Redslo

You are probably right. And that would have given us an edge for promotion overtime, but staying up would have been a lot more difficult--although if we still had a rich owner he could spend a lot of money under premier league FFP so long as we were not competing in Europe. (35 million pounds a year.)

Two points: first, I wasn't following Southampton back then so none of those names are familiar to me, but Safri's parents should have come up with a better first name. Second, if FFP had been in place for the last ten years we would probably still be a fairly stable Championship club.

Overall Mayuka will have cost us well under ten million pounds so he is not anywhere near the worst deal ever.

League 1 and League 2 FFP is a limit on the percentage of turnover than can be spent on player wages--60 and 55 percent respectively. But rich owners can kick in unlimited money.

I can't speak about Tesco because I have little knowledge of them as an American. (Although my sister worked for Tesco for a while as an English version of a lawyer.) However, I can talk about Walmart. When they were expanding, they would come into a town and under price the local merchants and underpay their employees. Unlike most businesses at the time, they did not provide health care. Now days many Walmart employees are paid so little that they are eligible for Food Stamps (a program to provide food to low income families). In effect, Walmart is free riding off the (inadequate) American safety net and destroying smaller businesses in the process. So yes, they should subsidize other business by paying more in taxes or paying their employees a fair wage. Of course, the real solution would be for the USA to increase the minimum wage to a sensible level but companies like Walmart lobby heavily to stop this. Translating things back to football terms, the Premier League can only exist in its current form because it sits atop the English football pyramid. Instead of giving back in a fair way, they have managed to change the rules recently so that bigger clubs can now force smaller clubs to sell their players at ridiculously low prices. So yes some of this new huge TV contract should go to the lower level clubs so that they can provide better training facilities and other benefits to the players many of whom might well be sold to Premier League clubs in the future for a mere pittance.

Madness. Also, the games are part of the basic package for my US cable viewing pleasure.

Yes. The past five years have certainly not all been wine and roses.

May not be true. A major purpose of the salary cap is to stop new domestic TV money from all going into increased player wages. Instead, currently, salaries can only go up by 4 million pounds a year.

They are estimating about 30 percent in 2015-2016. http://ewn.co.za/2014/09/16/Champions-League-gravy-train-keeps-on-running

I understand. The problem is that there is no direct solution to the problem if we qualify for Europe. If we lose Schneiderlin, our only club trained player is Isgrove. We cannot fix that unless we go out and buy (or loan) back players who left here in the past like Nathan Dyer, Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlin. Regular English players do not help. If we lose Clyne and Rodriguez as well we will have Bertrand, S. Davis, K. Davis, Forster, and Cropper as Home Grown players. Even assuming we dump Cropper and K. Davis, that leaves room for only one new English player on the European roster. Obviously, we can register more English players--I am just saying that if we lose Schneiderlin we will be limited to 22 players in Europe. If we don't qualify for Europe then yes I agree. We need to sign up some new English trained players.

Not surprising that Mayuka is groaning given his lack of playing time.

I have had to learn to live with that my whole life.

True--hence my point about such clubs not being well run. But there is still an element of unfairness.

I am sure that is the plan.

I think there is an element of unfairness in the Championship given their new FFP rules and the increased size of parachute payments. A club that has just been relegated will be able to way out spend the other clubs. On the other hand, a club that has just been relegated is probably not that well run and may not be able to use their advantage effectively. I talked about this in a blog post with too much arithmetic last November. http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-happens-if-southampton-is.html

The rules for the Premier League and European competition are very similar. The only difference is that in the Premier League there is no such thing as club trained players--instead home grown players are defined: “Home Grown Player” means a Player who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any Club (or club) affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three Seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the Season during which he turns 21) and for the purposes of this definition of “Home Grown Player” a Season will be deemed to commence on the date on which the first Transfer Window closes and expire on the date of the final League Match of the Season; This means that we could in theory register someone in all eight of those slots for Premier League play even though not all eight can be registered for European play. The problem is that I doubt the 1 to 4 players so registered will be thrilled to be ineligible for European competition. Given the relatively large number of playable under 21s we have I don't see us as signing new English trained players who will not be registered for European competition--assuming, of course, we qualify for Europe. Another way of looking at it is that we are limited to 17 foreign trained players in both competitions.

I do. But not because of a concussion and, in any case, it isn't happening for at least a month. But we really need to win this week so I am not too depressed to get back to work Wednesday afternoon.

Daily Echo reporting that Targett needs a week to recover from his concussion. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/news/11781904.Yoshida_is_Koeman_s_man_to_solve_crisis/

Given his symptoms, he had a concussion or, if he didn't, there is no way to tell so you have to treat him like he did.

I rather take Gareth Bale and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlin on loan for a season. They would count as club trained too.

Target tweeted that he had headaches on Sunday. The minimum recommended time for playing again after a concussion is five days after the symptoms stop. If Targett plays on Wednesday the club is being grossly irresponsible.

It doesn't quite work that way because younger players do not go on the 25 person roster, but are still eligible to play. We will only have two club trained players next year and that assumes we keep Schneiderlin.

How many is not too many. Just curious.

I am just glad to hear that one of my blogs was helpful rather than depriving people of the will to live.