Redslo

I am pretty sure that if Schneiderlin had been willing to sign a new long term contract at 70K/week, the club would have been happy to keep him and forgo the 25M.

Are you even allowed to sign players to six year contracts? Certainly, they are very rare. Also, would we be better off if Osvaldo and Rameriz had been signed to six year contracts?

To be fair, we didn't lose our two best players in 2014 since we held onto Schneiderlin that summer.

You may not feel that, but I think the club would disagree. They want net wage increases to be covered out of the transfer revenue. It might be different next season with the increased TV contracts. I don't think that is a fair comparison, but I decline to state why. Players are a majority of the wage bill and, in any case, the other people need to be paid so that is real money the club has to spend. I don't think other clubs generally do keep their players. Aston Villa didn't. Everton did, of course. However, it gets tough when there are only two years left in a contract. If you don't sell then you lose a bunch of money (compare Clyne with Schneiderlin). The club probably needs to be more proactive on signing good players to longer contracts--why, for example, did we not sign Clyne to a long term contract before selling Chambers to Arsenal? Clyne was not yet England's right back so he might have been willing to sign for a decent raise. Then we could have turned down offers this past summer. If he refused to sign even then, we would have known that we needed to keep Chambers, who had just signed a long term contract.

I think they include the newly signed transferees' salary in their calculations as well as increases given to current players. On the other hand, I think they treat the salaries that would have been paid to outgoing players as available funds. This means that there is a lot less than 35 million available.

I don't understand why the Swiss government doesn't just institute legal proceedings to temporarily take over FIFA. It is a corrupt charitable organization operating inside Swiss borders. They could do it--unless they have very weird laws allowing corrupt charities to operate freely.

If we want to have an opportunity for European competition in the future, we need English clubs to do well in Europe to keep the coefficient higher than the Italian coefficient. This means that we want all six remaining English clubs to do well--or at least significantly better than the remaining Italian clubs.

If Pelle needs injections to play, it would be worth having someone like Austin to start every other game so Pelle can be much healthier when he does start.

I am pretty sure he means the one that kicked that penalty into orbit.

I don't entirely disagree, but Crystal Palace has a new American Investor lined up. The implication is that they are going to be spending as allowed under financial fair play which means they can lose 35 million pounds a year (not including costs of the youth program) unless they are playing in Europe. Our owner wants us to be self supporting which means break even including the youth program. Add to that the appeal of living in London and Crystal Palace can be a more attractive destination for players who want big salaries.

If we are willing to pay higher wages, Sebastian Giovinco would be a good target for us. However, he would become our highest paid player since he is making at least 89K pounds a week in Toronto. Given his age the transfer fee would probably be affordable and he does score. If we are not willing to pay higher wages then it is unlikely we can find a striker in January who can actually improve the squad.

No, it was a clever ploy hoping someone would call his bluff.

I just posted "Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 15)"

I just posted "Southampton Weekly Salaries (Update FM 2016 November database)"

I just posted "Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 14)"

Also, if the new home grown player rules are implemented it is important to sign players when they are sixteen so they can qualify as club trained. That being said, it may already be too late to qualify this fellow as club trained--depending on how the rules end up being written.

I just posted "Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 13)"

But if that is true there is no point in selling him in January. The 30 million will still be there next summer.

Why? Because it is important that we play with a much weakened side for the second half of the season. Perhaps a brief (or long) flirtation with relegation would make the season more interesting for you.

What is your problem with https://www.facebook.com/clotese.porter I am glad he left because I think the club is better off without him even though he did good things. For a specific example consider Benali's run. Ralph Krueger ran part of the way with him on the last leg, but did not join him for the run into the stadium. I suspect Cortese would not have handled the situation as well or, possibly, even let Benali end his run by running into St. Mary's before a game. Keep in mind that Financial Fair Play makes it much harder to just buy progress now. If Leeds is currently running at a loss it will be very difficult for a new owner to make immediate progress. A little bit of research suggests that Leeds is not currently on solid financial ground. http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/latest-lufc-news/leeds-united-shambles-opens-up-a-flood-of-questions-1-7553208#axzz3r1dTZfCB http://www.thescratchingshed.com/2014/04/latest-accounts-show-dire-financial-state-of-leeds-united/ http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/latest-lufc-news/leeds-united-whites-left-to-count-cost-of-gfh-s-tenure-1-6995691#axzz3r1dTZfCB There is simply no room for financial maneuvering to buy improved performance. The new owner would need to spend a few years recovering the situation before investment would help significantly. In the short run, the owner would have to kick in millions of pounds just to reduce the level of the Financial Fair Play violations already in existence.

Why would anyone pay any attention to him? He is not even a planet anymore.

I often watch the Bundesliga Friday game but I don't even bother to record the Saturday ones since I will have no time for them. The studio pundits each network uses are also a factor. I would much rather listen to the NBC (or ESPN) folks talk than the FOX people who come across as a bit too arrogant. I usually watch the entire 45 minute pregame show broadcast at 4am my time. (I don't watch it live and I fast forward through the commercials, usually.) I usually skip the fox pregame shows for all football matches including the American Football one-of course, I have pretty much stopped watching American Football in the past year plus.

I just posted "Predictions 2015-2016 (Round 12)"

I am happy to be safely at home watching it on TV.

In 2007 I firmly intended to vote for Hillary Clinton for president and said so. Yet, I ended up voting for Obama. I really wonder why anyone would ever listen to anything I said after that.