Redslo

And yet some how Greg Dyke thinks it is good idea to increase the home grown requirements so that the richer clubs will need even more home grown players.

To the American ear, the plural always sounds right in this context--Manchester United are the best club in the world. No wait. That doesn't sound right either. Never mind. But I will stop worrying about the plural singular question in my blog writing and focus on eliminating every last reference to soccer--unless I am writing about Major League Soccer, of course.

According to the FA cup rules for 2014-2015: 15. PROVISIONS CONCERNING PLAYERS (a) Each team participating in a match shall represent the full available strength of each competing Club. According to the League Cup Rules for 2014-2015: 6.5 Each Club shall play its full available strength in and during all Cup Competition matches, unless some satisfactory reason is given. The Board will from time to time issue a policy as to what constitutes ‘full available strength’. In the event of the explanation not being deemed satisfactory the Management Committee shall have power to impose such penalties as they shall think fit. The provisions governing disciplinary matters in relation to the Competition are contained in Rule 23. In attempting to find what the policy is I could only find this two year old article which has some information (don't be confused--the article refers to both the NBA's San Antonio Spurs and Tottenham): http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/regulation-a-governance/item/resting-players-and-squad-rotation-comparing-english-football-and-the-nba If the article is right anyone one registered on the 25 man roster or an under-21 is good enough to play without getting into trouble. The Premier League did weaken its version of the rules after fining Blackpool a few years ago: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/jul/15/premier-league-weakened-teams-holloway

Swansea probably could. Manchester City could if their expensive new academy works out.

Or we could pay 10 million pounds for him.

It shows that Donatello should start a blog, but that you probably should not bother to read it. Or this. Inferentially, it would support my thesis (posted on my blog) that the newly proposed homegrown rules will cause the richer clubs to buy young players away from other clubs at age 15 so as to get them to qualify as club trained. There can be no doubt that right now our academy is the most effective. It will be interesting to see if Manchester City's massively expensive academy can start developing players in time to replace their current players as the age into uselessness. Also, will Chelsea do anything with its fine crop of young players. (Probably not under current management.) By the way, I was serious about the blog. That was a good bit of research which I would love to see extended for the whole league. Where did you get the info? Can you provide a link?

I no longer type soccer by mistake. I sometimes confuse my American friends when I refer to football. I try to remember use club to refer to the club as a whole and team to refer to the people selected to play on a give day. I am not entirely sure that is a thing, but it seems to be. I do not fully understand when a group of people are singular or plural ,however. Also, thank you.

By definition we would not refuse an offer we can't refuse. Liebherr needs to increase security on her horses.

Good.....................................................................................................................................................................Point.

I think we can be completely sure they have been working on plans to replace anyone who might go. What if we get a 25 million pound offer for Bertrand or Pelle? Unlikely I admit, but they would be accepted and plans would be in place to replace them.

I can confirm that there is more complexity but addressing it would require inside information about the club's finances so there is nothing we can do but speculate. My speculation is that the desire to get to (at least) a break even cash flow basis is the limiting factor not the wage salary cap. I believe that Liebherr does not want to keep putting in the 12 to 15 million pounds per year that she could put in under UEFA's FFP rules. This is supported by a comment I remember (but cannot now find) about how they had to recalculate everything last summer after each transaction. That only really makes sense if cash flow was the big concern...but I could be wrong.

Toby?

I agree that this is probably what will happen, but the Cork situation is not comparable. Cork was not guaranteed a better contract if he waited and he wanted to play. Unless we can credibly threaten to not play Clyne next season we have no leverage like we did with Cork.

All good points. However, it does appear that we are nowhere near approaching the standard salary cap for the current year (56 million). Remember that even though our salary expense last year was over 60 million, a large chunk of that was not for players and, therefore, did not count against the FFP salary cap rules.

You can't sell someone who doesn't want to be sold. Clyne can insist on compliance with his contract and stay for one more year and then leave on a free. It is what he did at Crystal Palace. Despite how annoying it might be to Southampton for him to do this, football clubs do not actually own their players. They own limited contractual rights. When they sign a player they have to consider the possibility that the player will insist on the contract being fulfilled as signed. Admittedly the terms of his new contract at Manchester United (or wherever) might be so favorable that he will allow himself to be sold, but it is his choice.

Could be he wants to stay to run out his contract so that next summer he would get the millions that would have been spent on his transfer fee. Nothing wrong with him doing this of course. I don't understand why more players don't do this.

The thinking was that his contract was expiring in the summer and a few million pounds was better than nothing and that midfield was not a current weakness such that he was necessary. This was an entirely rational decision--even though we could have used him at various times since when injuries or suspensions kicked in.

Agree with the bolded part. I have no strong preference on the others but it might be amusing to watch "The True Geordie" freak out when Newcastle loses to both Middlesboro and Sunderland.

Of course, if that is your way of thinking, exactly what are you trying to accomplish. We are not likely to win the league. This year may have been our best shot at Champions League football--at least for a while. Will we become a strange version of Arsenal and shoot for our 8th place trophy every year? This.

ESPN FC, a TV show here in the USA, often has the referee in charge of MLS's referees on to discuss calls and tell the pundits where they got it wrong. They rarely listen. In any case, reply should be added for off sides calls because they can be done reliably and quickly. I am not too sure about anything else just because of the subjective nature of the calls. The NFL added replay but generally it is used for objective determinations, not subjective ones.

I suspect the right to use the footage would be incorporated into the TV contract without any significant change in the price. I certainly don't remember it being any kind of an issue for the NFL when they introduced replay review.

I definitely think we should sign some players we are linked with even though I have never seen them play. If we didn't there would be hardly any players we could sign--except ones we are never linked with.

But at Arsenal doesn't it appear to be a question of when someone will get injured not if?

I have been stalling writing about our most recent financial report on my blog in the hopes that Swiss Ramble would cover it and I could avoid all that work and thinking. Victory.

I just posted "I Make Predictions (Round 36)."