Redslo

I thought that was part of the joke.

Ward-Prowse got scolded once too.

You don't know what you are talking about.

No it doesn't. You are wrong again.

And even if he didn't play that well at first he was hardly the worst signing since Ali Dia. At the very most he was the worst signing since Forren.

Anyone still think the tickets for this game were overpriced?

He does under current rules, but if the new rules are implemented he would not count as home grown (in England, would still be home grown in France).

And the total payroll would be higher than ours.

I think the transaction reflected our belief that Lovren was not worth 20 million. I thought that was doing a Nathanial Clyne.

But all clubs are guaranteed pay as if they were on TV 10 times so last year we got paid more than we deserved (so to speak). This year I think we will be on 12 times total (although I might have missed one or two) so it really won't be that much more money.

Related to that is the fact that we generally buy younger than we sell. Even Pelle was younger than Lambert. Since players get old and stop being good enough, buying younger is all by itself a way of improving the club. Not enough of a way if you don't buy the right players, of course.

I just posted "I Make Predictions (Round 37)." http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/ http://redsloscf.blogspot.co.uk/

You may be right, but the Champions League slot had not yet dropped away when our quality of play fell off. We are 11 points behind Manchester United and we threw 10 points away in February. If the team actually gave up on the Champions League and started playing poorly, they gave up too soon. (Or to put it another way, the Eleven points we dropped in our last five games would also have kept us in contention.) We just stopped scoring goals. Were we just lucking in the first part of the season or were our players underperforming in the second part of the season. No way to know.

Your reasoning is a disgrace.

Clearly, your mind is broken. Have it checked out and have the excess nags removed.

Deleted by me.

The way the teams that weren't Chelsea played this year, this might very well have been Southampton's best chance ever to qualify for the Champions League. We missed it because our scoring disappeared after January. Had management known that Pelle was going to stop scoring and that the other teams were going to be as weak as they were, they might have made a few more moves in the transfer market either in the summer or in January. But those moves would have come with their own risks. Would we have been as good in the first half of the season if we had two first team strikers to keep happy? Would the money spent on the second striker have meant that we couldn't buy Bertrand in January? Did Liebherr forbid any more spending that could not be paid for out of current cash flow? We just don't know. It is a matter of perspective. From where we were this summer things are better than almost anyone could have expected. From where we were at the end of January, things look almost disastrously bad. Since the average fan was way too pessimistic in the summer and way too optimistic in January, we are probably about where we should be. Since I was not one of the summer pessimists, but I was one of the January optimists, I am less happy than I should be given the season as a whole. I particularly hate that we maybe relying upon Man City (x2) and Arsenal (x2) to qualify for Europe. I am striving to maintain my good sense and save my rants for the election results where they belong.

Jake Cohen, who blogs about Chelsea, posted an interesting blog on the subject of players not signing contract extensions. http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2015/4/1/8325609/top-footballers-shouldnt-sign-long-term-deals

Danny Rose is not number 5 on the list. Marcelo is. Rose does not appear on the list at all.

I have gone off topic and posted "I Discuss the Recent Election." I promise not to do this very often. In any case, it will be less controversial than saying something good about Portsmouth.

Yours? Or Ryan Bertrands?

http://www.espnfc.us/video/espn-fc-tv/86/video/2439140/power-ranks-worlds-top-10-defenders

I am confident that Newcastle's problem is not foreign players. After all, they had lots of foreign players when they finished 5th. And Chelsea has lots of foreign players right now. According to the most recent FM 2015 database, these are the weekly salaries in thousands of pounds: Lukaku 80 Baines 70 Barry 60 Lennon 55 McGready 50 Pienaar 50 Jagielka 50 Distin 45 McCarthy 40 Kone 40 Barkley 40 Mirallas 40 Osman 40 That is probably far enough. It seems they pay more than we do at the high end, but not so much that we cannot compete. I would guess they put more money into player salaries at the expense of something else--youth development maybe?

We should be able to compete with Everton on salary. Our total income is not much different and I don't think their owner is pumping in a lot of money.

Here is a link to the fair play table on the official Premier League web site. http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/matchday/fair-play.html