Redslo

It sounded to me like he was persuaded that he would like playing for Ronald Koeman too.

But if we make the champions league he could have it both ways. Play for us next year and refuse to sign a contract but refuse to agree to a transfer. He could then go anywhere on a Bosman in 2016.

Maybe someone should come up with a new song addressing this.

I basically agree. Baseball is, in many ways, a sequence of independent incidents with well over 100 years of data to look at. This makes if far more susceptible to analysis that football. My critique of the earlier statement is the idea that "what managers have intuitively understood since time immemorial" is likely to turn out to be correct. Sure some of it will, but some of it will turn out to be hilariously wrong. In baseball, for example, managers were right about the platoon advantage, but wrong about the relative value of walks, base hits, and stolen bases.

No. Some teams were using FM before it became available in the more convenient form. (Some might still be using it because it is undoubtedly cheaper.) Also, using the FM database is different from using Prozone's product, but not enough different to make "utterly ridiculous and completely false" a fair characterization.

This could mean that he will stay if we qualify for Europe (or the Champions League) which, frankly, is what most of us would expect.

A team who purchases access to the Prozone product has full searchable access to the FM database which is probably updated more often for Prozone than it is for the game. (And may include additional data.) It is not the same as doing a player search in game because that is deliberately limited in terms of effectiveness because, of course, the FM data base stats reflect the "real" game world so providing direct access to them is not realistic. Providing direct access to them in the real world is just another form of scouting--one that is more complete and efficient than Wenger using the FM player search function, but not really that different.

That's what all the experts said about baseball until they stopped saying it because it made them look stupid.

Clyne only has a year left on his contract. Shaw had four years. That makes a big difference. Still I would try to get more since there ought to be more than one team interested.

We are reliant on Pelle for the way we play the ball forward even when he is not scoring.

I think the idea would be to buy underpriced new players whom our brilliant scouting department has been following for a significant period of time....every single time we don't win.

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" by The Hollies

I assume the first sentence was clear. Man U makes less money from some of their sponsorship deals if they are not in the Champions League. If they have less money they can spend less money and they are easier for everyone else to compete with. Not sure why you didn't get it, but I didn't feel it was worth a full blog article. Feel free to ignore this post if you wish. I have no idea what the actual numbers will be, but their profit in the last two years was only a little bit more than their net spend so far this year. Also, without increases in commercial income or European income they cannot increase their total wages by more than 4 million pounds per year. They cannot keep doing this forever and if they don't get back into the champions league they have to stop doing it sooner than if they do. Of course, they will always (for the foreseeable future anyway) be able to spend more than anyone else, but anything that mitigates that is good for everyone else in the league.

Also, some of Manchester United's commercial sponsorship deals are dependent on their presence in the Champions League. If we (and by we I mean the league as a whole) can keep them out it will help everyone.

No doubt because I omitted the detailed discussion of weekly salaries at random Portuguese and Dutch clubs and the slapdash discussion of Aston Villa's financial problems.

I have just posted “Financial Fair Play: Friend or Foe.” http://redsloscf.blogspot.co.uk/ http://redsloscf.blogspot.com/

Perhaps, but he has two more years left on his contract so there is nothing that needs to be settled before the season ends. And where we finish likely affects whether he wants to stay.

Speaks well of your judgment.

But it would be fun to watch.

It's on my list.

Also, it requires patience and a willingness to spend money on things that won't help you right away. This was far easier for us to do in L1 with no FFP restrictions than it is for a Premier League team now. On the other hand, the danger of the big clubs doing this is real. In some ways our approach resembles the Moneyball approach of the Oakland As. They never won a championship with that approach but the Boston Red Sox did.

I strongly suspect that even this issue is currently being addressed. Maybe we would still Paul Mitchell back from Spurs?

Since AC Roma is 24th on the list, I thought it might be interesting to post this link. Does AC Roma's strategy make sense? Is there real money here and, if so, should Southampton be doing something similar? I don't know. http://www.soccerex.com/news/2015/01/roma%E2%80%99s-digital-revolution

It is based on gross cash inflow in Euros, but yes it appears we are 25th on the list world wide. We should pass Aston Villa this year--especially if we get lots of TV appearances during the rest of the season. It is also worth noting that making the Champions League next year would put us above Newcastle, but would not catch us up to Tottenham--unless maybe we won the Champions League and the Spurs failed to qualify for Europe at all. If we qualified for the Champions League in 2016-2017, with the new league TV contract we would probably be in the top ten world wide. Edit: I take that back. We probably could not catch Juventus or Spurs.

I am not sure if that will affect my writing or not? Did I get it right?