Southampton FC, Martin Samuel, and Financial Fair Play (Part 2)

In Part One I discussed some aspects of Martin Samuel's recent articles about Southampton.  I promised that in Part Two I would analyze his claim that the Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules limit Southampton’s ability to progress beyond what he once referred to as a “glass ceiling.” This is the beginning of that analysis.

As always, when I discuss Financial Fair Play issues, I reference and rely upon the Financial Fair Play website which is linked in the sidebar.  Since my goal here is not to explain the FFP rules, but to analyze how they effect Southampton FC, I will not explain the rules in full detail.  Instead, I will limit myself to explaining specific rules as they become relevant.

As you might expect, the key issue is money.  But there are five different “types” of “money” that matter for this discussion.

First, there is real money—the kind of money the club spends on everything.  This is the money that Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour used to buy their way to the top.  This is the kind of money we used to buy our way back to the premier league.  This is the kind of money that Randy Lerner doesn’t seem to have right now.  It is the kind of money that the Glazers sucked out of Manchester United to the tune of £700 million (I finally figured out how to insert the £ sign) over ten years.    Think what that means.  With more responsible ownership, Manchester United could have spent an extra £70 million a year on transfers and salary.  How many more trophies would Ferguson have won with that kind of money?  How much more money would Abramovich have had to spend to compete with him?

In Southampton terms, real money includes the money Katharina Leibherr might want to take out of the team as loan repayments or dividends or give to the team as a capital contribution.   There is a belief that real money doesn’t matter in this era of FFP, but that is not true.  You have to pay the bills and bills are paid with real money.

PSG and Manchester City have both been subject to FFP sanctions that limit what they can spend this year, but their owners’ real money can still be spent on a variety of football expenses that are not covered under FFP regulations.  Their real money also allows them to set up those ludicrously lucrative related party sponsorship deals.  Sure the FFP value of those sponsorships can be discounted, but they are not discounted to zero.

For the purposes of this analysis, I will call the next type of money Sustainable Money.  It is the real money that is actually available to the club based upon its own activities.  It is the money that is there if the owner puts nothing in and takes nothing out.  This is different from the money that is considered under FFP regulation because FFP regulations do not count some types of spending, but those bills must still be paid, and FFP regulations allow owners to contribute some money to cover losses.

If I am drawing the right inferences from the public statements of the Southampton board, this is the type of money with which Liebherr wants us to operate.  I get the impression she does not want to take money out, but she wants to stop putting money in.  If this is true, this is a significant impediment to sustained progress for Southampton.  FFP regulations present barriers, but if Liebherr is not going to kick in the maximum amount of money she can legally contribute under FFP, we will have to progress more slowly.  And slow progress might be fatal to our ambitions.  Schneiderlin and Clyne might be happy (or even thrilled) to stay here if they thought we would make the Champions League in three years.  They will not want to stay if it is going to take ten years.

If we are limited to sustainable money, we will have trouble competing with teams like Chelsea and Manchester City whose owners will (almost certainly) continue to contribute whatever the rules allow.  For that matter, QPR has its problems with FFP, but it certainly seems like its owner is willing to put money in. If QPR can avoid relegation and stop wasting money on bad players, they will be able to outspend us too.    On the other hand, Arsenal’s owners, both of whom are richer than Liebherr, do not seem to be willing to put money in.  However, Liebherr’s desire for us to operate on a sustainable basis is not a limitation that is imposed upon us by FFP.  It is a self-imposed limitation.

Next is the money that is available under UEFA’s FFP rules.  UEFA’s rules are complicated.  These rules do not affect Southampton until we qualify for Europe.  However, there has been a recent clarification to that limitation.  Previously, it was thought that teams that qualified for Europe would not be evaluated under UEFA FFP in their first year.  Recent reports (here,  here, and here) indicate that any team that might qualify for Europe needs to be aware that if they are not presently in compliance they might have prize money withheld or suffer some other sanction.

The BPL has its own FFP rules and its own limits on the money that can be spent under those rules.  These limits are far more generous than UEFA’s limits.  Once the rules are fully in effect, UEFA limits losses to 30 million Euros (£23.4 million) over a three year period whereas the BPL will permit losses of £105 million pounds over a three year period.  Although last season will count as one of the first three years for the BPL FFP rules, the penalties for any failure to comply do not take effect until after the 2015-2016 season.

Finally, there is the money that can be spent under the BPL salary cap rules.   Although related to FFP rules, the Salary Cap is completely independent.  It is possible to violate the salary cap rules while being well under the FFP limits and possible to comply with the Salary Cap rules while failing a FFP test.  I have discussed the salary cap at some length in several earlier posts.  I believe my understanding of the rules and my analysis was correct, but, early on, I made a mistake in thinking that Southampton’s reported salary spending was the relevant number for salary cap purposes.  It was not. Only player salaries count against the cap, but I was using the total salary spending for the club as a whole. I corrected that error in my third post on the subject. My earlier posts on the salary cap as it affects Southampton can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

If my most recent salary cap calculations are correct--I know that they are not exactly correct, but they should be good enough for our purposes—Southampton is spending around £41.6 million on player salaries this year.   The Salary cap this year is at least £56 million.   Depending upon our commercial income and how much more we spend on transfer fees, this year’s cap could be much higher, but that only matters if we actually spend the money.  Next year’s cap is either £60 million or £4 million more than what we spend this year.

This means that we could offer Rodriguez, Schneiderlin, and Clyne each £100K a week to stay and still be under the cap. Given their current salaries, this would add a little over £10 million to our spending—although since we are part way through the season it would add less depending on when the contracts were signed.  The problem with adopting this strategy is that other players might expect big raises too, and we cannot give everyone a big raise and stay under the cap—unless we do it right away and do not spend much more money on transfers.

It is possible that this is a significant dilemma now facing the board and might explain why players like Cork are not being offered new contracts now.  The board may be waiting until closer to the January transfer window to figure out whether we need to use the summer transfer profits to strengthen the team or whether they can safely be spent on increased salaries and, if the latter, whether they will try to push the salary cap up.  If we spend more than the current £56 million limit this season—say £59 million—then our base cap for next season is £63 million instead of £60 million.  Of course, to do that we have to actually have to real money to afford it—not just this year, which we clearly do, but also during the remaining years of the contracts.

In pre-FFP universe, we know from simple observation what it took to challenge for the title and the Champions League spots.  In his first ten years of Chelsea ownership, Roman Abramovich spent £2 billion on Chelsea. Sheikh Mansour spent around £900 million in his first three years of ownership.    Obviously, these figure are not exact or up-to-date, but they don’t need to be for our purposes.  If you spend £200 to £300 million a year, you can turn your team into a contender.  FFP prohibits this now.  If all Samuel meant was that we could not do this, then he was right, but that is not really a limitation that FFP imposes on Southampton because no one seriously believes that either Markus or Katharina Liebherr would have spent that kind of money on the club.  The estimates I have seen of Katharina’s wealth are around £3 billion.  Abramovich supposedly has four times that much  and Monsour has ten times that much.    Liebherr would never be able to compete with them by spending her real money on the team.  In that sense, FFP, by limiting what they can spend, gives us at least a theoretical chance to compete—if we can find enough EUFA FFP compliant money to do so.

Of course, there are teams that compete with Chelsea and Manchester City without spending £200 million a year:  Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool. However, the last time any team other than United, City, or Chelsea won the BPL was 2004-2005, so in a sense only Manchester United is really competing and they did it with their fabulous worldwide popularity and commercial income combined with talents of Alex Ferguson.  Right now it is not clear that they will be able to continue to compete for the BPL championship without him.

Moreover, while those three teams did not require the massive level of injections of real money that boosted Manchester City and Chelsea, they already had their own massive levels of income from other sources—perhaps most importantly, decades of building up their worldwide brand name without any FFP limitations.  Obviously, Southampton does not that kind of income from any sources and our brand name is not so well known around the world.  Yet, in order to compete with these teams for Championship league places we must either find a way to obtain that kind of money or find a way to progress with less money.  So the question is, does FFP make both options difficult or impossible for Southampton?

I was hoping to complete my analysis of these issues in just two parts, but this article is already longer than I intended and I need more time to research , calculate, and think.  So I will write and post part three sometime in the next several days.

Concussion Update (Part4)

There have been a number of developments since my last concussion update.

Arsenal actually got back to me in response to my e-mail about the Laurent Koscielny incident.  They informed me that he was removed from the game not due to a concussion but due to significant discomfort caused by his stiches and head dressing.  The American TV broadcasters told us it was a concussion, but post game reports stated that it was not.  I did try to search for those reports them when I wrote my prior post, but I did not find them at that time.

That being said, Koscielny was exhibiting the symptoms of a possible concussion so I hope that he was properly checked out before being allowed back on the field.  And, as always, I am concerned about the speed with which players are checked out and allowed back into the game.  Of course, since Koscielny did not have a concussion, allowing him back into the game, even prematurely, would not have presented the significant  health risks involved in a second concussion.

I found an interesting website that deals with concussions called the concussion blog.  I highly recommend it.  The link is in the side bar of my blog.

A class action lawsuit has been filed in California against FIFA, American Soccer, and the American Youth Soccer Organization over brain injuries and concussions. The lawsuit has the potential to be very significant or to be a complete nothing.  I will comment on it more in a future update after I get the chance to look at the documents.  Since it was filed in a California court I will have a fair chance of understanding what is going on.

Apparently, research performed by the Medical Director of the State University of New York at Buffalo’s Concussion Clinic, John J. Leddy, and others has found that it is difficult to distinguish between concussions and neck injuries based purely on the symptoms. (See here and here.) 

The research concluded that some patients who were told they had suffered a concussion and whose symptoms persisted for several months may actually have suffered a neck injury instead of or in addition to a concussion.  They concluded that there is no way to separate out the two types of injuries based solely upon their symptoms.  Moreover, the appropriate treatment for a neck injury and for a concussion is completely different so an accurate diagnosis would be helpful.  As a result, they recommended that people who have suffered symptoms of concussions over a long period of time should be examined for a neck injury by a qualified doctor.

Of course, this does not mean that it is safe to return injured players to the field faster simply because they might have a neck injury.  Presumably, someone with severe neck injury that mimics a concussion probably should stop playing football for at least one day.

However, if I understand their recommendations, they are only recommending that people who suffer symptoms for several months be checked for a neck injury.  This seems strange.  If the neck injury can be detected earlier, the appropriate treatment could be started earlier.  However, I am not a doctor so possibly I am misunderstanding the recommendation or something else.

There have also been several more possible concussion incidents in BPL games I watched.  The first happened in the 13 September 2014 Southampton-Newcastle game.   Shane Long was whacked in the head by the Newcastle goalkeeper.  It was clearly a penalty, but apparently the official did not see the head contact.  This may explain why the referee did not stop the game and have Long examined for his head injury.  He probably thought Long was faking his injury.

In any case, Long went down at 3:04 but was up and moving around by 3:14.  I don’t know exactly when he stood up because the camera was not on him the whole time.  Instead, they were showing replays of the incident--at least on the version of the game shown on the NBC American mobile app.  Sometime in the 28th minute, play was stopped and Shane Long was walked off the field in the company of physios.  At 28:07, his vision was checked with the finger moving back and forth in front of the face test. He was allowed back on the field around 28:55.  He was removed at half time in what Ronald Koeman characterized in a post-match interview as a forced change.

Once again, it appears that the new concussion rules were not followed.  Long was displaying symptoms of a potential concussion.  He should have been checked immediately to see if he had a concussion.  Yet, he was allowed to play on for approximately 24 minutes.  Then his status was checked in a matter of seconds before he returned to play.  Yet, at half time they decided that he had suffered a serious enough injury to require removal from the game.

I have checked the internet but have found no official statement that Long suffered a concussion.  However, at least one website reported the injury as a concussion.  At the 18 September 2014 press conference Ronald Koeman said that Long had suffered a head injury, had been back in training for three days, and could play on Saturday.

There were also two incidents in the 27 September 2014 Southampton-QPR game.  The first involved Sandro. The protocol was correctly followed and Sandro was removed from the game immediately.  The second involved a clash of heads between Wanyama and Eduardo Vargas at 37:13.  Vargas walked off the field holding his head at 37:40.  He was bleeding. He returned to play at 38:27.  Presumably, this means he had a cut, not a concussion.  Again, the evaluation seemed overly fast to me.

Finally, there was a head injury incident involving Dejan Lovren.  However, I have misplaced my detailed notes about the incident and, in any case, the people who read my blog probably have a limited interest in wellbeing of Dejan Lovren’s head.

Southampton FC, Martin Samuel, and Financial Fair Play (Part 1)

In a couple of recent columns (here and here)    Martin Samuel managed the not too difficult task of riling up Southampton fans by making a bunch of possibly accurate factual assertions in as condescending fashion as possible.  I have decided to jump into this somewhat pointless dispute because there are three aspects of it that interest me.  The first is Samuel’s claim that he actually likes Southampton and was not gratuitously criticizing the club:

Why would I have any grudge against Southampton? I’m from London. Growing up, I didn’t know any Southampton fans. They were not rivals, just another club that came to Upton Park. Frankly, far from disliking Southampton, I would love it if they won the league, or if any team from outside the established Champions League elite won the league, even finished top four. I remain outraged that FFP gives Southampton very little option but to positively manage the break-up of their squad. Any challenge to the elite excites me. That’s what I like about Manchester City. They’re new. They’re outsiders. They’re not supposed to be there. I hate the loan system, but I would still have secretly loved it if Romelu Lukaku had propelled Everton into the top four last season. Monday’s article was full of credit for Southampton. But I’ve been paying close attention for over 30 years now and have seen what happens when a board thinks selling and rebuilding a team is a game that can be played regularly with success. It rarely pans out that way.

This leads into the second interesting aspect of the dispute—Samuel’s belief that under Financial Fair Play Southampton is doomed to constantly have to break up its team with no real chance of improving enough to challenge the elite of the BPL, much less Europe.  Or, to put it another way, starting with Football Manager (FM) 2014, the game has become a lot less fun for anyone who wants to take their small home town team to the Champions League and win it.

Samuel’s view of how Financial Fair Play must affect Southampton leads to the third interesting aspect of the dispute which is Samuel’s contention that no reasonable Southampton fan should have been bothered by his article because it was supportive of the Southampton fan, if not the club itself.  As Samuel put it:

You might think writing that it would not be a good idea for Southampton to continue selling their best players, would find favour with the fans. You might think pointing out that this way a mighty fall lies and the board should not get any big ideas just because Ronald Koeman has made it work this time, was hardly a controversial stance. And that is where you’d be wrong.

I cannot read Samuel’s mind so I do not know what he was actually thinking.  However, upon first, second, and third reading of the article I did not get the slightest sense of support for my team.  Instead, I got a strong sense of superiority based upon a belief that Southampton’s Board and fans were stupid—albeit in different ways.   On the Saintsweb Fan Forum I characterized Samuel’s article as warning the Southampton Board not to run with scissors.  However, someone who posts on the Saintsweb forum as “KingdomCome” captured the flavor of Samuel’s column much better than I:

"A bit of advice for you son, don't shoot yourself in the foot"
"But, I wasn't going to"
"Well just remember, son, it's a bad idea"
"I wasn't go..."
"Just heed this advice son, I'm only looking out for you"

2 years later
"See son, aren't you glad you didn't shoot yourself in the foot?"
"Whatever, dad"
"No need to thank me, son"

[Digression about metaphors and gun safety in the USA omitted.]

No rational person would believe that the Southampton board would actually want to sell five important players every year.  This year, for example, it seems very unlikely that the board actually wanted to sell anyone other than Luke Shaw.  Whether the board could or should have drawn a line earlier than they did is certainly a debatable question.  However, even in real time, the transfers were nearly all defensible.  Lambert was getting old enough that he needed to be replaced and should be allowed his dream move as a reward for five years of great service.  Shaw—good as he was—was less valuable to the club than 30 million pounds.  Lallana could not be kept around given his desire to go and his status as team captain.  Also, the new manager had apparently identified an adequate replacement.  The board and manager wanted to keep Lovren.  However, as it turned out he could not be kept given his attitude and the club’s ability to replace him for less money—albeit with some risk.  The Chambers move is less explicable, but Chambers is the only one who is clearly better off at his new team.  He might barely have gotten off the bench for Southampton but at Arsenal he has practically been a first team regular.

Under such circumstances, what was the point of Samuel’s advice to the board that they should try not to do this every year?  They wouldn’t want to.

Of course, this does not mean that it won’t happen.  Nathaniel Clyne's contract expires in 2016.   If he won’t sign a new one next summer, he will have to be sold.  The same is true for Jay Rodriguez.  We don’t know what was said to keep Schneiderlin on board,  but it might have involved a promise to sell him next summer—at least under some circumstances.  Alderweireld is here on some kind of weird loan deal that may make it impossible to keep him even if we want to.    Right there that is four important players that might leave next summer even if no one at Southampton wants them to go.  If Samuel was telling the board, “Try not to let that happen,”  on behalf of the board, I respond “Well, duh.”  Moreover, given the experiences of this summer, there is good reason to believe that Southampton's scouting department is already at work trying to identify replacements for each of these players.  No one can be certain that they will succeed, but there is good reason for cautious optimism.

I can't help but think that Samuel is just setting himself up here to succeed.  If Southampton is relegated under current management, he will be able to point to some transfer that was "one player too many."  On the other hand, every season we don't get relegated, we will have followed his advice not to sell too many players.  Even if we sell five players next summer, if things work out, we just didn't sell "one player too many."

Samuel claimed that he had nothing against Southampton.  Again, I can’t read his mind so this might be true, but there is evidence that would allow someone, in good faith, to question this claim.  Having only been a Southampton fan for four years, I am not aware of the extensive history of grudges and rivalries, both real and imagined, that exist in and around English football.  However, even I could tell that the media frenzy surrounding the inevitable sale of all of Southampton’s good players this past spring and summer was unprecedented.  Maybe everything single reporter was accurately reporting in good faith information he or she had received from a completely reliable source.  However, much of the information contradicted itself and was wrong.  Very likely there was a lot of lies spread by people with their own agenda being published as legitimate news.  Certainly, something weird was happening.

Samuels did not claim to the contrary.  He merely asserted that he himself had nothing against Southampton.  The problem with this claim is that Samuel does have a motive to dislike Southampton.  Rupert Lowe, when he was chairman of Southampton, sued The Times and won 250,000 pounds for libel damages based upon a column written by Samuel.    

[Digression about free speech USA style versus free speech UK style omitted.]

This lawsuit and its result would permit a reasonable person to infer that Samuel could have a grudge against Southampton.  Or he might not.  After all, nine years have gone by. The club ownership and management is completely different.  Samuel is working for a different newspaper.  It could all be water under the bridge.

The real reason it feels, to Southampton fans, that Samuels is hostile to our club is the tone of his articles.  In his response to Southampton fans he pointed to his column of 17 January 2014 which, unlike most commentary at the time, did not assert that Southampton was falling apart because our genius leader Nicola Cortese had just left the team.  Instead, Samuel suggested that Cortese had gotten a big head, overstepped his bounds, and failed to understand that he worked for Katharina Liebherr, not the other way around.  According to Samuel:

The day it was published I got a very nice email from people working for Katharina Liebherr saying some very complimentary things. It wasn’t exactly a party invitation, but the offer to stay in touch was there. Trouble is, I’ve never sought to be in anybody’s gang, establishment or otherwise. So I keep my distance.

Alas, at that moment in time most Southampton fans weren’t ready to hear criticism of Cortese so this article, which doesn’t seem too bad to us now, sounded like just another attack.  A perception which was supported by the casual aside suggesting that it would be impossible for Southampton to progress any further under any leadership.  His most recent article, while complimentary in some ways, certainly implied that we have just been lucky.  Well, we have been lucky.  We were bought by Markus Liebherr instead of some rich jerk.  We were lucky his daughter was not the evil mastermind many people believed.  We were lucky our board turned out to be competent.  But given those preexisting facts, the results of this summer were due to design, not luck.

[Digression about Sir Alex Ferguson omitted.]

[Digression about Neil Ashton omitted.]

I have no real idea whether or not Samuel is biased against Southampton.  I do know that his style is such that we probably won’t even notice when he is on our side.  For me, the real test is whether he is right about the inevitable negative effects of Financial Fair Play on Southampton.  Alas, that subject is too complex to be addressed in this already overly long article.  I will try to post Part Two in the next day or two.

QPR’s Transfer Window and Match Preview

I was going to transcribe part of Harry Redknapp’s press conference for this posting,  but to my American ear much of what he said was untranscribable.  Certainly, I was not going to spend three hours today trying to understand him to type it up. 

The most interesting piece of news about QPR this week is that their expensive new midfielder, Sandro, is going to miss this game and, perhaps, several more because he is a complete idiot.      Apparently, he seriously injured his knee celebrating a goal in practice.  I know Harry Redknapp isn’t too popular around here, but I think we can all agree with him that it was a “stupid injury” and “absolutely crazy.”  At his pre-match press conference he suggested that the injury might not be as bad as originally thought and Sandro might be able to play on Saturday, but I did not find him too convincing. We shall see.  Also, Sandro apparently claimed that he injured himself some other way, but Redknapp did not find that too convincing.

And that reminds me, I know Pelle looks strong, but he doesn’t really need multiple full-sized adult men jumping on his back every time he scores a goal.  He could get hurt.  In fact, most goal celebrations are unnecessarily dangerous.  Please take this under advisement.

Another interesting QPR story this week is the non-arrest of Steven Caulker who may have committed the serious offense of shopping while black.  Or maybe he accidentally walked out of the store with some cheese—while black.  Fortunately for QPR, he did not celebrate the removal of the handcuffs by sliding across the parking lot on his knees.  At his press conference Redknapp wanted to know who leaked this to the media implying, perhaps, the existence of some kind of police conspiracy.  I am as willing to believe in police conspiracies as anyone, but I doubt this is one.

QPR is also interesting because it faces Financial Fair Play  problems.  In the Championship, teams were only allowed to lose 8 million pounds last season.  Any team that violated those rules faced a transfer ban or, if it got promoted into the BPL, a fine.  Given the amount of QPR’s apparent overspending—possibly around 60 million pounds—they face a fine in excess of 50 million pounds.    QPR has threatened not to pay the fine, but the Football League responded by threatening to refuse to permit them to play in the Football League when they eventually get relegated.  This would drop them all the way down to the fifth tier.   This seems like something that would result in litigation.  However, the penalty seems fair to me—although the Conference National teams that would have to play the newly relegated QPR might feel differently.  Also, would QPR be allowed into League Two when they won promotion or would they still have to pay the fine first?

TRANSFERS

QPR did a lot of transfer business.  Most of it involved unloading Championship Quality players who were not good enough for the BPL and BPL quality players who were too good for QPR.  And they were still dealing with the overspending on bad players from the season before last.  Since my purpose is to evaluate the strength of the current squad and whether it improved during the transfer window, my charts will ignore players such as Julio Cesar who was loaned out to Toronto last season and left on a free transfer and Loic Remy who was loaned out to Newcastle last season and then sold to Chelsea.

As always, I evaluated the transfers using information from Football Manager (FM) 2014 and Transfermarkt.     CA stands for current ability in FM.  PA stands for potential ability.  Both are on a scale of 0 to 200.  Negative PA scores reflect a young player’s potential with -10 being the best and very rare.    I ignored players who with club both at the end of last season and the closing of the transfer window or not with the club both at the end of last season and the closing of the transfer window.

INCOMING TRANSFERS

Player                                   CA                          PA                          Transfer Fee (in millions of pounds)

Sandro                                 157                         167                         11.09

Rio Ferdinand                    155                         180                         free

Eduardo Vargas                 145                         160                         loan

Steven Caulker                  142                         165                         9.46

Mauricio Isla                      142                         155                         loan (1.1 fee)

Leroy Fer                            138                         155                         8.8

Adel Taarabt                      134                         156                         end of loan

Alex McCarthy                  133                         155                         3.33

Jordon Mutch                   126                         143                         6.66

OUTGOING TRANSFERS

Benoit Assou-Ekotte        139                         150                         end of loan

Yossi Benayoun                133                         153                         free

Ravel Morrison                 132                         -9                            end of loan

Ji-Sung Park                       132                         150                         free

Danny Simpson                 130                         140                         2.2

Thomas Carroll                 128                         137                         end of loan

Gary O’Neil                        128                         133                         free

Jermaine Jenas                 125                         150                         free

Modibo Maiga                  124                         138                         end of loan

Andy Johnson                   124                         136                         free

Aaron Hughes                   124                         144                         free

Kevin Doyle                       118                         145                         end of loan

Dellatorre                          118                         135                         end of loan

Hogan Ephraim                116                         128                         free

Luke Young                       115                         139                         free

Will Keane                        109                         -8                            end of loan

Angelo Balanta                  92                          122                         free

Sam Magri                         78                          -7                            free

Mo Shariff                         65                          -6                            free

Emmanuel Monthe         45                          -4                            free

On the surface, QPR’s transfer business looks good.  They brought four to six good BPL caliber players while losing no one they really would have wanted to play—except Remy, of course.  It looks less good with Sandro injured.

Transfermarket values QPR’s entire roster at 78.98 million pounds which is 16^th in the BPL.  We are 8^th at 128.26 million pounds. To the extent this accurately reflects reality, it suggests that we are a much stronger and deeper team.  On the other hand, it is partially reflexive of our ability to pay more for our incoming players and sell our outgoing players for higher prices.

In my preseason prediction, I picked QPR to finish 12^th.  I used a non-discretionary method involving salary, team value, and FM CA ratings.  The changes in QPR’s squad since the transfer window would have lowered where I picked them to finish. However, I am not going to redo the numbers to get an exact result.

QPR'S STARTING ELEVEN

Last year’s starting eleven is based on the players who got the most playing time.  This year’s is based on the best CA’s at each position except where someone else is clearly the starter.

Position                                Last year(CA)                     This year(CA)

G                                             Green 129                           129

LB                                           Assou-Ekotte 139             Traore 123

CB                                           Dunne 133                          Ferdinand 155

CB                                           Hill 125                                  Caulker 142

RB                                           Simpson 130                       Isla 142

LM                                          Hoilett 130                          130

CM                                         Barton 131                          Fer 138

CM                                         Carroll 128                           Sandro 157

RM                                         Krankcar 130                      130

AM/ST                                  Morrison 132                     Vargas 145

ST                                           Austin 136                           136

QPR has lost 16 points of CA at one positions and picked up 100 points at six positions for a total gain of 84 points.  I assume this type of improvement is normal for a newly promoted team.  This means that their FM based first team strength is 1527 whereas ours is 1545. 

However, FM 2014 overstates the quality of QPR.  I have seen Rio Ferdinand play this year and he is no longer a 155.  I saw him play last year and he was not a 155 at Manchester United in February.  In fact, he does not seem to be as good as Fonte, who is rated as a 130.  This is one of the rare cases where I feel confident enough about my personal observations of game play to assert something like this as a fact.  Enjoy it.  It may not happen again for months.

INJURY LIST AND THIS WEEK’S LINEUP

These are the injury lists from the BPL website.

Southampton:  Rodriguez, Isgrove, Gallagher, Ward-Prowse, Yoshida, Alderweireld

QPR:  Joey Barton, Sandro, Adel Taarabt, Jordon Mutch, Alejandro Faurlin

STARTING LINEUP

For QPR’s stating line up, I took last week’s line up and replaced the injured players with the logical replacement.  For us, I took my best guess based upon who played last week—again accounting for injuries.

QPR                                                                       SOUTHAMPTON

POS                        PLAYER                                 POS        PLAYER

G                             Green 129                           G             Forster 138

LB                           Traore 123                           LB           Bertrand 140

CB                           Ferdinand 155                   CB           Gardos 128

CB                           Caulker 142                         CB           Fonte 130

RB                           Isla 142                                 RB           Clyne 140

CM                         Henry 121                            CM         Wanyama 146

AM                         Fer 138                                 CM         Schneiderlin 141

AM                         Krankcar 130                      CM         Davis 135

AM                         Hoilett 130                          LW          Tadic 146

ST                           Vargas 145                          ST           Pelle 132

ST                           Austin 136                           RW         Long 142

QPR’s line up totals 1491 CA.  Ours totals 1518 CA. However, I believe that FM understates our team’s strength and, as I have indicated, it overstates QPR’s strength.  In addition, QPR is not playing very well.  They have earned five points from teams that earned 17 points out of 60 in their other games.  We have earned ten points from teams that have earned 26 out of 60 points in other games. In other words, QPR has played much worse that we have against opponents that are playing much worse than our opponents.  Their goal differential is also worse than ours by 14 goals.  That is nearly three goals a game.  Taken together, I view this as indicating that we should win by 3—most likely 3-0.