Transfer deadline day

So, erm, now that's over... do they just want us to go back to our old lives? No more worrying? No more frantic refreshing of pages looking for news?

I... I don't know what to do with myself.

 

Damn international breaks. I used to love them, but not any more...though I will watch the game tomorrow as nothing else to do. JWP is on tonight...happy memories.

 

Saints top of the Premiership!

http://hereisthecity.com/en-gb/2014...e-premier-league-sides-ended-the-summer-in-p/

 

IS this sarcastic? Gets the best out of who? Gets them to play nice football but I think his sides tend to underachieve. The only side that didn't underachieve was the experienced side he had when he first took over Arsenal. Since he took the mantle of some genius at finding young players and integrating them into the first team Arsenal have underachieved year on year. On top of that Arsenal's medical team / Wenger himself have a shocking record at players being rushed back from injury and getting injured again.

The only one that is playing above his level at the moment is Ramsey. Walcott and Chamberlain have not progressed as they should and Wilshere's 'improvement' has stagnated (at best) for the last 4 or 5 years.

Ozil and Cazorla's form has declined gradually since they joined Arsenal.

So he doesn't get the best out of his players. Quite the opposite IMO. How much of that is down to Wenger himself and how much is down to the character / personalities of the player he signs is debatable but in no way would I say he gets the absolute best out of his players. That was Fergie.

 

I'm not picking on you directly here but just struggle to understand why so many people have this idea in their heads about 'Gaston might come back a different player and then kick on with us'.

Even if he has a good season he will come back with only 1 year left on his contract and be sold. He isn't going to come back and after 2 years @ Saints (+1 @ Hull) put out of his mind that we didn't play him so he won't be signing an extension. Therefore with 1 year left on his contract he will be sold on. If we get £5 or £6m for him we will have done well at that point added to the loan fee from Hull (£3m??) and the saved wages for this season (circa £2.5m) I think that is decent business.

£6m + £3m + £2.5m = £11.5m. Lucky to nearly break even IMO.

 

No I didn't mean SB3 was him (or her) but I thought they knew each other.....

 

I'm glad you found my blog interesting. I should mention that my initial analysis was based upon the flawed assumption that the publically announced salary costs for Southampton FC were the player costs. In fact, they were the salary costs for the entire staff. I addressed that in later blog posts. This means that loans do not have any future beneficial salary cap effects for us at our current salary level. On the other hand, I still like loans with an option to buy. And the salary cap did impose a real limit on our ability to bring in new players and retain all our old players--if the old players would have wanted raises comparable to what they are receiving at their new clubs.

 

Indeed, we were pretty much faced with a choice of increase contracts and make the squad thinner OR sell the wantaways.

One Caveat though RedSlo. There is still the January transfer window where we may do some 6 month loan deals