Redslo

You do realize that sixth place now qualifies for Europe and if Arsenal, Man U, or Liverpool win the FA Cup seventh place will qualify too.

Barcelona is under a transfer embargo this summer. Morgan will not be going there before January. Of course, if we make the Champions League but get eliminated in the group stage that might be perfect timing.

FFP prohibits that kind of spending except on things like stadiums and youth programs.

It is completely excluded from FFP calculations, including any interest on loans to fund it. That is one reason why many clubs are looking to build or expand stadiums--those costs do not count against FFP but the increased income counts as FFP income.

The trip has been planned for a while.

Early in the season it appeared as if our players were taking more shots from distance than they did under the prior manager. Were they ignoring instructions then? Or are they ignoring them now? Or have the instructions changed? Or is this not actually the problem?

I cannot say how much they will offer him but we are 25th on Deloitte's money list and Wolfsburg is not in the top 30. Strange as it may seem, due to the size of the Premier League's TV contracts, we have more money that Wolfsburg. According to FM 2015 their top ten players are paid more than our top ten players but below that ours are paid as well or better.

Tottenham too, strangely.

Humor.

I can't dispute the bigger club and Champion's League points, but we can probably afford to pay him more than he is making right now. FM 2015 says he is making just under 34K pounds per week. Everton's finances are discussed in detail here. http://swissramble.blogspot.com/search/label/Everton

I posted "I make Predictions (Round 28)". It includes magic number updates which are less fun when we lose. http://redsloscf.blogspot.co.uk/ http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/

We can afford to pay someone 80K per week, but not too many someones. Assume our salary cap next year is the basic 60 million and we have to play 25 players. (These assumptions are both wrong. We could probably go a bit above 60 million, but we have to pay more than 25 players. Therefore, my assumptions are good enough for a basic calculation.) That is an average of just over 46K per week for each player. Since the cap includes most bonuses, the actual face weekly average has to be lower than that amount. Using the figures from FM 2015 the current average for our top 25 paid players is 34K per week. http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2015/02/southampton-weekly-salaries-update.html So there is some room to increase pay or sign new players but this is only the salary cap. Other FFP rules limit our loses and it is not clear that we are breaking even for FFP purposes with our current salary structure. And breaking even under FFP is still losing money in the real world. If Katharina Liebherr really wants the club to pay its own way then that limits our spending even more. Plus, there is the effect on other players. The squad as a whole would probably tolerate paying Schneiderlin that much money to resign him and maybe Toby and Clyne as well but it would increase the pay everyone else will expect when they sign new (or first) contracts with the club. Thus, we need to increase our income to increase pay rates across the board. Making the Champions League this year would help--making the Europa League would not really matter unless we could be sure of selling out St. Mary's for each game at a nice high ticket price. The new TV contract will help but the premier league will almost certainly limit how much of it can be used for player's salaries.

It was called in the Olympic woman's semi-final between Canada and USA. It was a decisive but unpopular call. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/sports/olympics/referees-call-in-womens-soccer-semifinal-prompts-debate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I do not understand why making Europe seems unlikely. The top six will almost certainly make Europe. There is a good chance the top seven will make Europe. We are still in fifth place. Why is finishing better than eighth place unlikely?

Given our current position and upcoming schedule this would ensure lots of 0-0 draws with bottom half teams.

To be fair, not winning when we outplay the other team is our weakness.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not saying this is not a significant amount of money. As a rough approximation, it is what it would take to sign Clyne, Schneiderlin, and Wanyama to 100K per week contracts. That would certainly matter. It just wouldn't catch us up to the richer clubs.

I addressed this in my blog: http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2015/01/southamptons-european-roster-issues.html] For European purposes we need four club trained players. We have only two Isgrove and Schneiderlin. Unless we loan back someone like Walcott or Bale, that is the best we can do in that category so our European roster will be limited to 23. For European purposes we need four association trained players. For Premier League purposes we need eight: We have eight: Bertrand, Barnes, Clyne, Cropper, Davis, Davis, Forster, and Rodriguez (plus Schneiderlin and Isgrove). Some of them are less useful than others, of course. Even if we are left only with Bertrand, Davis S, and Forster, I don't see it being a problem buying another English player. I do see a problem if we are playing in Europe with no club trained players, but we sign eight English players for the Premier League. That would mean that four roster players are not eligible for Europe. That might make some folks unhappy. However, we should still have enough players over all because are young players are not counted against these limits so Reed, Targett, and Ward-Prowse, for example, could all still play without taking up one of the 25 roster slots.

I wanted to edit my post to add this, but edit did not work right for some reason. There is an ongoing challenge to FFP that started its court hearings this week. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/financial-fair-play-under-threat-brussels-court-case-could-potentially-lead-to-rules-being-scrapped-10070581.html

You are wrong. Liverpool was cleared because they did nothing wrong. They lost lots of money but it was spent on infrastructure things which are excluded expenses under FFP. Hull was given a minor penalty because they did very little wrong. Their loses included time in the Championship and they had no reason--coming into last season--to expect that they had to comply with the stricter European FFP rules. It would be a different matter if Southampton qualified for Europe and then went crazy signing people to salaries that are unaffordable under FFP with our financial situation. However, it would no prevent us from playing in Europe next year, but they might withhold some of our prize money. There are really only two ways to get around FFP (as opposed to complying with the spirit and letter of the rules): 1) refuse to follow it and go to court. If you win, FFP goes away for everyone; and, 2) get a rich friend (not family member) who is financially independent of you to way overpay your club for sponsorships. If Katharina Liebherr could convince, for example, Paul Allen to become our new shirt sponsor for 30 M pounds a year and pay a similar amount for stadium naming rights, that would work--so long as she did not get caught offering equivalent sponsorships to the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders--clubs owned by Paul Allen. ManCity is trying a third way, but shifting some of its losses into related companies--specifically the companies running their Australian and American soccer clubs. How that will be accepted is as yet unknown. However, I don't believe anyone Liebherr should buy two more football teams from outside of Europe to help her lose money more efficiently. It is true that by wanting Southampton to break even on its own, Liebherr is forgoing the opportunity to put in roughly 8M pounds a year plus the cost of the Youth Development program and any infrastructure expenses. So possibly she is demonstrating a lack of ambition to the tune of 10-15 M pounds a year, but that is hardly going to let us catch Chelsea, Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Tottenham. It might let us catch Everton and Newcastle, but we have already done that haven't we. I suspect you probably did dream about that, but your dream was slightly off reality. They were limited to registering 21 players for the Champions League. They were limited to a net transfer spend of 49 M pounds. Their European salary was capped at the same level as last years and they were fined about 49 M pounds but two thirds of it was suspended. They were also assigned specific limits on their losses for the next two years--although those actually helped them because the three year rolling loss limits would have been more stringent.

Remember Schneiderlin counts as both English and French for home grown purposes.

Yah. Clearly, we will win 0-1.

FFP is not our problem here. It is that we have less money. FFP does limited how much money Katharina Liebherr can donate to the club, but she was never going to donate as much as Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour or enough to compete with Man U's commercial income. Unless someone like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Carlos Slim is going to buy us FFP generally favors us. We can see this year how FFP has limited both Chelsea and Manchester City, but not Manchester United.

Since two of these superstars haven't played in the last few weeks and one has only play a little bit, this doesn't seem like a likely explanation.

I just posted "Southampton Weekly Salaries (Update final FM 2015 database)"