THE TRANSFERS
First, I want to consider whether, overall, the transfer
window has been good for Southampton. I
have created a couple of charts summarizing our incoming and outgoing
transfers. As I often do, I am using the
Current Ability (CA) and Potential Ability (PA) from Football Manager (FM) 2014
and the market values (in pounds) from Transfermarkt to rank the players.
Outgoing Transfers
Player CA PA Value
Lallana 152 160 19.36Osvaldo 152 156 9.68
Lovren 150 165 17.6
Ramirez 142 160 6.6
Lambert 142 145 4.4
Shaw 139 172 19.36
Chambers 126 -8 10.54
Sharp 124 130 1.76
Guly 118 118 0.88
Fox 112 118 1.76
Hooiveld 110 115 1.76
Barnard 103 120 0.222
Stephens 90 -8 --
Forte 90 97 --
Sinclair 85 -8 --
Turnbull 85 -7 --
Curtis 65 -6 --
Leggett 60 -5 --
Robinson 60 -5 --
Young 55 -5 --
Nehemie 55 -5 --
TOTAL VALUE 93.922
Negative PAs indicate young players with undermined
potential. -10 is better than -9 and so forth. -8s are pretty good prospects. -7s might turn into BPL players. -6s and below will not. Of course, the numbers are assigned by FM
staff and do not necessarily reflect future reality.
In evaluating the team’s current strength for this year,
only the transfers of Chambers, Shaw, Lambert, Lovren, Ramirez, and Lallana actually
matter. Osvaldo does not matter because
he was not actually part of the team at the end of last season. Therefore, we have lost 6 players totaling 851
CA for an average of 141.8 per player.
Incoming Players
Player CA PA Value
Tadic 146 160 10.56Long 142 149 5.28
Alderweireld 140 155 8.8
Bertrand 140 150 5.28
Forster 138 147 8.8
Mane 136 158 6.6
Pelle 132 133 7.04
Gardos 128 150 5.28
Osborne * * --
TOTAL VALUE 57.64
Osborne was too young to exist in FM 2014.
We have gained 8 players totaling 1102 CA for an average of 137.8
per player.
Thus, our typical player is a little weaker, but we have a
bit more depth.
Of course, these are FM’s judgments. Most of us think that Forster is an improvement
on Boruc, for example, whereas FM views Boruc as a 142/142, or slightly better
than Forster, but with no room for improvement.
OUR BEST ELEVEN
In updating my “How Close Were We?” blog, I will
compare our best CA team at the end of last year with our best CA current
team:
Then Now
G Boruc 142 Boruc 142LB Shaw 139 Bertrand 140
CB Lovren 150 Alderweireld 140
CB Fonte 130 Fonte 130
RB Clyne 140 Clyne 140
CM Wanyama 146 Wanyama 146
CM Schneiderlin 141 Schneiderlin 141
AM Lallana 152 Tadic 146
AM Rodriguez 142 Rodriguez 142
AM Ramirez 142 Mane 136
ST Lambert 142 Long 142
We have dropped 22 points of CA in three positions and
picked up 1 point in one position. This
is too close to make any judgments given that FM’s CA scores are not completely
accurate reflections of reality and, in any case, not intended to be used this
way.
This result does put us a bit further behind Everton in my
analysis of how close we are to competing for Europe, but it doesn’t really change my conclusion. The
only hope we would have of catching Everton this year would be if our young
players developed very well or our new players were significantly underrated by
FM. (Very likely, the new database for
FM 2015 will give many of our new players higher ratings than does the current
FM 2014 database. In FM when players go
to a bigger team they get higher ratings probably because of the assumption
that they must be better players to be playing for the bigger team. Gareth Bale, for example, went from a 168/180
in the first FM 2013 database to a 177/186 in the final FM 2014 database. This effect will also inflate the ratings of
our former players who were sold for large fees.) Avoiding significant injuries to important players would also be critical.
SALARY CAP UPDATE
This part of the blog updates several earlier posts specifically,
in order, “Financial Fair Play and Southampton’s Finances,” “The BPL Salary Capand Southampton FC,” “I Used Information from Football Manager to Talk about the Real World. Am I Crazy?”, “Am I Crazy? (Part Two) ,” and “Southampton Salary Cap and Financial Fair Play Update”. If you do read those posts, keep in mind that
my initial analysis was based upon a misapprehension as to the amount of the
reported Southampton FC Salary that was relevant to salary cap issues. I thought that the reported figure was for
players only, but it was for the entire staff.
The salary cap only applies to player salaries.
In order to remain consistent I will continue to use the
transfer fees as reported by Transfermarkt.
They have changed some of their numbers and I will use those changes. The changes are not significant.
Transfer Fees Spent
Dusan
Tadic 12.32Graziano Pelle 8.8
Fraser Forster 11.0
Shane Long 13.11
Sadio Mane 13.2
Florin Gardos 5.98
TOTAL
64.41
Incoming Transfer Fees
Luke
Shaw 33.0
Adam
Lallana 22.0
(reduced from 27.28 to account for payment to Bournemouth)Dejan Lovren 20.0 (reduced from 22.26 to account for payment to Lyon)
Rickie Lambert 4.84
Calum Chambers 17.8
As for the Salary Cap update:
Previously Calculated 2013-2014 Players’ salary
40.0 million poundsSalaries for released players (Forte, Fox, Barnard, Guly): 3.0
Salaries of Transferred Players (Lallana, Lambert, Osvaldo, Lovren, Shaw, Chambers): 10.3
Salaries of Loaned Players (Hooiveld, Ramirez): 4.1
Salaries of incoming Players (Tadic, Pelle,
Betrand, Forster, Long, Gardos, Mane, Alderweireld): 18.2
Fonte’s Raise: 0.5
Unreliably Calculated Current Payroll: 41.3 million pounds
I have calculated the incoming salaries using
the same method as before. For players
on loan I used their FM 2014 salary. For
players we bought, I use the average salary of last year’s transfers or 2.6
million pounds per year. I suspect this
figure is too high, but I have nothing else to go on.
This means that we still have plenty of room
under the 56 million salary cap to give raises to current players or sign new
players in January. In fact, using these
calculations, our current salary cap is close to 86 million pounds per year
given the net positive transfer income.
Obviously, we will not be pushing these numbers unless Messi, Ronaldo,
and Bale all sign with us on free transfers.
To put it another way, the team faces no real salary cap or financial play
restrictions on its activities this year or next, unless we buy very expensive
players or give large raises to many current team members. However, the team could afford to sign
Rodriguez and Schneiderlin to new 100,000 pound a week contracts so long as
everyone else doesn’t also want a big raise.
Edited on 3 September 2014 to account for salaries of loaned out players: Hooiveld and Ramirez--Stephens was loaned out last year too so that doesn't change anything).
Edited on 3 September 2014 to account for salaries of loaned out players: Hooiveld and Ramirez--Stephens was loaned out last year too so that doesn't change anything).
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