The £300 million team

[Heisenberg]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

[saints-cris]

Certainly hasn't been helped by us handing out 5 year contracts to players who really aren't offering much (JWP and Forster spring to mind). Those wages could surely be put to better use.

 

What baffles me is after all the amount we have sold and replaced with cheaper options, we still seem to be unable to compete financially.

 

Ultimately, when we finished 6th that was our chance to go for it - we didn't, and have paid the price ever since.

[spyinthesky]

I think this is a fair point.

 

I think there was a table produced not so long ago that showed we were in the top 20 clubs in Europe when it came to revenue and players wages

 

I reflected on this when we were struggling under Puel during our European campaign.

 

There are regular accusations (and I am one of those questioning our transfer spend) about lack of player purchases.

 

I dont think we do too badly on this.

 

However we used to be quite good at spotting and nuturing talent.

 

I dont think this is the case now and we have ended up with a bloated squad of pretty average players

[ally_uk]

It may cost £300 Million but the team is pretty damm average. We are playing in the Premier league what do you need to win games of football? goals and assists....

 

Charlie Austin, Long, Stephens, Ward Prowse, Hoijberg, Redmond, Fraser F, Ward Prowse, Hoedt,

 

We have average players some who have been here more than one season and have produced nothing..... This team still needs major surgery fans expect a top 10 finish? need a reality check this squad is pants....

[Lallana's Left Peg]

The fact we have been able to do this while the club strictly operates on an 'invest what we earn' policy shows how successful we've been for nearly 10 years.

 

The big weakness in the model - and any other - is that the moment you start buying players that turn into duds it all comes tumbling down very quickly.

 

We've spent too much money on players who are simply not good enough.

[nta786]

have to admit- both scouting and coaching has gone wrong in recent years. That is the reason for our demise.

 

I have no doubt Poch would have improved all our players in our squad right now.

[Pilchards]

have to admit- both scouting and coaching has gone wrong in recent years. That is the reason for our demise.

 

I have no doubt Poch would have improved all our players in our squad right now.

 

Its that exactly.

Cant remember the last player that has improved since signing for Saints.

We are no longer improving players and that’s going right down to the youth players too.

 

I will list a few:

Romeu - getting worse

Lemina - One good game in 20

Redmond - Exciting at Norwich, not so much now.

Hoedt - Total pants

Bertrand - Going backwards quickly

Gabby - Nothing like the person we signed.

[red&white56]

Its that exactly.

Cant remember the last player that has improved since signing for Saints.

We are no longer improving players and that’s going right down to the youth players too.

 

I will list a few:

Romeu - getting worse

Lemina - One good game in 20

Redmond - Exciting at Norwich, not so much now.

Hoedt - Total pants

Bertrand - Going backwards quickly

Gabby - Nothing like the person we signed.

 

Would you agree that McCarthy has improved since joining us?

[ally_uk]

Why are players regressing? coaching? manager? tactics?

[Dalek2003]

Why are players regressing? coaching? manager? tactics?

 

Confidence, confidence, confidence.

 

Plus, a lack of leadership and direction. We have settled on 'survival', which means we are playing close to the wire and the fear of relegation seeps into the team. If we can just get a few lucky wind and a good little run we will be OK

[Heisenberg]

Its that exactly.

Cant remember the last player that has improved since signing for Saints.

We are no longer improving players and that’s going right down to the youth players too.

 

I will list a few:

Romeu - getting worse

Lemina - One good game in 20

Redmond - Exciting at Norwich, not so much now.

Hoedt - Total pants

Bertrand - Going backwards quickly

Gabby - Nothing like the person we signed.

 

Be interesting to watch ings (assuming he stays fit) as his debut he looked sharp, very fit and hungry.

 

Be interesting to see how long it takes us to work/train that out of him.

[southamptonfc]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

 

All Premier League clubs have one of the most expensive squads and one of the highest wage bills in Europe...

[aintforever]

We've just accumulated too many average players. It would be interesting to know how much it costs in wages to keep the likes of Forster, Davis, Long, Ward-Prowse who contribute the square root of **** all to our first team.

 

We are obviously working under more of a budget now as well which means recruitment have to work harder to find players they can flog on. Players like Wanyamma, Mane and Van **** had top clubs sniffing around when we signed them, not sure who we beat off to sign Armstrong and Elyounoussi.

[Cabbage_Face]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

 

Depends if youre signing and creating average players. Honestly only signing we’ve made in recently that has any sort of potential to earn money is Lemina.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nta786]

We've just accumulated too many average players. It would be interesting to know how much it costs in wages to keep the likes of Forster, Davis, Long, Ward-Prowse who contribute the square root of **** all to our first team.

 

We are obviously working under more of a budget now as well which means recruitment have to work harder to find players they can flog on. Players like Wanyamma, Mane and Van **** had top clubs sniffing around when we signed them, not sure who we beat off to sign Armstrong and Elyounoussi.

 

We stood still. Everyone else has caught up. Now the bottom 13 (and everton if you like) is a mere free for all.

[egg]

Why are players regressing? coaching? manager? tactics?

 

It's worse than regression, we're retrogressing. That will always happen when progress is not being made. I think the reasons are those you list, plus confidence and like dalek says, with a few wins we'll make progress but on current form a win looks a long way off.

[Baird of the land]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

[edprice1984]

We moved away from our business model, mainly due to fans (understandably) getting fed up at selling all our best players to Liverpool. To counter this we offered long term contracts to players with little re-sale value - blocking moves to Wanyama, Schneiderlin and VVD (although we relented the following season) sent a message to potential players that we aren't the same club as before ie) offering a launch pad to a top 4 team. Our squad cost £300,000,000 - but this has been financed by players sales that must get close to that amount.

 

The thing is that wins against Brighton and Palace change the mood drastically. You can't legislate for a player doing something stupid like Hojberg, overall the style of football is much better than last year; clearly Hughes' is trying to find his best 11 but I am not worried at the moment.

[edprice1984]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

 

Bielsa, for all his brilliance and Leeds' early form, does have a tendency to kill off his teams by March. Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday will eventually catch up with them. A couple of injuries will only thin out the squad further. Watch them implode, end up in the playoffs and lose at Wembley.

[shurlock]

We moved away from our business model, mainly due to fans (understandably) getting fed up at selling all our best players to Liverpool. To counter this we offered long term contracts to players with little re-sale value - blocking moves to Wanyama, Schneiderlin and VVD (although we relented the following season) sent a message to potential players that we aren't the same club as before ie) offering a launch pad to a top 4 team. Our squad cost £300,000,000 - but this has been financed by players sales that must get close to that amount.

 

The thing is that wins against Brighton and Palace change the mood drastically. You can't legislate for a player doing something stupid like Hojberg, overall the style of football is much better than last year; clearly Hughes' is trying to find his best 11 but I am not worried at the moment.

 

Nothing of substance has changed in our business model; we’ve just recruited poorly. It’s no more complicated than that pal.

[Pilchards]

Would you agree that McCarthy has improved since joining us?

 

Been alittle suspect during pre season and against Leicester however he was breathtaking last season.

IMHO Gunn is a fine keeper to bring in if McCarthy drops off even more.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

I think it's self evident that our recruitment has gone badly downhill since Paul Mitchell left.

 

On coaching, Poch is one of the best managers in the world and was a brilliant pick. How many managers like him are out there waiting to be plucked from obscurity? I'm not sure there's many. Especially now we don't have Cortese spinning the line that we're going to spend loads of money and get into the champions league

[Charlie Wayman]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

 

Hindsight is wonderful, 20/20 vision indeed!

 

Nobody could have possibly foreseen that Bielsa might succeed at Leeds so why would anybody else have taken a punt on him? In any case it's very early days yet, half a dozen matches in and you're flagging him up as a world beating manager. Unbelievable!

 

Let's see how things are at Christmas and next May before we hail the arrival of the new Guardiola.

[shurlock]

Hindsight is wonderful, 20/20 vision indeed!

 

Nobody could have possibly foreseen that Bielsa might succeed at Leeds so why would anybody else have taken a punt on him? In any case it's very early days yet, half a dozen matches in and you're flagging him up as a world beating manager. Unbelievable!

 

Let's see how things are at Christmas and next May before we hail the arrival of the new Guardiola.

 

Flagging is Les having a nap after his elevenses chocolate digestive.

[Heisenberg]

Great discussion guys, some interesting points made.

[eelpie]

We've just accumulated too many average players. It would be interesting to know how much it costs in wages to keep the likes of Forster, Davis, Long, Ward-Prowse who contribute the square root of **** all to our first team.

 

I'm sadly finding myself increasingly curious to know what the relegation budget plan might be.

[Cabbage_Face]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

 

Likewise

[hughieslastminutegoal]

Would you agree that McCarthy has improved since joining us?

 

Yes, and that solitary swallow I saw yesterday was the only proof I needed that we had a summer.

[hughieslastminutegoal]

It's worse than regression, we're retrogressing. That will always happen when progress is not being made. I think the reasons are those you list, plus confidence and like dalek says, with a few wins we'll make progress but on current form a win looks a long way off.

 

"The Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus show that regress is much more frequent in both American and British English. Unless you have a very good reason for using retrogress, your language is more likely to be effective if you use regress instead."

[Faz]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

 

Bielsa a is mad as a box of frogs. No EPL club would take a chance on him, nor any other top league in Europe after his most recent exploits. Some of his students have turned out to be better than their master.

[Pamplemousse]

If Bielsa is so good, why is he at Leeds and not a top Premier League club?

 

At every single club he has been at, it has gone tits up, someone who I know who follows Argentine football a lot says it generally happens in the second season after a brilliant first season.

[Matthew Le God]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

 

Normally you complain Saints aren't spending money on transfer and wages. Now you admit they have an expensively assembled squad and a high wage budget.

 

Time to start making your mind up boss!

 

[video=youtube;h4-lKMGII_k]

[Pamplemousse]

I don't think Heisenberg is complaining about the money being spent, more the performances in relation to that spending.

[shurlock]

Normally you complain Saints aren't spending money on transfer and wages. Now you admit they have an expensively assembled squad and a high wage budget.

 

Time to start making your mind up boss!

 

[video=youtube;h4-lKMGII_k]

 

Blatant insubordination. Pretty clear which one of you two wears the trousers.

[Matthew Le God]

Blatant insubordination. Pretty clear which one of you two wears the trousers.

 

He does! I wear a tear away skirt, Glasgow keeps pulling it off!

Edited 28 August, 2018 by Matthew Le God

[trousers]

Blatant insubordination. Pretty clear which one of you two wears the trousers.

You called?

[Baird of the land]

Hindsight is wonderful, 20/20 vision indeed!

 

Nobody could have possibly foreseen that Bielsa might succeed at Leeds so why would anybody else have taken a punt on him? In any case it's very early days yet, half a dozen matches in and you're flagging him up as a world beating manager. Unbelievable!

 

Let's see how things are at Christmas and next May before we hail the arrival of the new Guardiola.

 

Nothing to do with hindsight. Potchettino was brilliant in hindsight. Bielsa is a world famous coach known for the attractive attacking football, inspiring the likes of potch.

Yes things may yet go south at Leeds because he’s certainly on the madness/genius Line but Leeds fans are going to be far more entertained than they have been in years of stagnating averageness.

I’d happily see saints take a punt over horrid scraping survival football.

[egg]

"The Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus show that regress is much more frequent in both American and British English. Unless you have a very good reason for using retrogress, your language is more likely to be effective if you use regress instead."

 

Nah, different words mate with different meanings, although both are the antithesis of progress.

 

Regress is basically 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Retrogress is basically 2 steps forward and 1, 2 or possibly 3 steps back.

 

Either way we ain't making progress.

[Heisenberg]

Normally you complain Saints aren't spending money on transfer and wages. Now you admit they have an expensively assembled squad and a high wage budget.

 

Time to start making your mind up boss!

 

No, I thought we have invested what we have received. As I know in the past you’ve spent hours searching through my posts across this and other forums to try and prove a point I’ll caveat that by saying it is possible that I may have had a rant about us not spending so there may be a post or two that says that. But there are plenty of others where I say we have spent alot (but badly) and that was and still is my view.

[benjii]

Would have loved to seen Bielsa shaking up our squad. Instead we are lumbered with Hughes

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/aug/28/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-myth-assembled-real-time

 

It is a little odd that after a few years going for continental cheapos under the guise of "attractive, high-tempo football", the granddaddy of the Zeitgeist was available and ended up at flipping Leeds Leeds Leeds.

[GarrettIvo]

All Premier League clubs have one of the most expensive squads and one of the highest wage bills in Europe...

 

Indeed.

 

If only we could play Rennes, Breda, or Sepsi week in week out.

[Ultimatt]

£300m gets you a squad of 10-20m players and we know 20m doesn't get you quality anymore: it gets you average players or unrealized potential

 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[CB Fry]

We are obviously working under more of a budget now as well which means recruitment have to work harder to find players they can flog on. Players like Wanyamma, Mane and Van **** had top clubs sniffing around when we signed them, not sure who we beat off to sign Armstrong and Elyounoussi.

 

The only competition I can recall for Virgil at the time was Sunderland.

 

Mane's signing was out of the blue on deadline day with very few rumours beforehand of him coming to us or anyone else.

 

Victor, personally can't remember him being linked to anyone bigger than us. Just a mid-table club signing a Celtic player. Big clubs sign very few Celtic players.

[Heisenberg]

All Premier League clubs have one of the most expensive squads and one of the highest wage bills in Europe...

 

Do they all have squads that cost £300m?

 

I suspect we are easily top 10 in squad cost, but bottom 5-10 in terms of quality

[Saint86]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

 

A total momentum reverse under Reed. Simple as that. Gone from getting things mostly correct to getting things mostly horrendously wrong. And as with any object that has recently fallen from a large height, we've been accelerating in recent seasons. Question is, have we gone terminal under Reed? And where is the bottom?

[OldNick]

A total momentum reverse under Reed. Simple as that. Gone from getting things mostly correct to getting things mostly horrendously wrong. And as with any object that has recently fallen from a large height, we've been accelerating in recent seasons. Question is, have we gone terminal under Reed? And where is the bottom?

but was the momentum pre Reed and it is only the erosion in time by his decisions have put us where we are now?

[Jez]

Lots of talk about club working within limitations and how difficult it is for us to compete.

 

Our squad has cost c£300 million and our wage bill is c£100 million a year

 

No excuses for our dismal performances/results and average squad.

 

One of the most expensive squads in Europe and one of the highest wage bills too

 

Would you mind listing out the monies paid for our squad (so it reaches c£300m), and doing the same for all the other teams so we can see where we sit in comparison to everyone else, so we know where we should end up in the league. And wage bill too. Obviously if a player was brought on a free, or came through the youth academy (in whatever format) then you'll have to just estimate their worth (Kane for example). Only then can we see if we still have any valid excuses to use. Vs Europe is not relevant, as we are not competing against anyone outside of the Premier League. Or link to an article detailing this comparison if you're a little busy arguing with MLG about something to have time to work out the stats. Cheers! (I was going to say "cheers pal" but then realised how this sounds after seeing how Shurlock uses it!)

[Batman]

Would you mind listing out the monies paid for our squad (so it reaches c£300m), and doing the same for all the other teams so we can see where we sit in comparison to everyone else, so we know where we should end up in the league. And wage bill too. Obviously if a player was brought on a free, or came through the youth academy (in whatever format) then you'll have to just estimate their worth (Kane for example). Only then can we see if we still have any valid excuses to use. Vs Europe is not relevant, as we are not competing against anyone outside of the Premier League. Or link to an article detailing this comparison if you're a little busy arguing with MLG about something to have time to work out the stats. Cheers! (I was going to say "cheers pal" but then realised how this sounds after seeing how Shurlock uses it!)

 

Well, the spurs starting 11 at old Trafford cost less than Paul Pogba to purchase

[ALWAYS_SFC]

but was the momentum pre Reed and it is only the erosion in time by his decisions have put us where we are now?

 

Whilst not defending of condemning anyone, it seems that everything that is/was good has nothing to do with Reed but everything bad is/was the fault of reed...

 

Nick, that`s how its judged on here by the lynch mob so give up trying to explain, your efforts are respected by those with sensible reasoning but will be ultimately futile for the aforementioned mob

[aintforever]

The only competition I can recall for Virgil at the time was Sunderland.

 

Mane's signing was out of the blue on deadline day with very few rumours beforehand of him coming to us or anyone else.

 

Victor, personally can't remember him being linked to anyone bigger than us. Just a mid-table club signing a Celtic player. Big clubs sign very few Celtic players.

 

Wrong, it's impossible to know what is just paper talk and what's genuine but Van Dijk was linked with Spurs and Everton, Mane - Manchester City, Spurs and West Ham and Wanyamma - Arsenal, Liverpool and Everton amongst others.