Redslo

Thank you. I have read a lot of Bill James.

No doubt. There will also be some change for the worse.

I have no idea. My point is that if the UK acts unilaterally, so will other countries and it cannot be predicted what they will do. Maybe they will impose a tax on all financial transactions with the UK thereby hurting London's status as a major financial player. Maybe France will refuse to let UK citizens visit their country unless they have been individually vetted and certified as not being terrorists. Maybe someone will put a tariff on UK airplane engines or pharmaceuticals. Maybe nothing will happen. Still it is better to negotiate a satisfactory deal than to take a chance.

There is some faulty reasoning here. Just because some of the best players of all time are still great players in their early thirties does not mean that they are still at their peak. Ronaldo is clearly not as good this year as he was a few years ago. The same is true of Ibrahimović. And that assumes they remain healthy. Older players tend to get injured more and and heal less quickly. Athletes reach their physical peak sometime in their early to mid-20s. For sports which there is a high learning curve (and football is one of them) they can continue to improve into their late 20s because their increased mental ability makes up for the drop in physical skills. This is, I believe, partially correct. I can illustrate why best by talking about major league baseball pitchers. It was long thought that pitchers who did not primarily rely on the fastball would be able to pitch at a higher level longer than those who succeeded by blasting the ball past the batters with their speed. It turns out that this was not correct. A pitcher with a 95 mph fastball can still pitch in the major leagues even if he loses speed--so long as he makes appropriate adjustments and learns to use other pitches effectively. (Nolan Ryan was still pitching in the major leagues at age 46 and he was the best known fastball pitcher of all time.) A pitcher who does not throw that fast will, at some point, stop throwing fast enough to fool major league batters no matter how good his breaking ball. Bring it back to football--a fast striker can lose some of his speed and still be effective if he can learn other skills. A slow striker will become too slow to be useful. The same would be true for goal keepers and central defenders except that the minimum speed they need to play at the highest level is lower. However, even a central defender who is outstanding at positioning himself will eventually become too slow to get to the right spot in time. If he starts out faster, he will be able to do the job longer before that time comes. In addition, there is the cumulative effect of wear and tear on the body. At some point anyone who has spent decades smashing their head into the ball and their body into the ground and other players is going to wear out. Positions (like goal keeper) which involve less of this wear and tear allow their practitioners to have longer careers. As relevant to Southampton, Fonte has never been a speed player so we have to be prepared for him to be unable to do the job sometime in the next few years. Long, on the other hand, has speed to burn right now and could remain effective if he can make up for the loss of speed in other ways. However, if he loses the endurance that allows him to be so annoying to the other team for the whole game, that would be a different matter--but he still might be effective as someone you bring on the play the last 30 minutes.

Because if you do it unilaterally, they will retaliate and makes things bad for the UK in other areas which would matter to you.

At age 29 with only one outstanding season, Vardy is not going to sell for 30 million. Kante is only a year younger than Schneiderlin and we only got 25 million for him last year. However, there are three more years on his contract so you probably could get something more--especially with the new TV contract inflating player values. For that reason, you might be undervaluing Mahrez if the big clubs decide he is this year's Sterling (but Sterling was much younger) and go crazy for him especially since he also signed a four year contract last summer.

I'd make him a striker.

Had Wenger signed Luke Shaw for 2 million things would have been very different. We might have been relegated having to play Fox all the time while Shaw would not have gotten the necessary first team playing time to develop. Instead, he probably would have turned into another one of those injury prone Arsenal players.

I slightly disagree. AOC's former presence here would make him an advantageous person to have on the squad if we qualify for Europe. In effect, he would be a free player who could be added to our squad list without having to remove anyone else we would be likely to play. I am also skeptical that sports writers in general make things up. I think they accurately report things that other people make up and tell them and do an insufficient job of checking the facts before publishing them. Otherwise I agree with you.

the Olympic stadium deal with help them as will the new tv contract. I suspect they have been more willing that we to spend next year's money this year. But they do take in more than we do and that will (aside from league position) only change to our detriment over the next several years. See this Swiss Ramble article about them: http://swissramble.blogspot.com/search/label/West%20Ham

I think the violence and bigotry that has flowed out of the religious affiliations of Celtic and Rangers fans demonstrates quite clearly why religion should be kept out of football. The fact that I might have difficulty convincing a die hard Ranger or Celtic fan of this would in no way suggest that my point of view was wrong.

This is an inappropriately placed endorsement of Festivus.

I think he wanted to formally register his opposition to what the club did and pretty much didn't care whether people agreed or not. I should mention that I would generally agree that religion should be kept out of football, but I interpreted the clubs announcement as a joke/pun and, therefore, inoffensive. I do remember getting into it with some folks last year are religious related arguments here, but don't remember what they were about right now. For whatever reason, those were important enough to me to take a stand. This wasn't. I am pretty sure that it is all, not just Christianity.

Even when the match did not end in a draw.

It is looking like it will not happen this year which means that it is safe through the 2017-2018 season. The Juventus-Bayern Munich game is important. If Juventus is knocked out Italy probably cannot catch England this year. However, it is looking like England and Italy will start next year pretty close to even so the results next year could take away the fourth slot for 2018-2019. On the other hand, if Juventus wins and goes on to the finals and both Man City and Arsenal are knocked out this week, it could still happen this year. Because of how well Italy did last season, the fourth spot is going to remain potentially at risk for the next three years.

Leicester's success is due to a number of factors many of which were not within their actual control--such as their low number of injuries and Vardy's and Mahrez's surprisingly prolific scoring. Also, the best and worst clubs are not as far apart in quality this year which makes it easier to get to the top of the League. If Pelle has scored like Vardy last year and Mane had scored like Mahrez and everyone had remained healthy we might have competed for the title and we certainly would have finished ahead of Manchester United, Tottenham, and Liverpool.

That won't happen so long as you keep relegation. Close enough for the purposes of this discussion. However, all American sports leagues work on some variant of this process and there is probably no way to make it work in England, because, as I said, relegation would have to go. Also, a critical part of American sports balance is that there must be a way of allocating players that gives an advantage to the weaker clubs--in other words a draft where the lowest finishing club drafts first before the next season. I don't think European labor law would permit this--although perhaps the UK could implement it after leaving the EU. Also, American law allows players to be more permanently bound to their clubs. In major league baseball players are bound to their club for six major league seasons. This is on top of the time the spend in the minor leagues. There is functionally no reliable way players can compel a club to trade (transfer) them. On the other hand, players are less likely to want to move because their are no clubs that are inherently superior such that they have no shot at a championship without moving. My club, the San Francisco Giants, for example has won three of the last six world championships and is (depending on how you want to calculate it) the third or fourth richest club. But it wasn't that high on the list a few years ago. It got there by being successful rather than being successful by being rich. It seems unlikely that the richer English clubs will go for anything like this. Only if the bigger and richer clubs move to a European Super League will there be a fair and balanced competition in English Football. Another interesting question is whether the Superleague would adopt American style balance rules such as a draft, revenue sharing, and a true salary cap. That is just crazy talk. The ball should be round, but much smaller, and the other club should gain a player whenever their opponent scores.

If we qualify for Europe we should definitely get him if we can because he would fill an otherwise pretty useless roster spot. If we don't qualify for Europe, it would depend on other factors like costs, what Koeman thinks of him, and his long term fitness outlook. The same would go for Walcott and Bale, by the way.

But which one has the better hair?

Sure it does. It used expected results based upon pre-match betting odds. The reliability of those odds might be debatable, but the analysis does attempt to account for relative team quality.

I just posted "Magic Numbers and Relegation Safety'

Generally, I agree, but the drop off wasn't inexplicable. We had lost our two most important players. You could make an argument that there are only two significant differences between us last year and Leicester this year: they have someone who is playing like a top level striker (so far) and they have remained healthy (so far).

I think the reason people are upset with him is that he left the board with the impression what he would seriously discuss signing a new contract once the season was over and that was never true. Also, when he left he told them that he was not leaving to join another team he just wanted to stop coaching here but when informed that either way, he still had to pay the 2 million pound fee then suddenly the spurs were calling to negotiate.

This is true or false depending on whether the owners of spurs intend to pay for the stadium with their own money or out of spurs future profits. After all, the Arsenal owners could have paid for their stadium with their own money, but chose not to. On the other hand, I believe Abramovitz is planning to pay for the Chelsea improvements with his own money.

I had forgotten how out of focus life was in the 1980s.