

And if they are not playing in Europe, they can lose up to 35 million pounds a year under Financial Fair Play so long as the owner puts the money back in.

That was also my reaction to this. I certainly think better of Juventus right now than I do of Athletico.

In the United States, they would probably bill you for the cost of imprisoning your daughter.

I would rather know what Koeman implied in the interview.

Nice try David.

Thumbs up to a good groundbreaking post.

I slightly disagree. There is a glass ceiling, but it is not what is blocking us because our owner does not want to kick in hundreds of millions of pounds to buy players. If she wanted to do that, FFP would constitute a glass ceiling that would block her. This is a faulty, but understandable, perception. When we got promoted from the Championship, we had players who would have looked good to midtable clubs, but those clubs could not offer significant salary increases so there was no interest by our players in leaving. The same was true after our first year in the premier league. Now our players look good to clubs playing in the Champions league who can out pay us. However, world-wide there are really only 20 to 30 clubs who can out pay us. In other words, because of our rich owner, we avoided several years of poaching so it looks like it is worse now. But two years ago Everton could have taken one of our players. That seems unlikely now. Assuming we avoid relegation, the situation will improve with the new TV contract. At point there might only be 10 to 15 clubs world wide that can take our players using their financial power. Unfortunately, six of those clubs are in the Premier League. I think that is an over reaction. If we have a bad year, fewer of our players will look good enough to poach and we will be better able to recover the next year. So long as we avoid having a bad enough year to get relegated we should be fine. Who is Andy Murray? We were in 9th place. Since the official premier league table shows us as currently being in 13th place I guess we have dropped off a little. On the other hand, he did leave us with some unnecessary problems in the cash flow area. Also, Osvaldo. We could but, as you pointed out, the issue is money. I have already addressed this in some detail in an earlier post so I am not sure what more there is to say. And, yes I see the irony in posting this long response. I guess you could say there is no glass ceiling because it is not hidden and we all know that it is there, but FFP does impose a ceiling on what we can do in the short and medium term. In the long run, we are all dead. Thank you.

Taking out the emotional blither blather and treating the original post as a serious question, here is my answer: The primary long term determinate of a football clubs success is what it pays its players relative to its competition. Chapter Two of "Money and Football" by Stefan Szymanski demonstrates this quite clearly. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Money-Football-Soccernomics-Stefan-Szymanski/dp/1568585268/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436174091&sr=1-1&keywords=money+and+football Obviously this factor can be mitigated somewhat by running the club well (and avoiding running it as poorly as QPR, for example). However, in the long run no one club is always well run. No club always gets its transfer activities right all the time. To improve our league position we need to increase our income so that we can increase what we can afford to pay players. But this has to be an increase relative to the rest of the league. How can that be done? We can increase ticket prices to the point where they maximize revenue. Of course, that strategy would outrage the true fans. Based upon this year's ticket prices, it appears that the club is not trying to greatly increase revenue this way. Of course, cup runs and European games will increase ticket sales and income. Obviously, the club wants to progress in that fashion. We can increase our merchandizing sales. Individual fans can help by buying lots of shirts and what not, but the club can only do this by increasing its appeal around England and around the world. This can happen by the club performing well and getting favorable publicity and by the people running the club making good decisions on how to attract new fans. There is good reason to believe the club is working on this. We can increase our commercial income by getting more and better paying sponsors. The club is clearly working on this. We can increase our TV revenue relative to other premier league clubs. European participation will do this some. Finishing higher up in the league does this as well. Being selected to appear in the nationally televised games also increases revenue. If we qualify for the group phase we will have a significant TV revenue increase this year not just because of the money from Europe but because the additional Sunday games are more likely to end up on TV--if we are playing well. Obviously, the club is doing all it can do in this area. We can make money buying and selling players. We appear to be doing this. In fact, selling a couple of our best players each year may not be a bug, but a feature of our club's financial plans--just as Chelsea relies upon their buy and selling of players to make the profit they need to support the first team. The difference is that we are not building up a stable of good young players who will never play for us just to sell them at a profit. Maybe we should be doing this. Our owner can put more money into the club up to the limits imposed by financial fair play. Although Liebherr has put money into the club in the past, the sustainability talk we here from the club suggests that her goal is not to pump in the 7 to 15 million pounds a year (the exact amount is uncertain for a variety of reasons most of which would be known to the club insiders, but not to me) European Financial Fairplay would allow. Of course, Liebherr might change her mind, but right now it looks like the club is not exercising this option. I posted a relevant blog on this subject back in January. http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2015/01/financial-fair-play-friend-or-foe.html Based upon the latest numbers (for the 2013-2014 season) to catch Tottenham (the least rich club in the top six) we would have to increase our turnover by 75 million more than Tottenham increases their turnover. Given that they are going to move to a big new stadium in the next few years, this does not seem likely--assuming the loan repayment costs on the stadium do not eat up all the additional profit. Even if that were to happen, the rich owner of Tottenham could cover those costs out of pocket without violating FFP. However, the connection between what player are paid and the results on the field is not a perfect one. There may be years when we get lucky relative to the richer clubs and finish ahead of some of them. If we are close to them, superior club management might make the difference. In a way that is what is disappointing about the past season. Good as it was, we all feel that with just a small number of breaks we could have finished fourth. A chance like that may not come along again for a while. Edit: Why did I stay up to 2:41 am to write this? Good night all.

Thank you for that explanation although now I will have to go back and read what I said again. However, I will say that I am not particularly self-righteous, I just happen to always be right.

True. But if they had refused to negotiate we could have gone ahead without the agreement and seen what the court system decided. Perhaps the same process will happen here, the difference is that rangers had no way to retain Davis whereas we still want Toby.

But you appear to know that you don't know anything (except how to make a possessive) so really you know more than most.

Clearly, any post that could bring Turkish, CB Fry, MLG, and hypochondriac (and possibly other worthies whose notoriety I am too new here to recognize) together serves a useful purpose. Also, I am trying to cheer alpine up so he can live a fuller and happier life--albeit by becoming a Manchester United fan.

Possibly there is no way forward in the sense you mean. However, the fact that you don't see it is meaningless since you are not inside the club with knowledge of their plans. Maybe Reed and company do see a way forward. Either way, I am not sure what you are upset about. Nearly six years ago you were complaining that Lallana and Schneiderlin were not good enough for League 1 and had suspect temperament and commitment (whatever that means). http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?16021-The-midfield-is-the-problem http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?16361-List-the-players-still-at-SFC-with-suspect-temperament-commitment I was going to link to some of your other posts since then to further demonstrate your excessive pessimism, but I decided not the bother because I am confident that issue is not in dispute. Your club has had a remarkable run of improvement during the past six years after nearly disappearing completely. Why not enjoy this and try to be happy instead of always looking for the worst and spreading doom and gloom? The new season is a blank slate. We might win the Europa League and qualify for the Champions League. We might drop off a bit with all the games we could have to play (possibly as many as 73 although that is very unlikely) but relegations seems unlikely so you should be able to enjoy your club playing at the highest level again the year after next. How is any of this intolerable? Or if it really is intolerable, why are you tolerating it. Just become a fan of Chelsea, Man U, Man City, or Barcelona. They don't have a glass ceiling so I am sure you would find nothing to complain about with them. We were the big fish in a smaller pond and, as a result, our players didn't look that good to clubs that could afford to out spend us. The one player that did look that good Cortese sold.

In the past several years, Tottenham has sold its two best players and seems likely to sell Lloris this summer. I doubt Toby is concerned about these factors. Money, where he wants to live, and which club is likely to both play him and play well this coming season are probably his only real concerns. After all, if he does well for either club this year there will be pressure to sell him on again.

Isn't that a song by Queen? Or is it Billy Joel?

Thanks for the offers. However, I am pretty sure that would violate the conditions of the sale. While I think it is unlikely that the California State Bar would notice and discipline me, I try to avoid such problems. All you will get to read is my analysis of part of the new Financial Fair Play rules using information from their report. Last year's report may be good enough for my purposes. It will almost certainly be more accurate that Football manager and I use their information all the time.

Do it on an empty stomach?

Your response sounds insulting, but I actually don't understand what it is supposed to mean. This insulting response I do understand, but it is pointless. I use FM information for a few purposes. This, obviously, is not one of them. So what is your point? I almost want to stay up all night to see what happens.